The Daily Show and The Colbert Report

For an artifact, I watched an hour of television. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both satirical, left-leaning, political commentaries on Comedy Central. They are similar in structure and style, since The Colbert Report is sort of a spin-off of The Daily Show. Both involve mocking people or ideas to show how ridiculous they are. Stewart, of The Daily Show, has a straight forward approach, while Colbert parodies a conservative. His character is absurdly over-patriotic and selfish. He acts a bit like an Emperor, because his set is covered with American symbolism and a few pictures of himself.

The episodes that I watched both focused on the recent Republican Primaries. Stewart is quick to point out the hypocrisy of Mitt Romney during one of his celebration speeches. Romney scolded Obama for not keeping his campaign promises then proceeded to make a few lofty promises of his own. He said, "I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it." Perhaps Romney was excited or taken out of context, but we all know politicians tend to make empty promises on the campaign trail. Both shows also examined the use of vicious attack-ads to gain voters. These ads are essentially imperial propaganda. There is no openness for interpretation. They present negative facts about other candidates, before literally telling you who to vote for.

Stewart's guest interview was with conservative Jim DeMint. According to Stewart, he and DeMint debated economics for over 25 minutes. From what I could gather from this interview, both believed that our economic problems (evil) are caused by ignorance and could be solved by reasonable debate. But, Stewart and DeMint seemed absolute in their opposing principles. In America, we are encouraged to believe that all problems can be solved simply by choosing the correct political party. This is somewhat of a modernist, totalizing approach. However, Colbert takes a more post-modern, apathetic view. He has a segment called End of the World of the Week. Perhaps he feels that our problems are too large to be fixed, so we should just laugh at them.

1. Do you think attack-ads are equivalent to propaganda?

2. Does America need to get more than two worthwhile political parties?

Potter Magic

Last night I watched the second Harry Potter movie, Chamber of Secrets. As I am sure everyone knows by now, Harry Potter is a wizard. He lives in a world that is run by Muggles (non-magical people), but his schooling takes place in another world entirely. In the second movie Harry is faced with a few obstacles, first, an unknown force tries to keep him from going back to Hogwarts (the school he attends) and then an old mystery arises and starts attacking students at the school. Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione, find themselves in a race against time to solve the mystery and protect the school they love. As many Christians, who watch and read Harry Potter, might say the series is a good example of good vs. evil, an allegory of a redeeming Jesus figure (Harry) and an encroaching devil (Voldemort). In The Chamber of Secrets we see these two rivalries clash. This movie shows us that evil can get in anywhere. It can attack the weakest members of our group or society and that person, unknowingly and unwillingly can hurt the people around them. Often times evil comes from places that we would guess. An example from The Chamber of Secrets, would be how Lucius Malfoy sneaks the journal into Ginny Weasley`s cauldron. But that is not the only way. Evil can also manifest itself in characters that seem friendly, but aren’t. This type of evil is shown in Chamber of Secrets in the character of Tom Riddle, who in the end turns out to be a form of Lord Voldemort. I think that this artifact gives us hope for things to come. It shows us that evil can be defeated, and things are not always going to be bad, and there are people who can help us when we don’t feel like we can succeeded. One line that is famous from this movie if from Dumbledore, the head master, he said, “You will find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” If we look at Hogwarts as being the Kingdom and Dumbledore as a God character, then we merely have to ask and God will be there to help us; no matter what.

Artifact 1- Vampire Diaries

For my cultural artifact I chose to watch an episode from season two of CWTV’s The Vampire Diaries. This series is a suspenseful, romantic horror series which takes place in a fictional small town haunted by supernatural beings. The main focus of the series is the love triangle between a human and two brother vampires. The episode I watched was “Kill or be Killed” in which one of the vampires has to decide to go against everything he thinks is morally right and against his natural being in order to protect himself and his lover.

This cultural artifact tells so much about human purpose. In these episodes humans are solely for vampire consumption and there is a great contrast between the two vampire brothers in what they believe is right. Stephan does not drink human blood and suffers great weakness because he only consumes animal blood. Damon however, is a ruthless killer and feeds on humans for strength and entertainment. This artifact reveals the fragility of human life and the choices those with power have to make. This artifact encourages one to hope for good to overpower evil. While Stephan is suffering from his choice the audience hopes that he will be able to overcome the hardship he is presented and prove to Damon that there is a way to fight the inner demon they are possessed with. While Damon and Stephan both have the great desire for human blood, Stephan has chosen to fight against it and that gives hope for humans as well to be able to recognize that not all vampires are bad. We can apply this lesson to the in the real world as we strive for awareness of how challenging fighting against a strong impulse can be and how love, support, and guidance should be provided to those who need it. I am aware that humans don’t often have the desire to drink blood but we are hindered by alcoholism, sex addiction, eating disorders, and mental incapability.

1. 1.How are we to reach out and support those who are struggling to turn away from life in the empire and live for the kingdom of God?

2. Although this is clearly not a “Christian” television show, do you think it is possible to derive the good versus evil theme and apply it to our discussion using a Christian viewpoint?

Artifact 1, The Next Christian

The artifact that I choose was one of the January Series lectures. The lecture that I attended was titled The Next Christians: How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith. The speaker of this lecture was Gabe Lyons. He spoke about the Christians interactions with the current culture.

In culture many perceptions of Christianity are that Christians believe in anti-homosexuality, they are judgmental, hypocritical, sheltered, and too political. The lecture went on to talk about the interactions that Christians have with the current culture. Lyons describes three different types of Christians. They are separatists, cultural, and restorers. Separatist Christians are described as separate from the world and that they are one group who think, act, and look alike. Cultural Christians are described as people who blend in, have a close alignment to culture, and just put themselves in the category of Christians. Restorers are described as Christians practicing what faithfulness looks like. He went on to talk about the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration and continued saying that the cultural Christians only look at the creation and restoration, while the separatist Christians only look at the fall and redemption. Lyons then says that the restorers look at all the whole story form creation to redemption, while the other two only look at half of them. Restorers are provoked because they get engaged and involved and through this we can see he kingdom showing up. Restorers are also called to creation; this is true because they create and environment, experience, conversation, or an organization that is bettering the kingdom. Restorers are also called they are to use the gift’s that God has given them; Restorers use their gifts to redeem and restore that world. He continues that it is important to not escape from the world but to renew it and also that reconciliation can happen with anything and pleases God because it changes our hearts. He then finishes up saying that there are seven channels of culture and they are church, business, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and social sector. He says that pretty much everyone is a part of one of the channels.

1. How can we get engaged and create the world as it should be?

2. Which of the seven channels do you think you could be apart of? Why?

America the Beautiful

Last night, for the dorm film showing, I watched America the Beautiful. This film was a documentary written by a guy who had passed up an incredibly beautiful woman just because he wanted to see if he could find someone even prettier than she. The woman ended up falling in love and marrying a different man while he was left pondering the mistake that he. He wanted to discover why exactly Americans, especially women, are so obsessed with being “beautiful”.

 In the film the director, Darryl Roberts, gives many examples of how advertising and especially modeling corrupt our society on our views of what a woman should look like in order to truly be beautiful. He particularly showed the story of a girl who began modeling at the young age of only twelve years old. Already then, this girl had started comparing herself to sexy women and advertisements as well as the bodies and slim figures of models. He then went on the say that over 46 percent of eleven to twelve year old girls already begin dieting and talking about plastic surgery at their age. To me, this was not only a very sad statistic to hear, but also a sad reality to be confronted with. It made me realize just the extent that so many women go to in order to achieve the American eye of beauty. As Jessica Reaves phrased it in her review in the Chicago Tribune, “Women suffer all sorts of indignities, anxieties and pain in our futile attempts to achieve a narrow, twisted standard of attractiveness”.  I completely agree with this statement because to many people around the world, every American woman is absolutely beautiful, yet to Americans, there’s automatically a certain standard that women hold themselves to which only a slim few can actually achieve.

The film also gave the statistic that over 91 percent of college girls are on a diet. This also hit me hard being that I myself am a college student. I think one of the biggest differences I can do in my life for myself is to recognize that I’m beautiful to God and that alone is the opinion that matters, not the world. The biggest difference I can make amongst my peers is just simply giving a compliment and genuinely letting someone know their beautiful. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that truly make the biggest difference.