Weekend Reads (Aug 20): “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” Nihilism in the MCU, Frederick Buechner (RIP), Banning the Bible
Recommended weekend reading material for August 20, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
The South Korean series Extraordinary Attorney Woo — a legal dramedy about a rookie lawyer with autism whose intellect and memory allows her to find unique solutions to cases — is one of Netflix’s latest hits. But the series’ depiction of autism has mixed success, writes Geoffrey Bunting.
Offering comfort like that, it’s no wonder that Extraordinary Attorney Woo has found an audience among the disabled community. When we’re so used to being chronically underrepresented, it sometimes feels like, as a community, we’re ready to accept any relatable moment in film and television. I initially felt positive watching Extraordinary Attorney Woo, seeing growth depicted as a process rather than an instant change, the realistic depiction of discrimination, and the support Young-woo receives from her colleagues. But I also wonder if we’re not sometimes guilty of relating to what we want to see.
I watched the first couple episodes of Extraordinary Attorney Woo out of curiosity, and I can see why it’s a hit; the series really is quite charming and filmed with a sense of elegance and lightness that I’ve found typifies Korean dramas. That, and there’s loads of melodrama packed into each episode that proves to be as affecting as it is ridiculous.
The series definitely seems to have its heart in the right place. That being said, the main character is often depicted in a very cute, even cloying way that risks reducing her and her autism — not to mention her mannerisms, speech patterns, etc. — to a bunch of adorable quirks. It’s a tricky balance to be sure, and I can see the series being just as problematic and disheartening for people with autism as it is encouraging and comforting.
Steven D. Greydanus confronts the growing sense of nihilism in the most recent Marvel movies.
[I]n the popular TV series Loki it was revealed that the border between the possible and the actual has been delineated and maintained by an unfathomably powerful, quasi-religious bureaucracy of brainwashed functionaries who believe they are following the will of transcendent “Time-Keepers” in preserving the integrity of what they call the “Sacred Timeline,” when in reality their whole cultlike worldview was dreamed up by a psychopathic mortal who happened to win a war between branching timelines.
If the “reason” Tony is alive is simply that this happened to be the version of reality preferred by a psychopath — well, it might not strictly disprove the idea of a moral structure to reality, but it certainly seems to debunk that striking sense of meaning that Tony finds in his survival and his feeling that it follows that there is something he must do.
As for the universe sending Jane a message, for some time now each new MCU release has offered another variation on the same nihilistic theme: The powers that be are revealed to be untrustworthy at best, deceitful or self-serving at worst, and ideas about destiny, the grand design, and good and evil are debunked.
After Sacheen Littlefeather took Marlon Brando’s place at the 1973 Oscars — he had declined to accept his “Best Actor” award for The Godfather — to protest Hollywood’s mistreatment of Native Americans, she was subjected to mistreatment and abuse. 50 years later, the Academy has finally apologized.
“[Brando] very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award,” Littlefeather said in her improvised non-acceptance speech, knowing she would not have time to read from the actor’s eight typed pages of prepared remarks. “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry [the audience begins to boo] — excuse me — and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.” (A month before the ceremony, the activist organization American Indian Movement had occupied the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee to protest the sustained mistreatment of Native Americans, a standoff that at the time of Littlefeather’s televised appearance at the Oscars was under a U.S. Department of Justice-imposed media blackout.)
Littlefeather’s 60-second plea for justice resulted in immediate and enduring personal backlash. She says that in the wings, John Wayne had to be restrained from storming the stage to physically attack her, while in the aftermath, her identity and integrity were impugned (the rumors were so abiding that in 2012, Dennis Miller mocked Elizabeth Warren by calling her “as much Indian as that stripper chick Brando sent to pick up his Oscar”). Littlefeather, who had acted in a few films before her infamous moment, says that the federal government threatened to shut down any talk shows or productions that put her on the air.
IndieWire asked 60 actors, directors, writers, etc. — including John Boyega, Nia DaCosta, Bill Hader, Rian Johnson, Chloë Sevigny, and Elijah Wood — to list their top 10 films from the ’90s. FWIW, here are mine, in order of release year:
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Iron Monkey (1993)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Chungking Express (1994)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Who Am I? (1998 film)
The Color of Paradise (1999)
The Matrix (1999)
I, of course, reserve the right to change this list at any time, for any reason.
Russell Moore — who recently became Christianity Today’s Editor in Chief — examines the growing trend of white Southern evangelicals who are leaving the church only to embrace a form of “cultural” Christianity.
The kind of cultural Christianity we now see often keeps everything about the Religious Right except the religion. These people aren’t in Sunday school, but they might post Bible verses on Facebook (or quote them on TikTok).
Cultural Christianity, as we once knew it, is largely being replaced by a kind of blood-and-soil Christianity. The “Christianity” in such settings is the sense of belonging and obligation not to a church but to a particular brand of white political and cultural identity.
For, say, a front-row choir member to become such a disconnected, culturally combative non-churchgoer is akin to the old God-and-country civil religion morphing into the kinds of Christian nationalism we see emerging around the world.
Moore’s piece references this analysis by Daniel K. Williams of the cultural trends at play: “The southern Bible Belt is quickly becoming a region of unchurched or lapsed Protestants who may still hang onto their evangelical identity to some extent but who don’t think going to church is necessary.”
Celebrated novelist and author — and Presbyterian minister — Frederick Buechner died this past week at the age of 96.
Likened by some critics to the works of Mark Twain, Henry James, Elizabeth Bowen and Truman Capote, Mr. Buechner’s novels were admired by loyal readers for their elegance, wit, depth and force. His more homiletic memoirs and essays reached much larger audiences of Christians and consumers of religious books, even though he did not hold orthodox religious views.
“Contrary to widespread religious belief,” he wrote in a 1994 essay for The Times, “I don’t think God goes around changing things in the sense of making bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people, or of giving one side victory over the other in wars, or of pushing a bill through Congress to make school prayer constitutional.”
Mr. Buechner said he believed that chance largely ruled the universe, but also that “through the chance things that happen, God opens up possibilities of redemptive human change in the inner selves, even of people who wouldn’t be caught dead believing in Him.”
Back in 1997, Philip Yancey penned this profile of Buechner concerning his career, beliefs, and approach to writing and spirituality. It includes one of my favorite quotes, from The Return of Ansel Gibbs:
If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don't ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don't know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and… great laughter.
I’m not as familiar with Buechner’s writing as I should be, but I do love that quote.
Efforts to ban books usually focus on books with supposedly “pornographic” content (e.g., LGBTQ content). However, book-banning efforts in Texas has had some surprising targets, like The Diary of Anne Frank and… wait for it… the Bible.
The books were snatched up due to a new compliance policy the school district’s board adopted on Aug. 8, local outlet WFAA Dallas reported. According to The Dallas Morning News, Keller spokesperson Bryce Nieman said that the new policy requires every once-challenged book to go through a review process. Keller associate Superintendent John Allison said each book would be returned to its respective library if it’s found to be in compliance with district guidelines. However, officials say they don’t know how long the process may take.
Forty-two books in total — including the Bible, a graphic novel adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe — were taken from school shelves despite some of them previously being approved by officials to stay in circulation.
While I find this situation hilarious — because really, who didn’t see it coming? — it’s also maddening.
Should parents be aware of the books and materials available to their children, or that their children are being told to read? Should parents express their concerns over content they find objectionable, for whatever reason? Should school districts take parents’ concerns into consideration when picking materials? The answer to all of these is “Yes,” obviously. But these are complicated issues that require thoughtful, nuanced debate and discussion. Banning books, however, is the exact opposite of “thoughtful” and “nuanced.”
I know that “slippery slope” arguments can be fallacious, but in this case, this really does seem like a “slippery slope” situation. Are we really to believe that nobody proposing/supporting these bans didn’t see this coming? What makes this even more frustrating is that some right-leaning folks will no doubt find a way to spin the Bible’s removal into more evidence that they’re being persecuted by the Left, even though it’s their own decisions and preferred policies that made its removal possible in the first place.
We really do live in the dumbest timeline, don’t we?
Daniel Dylan Wray has noticed that more and more of his friends seem uninterested in discovering new music.
The capacity to be amazed, overwhelmed or sucker-punched by music remains a constant presence and ecstatic joy in my life. It’s something I’ve experienced a million times but when it hits it still feels new. The late DJ Andrew Weatherall, with his boundless curiosity, knowledge and passion for music, right up until his untimely death, is my personal benchmark and inspiration. I write about music for a living, and naturally I don’t expect others to maintain anywhere near the same level of interest — and not everyone reaches their 30s and gives up on music, as the success of BBC Radio 6 Music shows. Not that there’s anything wrong with tapping out, either – interests and priorities change. A parent with two kids under five has things higher up their to-do list than checking out Jockstrap. Gigs become less attractive when a small person screams you awake at 5am. I get it.
Nevertheless, it’s a strange and alienating experience to have a fundamental part of your relationship with someone deteriorate.
On the one hand, no kidding… as people get older and start families, they have more and more vying for their attention (and money). Something’s got to give, so as unfortunate as it might be, I’m not surprised that it’s music for many.
On the other hand, I have some friends with whom I still regularly exchange music, usually via Facebook or direct messages. But I do sometimes wonder about older friends that I’ve fallen out of touch with, like former bandmates. There was a time when music dominated our lives, back before we were married or had kids. Priorities and passions can obviously change over time (as Wray notes), but if we met back up for a reunion at one of our favorite haunts, would we still talk about music with anything approaching that old fervor? Or if we tried, would it just be awkward because our priorities, tastes, etc., have changed and diverged?
Bandcamp’s Maria Barrios profiles Tortoise, a Chicago-based musical collective whose albums in the ’90s helped define the “post-rock” sound.
Tortoise’s idiosyncratic approach has roots in the influential DIY scene of the 1980s. “I was in punk bands in the ’80s,” says percussionist Dan Bitney. “There’s an ethos that goes with being from that era, of kind of ‘doing stuff yourself,’ doing what you want to do.” The 20-minute long “Djed,” which opens Millions Now Living Will Never Die, is representative of that attitude in being almost a “fuck you” to what any other rock band would have been doing around that time. With its stormy opening loops and moody melodic line (played by McCombs and David Pajo, of Slint fame), it sounds unlike anything else that was being made at the time.
If you want to know who to blame for crypto’s massive crash earlier this year, you might want to start with Three Arrows Capital, a hedge fund that filed for bankruptcy this past July.
For a firm that had always portrayed itself as playing just with its own money — “We don’t have any external investors,” Zhu, 3AC’s CEO, had told Bloomberg as recently as February — the damage Three Arrows caused was astonishing. By mid-July, creditors had come forward with more than $2.8 billion in claims; the figure is expected to balloon from there. Everyone in crypto, from the largest lenders to wealthy investors, seemed to have lent 3AC their digital coins, even 3AC’s own employees, who deposited their salaries with its “borrowing desk” in exchange for interest. “So many people feel disappointed and some of them embarrassed,” says Alex Svanevik, the CEO of Nansen, a Singapore-based blockchain-analytics company. “And they shouldn’t because a lot of people fell for this, and a lot of people gave them money.”
That money appears to be gone now, along with the assets of several affiliated funds and portions of the treasuries of various crypto projects 3AC had managed. The true scale of the losses may never be known; for many of the crypto start-ups that parked their money with the firm, disclosing that relationship publicly is to risk increased scrutiny from both their investors and government regulators.
I continue to find these sorts of stories fascinating. For something that’s often surrounded by so much hype, idealism, and optimism, the crypto world sure seems to have more than its fair share of scammers and hucksters.
Via Morning Brew.
Related: Molly White has compiled a bunch of Three Arrows Capital-related articles that reveal the breadth of their impact on the crypto scene.
File this under “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”: scientists are looking into resurrecting the thylacine, aka, the Tasmanian tiger.
On Tuesday, a company called Colossal, which has already said it wants to bring the mammoth back, is announcing a partnership with an Australian lab that it says will de-extinct the thylacine with the goal of re-introducing it into the wild. A number of features of marsupial biology make this a more realistic goal than the mammoth, although there's still a lot of work to do before we even start the debate about whether reintroducing the species is a good idea.
Via 1440.
From the Blog
I’m currently in the process of archiving all of the articles, reviews, etc., that I’ve written for other sites on Opus, and here’s why:
So if I bear no hard feelings towards those other sites, why am I taking the time — and make no mistake, this process will take time — to do this? Because I researched, wrote, re-wrote, edited, and re-edited those pieces. They’re my words and they should ultimately live on my website. I should be able to take some ownership of them and ensure their ongoing existence if, God forbid, any of those other sites ever shut down. It’s as simple as that.
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