tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post3501251833269122117..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: Lars von Trier's AntichristBen Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-1566469872087254402009-08-01T19:47:00.908-04:002009-08-01T19:47:00.908-04:00Eek.Eek.ithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-28305744343142674682009-08-01T09:55:39.025-04:002009-08-01T09:55:39.025-04:00Something near discourteous about Defoe working bo...Something near discourteous about Defoe working both sides of the street, i.e. a previous Temptation.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14435707760901207469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-39084662643450068542009-07-31T12:32:59.211-04:002009-07-31T12:32:59.211-04:00For anyone still interested over at AUFS I've ...For anyone still interested over at AUFS I've posted <a href="http://itself.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/theology-through-film-syllabus/" rel="nofollow">the syllabus for the Theology through Film course</a> I taught last semester.Anthony Paul Smithhttp://itself.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-27411017597805565082009-07-30T10:53:22.286-04:002009-07-30T10:53:22.286-04:00Tyler,
I wasn't trying to insult you, I guess...Tyler,<br /><br />I wasn't trying to insult you, I guess that particular perspective is just so far from my own life that I have trouble understanding it at all or seeing how one can hold it. Apologies for being a bad pluralist.Anthony Paul Smithhttp://itself.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-91581193489611066502009-07-30T09:12:28.480-04:002009-07-30T09:12:28.480-04:00(Little Leonard moves humbly to the front of the c...(Little Leonard moves humbly to the front of the class with his ofering:<br /><br />...If it be your will<br />That I speak no more<br />And my voice be still<br />As it was before<br />I will speak no more<br />I shall abide until<br />I am spoken for<br />If it be your will<br /><br />If it be your will<br />That a voice be true<br />From this broken hill<br />I will sing to you<br />From this broken hill<br />All your praises they shall ring<br />If it be your will<br />To let me sing<br />From this broken hill<br />All your praises they shall ring<br />If it be your will<br />To let me sing...<br /><br />(Everyone is silent as he walks back to his seat.roger flyernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-63478298322867198912009-07-30T04:43:16.603-04:002009-07-30T04:43:16.603-04:00... to expose this cruelty of stupidity or what ha...<i>... to expose this cruelty of stupidity or what have you and then present some kind of restorative or redemptive spin on it is to lay the seeds for more "good people" to take up Power and perpetuate the system.</i><br /><br />The last thing I am proposing, APS, is this kind of "spin", some (as it were) aesthetic theodicy, let alone the film as pep talk. (If you think <i>The Waste Land</i> is in this category, we are reading a different poem.) On the contrary, following Barth's powerful, if peculiar, idea of <i>das Nichtige</i>, I do not think that evil can be harmonised with the goodness of God either systematically or systemically. I recognise the aporia here. <br /><br />But that is not the end of the matter, either discursively or practically. There is a next move: it is Christological. In art this move need not be explicit; in fact, when it is, the art is usually pretty crappy. But because God has made evil his own affair, because in Jesus he has met it and fought it and overcome it, because we wouldn't even know what evil ultimately is without this divine encounter and victory, we can sound the note of hope and even what Barth called "joy over the abyss", and we can become what Ricoeur calls "co-belligerents" in the fight gainst evil and in witnessing to its defeat.<br /><br />The tragic has its place, even - especially - in the Christian story. That we must attend to the tragic without evasion or spin, explanation or assimilation - here I sit at the feet of Donald MacKinnon. Nevertheless - to refer to Eliot again - it would be an egregious misunderstanding to think that the end of "Little Gidding", the conclusion of <i>Four Quartets</i>, could not be recited in the presence of Ivan Karamazov.kim fabriciusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-58783670086027164372009-07-30T00:56:57.301-04:002009-07-30T00:56:57.301-04:00Danny,
I agree with some of what you're sayin...Danny, <br />I agree with some of what you're saying but I think people have made up their minds.<br /><br />For instance, I believe I was implicitly accused of an ad verecundiam when referencing Paul in describing my own conscience concerning these matters...I don't think the conversation you're wanting to have is the conversation they're wanting to have. <br /><br />I learned more by listening.<br /><br />APS, thank you for your thoughts on film and this one in particular. I think we simply depart on some issues surrounding theological aesthetics, but I appreciate the diversity.Tyler Wittmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12985272957466851438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-34247815029250722662009-07-29T23:31:20.661-04:002009-07-29T23:31:20.661-04:00What is specifically "Christian" about w...What is specifically "Christian" about wanting to leave the intimacy of sex private?Adam Kotskohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00242669006117144100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-83209798419761090382009-07-29T23:21:44.235-04:002009-07-29T23:21:44.235-04:00Isn't there something unique, something privat...<em>Isn't there something unique, something private about sexual intimacy that warrants Christians closing their eyes or wincing during graphic sex?</em><br /><br />Isn't this question grounded in assumptions that positively scream "I'm a big pious prude."Bradhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07303975097082135649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-60175491392521799052009-07-29T22:59:16.806-04:002009-07-29T22:59:16.806-04:00That's an interesting way to put it, Brad. I&#...That's an interesting way to put it, Brad. I've made that connection with Hitchcock before, but not others. Maybe it's time to watch Tarentino again. <br /><br />I got into Hitchcock when I was really young, maybe 13-14, thanks to my dad. Because of this I've always been put off by in your face violence, even though I can see the obvious difference between something like Pulp Fiction and your run of the mill 3d gorefest or whatever. <br /><br />The genital mutilation and other things described cross over different lines, of course (on purpose), but from what Anthony's saying, it sounds like the hubbub about everything is way too focused and out of context from the rest of the movie. I'll check out one of his films when I get the chance, and now I'm kind of looking forward to coming back to Tarentino. <br /><br />Thanks to you guys I have a slew of movies to watch and no way to do it yet! I need to convince the guys in my house to get a joint Netflix, but only my roommate would really watch any of these movies. <br /><br />DaveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-3645316821198799742009-07-29T22:06:54.368-04:002009-07-29T22:06:54.368-04:00"Umm... the nudity gets to you? Seriously? I ..."Umm... the nudity gets to you? Seriously? I mean, I get not liking porn if you want to be a moral person, fair enough, but this is a film and sex is part of life."<br /><br />This quote was earlier in the discussion and the comments here might be dead, but how does sex being "part of life" justify its being depicted on the screen? Isn't there something unique, something private about sexual intimacy that warrants Christians closing their eyes or wincing during graphic sex? This is not to say all movies with sex should be boycotted, blah blah blah. I haven't hear any good theological reasons for showing sex on the big screen. A lot of people here are paranoid about being uncool. This blog (or this blog's comments, rather) need to get past the whole "I'm not a fundie so I can watch whatever the hell I want and if you don't like it you're a big pious prude" thing...Dannynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-72340760643755743322009-07-29T21:41:14.365-04:002009-07-29T21:41:14.365-04:00For my money, the importance of filmic violence is...For my money, the importance of filmic violence is not really related to how graphic it is so much as the degree to which the viewer feels as though s/he is being observed by the violence to the more or less same degree to which s/he is observing the violence. Hitchcock was a master of this: think of Scotty staring wild-eyed <em> at you</em> in <em>Vertigo</em> as madness overtakes him; or Marian reaching out <em>to you</em> in <em>Psycho</em> as she is stabbed in the shower. Even at his most graphic, Tarantino achieves this as well. Think, for example, about Marvin getting his brains literally blown out in <em>Pulp Fiction</em>. Here, T. is far more interested in what happens <em>after</em> the moment of violence--whereas most other banal depictions of violence are just interested in the action itself. (The same thing happens in the long drawn out, bloody deaths of <em>Reservoir Dogs</em>.) The characters responding to these acts of violence act out narratively the revulsion and horror and surprise that we, the viewers, feel, and are left to pick up its pieces. This is a far cry from the more mundane instances of slasher-flick violence where the object of the violence is shocked for a moment, just before being wounded or killed, followed by the story moving on to a new scene. <br /><br />Where the violence itself is the focus, it loses any sort of violent effect on the viewer -- we're just receiving it, to the point that, as they say, we are de-sensitized to it. One does not get de-sensitized that easily, though, to the violence that stares you down and forces you to account for it <em>as violence</em>. Much the same can be said of sex, I suppose. This is the stuff of nature, of life and death, and precisely the stuff that provokes religious reflection.Bradhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07303975097082135649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-19473614708315025022009-07-29T20:59:23.543-04:002009-07-29T20:59:23.543-04:00(Roger takes a long draw from his beer and is sile...(Roger takes a long draw from his beer and is silent. Then he orders a scotch and one for Kim and is ready to listen for awhile))roger flyernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-52808180517355254052009-07-29T20:42:54.780-04:002009-07-29T20:42:54.780-04:00Dave,
I would recommend Breaking the Waves and gi...Dave,<br /><br />I would recommend Breaking the Waves and give Loughlin's chapter in Alien Sex a read alongside. Also, the wikipedia entry sort of ruined the aggression of those scenes (by that I mean being confronted with this violence) as I was ready for it. Really, that's all the violence in the whole film and it is extreme, but presented starkly and horrifically in contradistinction to the kind of "it is all ok" cowboy violence of Pulp Fiction. I will say if you don't like any of Trier's other films you really won't like this one and so check a less graphic one out first before you go watch some genital mutilation. <br /><br />Roger,<br /><br />OK.<br /><br />Kim,<br /><br />Long quote from you just to place what I'm going to say in context: "As for the "nihilistic", I think we must distinguish between a film that is an anatomy of nihilism and a film that is (if you like) teleologically nihilistic, i.e. that shits on life. Eliot's iconic poem The Waste Land is nihilistic in the former sense, registering as it does what Terry Eagleton calls "this haemorrhaging of experience from modern urban life"; it is not, however, nihilisitc in the latter sense: on the contrary, its barrenness is that of a seedbed, its hopelessness plaintive, yearning, and somehow restorative."<br /><br />This, it seems to me, is part of the problem though and why something seemingly hopeless "in itself" like Haneke's 7th Continent or Antichrist is less nihilistic than, say, the Wasteland (just for the sake of a bit of polemic). The world is shit, or to put it in other terms, it is the very Powers of this world that can take even "good people" and still shit on life (as you say). To expose this, and I don't think it is right to call it nihilism in any intentional sense (but that's neither here nor there), to expose this cruelty of stupidity or what have you and then present some kind of restorative or redemptive spin on it is to lay the seeds for more "good people" to take up Power and perpetuate the system. This is why I wish Goodchild's work was more widely read as he makes a brilliant point that we have to think very hard about how to respond to the aftermath of the environmental crisis or else we will simply perpetuate the old problems again, even in our attempts to solve them (more privatization!). Adam has actually made this point as well, that any attempt to "live off the grid" ultimately fails because it doesn't think past the rebellion. We have to start, as a common affect, from the position that Trier and Haneke leave us at the end of their films. Not ideologically restored and able to go about our day, but disturbed enough that our desire breaks free and begins to produce, not the old thoughts, but new ones.Anthony Paul Smithhttp://itself.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-7099089924758810922009-07-29T20:40:45.298-04:002009-07-29T20:40:45.298-04:00Dave-
you need a salad with your bratwurst.
Sound ...Dave-<br />you need a salad with your bratwurst.<br />Sound of Music?<br /><br /><br /><br />: )roger flyernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-85410646128031693562009-07-29T20:29:39.793-04:002009-07-29T20:29:39.793-04:00Anthony, thanks for the response. The only thing I...Anthony, thanks for the response. The only thing I can say is that maybe I'm just making too big of a deal out of Antichrist in my head because of the wiki description. Maybe it's one of those things where your imagination can run wild with just what you've read. Pulp Fiction is extremely violent, but the description of some of the stuff I read made Antichrist seem more extreme. Maybe it is the sex stuff, mixed with violence. I'm not sure - I suppose I'm drawing an arbitrary line here.<br /><br />kim, earlier this summer, I watched the entire series of The Wire online in about two or three weeks. Great show.<br /><br />I don't want to hijack the thread, but while we're loosely on the subject, I'm curious to see what people think of Synecdoche, New York. Many Kaufman fans I've run across didn't seem to think it was very good, but I think it might be his best.<br /><br />I tend to like Wes Anderson, Gondry, and Kaufman the most as far as movie people today go. I haven't seen anything by von Trier, so maybe I should rent something and check it out. <br /><br />DaveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-91109574118144170072009-07-29T20:17:57.455-04:002009-07-29T20:17:57.455-04:00APS-
OK. I think we misunderstood one another. H...APS-<br /><br />OK. I think we misunderstood one another. Has that everhappened before? Let's have a beer and parse Bergman. I think The Antichrist (as pitched) might cause too many tears in my beer.<br /><br />I'll take away your nilihism if you take away my piety (Oh shit, I might be a pietist)roger flyernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-4962711584748717172009-07-29T20:13:56.404-04:002009-07-29T20:13:56.404-04:00Finally, to Ben and whoever, it was a really good ...Finally, to Ben and whoever, it was a really good film. If you ever thought "I really like Lars von Trier, but I wonder what would happen if he did a horror movie", well, you have your answer. It really brought together the usually brilliance and slow pace of his other movies with aspects of the horror genre in a, to me at least, terrifying way (seriously, I'm still up because I am a little spooked). This meant that a lot of the audience hated it - half thinking they came to see a Trier film and half thinking they came to see a horror film. The focus in the media on the violence is really misplaced, the majority of the film lacks violence and, while there are disturbing scenes involving deformed animals or the eating of animals, it is largely a character driven film. Also of note is that it was dedicated to the great Russian director Tarkovsky and that he credits a team of researchers - one on misogyny and two for theology (there were more, but I can't remember it all now). I have some more thoughts, but I'm trying to collect them all into some kind of coherence. OK, really to end, I don't think I agree with infinite thought (who wrote the reflection Ben links to, not me) completely on the "message" of the film. Yes, there is no separation between the natural and unnatural, but that doesn't mean there is no difference between "right" and "wrong" (though we would have to talk about what these terms means ethically). It seems clear to me, for instance, that when there is genital mutilation it isn't presented as "just something that happens". It fucking matters! It is matter! So, finally, I'm probably a little less inclined to this diagnosis of rampant nihilism than most of the readers of this blog, but I don't think Trier is "marketing" anything here in the sense you mean it. Not his style as he's been in the shit. Now I have an index to finish.Anthony Paul Smithhttp://itself.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-69267951529673534972009-07-29T20:12:55.654-04:002009-07-29T20:12:55.654-04:00Kim once again has 'more' eloquently artic...Kim once again has 'more' eloquently articulated my point of view.roger flyernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-4424794558570460862009-07-29T20:12:49.312-04:002009-07-29T20:12:49.312-04:00Roger: you called me a nihilist and then you'r...Roger: you called me a nihilist and then you're upset when I call you pious? It isn't like the tone prior to my comments was so high-minded; there appeared to be some kind of consensus that Trier's film would be really horrible to see and that good Christian folks should shun it. Now that said, I don't know what kind of answer I could give you for why seeing a violent film or a sexually graphic film is good (partially because I can't quite parse your sentence, what do you mean when you say "what recommends"?). Frankly watching a movie like Antichrist (which I have just come from - brilliant film, so much going on in it) I never think "there is going to be sex and violence, oh yay!" It isn't a film about some fetish object (most Hollywood blockbusters make violence consumable or turn sex into an uncomplicated subject-object relation, etc) and is so outside the framework of violence-for-its-own-sake that it just isn't an issue for me. If you're interested in seeing a film that is disturbing, meaning it will make shake you from your dogmatico-cinematic slumber, then give it a shot and if you are not, well, then you aren't really into film as an art form (though you may like entertainment and that is fine and good as far as these things go).<br /><br />Nothing makes me the arbiter of good film (as an aisde: I am a little bothered that in the same post you feign some kind of offense with my tone you suggest that I've not even attempted to be persuasive, instead arguing as if I were an authority figure). Never said I was. I have, to the best of my abilities in a comment box, explained why I think film-makers like Trier and Haneke make theologically challenging films and why I think they are good to watch. What has been lacking is any explanation other than "it has sex" for why one would consider this a bad film (to say nothing of not wanting to see it). I wouldn't claim any expertise on film, but I wouldn't go so far as to feign humility I lack and, furthermore, don't feel I need to pretend I have. These are issues that I have given serious thought to to the extent that I have taught a course on them. So, yeah, I think we can decide what is a good film as art and differentiate that from bad films and even films that are entertaining (and again, I think that's good!) but lack the amount of quality and care that is present in Trier's Antichrist.<br /><br />Dom: What I am having trouble understanding is why you would be fine with Pulp Fiction, which has a lot more violence than Antichrist, and not Antichrist, though it perhaps has more graphic sex and presents the violence more realistically (in that it isn't glorified, no one gets hacked to death with a sword in an instance of redemptive violence). Is it mainly the sex that gets to you? If that is so then that would be an issue you would have to deal with before seeing a film that has graphic sex in it, but it wouldn't be right to blame the film for that issue. I say this thinking Tarantino is one of our great directors - he is essentially the Andy Warhol of film - so I'm not saying you shouldn't watch him, just asking where this discrepancy in your thinking comes in. <br /><br />dan: In the context of the plot I really don't understand your comment. What people would you ask about the violence shown in Antichrist?Anthony Paul Smithhttp://itself.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-45019377948428421012009-07-29T20:10:58.054-04:002009-07-29T20:10:58.054-04:00The Wire (we're just getting it in the UK): se...<i>The Wire</i> (we're just getting it in the UK): sex, violence, bad-assed language - the lot: and an absolutely brilliant bar-raiser. Do you feel me?kim fabriciusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-63215426522272023042009-07-29T20:00:43.682-04:002009-07-29T20:00:43.682-04:00I think that the burden of proof is really on the ...I think that the burden of proof is really on the people who think sex and violence in movies is ipso facto problematic. I don't say this to be an asshole -- I don't see it as a problem and have trouble getting into a mindset that would see it as a problem unless there was just an arbitrary rule against it.Adam Kotskohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00242669006117144100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-70331136778972028892009-07-29T19:49:31.078-04:002009-07-29T19:49:31.078-04:00My original comment, btw, with the line from the C...My original comment, btw, with the line from the <i>Confessions</i>, was not addressing the film; it was rather a qualifying comment, to balance the bleak quotation from the <i>City of God</i> (with the notion of "pure evil" in my sights). I didn't mean to drop a thread-turd.<br /><br />As to some of the points raised ...<br /><br />Sex and violence in the cinema: with Ben, not a problem - unless it's gratuitous; but then sex and violence don't have a monopoly on filmic gratuity. And there are plenty of good - great - films with sex and violence in them. (<i>Pulp Fiction</i>, I think, is one of them; <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>, I think, is not.)<br /><br />I would have thought that the only salient question to ask about a film (as with any art form) is precisely that: Is it a good film or a crappy film? And the answer will depend on an evaluation of both form and content - and I think the better the film, the harder it will be to prise the two apart. It will also depend, I think, on the moral, social, and political judgements that any critic worth his salt will exercise. None of this is rocket science; if anything, I apologise for its triviality.<br /><br />As for the "nihilistic", I think we must distinguish between a film that is an anatomy of nihilism and a film that is (if you like) teleologically nihilistic, i.e. that shits on life. Eliot's iconic poem <i>The Waste Land</i> is nihilistic in the former sense, registering as it does what Terry Eagleton calls "this haemorrhaging of experience from modern urban life"; it is not, however, nihilisitc in the latter sense: on the contrary, its barrenness is that of a seedbed, its hopelessness plaintive, yearning, and somehow restorative. <br /><br />Now I have not seen <i>Antichrist</i>. Anthony ends his reflection thus: "<i>Antichrist</i> is disturbing because ultimately there is no separating the natural from the unnatural, right from wrong. There is trauma because there is life and then death, and none of it means anything." It sounds to me like von Trier is at least acutely discerning and evoking a cultural mood. But is he marketing it?kim fabriciusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-53040813662576137232009-07-29T19:14:33.312-04:002009-07-29T19:14:33.312-04:00I'm not a huge fan, but I did really like Pulp...I'm not a huge fan, but I did really like Pulp Fiction. Reservoir Dogs was good, but maybe I hyped it up too much. I haven't seen it in a long time. I watched it in 11th or 12th grade when I was first getting into movies (5-6 years ago). I haven't seen Kill Bill or any of the earlier ones. The preview for Inglorious Bastards looked pretty terrible to me, especially the Pitt speech that they show, but I think that's the point.<br /><br />Maybe I should give Kill Bill a try? I think I'm going to try to get some Bergman and also look at more Woody Allen. I glanced t imdb, and the only Woody Allen I've seen is Match Point. I won't lie - it was largely because of Scarlett Johansson.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-4728247135899729862009-07-29T18:52:24.444-04:002009-07-29T18:52:24.444-04:00I would choose beer as well.
What do you think of...I would choose beer as well.<br /><br />What do you think of Tarantino?Adam Kotskohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00242669006117144100noreply@blogger.com