Pacifism in a Time of War

Or, Why I Won't Be Watching The Hunger Games in Theatres.

I think there is a split between people who like The Hunger Games trilogy for the characters and writing, and people who found the message far more important than the relationships. Dystopias are written to parallel contemporary culture. So, there is definitely a statement about the world in which we live to be found here.

But I think it goes even further. On the surface, this is a hero tale. A girl overcomes remarkable odds to make the world a better place. Now, I identify with Katniss.  As much as someone from the middle class who has never been in combat can. But I didn't read the series as a hero tale. Katniss simply does what she has to to survive and protect her family. And if it were just a hero tale, I don't think the series would be very remarkable. The writing is very good, the characters full and complex. Suzanne Collins has a knack for always leading her characters down the most difficult paths.  But there is nothing inherently disturbing in the hero tale.  Even set in a dystopia.  But there is something deeper at work here.

Suzanne Collins is not just writing a cautionary tale. As I read it, The Hunger Games trilogy is one of the  most well argued pieces of anti-war literature ever to masquerade as an adventure story.

The Hunger Games is a pacifist manifesto.

She builds the most compelling case for a just war that you could make.  Then she deconstructs her case by showing all the evils of war without pulling any punches or glossing over long term consequences with a happy ending.

I honestly didn't care about the romance. I cared about the characters as individuals, but I really cared most about Panem. Is there a way out? Once it blows up beyond what one girl can handle, will we get a break emotionally and have a little bit of offstage exposition? No. We will be dragged through every detail of injuries, propaganda, emotional trauma, politics, corruption, bravery, injustice, cruelty, and love.  We will be made to see the crimes committed by both sides.  We will be forced to look into the faces of the oppressed.  And we hear the voice of the author: "This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong."

I feel a little uncomfortable with the fan response to the books. Because I didn't enjoy them.  Not the way I enjoy most novels.  But they spoke to me and I hope the die-hard fans heard at least some of the message I did. For me, the entire series boiled down to one conversation:

"We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss." 
"What?" I ask.
"The time it sticks."


Anything less than this central message renders the movie meaningless to me.  And if it's spot on, I'll be more messed up by it than by the books. So I won't be seeing the movies.

But, for the record, Team Peeta.

A Parable

Building Barns

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” Luke 12:21

The preacher stood in front of his congregation, beaming, “Today we are implementing a new system that will allow us to greater serve the needs of this congregation during worship.  This system is cutting edge and designed to boost attendance and provide greater spiritual nourishment.  Its name is Gimmix.  Gimmix is an electronic control package that allows us to run lights, sound, auto-tune, projections, video, and live recording from one console.  We will be able to pre-program the entire worship and run it for each of the services.  From the same console we can record and upload the service to our website.   The ministers and elders feel this is the biggest advancement our church has made since we added electric guitar.  Please join me in applauding the programmers that rushed to install Gimmix for this Sunday’s service.“  

The worship leader got up amidst the applause and waited for the new moving lights to ballyhoo, indicating that worship had begun.  There was a pause and a loud POP!  All the lights went out.  The mic went dead.  The preacher got back up. 

“Just a few moments,” he shouted, “we are clearly running into some technical difficulties.” 

He waited nervously.  From the back of the auditorium, a man in a blazer and jeans came forward and whispered in the preacher’s ear.  “It appears we may have a serious electrical overload.  We won’t be able to run Gimmix today, and we didn’t make any back-up plans.  You are all invited to enjoy an early brunch.” 

Slowly the church filled from the darkened auditorium into the sunlit parking lot.  They stood dazed, thrown by the interruption in their Sunday routine.  A little girl looked up at her father. “Daddy, why are we having church outside?”

“We aren’t,” he said, “We aren’t having church today because the Gimmix didn’t work.”

“Oh,” she said.

People were starting to edge away.  The little girl started to sing.  It was one of the older songs with a memorable melody that they still sang sometimes.  Her father looked down at her joined in her song.  Slowly more members of the crowd joined in until the whole congregation was singing.  The preacher emerged from the church and his embarrassment turned to amazement when he saw his church, without aide, leadership, sound systems, lights, or lyrics singing:

Just as I am without one plea,

But that thy blood was shed for me

And that though bidst me come to thee

Oh Lamb of God I come, I come.

Confessions of a (former) Picky Eater: Part I

I will be the first to admit that my lifelong track record of eating what is set before me isn't very good.  Food was a great source of anxiety for me growing up.  Doubly so at new restaurants or other people's houses.  My parents tried, but forcing me to try new things didn't work well with my refined gag reflex.

So what changed? Several things. As I got older, the idea of offending my host became worse than going hungry.  So in the most dire situations I would determine to find as much edible on my plate as possible.  I still had a raging mental block about food, though.  It didn't matter if it looked or smelled good; new food was icky.  So I set easy goals.  There was no way I was going to adopt "I'll try anything once."  So I settled for "I'll try one new thing per situation."  That way my disgust level wouldn't be overwhelmed by the mere thought of all the icky food.

I also built up slow.  I discovered early on that foods in the same category tended to be similar, especially in texture which is where most of my trouble came.  So, if I could eat one type of bread, surely the others aren't that bad, right?  Granted I had my limits—pumpernickel, rye.  But tortillas and naan were good to go.  Same with meats, although I scraped most of the sauce or gravy off. (Turns out I'm more of an au jus kind of girl.)  Finding ways to add dishes to my repertoire of consumption gave me more options and a confidence boost.

It's a sad state of affairs when vegetables are the most disliked foods in our society. And I was no different. This was my biggest obstacle.  All my previous progress had served to make me "less picky." I wanted more for myself.  Cooking is a big part of my family life and I was tired of limiting the dinner menu.  Plus, I've always found food sort of interesting.  I mean, it looks good, smells good.  Why can't it taste good?

I accidentally happened down a path that is actually the best way to conquer food fears: I took an interest, then became immersed.  It started with Food Network.  My interest in food TV can be explained by only one thing: consistent programming.  I'm not into sports, but growing up my dad would put on golf as something to nap to.  Food programs were generally soothing if I wanted something on in the background for a lazy afternoon.  Some of the evening shows were even exciting!  But I was also interested.  These shows taught skills that I had never been interested in learning from my mother or grandmothers and then some.  Maybe if I made food like the professionals it would taste good.

That step actually went on straight thru college.  I watched food, but I didn't eat it.  I kept adding slowly using my assimilate-like-things method and another method where the offending food would be in such small bits that I couldn't eat around it and eventually came to tolerate it.  But I wasn't trying hard to add to my list.  Dorm living does not a foodie make.

My real break thru came after college.

Guy Movies: An Evaluation

Some things bear looking at more closely in my post about the top 100 Guy Movies.

1. Guys feel the need to codify their special club. In the past there were gentlemen's clubs, secret societies, and coming of age rituals. Now we have the Bro Code, fraternities, and boy scouts.  Any female version always comes after and imitates these guy clubs.  But I don't think girls have such a strong drive to codify their gender. (Maybe they do, but sexism has squelched it over the centuries?) The idea of becoming a man by accomplishing a list of tasks or having a list of traits is one that will probably stick around a while longer.

2. Post-Its are the best way to order a list of items.

3. Going by number of appearances on the list, Harrison Ford is the most manly, followed by Brad Pitt.

4.We really have Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman to thank for this genre.

5. Very few sequels are as good or better than the original, and most of those have Harrison Ford.

6. Want to keep a group of guys busy? Give them Post-Its and something needing hierarchy.

7. Waiting to publish a post until after you upload pics makes for a very after-the-fact post.

Try and Try Again

I've been on a reading binge the last two weeks, but instead of working on reviews and a way over due follow up post to my movie list, I will instead proceed to write about all the books on my shelf that will never get a post to themselves.

I try to read and recommend classics that are accessible and a bit marginalized compared to the 'greats' that you will see on most every reading list.  (Say, The Scarlet Pimpernel over The Old Man and the Sea.)  But I occasionally attempt those books too. Usually to the same results.

You see, when I was in middle school or high school, I thought it would be great fun to read The Three Musketeers. I tried and managed to slog through most of the book before I got so completely frustrated by the plot that I gave up. (I had pretty specific needs about good defeating evil in the narrative. Something I still struggle with.)  Sometime later I decided that to be so close to the end and give up was just ridiculous.  The problem was that I couldn't remember what had happened up to that point (or where that point was; both times I checked a copy out from the library) so I had to start over. I finished it the second time through.

This experience did two things for me:
1. I came up with the theory that Dumas can only write a good first half of a book. (More on this later.)
2. There are certain books that are Two-Attempters.

Sadly, I have given very few of these books the benefit of a second attempt.  Sense and Sensibility was more of a restart (only after I saw the movie and knew it was going to go somewhere).  There are a few books that I have tried to re-read after having completed them once, only to abandon them on the second time through.  Les Mis (abridged no less!) was the most notable one of these.

I have a LOT of books on my shelves (and others I've checked out or borrowed over the years) that I have never finished. Most of the books are definitely two-attempters, but I simply haven't made the attempt.  (The ones with really well known story-lines I plan on finishing even if I can't remember all the previous details. I have a lot of bookmarks.)  I collected them all because I am a sucker for cheap classics.  (There are even more that I have never started.)  These are the ranks of the unfinished:
Swiss Family Robinson, The Last Battle, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Oliver Twist, The Toilers of the Sea (another Hugo), A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Second Jungle Book, And Then There Were None, The Grapes of Wrath, The Lady of the Camellias...

A brief word about The Count of Monte Cristo.  I attempted this book after finally finishing Musketeers. The opening chapters are cinematic in there scope and vivid storytelling.  But the further into the book I got the more bogged down in felt.  Pretty soon I was in chapters so convoluted I had no idea what was happening or why.  I skipped to the end to see if it was worth my time.  For my narrative needs, it appeared Dumas had ended another book on a 'meh' note.  And yet the first half ranks among my favorite books of all time.  I plan to finish it one day (I may appreciate it more than I did in high school) and read the other great works of Dumas, pere.  I just have low expectations for most of it.

There are probably more I'm forgetting or no longer own.  Each was abandoned for unique reasons.  However, as a general rule I read for pleasure.  And I'm not an English lit buff that gets my kicks from reading Faulkner. So, this is not meant to diminish the greatness of these works. I just couldn't get into them.

In Defense of Eating

Michael Pollan's work has been to illuminate the food culture that Americans are currently mired in. My first encounter with him was in Food Rules.  In addition to Food Rules, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food round out his works on what and how we should go about eating. The latter two are both groundbreaking in the way they look at the mistakes we have made as a culture and society when it comes to eating.

I have recently completed In Defense of Food (and only just started Omnivore's Dilemma).  There was one thing that jumped out to me beyond the general advice on how to eat healthy.  Which was: eat—enjoy eating—eat for pleasure. The idea that food should be delicious and pleasurable balks at a national consciousness that still holds a Puritanical definition of gluttony. We fuel ourselves like we fuel our cars; if we are responsible, we take into account chemical composition and environmental impact.

Turns out, when you strip away culture and flavor and tradition you aren't left with food at all. Our culture has experts and scientists telling us what to eat. No other culture in history needed that. They knew what to eat because their parents knew.  Michael Pollan dwells a lot on this idea.  Culture and tradition are important to health.  So are family and connecting to food beyond items in a grocery store.

But the immediate take away lesson for me was pleasure.  Americans have a hard time eating less. Each new "super food" is simply added to the diet without removing something else.  But there is something everyone can do the next time, and every time, they eat.  Enjoy yourself.  Make something you love. [OK, learning curve here, but when you start to see cooking as a vehicle for the pleasure of eating it's less odious to take the time to learn a few new skills.] Sit down at a table with a few friends and a bottle of something else you love. And enjoy.

It turns out, the more you savor your food the less of it you eat before you start to feel full.  And if you plan on savoring food, you aren't like to buy something that becomes inedible if not eaten in the first thirty seconds (I'm looking at you, McDonald's fries).  Diets are something we dread. Eating for pleasure becomes an adventure, takes the fear out of eating.

It is all we need to be healthy? No. But it's a start. And it may be the most fun you ever have with a diet.

100 Guy Movies

Poking around a bit online, some classmates of mine found a couple different versions of a list of the top 100 movies every guy should see.  There are a lot of them floating about. Here's a link to one of the inspiring sites.

The problem with lists like these is that they are always, inherently wrong. Every guy is going to come up with opposing criteria as to what should make the list.  Three of my guy friends took it upon themselves to make their own list.  They didn't stray too heavily into any one genre (unless you count Action, but that's sort of a qualifying trait in this list), unlike the other lists that favored westerns and war movies.  Their ages are 23, 26, and 28, giving the list a distinctly Millenial flavor. However, any movie less than ten years old was moved down the list since its staying power is unknown.

The list of movies (around 140) was complied on post-its, then categorized into quarters.  36 movies were placed into the top quarter.  Some were later shuffled around as detailed organizing commenced. Other movies were remembered as they worked. All this was done without reference to imdb or other existing lists, except what could be remembered from the previous perusal.  So, naturally there are notably missing movies. That said, if its a movie every guy must see, it should be memorable.

Without further ado: The Highly Opinionated, Largely Inaccurate, Nearly Unresearched List of Movies Every* Guy Should See:

*Unless a guy has more rigorous standards of taste or morals that would exclude the viewing of many of the movies listed here. The author of this blog does not endorse the viewing of any particular movie on the list and cannot recommend more than the 23 she has personally seen.

1. Fight Club
2. Boondock Saints
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
5. Braveheart
6. The Shawshank Redemption
7. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
8. The Great Escape
9. Snatch
10. Ghostbusters
11. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
12. Die Hard
13. Field of Dreams
14. Goldfinger
15. Taxi Driver
16. Rudy
17. Gladiator
18. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
19. Star Wars
20. Wayne's World
21. Clockwork Orange
22. The Sandlot
23. The Matrix
24. The Godfather
25. Jackass
26. Goodfellas
27. The Big Lebowski
28. Back to the Future
29. Caddy Shack
30. The Lord of the Rings (yes, all as one movie)
31. Evil Dead (all as one, as well)
32. 300
33. National Lampoon's Animal House
34. Highlander
36. Jerry Maguire
37. Top Gun
38. Dirty Harry
39. Raiders of the Lost Ark
40. Rocky
41. Blazing Saddles
42. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
43. The Godfather: Part II
44. Full Metal Jacket
45. Pulp Fiction
46. Terminator 2
47. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
48. Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi
49. The Hangover
50. Enemy at the Gates
51. Kill Bill: Vols. 1&2
52. Gangs of New York
53. American Psycho
54. Jurassic Park
55. Young Frankenstein
56. Reservoir Dogs
57. Thank You For Smoking
58. Jaws
59. Gran Torino
60. Rain Man
61. Inglourious Basterds
62. Duck Soup
63. The Departed
64. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
65. GoldenEye
66. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
67. The Silence of the Lambs
68. Se7en
69. Clerks
70. Old Boy
71. Blade Runner
72. Scarface
73. American History X
74. Mad Max
75. Airplane!
76. The Dark Knight
77. The Blues Brothers
78. Gone in 60 Seconds
79. Cool Hand Luke
80. Ocean's Eleven
81. The Usual Suspects
82. Stand By Me
83. Watchmen
84. The Right Stuff
85. The Ghost and the Darkness
86. Sin City
87. Casino Royale
88. Maverick
89. Batman
90. Slap Shot
91. Rambo
92. Collateral
93. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
94. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
95. American Pie
96. The Patriot
97. Iron Man
98. Air Force One
99. BASEketball
100. Porky's