"We can talk on the phone as we eat fast food while using the ATM. Not only are we better at multitasking and becoming more productive and efficient, along with the increased pace, more is required of us. And so we hurtle through life faster and faster, becoming busier and busier. The result is that in our busyness we are becoming increasingly efficient at leading meaningless lives."

Don Whitney, professor, Midwestern Seminary [via jordoncooper.com]

Painful, Humiliating Work

Imagine you are a filmmaker, an auteur who has just released a short film to the waiting public. Every image, every word was painstakingly chosen to convey a single message. This single-mindedness of theme is reflected in the tiniest details -- down to the style and coloring of every letter that appears onscreen. You edit and re-edit until every second, every frame reinforces this single theme. Your finished product is seamless, relentless, forceful and uncompromising.

Now imagine that after all that work, all that laborious craftsmanship, you find yourself forced to go before the public in order to deny that this single, unmistakable theme was the intent of your film. In interview after interview you are forced to lie again and again. "No," you say, "that's not what the film intended to convey, not at all."

Those interviews would be painful, humiliating work. Some part of you -- the craftsman, the artist -- might be secretly proud that your intended message had gotten through as clearly as you had hoped. That small part of you might feel rewarded and gratified to see your skills recognized. Yes! you'd be thinking, they got it. But at the same time, you'd be forced to deny that this was really the message of your film. You'd be forced to try to convince these astute viewers that you were, in fact, an ineffective and talentless filmmaker who had failed, miserably, to convey the "true message" of your film. It doesn't mean what it seems to mean, you would have to say. It means something else.

The scenario above is not hypothetical. It's happening now, in the real world, to real filmmakers. {continue...}

[via slactivist, also: Unsubtle]

and there's apparently an Election Shocker! via The Nation, HT: The Rambling Prophet 2

The Psychology of The Dark Knight: Batman, superheroes, popular culture,art, Friederich Nietzsche, terrorism and the politics of George Bush

[via Encefalus]

In The Darkness, The Battle Wages

there is something very believable in the epic of the dark knight - misunderstood, flawed, torn between the desire to do right and the compelling race for the easy exit.

i feel a great affinity with the dark knight.

gone is the white knight, the hero in shining armor died with the 20th century. we do not relate any longer to the stainless, spotless hero who will not, nay cannot be tempted by the darkness that pervades our lives....

many of us can relate to the man in black. we are misunderstood... people believe they know our intentions and can understand our motivations, but they cannot. they jump to conclusions when they speak of us, believing we have given ourselves completely to the dark night. but they do not understand that it is in the darkness that the battle wages. gone are the days when we could encounter evil without getting our hands dirty... maybe we never could. some of us have marginal personalities, are socially inept, have made decisions that have castigated us, seemingly for all time.

we want to make a difference but are forced to wear a mask.

[via Scott Williams]

The Forces That Are Near

In contrast to the simplistic opposition of good guys and bad guys, spy thrilers with artistic pretensions display all the "realistic psychological complexity" of the characters from "our" side. Far from signaling a balanced view, however, this "honest" acknowledgement of our own "dark side" stands for its very opposite, for the hidden assertion of our supremacy: we are "psychologically compex," full of doubts, while the opponents are one dimensional fanatical killing machines.
~ Slavoj Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes

The same, I think, could be said of superhero movies with artistic pretensions. Take The Dark Knight. Batman's psychological complexity, his struggle with the moral ambiguity related his own actions, and his status as a "Dark Knight", do not level the playing field between Batman and the evil he resists. For the Joker is, in his own words, "a dog chasing cars", he is evil and violent, simply for the sake of being evil and violent. He promotes chaos for the sake of chaos. The Joker has not psychological complexity, no internal moral struggle, he is a "fanatical killing machine". He is thus completely, and utterly, insane. Hence, Batman's inner turmoil functions as a sign of his supremacy over the forces he resists, personified in the Joker.

Of course, many people have noted that this moves Batman from the realm of the heroic, into the realm of the anti-hero, and that's all well and good (i.e. that's where Batman has always belonged), but it doesn't take us very far. {continue...}

[via poserorprophet]

Finding Together

These powerful storms are capable of producing flash floods and downing trees, along with very dramatic displays of lightning.

But with all that violence comes precious rain; without these seasonal rains, the desert would perish....

I think what fascinates me about lighting is the way it combines beauty with violence, two things you wouldn't instinctively expect to find together. Describing it that way, lightning seems an apt metaphor for life itself. We live out our lives amidst beauty and violence. We both love and hurt those close to us. We strive for peace but scream obscenities at those who stand in our way. We practice compassion and kindness with those we know while ignoring the misery of strangers.

The entire history of humanity has been thus, and though I believe with all of my heart in the importance of building a world that lives at peace, we never seem to get there, do we?

[via AnotherThink]

Self-Interest and Sacrifice in The Dark Knight

[via C. Orthodoxy]

‘Dark Knight’ of our souls

[via ThinkChristian.NET]

In The Course of Time (lyrics and music by Mike Schmitz)

Secrets born in unknown lands
Currents that struggle to get
From your mind to your hands
Crossings heaving into view
Nobody rides through
The raging waters but you
Harder rains are gonna fall
Fog stands before you solid as a wall
All these mountains left to climb
But it's all, all in the course of time

Yes, there's fire on the trail
Long weary days and bread
That has long gone stale
But gifts you forfeit in the night
Reappear, purified
In the gathering of the light
Lies have crept into your ears
Soon as you know (soon as you know)
Knowledge disappears
Pain and wounds to heal the crime
And it's all, all in the course of time

Lightening stabs into my sight
I'm lit like a wick
And ripped like a storm blown kite
Danger just heightens what I feel
I reach out with my Sistine finger
To touch the wheel
Clouds no longer on my eyes
Fear is no jury when the heart retries
Every point to be aligned
And it's all, all in the course of time

Can't Tell

How can I stay in love with a man who hasn't spoken to me in a year and a half? A man who can't plan a special date for us, can't tell me anything without me asking first, can't challenge me, earn money for us, lead us in devotions or call me at work to see how my day is going. I don't know how. {continue...}

[via Pray For Ian, HT: single/certain]