A Unified Theory of What’s Wrong with Everything

Last updated on: October 26, 2016 at 7:33 am by Anne Kennedy

A Unified Theory of What’s Wrong with Everything 2016-10-26T07:33:12-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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Last week, among the many links that I was busy gathering to no effect or usefulness, I came across this musical number. I’m linking the Patheos article that so rightly articulates why the song is musically boring, and why the theology is also very dumb. I watched the song several times. I suppose I should say ‘listened to’ but it was more interesting to watch the people on stage, and try to wonder what it would feel like to be in the crowd. Once you hear the chorus, even though there’s another six minutes to go, you have to cast about for something to think about because of the incredible vapid emptiness of the words. This song, just to remind you, won some kind of award. And that’s why we have this election..

Anyway, let me not be distracted. The reason for bringing up that song is so that you can stop and read this long and wonderful article that helped me get a handle on what is so irritating and wrong not just inside Christian culture and ever increasingly theology, but American culture as well. This article explains Everything. Why do some writers leave me cold. Why do I hate all movies. Why is so much praise music a total waste of all our time. What’s wrong with all food tv…I’m not using question marks because these are not any longer questions, they are settled by the brilliance of Mr. Myer’s insight.

So obviously, you have to go read it, even though it’s very long. And what were you going to do instead? Read a book? Do laundry? No no, read this article. And once you’ve read it your eyes will be opened and you will be able to see, as if Jesus himself had laid hands on you. Essentially, just to distill out the nugget that has so transformed my existence, when you remove the suffering portion of something, all the emotion and feeling that you wanted to have becomes untethered and sentimental. Which is not good. It’s like trying to eat cotton candy all the time but insisting while you’re eating it that no no, you’re really eating the sacrificial lamb.

The thing that immediately leapt out at me, as I worked methodically and gratefully through the whole thing, is why all American movies are stupid. And it’s not because they skip over suffering, it’s because they only know of one kind of suffering and they can’t deviate from it even one single time. The suffering, which of course you all know, is the need of the hero or heroine to be self actualized, to discover the self against all odds. Once the self has been grasped and glorified then the movie can be over. So, let me see, what are some dumb movies that could have been good but fell headlong into this pit? Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Star Wars, that movie with the blimp thing, all those Panda movies, all the fairy tale ones, that movie with all the childhood characters like Jake Frost, Love Actually, I’m drawing a blank for any movie I’ve seen, but believe me, it’s All the movies, with rare and glittering exceptions. Where all movies insist, desperately, that you ‘Believe In Yourself,’ it’s such a relief to occasionally hear ‘Have Courage and Be Kind,’ or even, ‘Too Old to Govern Too Young to Die.’

Want to know what felt off kilter about Florence Foster Jenkins? She had to be sympathetic, Had To Be, because her life was pure unwavering devotion to this basic principle–the glorifying discovery and then expression of the self. She did what we are all commanded to do. And so it couldn’t be shown cinematically for what it is–poppycock–it had to be lovingly traced out. It had to be gently handled. The message being, it’s better to beclown yourself before all, in so much as you are pursing the essence of who you are, than not to.

Which makes all modern cinematic suffering pale and false because true suffering is not the thwarting of your own psyche that you over come to express more gloriously than ever. True suffering is when you deny yourself, even to death, so that another might live and go free. All suffering has to be grounded some way in the catastrophe of the cross. Wherever you see that agony reflected in words or images or music, there can be some room for the deep relief that comes when death that was endured is overturned and life is restored.

It’s not just that we pass over suffering, which we absolutely do. It’s that we misunderstand what kind of suffering is called for.

Obviously, this is only part one because I haven’t even really gotten into bashing at that song. And believe me, I had some things to say about it. Oh, and feminism, and social justice warrioring, and everything really.

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