Pop Culture Fridays (Sat. edition): T/F, Day 1

The crown jewel of cultural experiences here in Columbia, MO---the True/False Film Festival---kicked off its sixth installment Thursday night. My first films were both yesterday; here are a few quick impressions/observations:

1. Reporter: Here, Eric Daniel Metzgar catalogues the trials and travels of NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as he leads contest winners on a journalistic expedition, the goal to document the suffering of people in the eastern Congo and produce a report that will both inform and motivate his readers back in the States. This film provides the best articulation I've witnessed of the two questions that I wrestled with upon entering journalism school (and with which I wrestle daily):

First, how do you motivate people to care about vast amounts of suffering when, as the film reminds us, we see "one death as a tragedy, a million deaths as a statistic?" Centering around the notion that "compassion is an unstable emotion," we see Kristof earnestly grapple with the psychological, ethical and journalistic questions that complicate the job of the reporter.

Secondly, what is the future of journalism? Kristof and Metzgar examine the precipitous decline of print journalism and what an online-only world means for investigative reporting and advocacy journalism.

The film provides no easy answers but asks the right questions and asks of us that we consider our own culpability and our own conviction relative to the great suffering incurred by the world's peoples.



2. Sounds Like Teen Spirit: And, now...for something completely different...UK director Jamie Jay Johnson captures the ups and downs of Europe's biggest little singing competition in charming and cheeky fashion. Johnson provides an insider's look into the world of Junior Eurovision contestants, each seeking to make their countries proud and their voices heard. This film was a delight and a nice change of pace from the heaviness of Reporter. A wonderful film that deserves a wide audience.

1 movie already down today (No Impact Man) and 2 more to go (Burma VJ and Food, Inc.). More on those tomorrow...

Pop Culture Fridays: U2-{Please}

As a massive fan of U2, I would be reticent to rank their album Pop as one of their best. Yet (in my excitement over their impending new album) I've returned to it recently and forgotten how many songs from that record still stand on their own.

Goofing around on YouTube the other day, I came across a great live performance of my favorite song from Pop, "Please." I remember watching this performance on TV as a high school student; though it's marked as being live from Rotterdam...this is actually from the U.S. version of the MTV Video Music Awards. I love the song's slow build/slow burn (best evidenced live) and I love how understated Bono's stage presence is here...standing in place, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. That's especially notable because, at the time, they were in their "golden lemon/PopMart" phase, doing shows at the scale of the image above.

Pop Culture Fridays: Only 2 more weeks...

Exactly two weeks from today, I will be in the most glorious haze...

I will just have seen this great performer (in an equally great venue) the night before and will be heading into a weekend where I will get all the documentary fun I can handle...

Until then, I wait in eager anticipation with Adams & The Cardinals' latest to tide me over. Here's an excellent performance from Letterman's show...this song, "Cobwebs," is my favorite off the new record. What gets lost (just ever so slightly) in the live setting here is the beautiful, percussive, bell-like quality that Adams and Neal Casal get from their guitars. Great song.

Pop Culture Fridays: What Lost Teaches Us About Community

I may be one of the 6 people left in America who hasn't seen an episode of Lost. The concept seems fascinating; there is no good reason I have missed the show. A combination of grad school busyness and a bent toward situation comedies is probably, at least in part, to blame. This far behind, I have had a hard time finding the motivation to catch up.

Still, the impact wasn't lost on me when reading Regina Nigro's analysis of how the show paints an important picture of community. In America Magazine, a Catholic publication, Nigro writes that the popular drama has reinforced the oft-neglected concept of interdependence. Specifically, Nigro suggests "The “live together or die alone” credo has been a steady refrain throughout the show’s run, underscoring what has become a central theme: the value of living in community."

The show not only presents discussion on this theme but bolsters the theme in its very structure. Nigro writes: "The significance of individual choice extends even to the show’s narrative style. "Lost” employs parallel storytelling (juxtaposing a character’s pre-crash flashback with a current island crisis), providing several points for meditation on the nature of good and evil, people’s obligations to one another, the power of love and the endless struggle between faith and doubt. Placing moral crisesin the context of a struggle for survival lends a sense of urgency to the choices made..."

She continues:"...While “Lost” is too nuanced for simple allegorical mapping, the island is essentially our world writ large. While we are not plagued daily by murderous polar bears, an ominous “smoke monster” or creepy forest whispers, the island setting merely makes the challenge of living in community more apparent. The consistent message is that treating each other with dignity, respect and love is paramount; and it is no coincidence that every second chance awarded is oriented toward living together, not dying alone."

In every discipline I've studied (theology, politics, journalism, etc.), it has become glaringly apparent that perhaps our greatest sin, both individually and socially, is the sin of self-absorption, irresponsible independence and isolation. Our politics fails when leaders only look out for their interests; our communities struggle when neighbor will not lift a hand to help neighbor; we cannot be an instrument of God's grace or truly experience spiritual communion when we are only out to please self. John Piper speaks of our trading God's glory for lesser things; this "exchange" comes in the service of our self-glorification and contentment.

What Nigro sees in Lost is a lesson for our everyday lives and for the larger-scale decisions we make. When we give up our rights to ourselves, we are not losing, we are rather gaining. We become embedded and ingrained in community rather than setting ourselves up for loneliness, despair, spiritual emptiness.

It has famously been said that no man is an island. Perhaps it is the very purpose of the men and women on this TV island to remind us of that.

Pop Culture Fridays: Springsteen Takes Tampa

Hang around this blog long enough and you will get a sense of my bordering-on-ridiculous admiration for Bruce Springsteen. It's not a huge logical jump, then, from that statement to my excitement that he will be headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl 43. Not every Springsteen fan feels the same, however.

In a Sports Illustrated piece that came out this week, Joe Posnanski discusses the reactions of a few confused Springsteen devotees. Some point to the feelings of discomfort with stadiums The Boss has historically expressed. They wonder why someone who hated playing stadiums because of the inherent disconnect (due to venue scope and size) between audience and performer would play on the biggest stage of all...

I, on the other hand, am unconcerned. For one thing, I am never bothered by the chance for a real artist to display his skill on a platform usually reserved for lowest common denominator-type performers (think of the N'Sync/Spears halftime show of a few years ago or the infamous Timberlake/Janet Jackson experience).

And, while it might be a bit more awkward and histrionic a setting, I'm not worried about Springsteen's ability to connect. On stage, Springsteen is a populist preacher, a true man of the people and I have every confidence that his ability to make disciples won't be hindered by the pyrotechniques or dance squads the NFL is likely to toss into the mix.