Michael Kress: April 2007 Archives

One of the true joys of living in New York these days is the Tribeca Film Festival, started in the wake of 9/11 by none other than Martin Scorsese. This year's extravaganza opens on Wednesday, and as always, the festival's line-up includes a significant number of films that explore faith and spirituality, matters of the soul, moments of history, and life's biggest questions.

Some highlights, with description from the Tribeca website:

• "Hard as Nails": "This fascinating documentary follows unordained evangelical minister Justin Fatica on his quest to save America's soul. Fatica uses his Hard As Nails Ministry to promote the gospel to all Christian faiths and reach out to the MTV generation. His gruff style and unusual methods bring salvation to some, but seem troublesome to others."


• "Forging a Nation": "Accompanied by his mother, cousins, aunts, and uncles, the director retraces the steps of his Jewish ancestors, who fled Europe in the 1920's hoping to find in Argentina the land of their dreams. This poignant film journey uses the documentary as a singular tool to explore the multifaceted ways in which the Argentine nation was built."


• "Time and Winds": "This unforgettable, beautifully observed film is a lyrical and haunting portrait of life in a remote Turkish mountain village, where three preteens struggle with dreams and desires that are utterly specific and personal, and yet somehow universal. An extraordinary score by Arvo Pärt adds to the electrifying experience."


• "A Slim Peace": "When 14 women--Israelis, Palestinians, Bedouin Arabs, and American settlers in the West Bank--are brought together with the shared goal of losing weight, they find out they have far more in common than they ever would have imagined. A Slim Peace takes a revealing look at the universal struggle for acceptance, understanding, and personal transformation in a land of intractable conflict."


• "Passio": "A unique "oratorio for moving image and sound," and a dramatic meditation on the very act of seeing. This extraordinarily powerful film sets the music of Arvo Pärt's Passio--which has been called one of the last masterpieces of 20th Century music--against images carefully chosen from the billions created during the tumultuous century since moving image media first appeared. Its declared ambition is to manifest the neglected or repressed memory of the human race during this era." (And this one is showing at New York's extraordinary St. John the Divine Cathedral, with live music.)

Last year was Beliefnet's first at Tribeca, and we brought you reviews of some extraordinary films, like "The Saint of 9/11" about Father Mychal Judge, and "Sound of the Soul," about the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, and covered a fascinating panel discussion called "What Would Jesus Direct?"

Stay tuned for reviews of this year's spiritual Tribeca offerings, or check it out yourself by perusing the whole lineup and buying tickets here.

The question, to me, is not whether Imus should have been fired for his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball players; it's why he was fired for these comments in particular--or rather, why he, and countless other shock-jocks like him, weren't fired sooner for any number of other immoral comments and "jokes."

Let's be clear: spewing insensitive and hateful invectives was Imus' job. The tools of his trade are comments that are focused on race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc., etc., etc. You almost feel bad for the guy. I'm guessing he genuinely has not clue why these comments were over the line when everything else he's said a million other times were somehow OK. I suppose the consequences this time had to do with his targets--inspiring student athletes, rather than reviled politicians or trashy tabloid starlets--and the way the media works and how stories get picked up and amplified. But that doesn't change the fact that Imus represents a part of our culture of which we should all be ashamed. The truth is that our talk radio waves are no place for decent human beings--and yet we've turned those voices of indecency into megacelebrities.

And the problem is not just the Howard Stern-wannabe morning shock jocks like Imus. Perhaps more insidious are Rush Limbaugh and his political talker ilk, people who can hide behind the veneer of focusing on high-minded public-policy and values issues while dehumanizing and degrading their targets. The careers of these political shock jocks are no less based on insult and hate than Imus' and Stern's. Both groups are paid to provoke--one to provoke laughs, the other to provoke indignation--but nowhere is there a value on provoking thought, dialogue, and curiosity. In her Idol Chatter piece, Nicole Symmonds blames rap music for ruining the minds of a generation of children, making vulgar talk and crude behavior mainstream among young people; I'd blame (in part only) talk radio for helping to similarly damage a generation of adults.

I am most definitely not opposed to art, or even discourse, that is edgy, potentially offensive, or unpopular; not everything needs to be affirmations and lollipops. But crass has moved from the margins to the mainstream; it is the default, the expected, and that's where the problem is. Edgy has no edgy anymore and we are desensitized to the supposedly shocking. Imus' show was a popular forum for respectable, mainstram politicians. There was a time in this country when political discussion was not an oxymoron; when crassness was edgy (when done cleverly) and something to be a bit embarrassed by; when members of a political party could hold diverse views--even disagreeing with their party leaders--and not be derided for it; when we could talk about the issues that divide us without painting the other as evil, resorting to distortions to put down those with whom we disagree.

The end of civility is not only the fault of talk radio, to be sure. I hate to shoot fish in a barrel by blaming the media, but the endless drivel on cable television--just a visual version of talk radio--and the noxious lawlessness of the blogosphere play their roles, along with a million other factors. But talk radio--in its political and its shock-jock forms--seems to be the granddaddy of them all, paving the way for its TV and web-based cousins to push the line even further away from anything recognizable as decency.

The defense is always that free speech protects their comments--true enough, no argument there--and that the marketplace, the money-making massive popularity of these shows is its own proof of acceptability. But our lowest common denominators shouldn't be bar for judging community standards, nor does surrendering to our bases instincts define our morality. Now that Imus' show is history, let's stop the holier-than-thou condemnations and look within at the ways we've all contributed to the atmosphere that took the shock out of shock jock and allowed Imus--and Stern and Limbaugh and so many others--to thrive. And let's use this moment to start a national dialogue--a real one, not a talk-radio insult-fest--about what we really want from our media.

Amidst the intensity of Holy Week for Christians and the joy of Passover for Jews comes the secular festival known as Opening Day. Even as I frantically cleaned my apartment for Passover last night, I dilligently checked the Mets score online every few minutes (remember when local games could all be seen on local broadcast TV?). There's room for both in my life, and thank God for that.

I've written before in Idol Chatter about baseball as a deeply meaningful secular American holiday, and I've compared the spiritual lessons of baseball to the Book of Ecclesiastes. Tempted as I am to connect the Exodus from Egypt to the beginning of a new baseball season, I will refrain from any such attempts at theological relevance this year. Instead, amidst personal holiday prep and professional deadlines, I will offer only my thanksgiving that a new season is here, that hope and excitement have returned to the baseball diamond, and that, at a time of war and national anxieties, we can as a nation come together for some diversion and fun, celebrating traditions and finding sheer joy in the game. Play ball!

And Happy Opening Day to you and yours.