Paul O'Donnell: January 2007 Archives

In business these days, children are a fact of life. Working from home to stay with a sick child is an allowable indulgence. If anyone remarks on a small voice in the office or in the background on a conference call, it's most often to note it warmly. In 1973, when Roe v. Wade was being decided by the Supreme Court, children and business--and therefore women and business--never mixed. In order to get or keep a job, a woman could not get, or stay, pregnant.

This isn't an argument for or against the need for legal abortion in 2007. But it is one of the fascinating perspectives offered by PBS's excellent two-part history of the Supreme Court, which debuts tomorrow night and Feb. 7th. The documentary does much to humanize the Court and the implications of its decisions for real people. It reports the standard Roe lore that Justice Harry Blackmun's opinion was heavily influenced by Blackmun's wife and four daughters, who assailed him with their pro-choice views at the dinner table. More than that, though, the show reminds us that the Court's decisions can change our workaday lives so fundamentally that we forget why they seemed imperative at the time—leaving us to debate only abstract principles.

Not that the film trivializes the purpose or power of the court. The greater movements of history are also given their due: the civil-rights battles of the post-WWII era and the broad expansion of individual rights that followed, we learn, were the result of an opposition to totalitarianism that defined all American politics, including the Court's, and redefined our values.

But the personalities and human foibles are what make these four hours of talking heads and decorous re-enactments compelling. Even Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case that established the justices' power to quash legislation, involved a political battle between two second cousins, Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall, and hinged on Marshall's brother's failure to deliver an important document to would-be justice-of-the-peace William Marbury. That kind of detail dissolves the mist of highflown principle and tradition that swirls around any institution like the Supreme Court. And that's what good history does.

Okay, so Internet polls are scientifically suspect--only the Oscars are as susceptible to email campaigns, multiple votes, and people voting blindly for artists they've never seen. But the audience for MSN's Music Artist of the Year is so large and broad, with more than 270,000 people voting, that we're confident in congratulating Christian praise rocker David Crowder and his band for being named the web portal's top act of 2006. "They've single-handedly redefined what contemporary Christian music should sound like," said MSN in announcing the award.

Fine, but you don't beat out Christina Aguilera, Prince, and Kenny Chesney by redefining only your own genre. Crowder's beatific roar is irrepressible and inspiring regardless of what you believe, and his wholly committed, unabashed praise for God (as opposed to the sometimes-furtively faithful lyrics of his fellow CCMers) makes his music genuine rock and roll.

It's hard to recall the last time the Sundance Film Festival made any real noise--buzz, yes, but nothing like the howl sent up this year about "Hounddog," an independent film starring Dakota Fanning as an urchin who is raped by an older boy. Fanning, who will turn 13 next month, is also reportedly scantily clad in some scenes, while two other children strip in another.

The usual watchdogs on the right have raised alarms about decency--Ted Baehr of the Christian Film and Television Commission put none-too-fine a point on the matter last week, calling the scenes "pedophilia"--while others, like child-advocate (and former Mickey Mouse Club actor) Paul Petersen, have said Fanning will be scarred. The mainstream media have even telegraphed their queasiness by implying that Fanning's mother and agent are exploiting Dakota in a blatant bid for a paycheck-boosting Oscar.

The concern for Fanning is the most curious feature of this debate. Anyone who's been on a movie set knows that the technical chore of film photography is so distracting and piecemeal that maintaining a straight face--not surviving any emotional intensity--is the greatest challenge. The violent or sexual scene the audience sees has often been interrupted by lunch, naps, and bouts of laughter.

And it's not for sure that the audience will see a rape at all. According to director Deborah Kampmeier, Dakota's rape scene consists mainly of a close-up of her facial reactions. "I didn't shoot flesh against flesh," Kampmeier has said, "because I wanted to capture a soul going through this experience, not a body."

Why, then, show it at all? Kampmeier, whose previous film, "Virgin," also dealt with rape, seems to have something to say about sexual assault. My suspicion is that she believes that depicting the crime on film kills the mind's ability to confuse it with sex. Think: Would Kubrick's "Lolita" have been as wicked and sophisticated if we'd seen Humbert putting the moves on his victim? Would Humbert have been able to elicit sympathy for his feelings of love? The box office receipts of the decidedly more graphic 1997 version with Jeremy Irons suggest that the answer is no.

The sexual-abuse scandal that once looked to bring the Catholic church’s hierarchy in Boston crashing down has died away. The former Boston archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, is comfortably esconced in a favorable position in Rome, and few of the radical propositions to end abuse--popularly elected bishops or married priests--have come to pass, or are on the horizon. The anger that sparked the scandal, however, is as alive as ever, and is on display in tonight's "Frontline" on PBS. In "The Hand of God," Joe Cultrera, a filmmaker once employed by the archdiocese to make fundraising videos, tells the story of his brother, Paul, who was sexually molested by Father Joseph Birmingham, a parish priest in Salem, Mass., in the mid-1960s. As a timely way to share the burden of those who still suffer, or as an introduction to those who didn’t pay attention five years ago, "The Hand of God" is a worthy way to spend 90 minutes.

The film has little new to say about the crisis, but Cultrera' s closeness to the victim unexpectedly makes his film more insightful than hypercharged media investigations of the time. Moving from an intimate memoir of growing up Catholic in the deeply devout Italian community in Salem to a "Roger & Me"-style confrontation of church leaders, "The Hand of God" explains how abuse could be concealed in the immigrant communities of Boston's Catholic faithful, which, in Cultrera's depiction, were as idyllic as they were isolated. Their innocence withstood even the uprisings of the '60s and the self-empowerment movements of the '70s. Paul Cutrera's internal battle against his molester continued until his distraught ex-wife, looking for answers to her marriage's demise, forces his fight into the light.

"The Hand of God" is hampered by a lack of on-screen interviews by church officials, who understandably declined to cooperate. Cultrera overcompensates with metaphors of dirty laundry, and images of cake-top statuettes of altar boys. Some of this descends to the level of pantomime and is more distracting than illuminating. It's the family interviews that communicate deftly what a spiritual disaster the crisis was, and how it far it is from being resolved, even if the broader public has moved on.

The passing of a great man's widow is often taken as a second opportunity to mourn the man himself, but when Alice Coltrane, widow of the sax giant John Coltrane, died late last week, it was her accomplishments, and her spiritual path, that filled her obits. A jazz pianist and harpist--the latter putting her in some rare company--Alice Coltrane already had a busy career as a composer and performer by the time she met John Coltrane in the early 1960s. It's been suggested that Alice, who eventually took McCoy Tyner's place in John's quartet, drove John to explore the outer limits of jazz.

Certainly, she was the more intrepid spiritual explorer. Both Coltranes came from devout Christian households, but after meeting Swami Satchidananda, Alice's music became a part of her discovery of the divine and Hinduism. Of her conversion, she said, "I felt I could serve in any way that God wished. If He wants you to do charity work or humanitarian work or however He wishes to utilize you, maybe just talking or giving musical concerts is fine."

Coltrane did release several albums of Indian chant, with titles like "Journey in Satchidananda" and "Huntington Ashram Monastery," but she served in other ways. In the mid-'70s she founded the Sai Anantam Ashram in Santa Monica, Calif., where, as Swami Turiyasangitananda and a follower of the Hindu saint Satya Sai Baba, she taught meditation.

All through the elephant-dung Virgin Mary dust-up and the "Piss Christ" controversy, one might have drawn the conclusion that Catholic League president Bill Donohue just didn't get modern art. Who would want to tackle the task of explaining to Donohue...

Last fall, researcher George Barna--the Gallup of the Christian scene--found that Denzel Washington is better known and better loved than any living American religious figure. Lately, it seems as if Washington is running up the score.Denzel got a faith bump...

Hard to say whether the Catholic-born Kabbalah convert Madonna celebrates Christmas. Last year, she reportedly prepped for the Yule by having four 72-pint firkins of ale delivered to her Wiltshire home: a good sign that Father Christmas was expected at...

The connection between spirituality and art was once a given: think Dante or even the dark and edgy paintings of Breugel. In our day, art is understood to be secular, and the more edge, the more secular we expect the...