(Display Name not set)March 2006 Archives

The category “Christian rockers whose band is not Christian”—think Scott Stapp, or P.O.D.--is getting less exclusive every day. But at least one band is willing to sue to get on it. Mute Math, a Louisiana prog-rock group, is suing Warner Brothers for labeling them a Christian band. Headed by Paul Meany, formerly of the out-Christian act Earthsuit, Mute Math played to raves at Christian festivals over the summer and opened for Mae, a Christian band, last fall. But when Warner released their EP on its Christian subsidiary, Word Records instead of one of their mainstream labels, the band balked, first putting their full album out on a label co-owned by Meany called Teleprompt, then filing suit.

Naturally, the band's move has bred resentment in the evangelical ranks that calling any entity Christian is a litigatable offense. But think of the upside: the case may yield a court-approved definition of the term “Christian band.” A Mute Math spokesperson sketched out a sort of negative definition in saying what Mute Math is not: "Mute Math is not a worship artist. They don't preach from (the) stage. They don't preach in their interviews." That’s a start. But Meany himself intimates there’s more to the distinction when he told Billboard, “I had no desire to be the Christian version of a real band."

Whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, you have to wonder if holding those horrible posters and lingering outside clinics is the best way to protest abortion. Daniel Edwards, a sculptor based in Connecticut, has come up with a better way. Edwards has created an homage to the creative force in the shape of Britney Spears giving birth to her now 6-month-old son. Edwards found notoriety last year when he produced a sculpture of Ted Williams's surgically removed and cryogenically frozen head. The life-size resin figure, titled "Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston" depicts a pregnant, nude Britney crouched over a bear skin rug, with a look of severe concentration on her face and Sean Preston’s head emerging at the other end.

Britney fans are irate, sending the Brooklyn, N.Y., gallery where the statue goes on display next month more than 3,000 emails in less than a week. Activists on both sides of the debate are riled too: pro-choicers, of course, because they don’t like its message, but pro-lifers also complain it demeans their cause. Every individual is precious, of course, but it's true that we’ll be stunned if an abortion opponent ever asks, “What if Sean Preston Federline’s mom had an abortion?”

A study published recently in the Journal for Adolescent Health concluded that media—TV, movies, music, and magazines—operate in teenagers’ lives like a “super peer,” a beyond-cool kid whom the whole class models its behavior on. And sex is what this cool kid is recommending.

By comparing a group of U.S. teens’ answers about what they watch, read, and listen to with their sexual activity, researchers determined that the teens got much of their input about sexual behavior from media sources. This could be a problem because, the report says, “media programming rarely depicts negative consequences from sexual behaviour, and depictions of condom and contraception use are extremely rare.”

The good news is that parents, religion, and school came in a strong second in kids’ sexual decision-making.

The editors of the design magazine I.D. have no beef with intelligent design as a concept. Their annoyance with the debate is based purely on the confusion they felt on hearing their magazine’s title so frequently out of context. Their response, however, is a thoughtful, captivating March/April issue devoted to “Design and Religion: New Forms for Faith.”

Spanning a number of faiths, stories examine material religious culture, from the architectural transformation of a Houston sports arena into Joel Osteen’s megachurch to new household technology that allows Orthodox Jews to finesse Shabbat restrictions—programmable light-switch timers are just the start of it—to art inspired by Icelandic folklore. Designers can’t resist kitsch, so Jack Chick’s evangelical shock-tracts are studied, as are Barnaby Barford’s prank Christmas ceramics. But overall the editors’ degree of seriousness and professionalism, whether they are examining a new mosque in Singapore or showcasing four architects' mockups of their dream meditation spaces, is itself an uplifting experience.

Easily the best media moment for the Mormon Church in the past year is “New York Doll,” a documentary about the last days of rock bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane. The movie, released theatrically last fall and on DVD April 6th, shows that it’s possible to be a Latter-day Saint while maintaining legendary cult status, reuniting with your old band, and finding redemption.

Kane was a founding member of the New York Dolls, a group that was for the punk/New Wave revolution what, say, Buddy Holly was to rock ‘n roll’s first generation: a bolt-from-the-blue talent that changed everything, then vanished. The film finds Kane living in Los Angeles in 2004, 30 years after the band dissolved, thanks to drug-related deaths, heroine and Kane’s own alcoholism. After hitting bottom—he jumped out a window after seeing former bandmate David Johanson in the movie “Scrooged”—Kane discovered Mormonism, which he credits with saving his life. We meet Killer’s co-workers at the Family History Center at L.A.’s LDS Temple, as well as his former and current bishops and other assorted Mormons—all apparently reasonable, faithful people who accept Kane’s history and support him when the call comes from London for a reunion with the two other remaining living Dolls.

Greg Whitely, the director of “New York Doll” met Kane at church, and the film appealingly recreates his slow-dawning realization that Kane, a gawky, seemingly naïve specimen, is the object of awe and respect among some of rock’s top names. What makes “New York Doll” a serious spiritual film is Kane’s (and his co-religionists’) appreciation for the Dolls’ reunion as a sacred moment. The concert's critical and musical success pales for Kane next to the chance to restore his relationship with Johanson, whom he’d turned into a symbol of his own failure and lost glamour, and whose attention and love he still seeks out as a supplicant.

Kane’s renewal doesn’t return him to a pure state, but gives him his life back with his scars intact. We see that he sees it, and through the rasping, impish Johanson’s goading about his conversion, Kane exhibits a dignity that his old pal’s stardom can’t tarnish. Kane unexpectedly died less than a month after returning from London, from leukemia, and this film is the perfect epitaph to a life badly lived, but fully realized.

Did somebody say “Passion Effect”? A recent CNN piece claims the greatest boon of Mel’s “The Passion of the Christ” fell not to Christian filmmakers but to two Christian P.R. firms that help Hollywood navigate church basements to market their...

Well, not the Methodist Church, but the "Inside Man" star is said to have bought an apartment in a historic Methodist church near Washington Square Park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. A realty company is converting it into a luxury condiminium...

A critic for Canada’s National Post examines the new field of Seinfeld Studies, as it is represented in “Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain,” a recently published collection of academic writings on the cultural significance of the long-running sitcom. Among the...

The April issue of GQ, the magazine for dudes with elegantly mussed hair, baits us with the cover line, “The New Christian Sex Craze.” This continues a series of articles on conservative Christians, most of which have peddled fringey crackpots...

We all loved “Walk the Line” and Reese Witherspoon’s Tennessee-belle acceptance speech at the li’l ol’ Oscuhs. And we hated to see Dolly Parton’s “Travelin’ Thru”—the only Best Song nominee to mention Jesus--get passed over in favor of some rant...

You’re an up-and-coming pop star. You finally got an agent. You look fabulous. Then your uncle, who you don’t even talk to, totally masterminds a plan to fly jetliners into the World Trade Center! How uncool is that? Well, maybe...

The Wall Street Journal reports today on a former pastor who engaged a young atheist to attend a dozen church services in order to critique how Christianity was being offered. The pastor got the young atheist’s services by buying his...

After “Brokeback Mountain” lost out to “Crash” last night for Best Pic honors, “Brokeback” screenwriter Larry McMurtry was quoted as saying, "Perhaps the truth really is, Americans don't want cowboys to be gay." And he wasn’t the only one implying...

One benefit of Oscar season--besides finding out which gown designer is totally hot--is the rash of articles about worthy movies that didn’t get nominated. The films that make critics’ woulda-shoulda lists are jewels that are too small, too weird, or...