Purity and Danger

I just started Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger (that is, her preface to the 2002 edition). How nice it is to read something that demolishes the walls people put up between pre-modern and modern man, and exposes the lack of objectivity behind appeals to Science, that supposed arbiter of truth.

…behavior that blurs the great classifications of the universe is tabooed. We denounce it by calling it dirty and dangerous; they taboo it. (xi)

On why it can sometimes be hard for roommates to agree on how the house should be kept:

…there is no such thing as dirt; no single item is dirty apart from a particular system of classification in which it does not fit. (xvii)

Apropos of anti-smoking laws:

Dangers are manifold and omnipresent. Action would be paralyzed if individuals attended to them all; anxiety has to be selective. We drew on the idea that risk is like taboo. Arguments about risk are highly charged, morally and politically. Naming a risk amounts to an accusation. The selection of which dangers are terrifying and which can be ignored depends on which kind of behavior the risk-accusers want to stop. … Subsequent survey research showed that political affiliation was the best indicator of the distribution of attitudes to risk. (xix)

Clarissa

Just watched the BBC miniseries Clarissa.  It was a piece of filth.  I knew the barest outlines of the story, but thought there would be enough redeeming features to justify the plot.   The one redeeming feature is that Clarissa (in the film) isn’t a complete ninny – her piety and modesty are coupled with wit and the ability to verbally defend herself.  That doesn’t make the overall story any less disturbing, though – why would someone make an entire miniseries about the abduction and rape of a virtuous woman?  (Imagine my surprise when I found out the novel is the longest one in the English language – I felt dirty enough for devoting 3 hours to the story.)  The villain, Lovelace, is insane!

Or at least he would be in the 20th century … but rape seems to have had way more and different significance in pre-women’s lib times than it does today.  Anyone who did today what Lovelace did would be put away in a mental institution, regarded with contempt and maybe some pity – but apparently (from my online skimming), Lovelace fascinated and attracted readers in the 18th century, and continues to do so among critics today!

Gender Weirdness in Conservative Christian Communities

This hilarious blog post from my friend, who went to seminary with me (and has just joined Wycliffe Bible Translators), is a great example of how hard and weird it could sometimes be to interact with men at Westminster, and I think might illustrate:

- why I didn’t date much at Westminster

- why I apparently don’t know how secular men and women interact, and haven’t a clue how pickups in bars work.  Look at where I spent my young adulthood!

Masters of Counterpoint: Bach, Purcell and Depeche Mode

Ever since my college History of Western Music class, I’ve noticed affinities between my twin musical loves, Baroque and 80s synth pop – and this has now been confirmed by the Wikipedia article on Counterpoint. Listen to the refrain of “Never Let Me Down Again” if you want proof of Depeche Mode’s contrapuntal mastery!

I had a great time reading these articles on Depeche Mode:

• “Rock: Depeche Mode, Pain and Synthesizers” (New York Times)
• “Just Can’t Get Enough” (City Paper) – which says

This is, after all, a band whose music dotes repeatedly on depression, sexual politics/S&M (“Master and Servant”), mood-swing-prone deities (“Blasphemous Rumors”), sex as a mood-swing-prone-deity metaphor (“The Love Thieves”), and the healing properties of taciturn girls in black dresses. And so, it’s common wisdom that the DM oeuvre functions solely as a disposable soundtrack to the more John Hughesian moments of adolescence. Once one attains maturity, it is assumed, one gladly abandons those mopey Modes for the reputedly more sophisticated likes of Radiohead or something.

(This was written in 2001 – I bet DM’s cultural cachet has gone up since then.)

The city paper article also refers to DM’s campiness. Camp is a new concept for me, so I’m trying to wrap my mind around whether Depeche Mode is campy. Wikipedia says:

Camp is an aesthetic in which something has appeal because of its bad taste or ironic value. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language camp is “banality, artifice, mediocrity, or ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal.”

If this is the definition of camp, then whether or not one accepted DM as camp would depend on whether one was attracted to it because of its bad taste right? And while I think DM’s fashion sense and how they choose to be photographed is in pretty bad taste, I don’t think that about the music. Their music is unironically awesome!

Reviewers can make fun, but the passion and flamboyant unabashedness of their music (not just visual style) is one of the things I love most about Depeche Mode and some other bands (Erasure, Keane, A-ha on Hunting High and Low). I don’t know if that’s camp or not – maybe just if you think the passion is misdirected?

And I think I love the same thing about Henry Purcell’s odes and welcome songs, many of which were written to celebrate royalty and nobility. Music historians and liner note writers sometimes mock or apologize for the sycophantic and uninspired nature of their libretti (which Purcell didn’t write), but I revel in how cheesy they are (though really what’s cheesy are the causes for which they were written – in this case, celebrating the Duke of Gloucester’s birthday). They make me love the music even more. Case in point:

Who can from joy refrain, this gay,
This pleasing, shining, wond’rous day?
For tho’ the sun has all
His summer’s glories on,
This day has brighter splendour far.

(Sadly, “Who can from joy refrain” hasn’t made it to Youtube, but it’s available from itunes.)

Genesis and Capital Punishment

Whoever sheds the blood of man,

by man shall his blood be shed,

for God made man in his own image.

(Gen. 9: 6)

Another question about Genesis (and most of the OT) and Christian ethics. Do we live out of the old covenant or the new? The above verse seems to make it really clear that murderers should die. And, this is pre-Sinai, so you can’t argue that this is an only-for-the-kingdom-of-Israel thing.

But Jesus said turn the other cheek, and forgive them. NT ethics is not about fighting back and defending oneself.

(Not to mention these issues:

• what Paul says about God giving government the power of the sword in Romans 13: 4
• and how does the above relate to a situation where Christians live in a democracy? Where, at least theoretically, they along with everyone else collectively wield the power of the sword, where the people are the rulers?)

I really don’t know what the Bible, taken in all its fullness, teaches about capital punishment. That being said I am against it for these pragmatic reasons:

• the death penalty has been prejudicially enforced in this country – black men are way more likely to get the death penalty than white men convicted of the same crime.
• racism aside, so many people have been wrongly convicted. The death penalty is the one punishment that can in no way be reversed or made up for.
• appeals usually take decades and cost the state tons of money. You could argue that this is peripheral and doesn’t affect the essential rightness or wrongness of capital punishment. But I think part of what is attractive about the death penalty is the idea of 1) simplicity and 2) swift retribution for the victim’s family. The appeals situation undermines both these.
• The Roman Catholic church is against it. Another thing I’d look into if I had time: when they changed their minds on this (it seems a pretty big about face from the Spanish Inquisition etc.) and what the rational is.