Category Archives: TV/movie

Chalcedon via Buffy/Angel

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us. –Council of Chalcedon (451 A. D.)

(Warning: the usual Christian disclaimers for pop cultural references apply here.)

A super being from a higher plane who is both superior and vulnerable due to her assumptin of (quasi!) humanity.

A super being from a higher plane who is both superior and vulnerable due to her assumptin of (quasi!) humanity.

One thing that can really help a person explain the theology of the incarnation is watching the mostly paganish show Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its spin-off Angel.

In that fictional world, demons are commonly portrayed in a way that mostly resembles space aliens.  They usually come from other dimensions rather than planets (one episode in BtVS season four even crossed that line making it even harder to differentiate between fantasy and scifi) but they are pretty much creatures that could easily fit in a Star Trek episode.

But in some shows the principle is revealed that these demons have gone through alterations to come into the human plane.  They are “mixtures” or “impure” to some extent (vampires are espcially impure hybrids with human beings and thus looked down upon).  So they are superior in strength and durability usually, but they are still ultimately defeatable if one has super strength of one’s own, or the proper battle axe, or a handy source of high-voltage electricity.  Indeed, when dealing with incorporeal demonic forces, the common strategy is to find some way to get the being to materialize and then deal with the monster that results via weaponry. Continue reading

Prophecy Girl

My parents have FIOS.  Which means they have fast internet. Which means I can actually watch hulu.com.

It is a wonderful thing, except for the part where I have to travel to Texas.

They also have an elliptical machine with a board fastened to it so you can watch your laptop screen while you pedal or step or whatever, and sweat.

All this is to say, I watched Prophecy Girl tonight.  Again for first time.

Background here: first off, nothing I’m about to say is meant to imply that Whedon is anything close to a Christian.  He’s not.  The ending of Angel was as much a Norse apocalypse as one could ask for.  And according to this spoiler summary, the new comic book season 8 shows Whedon just can’t let go of Lesbian soft p0rn cliches.  But Whedon knows a good story, and Gospel’s story of sacrificial death and resurrection is too good to pass up.  Season 5 was marred by only one thing, that it didn’t end the show.  The end of season 6, however, also did the them almost as well, with the carpenter saving the world by being willing to die at the hands of the one he loved.

But I came into Buffy through reruns and never saw it in order.  When I finally saw season 1, I was amazed at how poorly it was done in so many ways.  Prophecy Girl itself features a three-headed muppet worm that screams “low budget” in a tri-vocal wail.  So I saw Prophecy Girl and thought it stood out, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it.

I must have been blind.

[spoiler warning]

Continue reading

Ramble: free-market ideal of individual economic freedom has to be a novelty

Individual economic freedom: I’m all for it, being me and all.

But I doubt it had that much relevance to, say, the American Revolution (which I think counts as a revolution because, rather than fighting the king to force him to acknowledge their rights, they simply cut off the king to enforce their rights for themselves–I’m not judging this one way or another, just recognizing the revolutionary step). It may have had a bit. It all depends when you date the industrial revolution and how far you date it at the time.

I had, coming out of college, more or less seen individual liberty as a progress of constitutional recognitions of rights that could be tracked as a series of political wins. For example, the Magna Carta would be a part of this heritage.

But, at the same time, being deeply immersed in libertarian/”capitalist” theory/propaganda, I more or less correlated or even smudged this with economic individual liberty. Free individuals making free choices about price, purchase, investment, and risk were the key ingredient in a prosperous and civilized community.

But to even begin thinking that way, there is a necessary precondition: It must be widely understood that your carreer is largely undetermined and unconstrained by your father’s career. Otherwise, it simply makes no sense. If you are a blacksmith because your father is a blacksmith dealing with landlords and with farmers whose lives have been determined the same way, then you are not going to think much about the freedom of “a person” as an individual needing economic freedom. You will think of yourself as a member of a class that is trying to find a correct fit with other classes.

You will think this way because anything else would be irrelevant and stupid.

You go to the bookstore and you will find a whole industry on how to choose a career, how to measure your gifts/skills/proclivities/turn-ons, how to present yourself and find your place in the economy. Did this literature even exist in the 1770s. Maybe Poor Richard’s Almanac was the start. Maybe geographic displacements make this sort of thinking more likely. Maybe. But I doubt it was that common compared to the 1850s. And so on. Continue reading

Finally coming out

All the usual caveats about morality and television drama. Not a children’s show.

And yes, I know the girl with superpowers theme has been overdone lately (Or, in the case of Sydney Bristow, the girl who really tries harder theme–but if you pay attention to the show they virtually admit she is the product of super breeding). In my defense, I think I got into this before discovering the Buffy reruns and after I lost track of Dark Angel.

I thought this was a really good series, if one likes comic books.

And I do. I was perplexed when I discovered it wasn’t available on DVD.  Glad that is fixed.

Though waiting this long may mean I’m the only fan who doesn’t already own his own downloaded and home-burned DVD set.

Notes on Mary Poppins the profound

George Banks goes insane about how the family is all cheerful.  He wants it to stop.  In the midst of all the directions he is shouting about how the family should be managed, he notices by happenstance that the piano is out of tune and tells his wife to get it fixed.

 “But George, you don’t play.”
“That, Madame, is entirely beside the point!”

For those of you with movie lists to see

I knew about this but forgot about it until just now.  Here is the Mises Institute’s recommendations for movies.  This may violate some ideal of separating art and politics.  I prefer to think of separating art and “preaching” (Like Ayn Rand did [i.e preaching, no separation at all!]; and some of these movies may fail by that criterion).  On the art end of the spectrum, revealing how politics works can be just as artistic as a literary character study.  Take a look

Is there a more brilliant movie than the Incredibles?

Thankfully, my youngest daughter now wants to watch it. So I get to.

All the lessons I learned in a dark way from Frank Miller (and more) are taught with bright optimism (that doesn’t come across as escapist).

The world exiles its heroes and hates them.

The world will use the sins of heroes against them to cover for the world’s hatred of their virtues and gifts.

Situations will arise where, “Doubt is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”

Scanning for information in order to re-live the glory days is just pathetic.

Learn to come in second place, but a close second. Save your real talents for the time when they are necessary.

If everyone is “super” then no one is. (The same thing is said about “special,” but that depends in what sense the word is being used. I think there is something special about everyone.)

You have more power than you know.

“What will you do?” Is this a question? Remember who you are. Go confront the problem.

The hellmouth wasn’t restricted to a town in California

I happened to catch part of an episode of Cold Case. It started in “Sunnydale, California” in the fifties.

Is there any chance at all that this passed through the review process without at least someone catching the Buffy reference?

The episode was rather horrible, since it revisited what we did to Japanese Americans during World War II. Pretty horrific. You might say that the episode argued that the hellmouth covered a lot more territory in reality than it did in the vampire show.