It’s been quite a week here at the blog. If you only come here on Fridays – why? And secondly, do check out my previous posts from the week. You might find something interesting.
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My son is continuing to post lots of movie reviews at his blog. An impressive pace!
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
What does Harry do? He grows up. At the beginning of the movie, his employer is always talking about how he’s late and takes constant coffee breaks. At the end, he’s being praised by his new working mates for his work ethic. He goes to night school to learn to be an engineer. He loved his time in summer, but he’s move on.
What does Monika do? She can’t grow up. She’s mentally stuck in that summer and wants nothing more than to go back to those carefree days. In that, she willing to sacrifice the man she loves and the child she bore. It’s her choice, but others must suffer for it.
As I do after watching all of these Bergman films, I read the corresponding essay that Criterion published in the massive 30 disc collection. The essay there is one of the worst pieces of film criticism I’ve ever read. It’s obsessed with the idea of non-conformity as a good thing, pushing Monika as some sort of all around heroine for casting off responsibility. For an essay that takes such a moralist view of the picture, it’s so willfully blind to the moral implications of putting oneself before one’s children.
Monika is no heroine. She’s selfish and placed her own sense of nostalgia over responsibilities she willfully entered.
And the movie is great.
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You may have heard of “no platforming.” It’s an oft-heard concept in contemporary identity politics. Don’t “legitimize” or “normalize” thoughts with which you disagree – deny the speaker a “platform” – don’t allow them to get public speaking engagements, don’t put them on television or radio, don’t publish their books, etc. As I follow gender identity politics, it’s something I see quite a bit there – for example, feminist icon Germaine Greer being de-platformed in Britain because of her heresy on trans ideology.
Well, do you know how I’m always telling you history is invaluable for understanding society and culture? Here’s an excellent article in the New York Review of Books regarding the de-platforming of poet Ezra Pound – who, let it be said – did express reprehensible pro-Axis and anti-Semitic views during World War II. But should the poems he wrote well before this have been omitted from a later anthology? This article looks at the controversy – notable for the fact that, yes, this has happened before – but also for the deeply civil way in which the matter was discussed and resolved.
In 1945, when Bennett Cerf of Random House was preparing to send to the printer An Anthology of Famous English and American Poetry, edited by William Rose Benét and Conrad Aiken for the Modern Library series, he omitted twelve early poems by Ezra Pound that Aiken had included in a 1927 anthology on which the new book had been based. In place of the poems, a note explained that, over Aiken’s protest, the publishers “flatly refused at this time to include a single line of Mr. Ezra Pound. This is a statement that the publishers are not only willing but delighted to print.”
In the years since Pound wrote those poems, he had become notorious for his fascist politics, florid anti-Semitism and racism, and hero-worshipping praise for Hitler and Mussolini. He stayed in Italy during the war, insisting on making radio broadcasts to American troops, urging them to drop their weapons and stop fighting on behalf of Jews and everyone else whom Pound hated. For these broadcasts, he was arrested after the war and charged with treason against the United States. At the end of 1945, he was awaiting trial in Washington, D.C.…
…The controversy spilled into national magazines, and Cerf met with both wide support and wide disagreement. Two months later, under pressure from writers he valued, especially Henry Steele Commager and Max Lerner, Cerf reversed his decision, and agreed to print the poems in future printings of the anthology. But he continued to insistthat he had been right the first time.
The issues at stake in the arguments over the anthology have never ceased to be contentious. The same questions recur in recent arguments—to choose only one among dozens of possible examples—over whether Martin Heidegger should be banished from philosophy reading lists because he was a Nazi. W.H. Auden, one of Cerf’s authors at Random House, wrote Cerf some letters about Cerf’s action and its consequences that may still be clarifying today.
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Speaking of trans ideology, a male British rapper took Twitter by storm this week by posting a brief video of himself “destroying” the women’s deadlift record – warning us not to be a bigot because he identified as a woman whilst he was doing it! All in jest, of course, and to make a point. It’s heartening to see the response – which is mostly appreciative sarcastic versions of the “stunning and brave” reactions you to see to this sort of thing. Again – some hope out there. Glimmers.
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Perhaps you, like me, are a sucker for explorations of abandoned places. Since I live in the Southeast, Abandoned Southeast is a regular stop for me. Here’s a recent post on Holy Cross School in New Orleans, devastated by Katrina.
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How to reform the Church? Again – look at history. The Church has experienced continual reform since the beginning. What are the characteristics of those that have been successful?
In seeking reform, St. Philip “was to pursue Savonarola’s purposes, but not in Savonarola’s way.” He emphasized community life, characterized by mutual love and hard work. He engaged in regular preaching, but a kind of preaching that was more subdued and steady than Savonarola’s more fiery, intense style. The daily preaching of St. Philip, and later of his fellow oratorians, was based upon spiritual works, the lives of the saints, and Church history.
Saint Philip always possessed tremendous interior zeal. At one point, at about the age of forty, he thought of going East as a missionary, but, as Newman writes, “his Indies were to be in Rome, where God would make much use of him.”
Whereas Savonarola had primarily aimed at external reform among the people of Florence, St. Philip worked chiefly for internal reform, sure that the external would follow—and it often did. He insisted on interior conversion, and the disciplining of the faculty of reason. He encouraged frequent confession and Holy Communion, love and freedom of spirit, humility and even humiliation, and devotion to the Holy Eucharist.
Saint Philip’s approach was slow and steady. “While he wished to do the very work which Savonarola intended, he set about it…in a different way,” Newman writes. He began by ministering to the poor, though he ended-up advising popes, nobles, philosophers, and artists. He was a heroic confessor, like St. John Vianney would later be. He was also heroically patient in a way that was not typical of Savonarola. Saint Philip wept for the sins of men, and took on severe penances on their behalf.
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Lent is coming!
In particular, take a look at a couple of devotionals, still available in digital form – and no, I no longer make a dime from their sales.
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Quinquagesima Sunday this week:
For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!