Though Edward Norton as Bruce Banner was pretty good.

HT: Bayly Blog, by way of James

Somehow, Hulkmania has infiltrated my home. I guess I’m not really surprised, actually, and Isaac’s pictures of the various family members hulking out are actually impressive. And so they want to see a Hulk movie. Of course, this takes us straight into the realm of nerd rage, because of the two Hulk movies that are in existence: Ang Lee’s much-maligned Hulk and the newer The Incredible Hulk.

Last Saturday I watched Hulk, and I guess I’ll be watching The Incredible Hulk when it comes out on DVD later this month. At this point, I’d have no objection to my sons watching Hulk, although I’m guessing that they will probably not care for it. I mean, there were all those…talking parts. You know, the bits with the character development where we see children struggling with the obsessions of their fathers. The use of the Hulk as a metaphor for the inner rage of the abused child. The final confrontation which is less about the crazy special effects and more about the final resolution of a shattered childhood.

That’s pretty heady territory for a couple of boys who really just want to see something large and green punch through walls. I’m going to guess that The Incredible Hulk will be more their speed, assuming that it passes muster with me.

But for me, I’m going to have to be very impressed to give The Incredible Hulk a higher grade than Hulk. True, I’m not sure if Hulk succeeded in what it set out to do. For example, I think that the recent Batman movies (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) have managed to negotiate canon more adroitly while still managing to transcend their pulp/comic background. And yet, I have to give credit to Ang Lee and his team for taking a stab at it. Hulk may be a flawed film, but it was striving for greatness, and that’s something I can appreciate.

And, of course, there’s that TV series floating out there….

I may write more later, if I have time.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I’m doing okay, actually. Had a bit of a moment when I read this, but otherwise I was on an even keel for the day. That’s good, actually. Looking back at previous years, this day has been better or worse, depending on stuff.

Elder James McDonald grabbed me after worship and said that he had been praying for us. He lost his mother a few years ago, too, and he said that he’d been thinking about us. On the one hand, it’s a positive indication that it took me a moment to figure out what he meant. On the other hand, I was deeply moved and appreciative that he had remembered. Made me feel loved.

The day before that, I watched Baby Mamma with Crystal. She wanted to see it, and it was for her birthday, so I said yes.

Now, before I launch into my cultural critique, I need to say that I enjoyed the movie. As my father would say, “It was diverting.” It followed the romantic comedy formula without the central relationship actually being a romance. In other words, it was about a relationship founded initially on a lie that needed to be transformed to a relationship founded on truth. Maybe it was a buddy movie…or maybe buddy movies are related to romantic comedies.

Anways, the bits about pregnancy and childbirth were pretty funny, and I laughed at the right places. At least, I’m pretty sure that they were the right places.

Then I left the theater with Crystal, opining that our civilization is doomed.

Providentially, as we wandered the Shoppes after the movie, we stumbled upon the display of the Dirty Laundry Project, which essentially reinforced my concern.

We have disconnected love, sex, marriage, and childbearing. In the movie, one of the characters says to another one, “What does being married have to do with having a baby?” One of the T-shirt said, “Love does not equal sex. Sex does not equal love.” While it’s certainly true that sex doesn’t always equal love, isn’t it supposed to? Several of the T-shirts talked about waiting to have sex. Wait for what? Marriage was never mentioned. Apparently, you’re supposed to wait for “the right one”. But, in the heat of the moment, the one in front of you is “the right one”.

And, ultimately, we take love, sex, marriage, and childbearing, and turn them into ways to satisfy our own lusts and desires. Yes, even childbearing. It’s the new way to self-actualize, to find meaning in your existence. Having children has become about being fulfilled as a person, not about giving to the next generation.

The more I wander the world, the more that I realize that the simple act of establishing a household, centered on the marriage of a God-fearing man to a God-fearing woman, raising God-fearing children, is a revolutionary act of epic proportions. The kind that makes the foundations of this corruption system tremble.

Here’s one from the quote file:

“Surely avant-garde enemy rebels of the system never had to change diapers.”–Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.

I’ll probably use my writing time today to work on A Flower for Mara, though, so I’m putting this here so that I’ll remember to write about this movie.

Or, alternately, so one of you will nag me in a bit.

But first, the trailer.

Oh, and a mention that this is a must-see if you’re at all into Dirty Secrets.

Welcome to the rest of the article!

This movie moved me powerfully. First off, it’s a detective noir that has, at its core, a conspiracy of light. The movie (and trailer) sets you up to think that it’s about police corruption, butthe “corrupt” cops are actually breaking the law to remove neglected children from their homes and getting them into better situations. It’s an odd noir that ends up with the “dirty secret” being essentially positive.

And yet….

As Patrick (the detective) knows, despite the excellent intentions of these cops, they are still kidnapping. They kidnapped the little girl to get her away from her mother, who is a prostitute and drug abuser. And, for sure, she would be better off apart from her mother. But it’s still kidnapping.

Patrick’s girlfriend threatens him. “If you report them, I’m leaving you.” And, of course, the girl would be returned to her mother.

But he calls. Because it’s the right thing. (Right?)

And of course there’s a big teary-eyed reunion on television and the cops’ names are dragged through the mud and the girlfriend leaves Patrick.

And, in the end, Patrick goes over to the house of the little girl. The mother is getting ready to go out and party. There’s no babysitter. The mother is hoping to get one, but she’s leaving anyways. So Patrick volunteers to stay. The last shot is of Patrick and the little girl, sitting on the sofa. Because of his choice, he’s lost everything, and for what?

A rough ending. Really rough.

It’s not enough for your outcome and intent to be righteous. Your means must also be righteous.

But still….

And I thought of Katelyn.

I haven’t thought about Katelyn in a while. It’s been so long, I don’t even remember which spelling variant to use. Caitlin, maybe? Katelynn? I don’t remember.

My mother worked in a crisis pregnancy center, and sometimes her work came home to live with her. Katelyn’s mother lived with us while she was pregnant, and then we helped her get settled into her own place. I remember moving her from one second-floor apartment to another second-floor apartment during the winter. I slipped on the stairs and broke one of them.

And I remember babysitting Katelyn one day when she was very ill. She wasn’t older than a year, maybe younger, but she had a terrible fever. But her mother had an appointment or something, so I went over to care for Katelyn. A couple hours, and all I did was hold her so she could sleep. I remember feeling her skin burning against mine.

Our family put a lot of time and effort and sacrifice into Katelyn and her mommy. And then, one day, she was gone. I don’t think that my parents ever told us all the details. All I remember is Mom explaining that Katelyn’s mother had chosen to listen to different friends. And that’s it.

Katelyn is…what…sixteen, maybe seventeen now. What’s her life like? Is she getting into trouble with boys, like her mother did? Does she even remember the teenaged boy who held her when she was sick? I doubt it.

All that time and effort and sacrifice…wasted.

Or is it? I have to accept, on faith, that no good work that is done for Jesus ever goes to waste. “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58) So, that morning spent with Katelyn was not a waste.

Maybe it was preparing me for today, when Justice became feverish and sick. So I laid around with him all day and then, late in the afternoon, I held him while he slept. I could feel his skin burning against mine. But he’s my own, and I will love him. And, God willing, the love that Justice received today will blossom in his life into something beautiful.

Crystal and I talked for a long time after we finished the movie. In the end, we agreed on two things:

1) Our ministry to this neighborhood will break our hearts. We will reach out to people, and they will hurt us. That’s just the way it is.

2) We need to give our children the love and care that they need. We cannot heal all the hurting people, so let us begin with the people that God placed in our own household, and we will extend from there.

To quote the MPAA, there is “violence, drug content, and pervasive language” in this movie. So be warned. But it is worth the watching.

Still, the hot button genre with the highest temperature seems to be horror, and how Christians should – or shouldn’t – interact with it.

Horror, Gore, Fear and the Christian…

Since I mentioned horror in an earlier post, I thought that I’d link to this.

(Why yes, I am being deliberately mysterious.)

It’s also inspired by the sort of detective fiction that I’ve been reading of late. So I wanted to watch it again from this angle. I’ve viewed it many times from the SF angle. This time, I wanted to see it as a noir. In the final analysis, I’m not sure if it actually works from this perspective. I mean that exactly as it sounds; in my mind, the jury is still out on whether or not Blade Runner is actually a noir, or if it is only stealing the visual cues of the genre.

But that doesn’t really concern me, because I gained a little more insight into the movie this time around.

Blade Runner belongs to that philosophically-oriented subgenre of SF that is trying to probe serious questions through its stories. Specifically, Blade Runner is asking the question, “What does
it mean to be human?” [*]

For those of you who don’t know, the movie is about replicants, which are genetically-created robots, nearly indistinguishable from humans, except by their emotional responses. The newest models (Nexus-6) are so advanced that, in an attempt to keep them emotionally stable, their creators gift them with implanted memories to give them a sense of having a past. Also, they only have a four-year life span.

Since an out-of-control replicant can do a lot of damage, they are banned from Earth and are used on the off-world colonies instead as cannon fodder, slave labor, and the like. Any replicant that returns to Earth is “retired” by special police units called “Blade Runners”.

So, here’s the question. Replicants look like humans. They have memories like humans. They even have emotional response like humans. So why aren’t they humans?

The easy response is that they are made, and humans are not. But that fails to answer the question in a satisfying way, especially as, throughout the film, the replicants react and respond in very human, understandable terms.

What makes us human?

This time, watching the movie, I realized that there was an answer in the film that I had overlooked in the past.

At the end of the movie, Roy Batty, the leader of the replicants, is chasing Rick Deckard, the blade runner who has killed…er…retired all the other replicants in his little group. They work their way up through an abandoned building, where Roy traps Deckard. In desperation, Deckard tries to leap to the next building. But his jump is too short. He is left scrabbling for a handhold over the yawning abyss.

Roy, a combat model replicant, makes the jump easily, and stands over Deckard. Then he says, “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.” Deckard struggles, flails, and slips. He is begins to fall.

Lightning-quick, Roy reaches out and grabs him, saving him from death. Then he drops Deckard on the roof, sits down next to him, and says these immortal lines: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” And then, while Deckard watches, he slumps and dies.

Mercy. In the end, Roy showed Deckard mercy.

Another character does so, too. Gaff is another blade runner who has been monitoring Deckard’s pursuit of these replicants. Gaff also knows that Deckard is harboring another replicant (Rachael) at his apartment. But he gives Deckard a chance to escape. He can’t give him much. Both Gaff and Deckard understand that Gaff will have to hunt them both. But Gaff shows mercy to both Deckard and Rachael.

All this brings me back to this quote, from one of the detective novels that I’ve read recently:

“That isn’t your real motivation. I know your type. You have a secret passion for justice. Why don’t you admit it?”
“I have a secret passion for mercy,” I said. “But justice is what keeps happening to people.” —The Goodbye Look, Ross MacDonald

Mercy is the virtue that makes us human. That certainly seems to be what Blade Runner is getting at. And isn’t that part of what God wants from us?

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8; KJV)

*Another worthwhile film addressing the same question is Dark City. Interestingly, the visual cues are very similar. Maybe there’s more to the noir references than meets the eye.

So, there. Two links for the price of one!