In The Beginning

The 'more senior' members of the Bahm Family recently watched Darren Aronofsky's Noah on Blu-Ray.  I kept hearing mixed reviews and reactions to the movie, so I waited until its disc release when I could burn my rental store credits to see it for $1.25.  Plus, I wanted to see it in a more open environment with my 'senior' children so that the 'senior' adults could dialogue with them a little better about it.

I was actually surprised at the pace and craftsmanship of the film.  I was prepared for a sleep-rendering grind, something a'la the old Hollywood sand-and-sandal flops, but Aronofsky is a deft filmmaker.  Crowe was very good, although I was a little worried when he started to sing a lullaby per my previous experience with him crooning during Les Miz.  I was most concerned about the notorious "rock people" so many had ridiculed, especially having interpreted the legend of the Nephilim my own way in The Warrant.  But Aronofsky's "Watchers" were ok to his story if clunky.  I had already dismissed any literal adherence to the biblical account prior to the film (Noah and his family built the ark by themselves over a 120 year period, not ten with the help of the Watchers), so all the other plot devices didn't bother me.  Nor was I bugged by any of the heavy environmentalism of the script and Crowe's Noah's redemption from its radical conclusion; I can see that type of political dogma coming like a huge tidal wave.

But for two days now, something else has been vexing me about the film, and I just now put my finger on it.  In search of what might be troubling me, I did some web-surfing with my Google Ark last night.  I already knew of Aronofsky's cryptic comment prior to the film's initial release that Noah was the "least Biblical film ever made."  I was familiar with the Director's atheism.  I was aware of the face-off between Hollywood and the evangelical community over marketing:  the distributors desperately wanted the Passion of the Christ crowd segment to show up; evangelicals didn't want to help sell tickets by the inevitable and compulsory trashing of an unliteral interpretation, as happened with The Last Temptation of the Christ.  I was tuned in to the loud debate and criticism of the film by young earth creationists.  On the Internet, I found post-release condemnations that Noah was infused with Gnosticism, as well as wild, over-the-top claims that the movie was Illuminati-driven spirituality.  But, none of these controversies were really what were bothering me.

I found the source of what had been bothering me when I looked up Clint Mansell's soundtrack on Spotify.  The first score track is entitled, "In the Beginning There Was Nothing."  This is the line Russell Crowe uses to begin telling the story of creation to his family inside the ark at sea.

Well, that's not what the Bible says.  It says, "In the Beginning God created..." in Genesis and "In the Beginning was the Word" in John's gospel.  There has never been nothing, in other words.  And this is what bothers me the most about any work of art that purports a past point of nothingness:  it is contradictory and hypocritical.  It is pathetically dishonest, not to mention arrogant, for someone like this movie's creator to state that in fact, some time in the past, something was formed out of nothing.  Darren Aronofsky didn't make his movie out of nothing!

Anyway, felt I needed to get this out.  Now I can resume my blog again after my lengthy hiatus.  I was busy trying to win an election, but fell short.  Don't worry about me though; it was nothing.

The Winter Play

Wenceslas Square, Prauge, during the 1968 anti-Soviet uprising

First blog of 2014!

For the past several nights, my subconscious has been bubbling up old images and feelings of all the theater work I did in college.  It finally hit me early this morning after another brainwave performance why this was.

Winter primary season is always my busiest time.  One friend joked to me the other day, "Don't you only work two months every two years?"  It is a very stressful, intense but productive time of packed days and late nights followed by heavy but short sleep.  Joe Klein in Primary Colors describes these types of elections through one of the characters as there being "sleep, but no rest."

The workload and rhythms are strikingly similar to putting on a play.  I talk about this in an interview I recently gave to a career blog.  The muscle memory of my theater days has likely frothed back up due to a unique confluence of thoughts, themes, workload and...cold weather!  In particular, the deja'vu of a play I ran the light board for during the winter of 1991 comes to mind, Larry Shue's Wenceslas Square.

Briefly, Wenceslas Square is a simple arc of scenes about a theater professor from Indiana who returns to Prague a few years after the 1968 uprising against the Soviet Union in the hopes of finishing a book about the city's vibrant, counter-establishment drama community that subtly led the protests against Moscow previously.  Sadly, the professor goes about visiting his old, fellow dramatists only to discover they've either been forced into semi-exile or have become a part of the very propaganda-dishing establishment they tried to subvert.  The story is a serene yet tragic examination not necessarily of just tyranny or revolution but of what fear does to people, and whether or not those with the strongest convictions really have the courage to change and sacrifice.  The play ends with the professor and his student assistant sitting in the famous Square of Prague contemplating whether or not he still has something to write.

What makes the play great is its double-theme about dealing with government authority through story-telling. The actual Wenceslas Square in Prague is named for the early Medieval and canonized king named Wenceslas I, who is very much a Santa Claus-like figure.  His legend is that he came down from his position and braved the harsh winter to help the poor, and that when his protege faltered in the weather, Wenceslas instructed him to follow by stepping exactly where he stepped in the snow.  It's the old footsteps aphorism about being carried by God.

But whereas the fabled king was brave and undaunted in his mission, the professor in the play isn't so sure of himself, especially after he witnesses renewed communist oppression and the weakness of his once-admired friends.  Most troubling to the professor was when he got accosted in a Prague alley by one of the old dramatists who has lost his mind.  What seemed to shake the professor deepest was how the Madman's ideals drove him into insanity once the Soviets had denied him his outlet.  It was this core fear that the professor had to confront.

It's also the subconscious fear that all of us who work in politics for the greater good and in defense of our freedom must deal with.  Are we afraid of truly losing our liberty -- or of just losing our outlet?  In my opinion, most of what animates our country's political discourse today - across the spectrum - is the latter.  Many of us have decided that being heard is more important than what we say.  I am certainly guilty of this.  True liberty lies in the ability to recognize that freedom is a gift from God, empowered by God, and does not need anything external to thrive in a person's soul.  True, speaking out is a natural fruit of this inner freedom, but not if the speaking out is driven by the same fear of losing the ability to do so.  This is the freedom that I want to defend.

But the minute I drift into the dark side of defending form over content, I find myself in a nightmare of anxiety.  Worse, if I am successful in defending that form over freedom by means of fear, I find myself in, to quote another playwright, "the winter of my discontent."  And it didn't go well for that guy.

A Terrifying Reality

As far as it being quality television (an oxymoron, I know), Duck Dynasty is an amalgam of everything wrong with reality-format programming.  This is precisely why Phil Robertson should be regarded as one crying in the wilderness.

Our culture is receiving its end-stage call to repentance.

The very first reality-based television show ever - MTV's The Real World which first aired more than 20 years ago - didn't build a mainstream audience mainly because the real world wasn't interested in a bunch of whiny young adults.  But the real reason MTV's show didn't have a broad appeal was because it, initially, was too raw; in its early years The Real World was much more documentary-style and captured interpersonal drama simply as it happened.

Enter CBS' Survivor in 2000.  The producers of this reality-style game show recognized that in order to be successful using such a format, they nevertheless had to insert a "script" of some kind.  The average viewer may have thought she was witnessing the real reactions of spoiled Americans trying to make it on a deserted isle, but really they were watching spoiled Americans working their way through a maze built by Hollywood programmers.  There is absolutely nothing true about how survivors or real housewives go about their lives in front of the camera; every second of screen time that makes the final cut fits a carefully controlled narrative conceived by the production team.  Dramatic hook has to be created and delivered.

The narrative of Duck Dynasty is no different, and on this point it is actually a somewhat stale, contrived, warm-up-the-leftovers script where the Robertsons are actually in on the showmanship.  The Robertsons are marketers, fundamentally, long before the A&E Network knocked on their trailer door; their sales credentials are as long as their hair.  Willie and his family - especially Si! - are fully self-conscious of the fact that they are putting on a show.  They relish in playing to type.  And they are relishing all the way to the bank.  The truth about the show is that the producers haven't even had to work that hard at sketching out scenarios for the Robertsons to play into, as they are very much actors ready to sell duck calls.

Which is why Phil, the patriarch and recent scorn of the gay community, should be regarded as a 21st Century John the Baptist, anatomical comments and all.  Who was John the Baptist?  He had long hair and wore heavy, outdoor clothing (RealTree).  He was the son of ancient Jewish society's elite (a successful American small businessman).  He was loud and outspoken.  The clean-cut men of Jerusalem came out to the Jordan to see the spectacle more than hear John's rough-hewn call to repentance.  John the Baptist was not a wild, homeless outsider holding a hand-painted sign on the street corner; he was a hyperbole of the culture who dominated the ratings (if you are still bothered by Phil's crude references to female versus male anatomy; John the Baptist was no shrinking violet when it came to calling sexual immorality what it was).

John the Baptist got attention using the most basic, bottomed-out, almost stale program the culture offered - religion.  He paved the way for Christ by making noise and by offering a sharp contrast between religion and faith.  God is using the market-exploited and exploiting Robertsons to accomplish his judgment.  John the Baptist drew people in then knocked them down with his condemnation of sin.  His hearers either walked back to Jerusalem and its compromise with the Romans in the name of power, or they stayed and listened further.

Christ Jesus followed John and enacted judgment and grace simultaneously, as only God can.  Part of the way the Lord did this was by meeting us, the couch potatoes, where we were.  His baptism was an expression of obedience to the Father's will, but it was also a demonstration of his compassion to us very similar to his actual birth -- he was coming down to our level.

The terror of God's call to repentance on us, as the controversy over Phil Robertson shows, is that it is done in absolute passive-aggressive comfort.  Phil's boom-lowering condemnation of sin based loosely on 1 Corinthians 6:10 was given initially to a magazine no one reads anymore - EXCEPT homosexual men!  Then, in perfect modern media fashion, he was dismissed from the show, which suddenly made his comments NEWS!  As they say in Hollywood, there's no such thing as bad publicity.  Only a divine purpose could have orchestrated these events; other than the passion of his convictions, I do not believe Phil Robertson, his son or his agent were calculating enough to know who he was talking to, marketing acumen aside.

And so here we are, an entire society - but especially the conservative segment that largely comprises Duck Dynasty's viewership - being forced to broach the concept of sin.  How odd.  How uncomfortable.

How terrifying.  And a silly man wearing camo has done this. 

A Brief, Pollyanna History of Texas Republicans

National headlines aside, the practical business of campaign season is underway in Texas.  So-called political insiders (of which I am one) are preparing campaigns in anticipation of the primaries next March.  This used to be a very rote process by which one could set his watch.  However, thirty days before candidate filing even begins, debate – and, regrettably, acrimony – has begun between the sub-factions within the Republican Party across the country.  The noise percolates even in the absence of candidates in some parts of the state.  One Facebook post I recently saw made a broad, infantile call for ANYONE to take on “establishment” officials, on the grounds that doing so will “make them listen.”  Whatever.

I will admit that I struggle with resentment over this acrimony.  I used to be a student of it – an objective observer.  But increasingly, I feel as though I and many others are the object of envy.  I have attempted to call these people out, and I have been met not with any correction of the facts as I presented them, but with a blanket attack that I was a liar.  I have been active in Republican politics since I was 16 (that’s 25 years to those of you who don’t know I celebrated the 23^rd anniversary of my 18^th birthday last May).  I have actually had the opportunity to directly shape policy and “make a difference” at the highest levels of federal and state government.  And yet, my contributions are a pittance compared to the time, treasure and life others have put in for many years.  Worse, many of the people attacking us have been working on behalf of conservative principles for a sum total of 30 months.

I am proud to be a part of the establishment.  I am prouder still that my establishmentness is rooted in a correct, holy understanding that our constitutions set forth an incremental approach to change.  I am as proud as the Constitution’s limits on my passion as I am my passion itself.  Still, I want to better understand this hostility toward the establishment.  My inner history nerd cries out to examine its sources, causes.  I guess I feel that if I can better understand the fracture, I can be an agent of healing it.  Call me Pollyanna, but that’s what goes on in the ol’ squirrel cage between my ears.

I have been spending the past several weeks wading through David Halberstam’s 1994 tome, The Fifties.  I saw another recent social media post stating that the national GOP has been in a civil war for the past fifty years.  Really, it’s been sixty years, and Halberstam goes in depth in explaining the two basic camp’s origins:  northeastern interventionist-internationalist vs. Midwestern libertarian/isolationist.  This tension in the marriage only really appeared in the early 20^th century with the arrival of Teddy Roosevelt – the northeastern variety is probably the older spouse, dating back to the abolitionist, pro-government origins of the GOP in the 1850s.

All of this makes for fascinating but lengthy, somewhat dry storytelling (unless you’re a nerd, of course).  What I’m interested in is how this split appears here in Texas.  Besides that of my personal, ethnic Texanism, this importance also comes from the academic theory that however the Texas GOP evolves, so goes the rest of the country.  Texas is in many ways a microcosm of the U.S. 125 years ago during the GOP’s greatest period of hegemony.  We are a place where resources are abundant, where an immigrant workforce does the menial labor while a burgeoning middle class devotes its time to rapid technological advancement, and where the prevailing view is that government should work hard at getting out of the way.

But what makes the Texas GOP unique early in the 21^st Century is just how the aforementioned spouses came to lead it.  The traditional, pro-government, egalitarian, pro-big business Republicanism of the northeast was a transplant.  This is the party of George H.W. Bush who heard about the crude oil plays of the Permian Basin after World War II and struck out with elite, New England financial backing.  The fortune he made enabled him to set up shop in Houston and literally build the party from scratch.  With the exception of maybe one R in North Dallas or out in the Panhandle ranch country, THERE WERE NO REPUBLICANS in the state anywhere prior to about 1965.  It was a dirty word.  To be Republican meant you were a sherry-sipping Episcopalian banker out to screw the hardscrabble, teetotaling Baptist Democrat cotton farmer.

At the same time, however, the excesses of Lyndon Johnson’s back-slapping, double-dealing socialism fomented a rift within his party between those same frugally-minded cotton farmers and an Austin elite who truly practiced what they preached when it came to thinking everyone should get a check from the Treasury.  The Great Society and Vietnam became Texans’ understanding of interventionism and internationalism.  The chief Texan critic of LBJ was historian J. Evetts Haley.  His A Texan Looks at Lyndon:  A Study in Illegitmate Power, gave voice and cohesion to those Baptists who knew something was wrong with the President but felt restrained by the group think to express it.  A Texan Looks at Lyndon became a kind of cherished, underground literature among respectable folks, and although Haley attempted campaigns as a Democrat, his writings matched verbatim in places with the rhetoric of Goldwater, Reagan, Buckley and Phyllis Schlafly.  The conservative Republican movement in Texas was born.

In time, George W. Bush, a Texan who nevertheless held a Connecticut birth certificate, rose to transform the state into a Republican monolith in one fell swoop.  But while he held deep convictions about social issues at odds with much of his northeastern Republican pedigree, W nevertheless advocated interventionism, ranging from ‘compassionate conservatism’ to Iraq.  Had he been successful in these policies, the roughshod conservative wing might not be as noisy as it is today.  But Bush struggled, in spite of his convictions.  And today, what Texas Republicans are left with are lost, confused movement-conservatives firing in all directions and an establishment that is only seeing pitchforks.

How can the tension be resolved?  I think basic principles of respect and honest disagreement can aid in the healing process.  Unfortunately, the frustration and fear emanating from the national situation under Obama has infected the two spouses in the Texas GOP.  The exact same tactics used to attack the President’s policies are being turned on any Republican, usually an incumbent, “establishment” officeholder, who is suspect.  Complex policies designed for complex situations are unwilling to be understood and are lied about.  This is the hallmark of liberals, as we saw last summer with HB2.  (Ironically, that bill's complexity was somehow embraced by conservatives, but that's another subject).

But I think the greater way to overcome the current rift is to first realize that the pie of power and influence isn’t as small as many act like it is.  Everyone has a voice across a huge state Republican apparatus.  Repeatedly, I come across grassroots-types who once felt “unheard," and they admit in so many words that is because they were lazy.  They didn’t go to townhalls, club meetings or rallies and interact with their elected officials.  Instead, they sat at home for years and only listened to the evening news.  On the day they quit complaining and started dialoguing, they saw they could have it both ways:  principles and peace.

In the information age, these same malcontents are absolutely terrified of reading or considering a source that might present reality.  I know of community and party leaders who will not follow the official communications of their representatives on Twitter, but who instead take the emailed musings of some privately-funded activist as gospel.  Many of these people are afraid of consensus.  They don’t want to be confused with the facts, and they feel that to “come up with the best we can” is the equivalent of walking outside in their underwear.  J. Evetts Haley was one of the first to suggest LBJ had a vested interest in the assassination of JFK; today, we prefer the dark narrative of Oliver Stone to simple, boring reports from Speaker Boehner’s office about what’s gettable from the White House.

The good news is that we as Republicans have an equally strong history of allowing our faith to guide us, dating all the way back to abolishing slavery.  Embedded in this same faith is the ability to find humility.  To paraphrase Pollyanna:  “We’re not supposed to be glad we’re very rich, are we?"

The Right to Heal

Ours is in no way a society of oppression.  Our rights here are abundant and generously protected.  The U.S. is so far removed from places like Sudan that we might as well be another planet.  Neither are we anything at all like India, Saudi Arabia or Nigeria where millions scrape by in abject poverty while the elite give new meaning to the term “the 1%” and many must grimly face persecution of various sorts on a daily basis.  Even compared to the more “liberal” countries where economic distress is ebbing, such as China, Indonesia or places in Latin America, our nation just doesn’t possess the man vs. man hardship that plagues the majority of the population.  Regurgitate whatever you want from your pot-smoking, conscientious professor, we just don’t have these problems in any real sense.

There is no amount of inner city chaos you can show me in America that comes close to meeting any standard of true oppression; it’s even rare among criminals.  There is no amount of turmoil among poor whites that rises to this level.  Among Mexican immigrants in the U.S., both legal and not, anything resembling tyrannical depravation is temporal at worst.

All Americans have rich people problems.

At the top of the list of our rich people problems is the unwanted pregnancy (NOTE: there may be an “unplanned” pregnancy, but in the instant it’s unplanned it becomes either wanted or not).  The unwanted pregnancy is a greater shackle on the American mindset than addiction, ignorance, lack of resources, family discord – everything.  Why?  Because the unwanted pregnancy, for either father or mother, represents a human being’s most uncontrollable experience.

The unwanted pregnancy offends a rich society’s ability to chart its own destiny.  But more than this, the unwanted pregnancy is a divine affront to the human ego.  Even Carl Sagan, the renowned atheistic scientist, admitted that sexual reproduction is counter-intuitive to a basic model of evolution, as one or both parents become virtually defenseless against the cold, hard world at some point in the process.

I know a young man who experienced this shaking fear once.  Although an abortion was fairly distant from the mind of this young man and the mother, the affront hurtled the father’s ego into the stratosphere.  As his ego was amputated from his sense of self, shame enshrouded him.  He became a fully justifiable target of anger.  Pain was in his handshake, in his presence; it ground up the hearts of those who loved him the most into hamburger.  Alcohol became the only salve to his mangled dignity, which of course only made things worse, both in the near and long term.

There is an ego in our society – in each of us - that wants to protect itself with the logic of:  it is wrong to bring an unwanted child into the cold, hard world.  By this logic, the perceived oppression around the earth I discussed earlier becomes an excuse for the wealthy.  There is no reason to terminate an unwanted pregnancy in the U.S. – NONE!  For the same reason that we are a grand experiment in listening to our better angels, America possesses the resources for every life to live and excel.

Proponents of abortion try to point out that where there is limited access, there is greater poverty and backwardness, that wealthy societies honor and protect a woman’s right to abort.  Well, the world’s most powerful economic engine, China, also performs the most “legal, safe” abortions (even state-paid and mandated).  In the past 40 years, more than 335 million Chinese babies have been killed.  By contrast, 50 million American children have been killed during the same time period.  Put another way, if none of these abortions would have occurred, China’s population would be 25% larger, while the U.S. would be 16% bigger.

But the truth is that the mark of a wealthy, mature society is that it protects life.  The best case in point is how even the most secular nations of Europe, like France and those of Scandinavia, all ban second and third trimester abortions.

But what about the health of the mother?  Irrelevant and inconsequential.  Pro-abortion advocates are eager to point to a dubious statistic based on a flawed, 75-year-old study which says 5,000 women died of unsafe abortions in America prior to Roe v. Wade.  Do the math.  Even if true (which it isn’t), that’s 200,000 women over 40 years.  Even from a utilitarian standpoint, this is no comparison to what has been done to children in this country.

Putting a mother’s life over a child in this case is completely beside the point.  Life must be protected using the maximum extent of the law.  Is a troubled woman a murderer for the abortion her child?  I would submit that she and the parties involved are guilty of a lesser category of manslaughter, because the circumstances of an unwanted pregnancy are complicated and often murky.  The mother is NEVER the only party involved, obviously.  It is unjust to single her out, even if she is or becomes pathological about obtaining abortions (the statistics on women who get multiple abortions after the first one will take your breath away).

Yet there is a deeper reason why life must be protected.  The power to reproduce is the power to heal.  A family, even in its loosest, most basic definition – a male and female who produce an infant – is 100% influenced by the father – and a heterosexual one at that.  In the past 150 years or so, our society has over-emphasized the mother.  But the presence or absence of the father completely determines the outcome of a family unit and the heart of a human being at all stages of life (the best that scholarly literature can say on the subject of donor inseminated children or the children of same-sex families is that the jury is still out).

The most lost, confused, afraid father has little chance of finding healing and redemption if his child is killed.  The term, right to life, so often used in public policy debate is synonymous with the right to heal.  Recapturing the father is the antidote to all of society’s ills, whether they be real or just rich people problems.  When abortion advocates complain about patriarchy and demand their “rights,” what they are really crying out about is the pain they’ve experienced from bad, weak or misguided men.  Good men can be agents of healing to this hostile spirit.

The young man I mentioned earlier became a father of a son who will be entering high school in the fall.  He is also the father of another son, a daughter, and two stepchildren.  There have been many mistakes, but there have been far greater moments of victory.  Not long ago, the oldest son said something very simple and profound to his father as he walked into church to help lead the youth group music.  "I love you," said the 14-year-old.

For those of us involved in the public square, a fight comes along every now and then that reminds us of why we got involved in the first place.  In Texas, we are poised to pass one of the toughest anti-abortion, pro-women’s health laws in the United States.  HB2 is an elegant blend of law and grace, and it fits within the current Supreme Court interpretations of the aforementioned women’s rights.  True, by next week abortion proponents will be rushing into a friendly federal courthouse for an injunction, which they will probably get.  But with our system, this moment is one for which many of us will be held accountable one day in much different court.  And outside the sphere of lawmaking, all of us will be held accountable for how we defend each other.

Please don’t infringe on my right to heal.

Superneed

I've been on radio blackout for a while.  Why?  Got married.

And what was the first birthday gift given to me by my wife?  Walmart premiere passes for our new, 7-member family to Man of Steel.  I also got a T-shirt with a super S emblazoned on it, which I of course wore to the event.

I believe in Superman.

So great is my faith, in fact, and semi-idolatrous, that we pulled the kids out of Baptist church camp 16 hours early so we could all make it to the premiere (WARNING:  spoilers ahead).  Which is why I must write on the ground as all the self-righteous heretics out there cast stones at this marvelous, spell-binding new version of the comic book character franchise.  Let he who is without sin leap over the nearest tall building with a single bound.

The summer night my parents, family and friends sat in the Rolling Hills Twin Cinema in Greenville, Texas to see the first Reeve version in 1978 impacted my soul with a force equivalent to that of Episode IV a year earlier.  But Superman: the Movie was different.  Although I would absorb more of Lucas' Expanded Universe over time, the visuality of Superman burned itself with heat vision into that kinetic part of my consciousness.  Superman represented raw excitement.  For years afterward, I ran around the house with long pieces of cloth tied around my neck, until I finally outgrew them for a driver's license.  Whereas Star Wars may have conveyed information and meaning into my imagination, Superman supplied the energy.

So when the Man of Steel trailers began to hit, I - and I suspect many millions of others - felt a shudder that a Snyder-Nolan reboot of the character could in fact provide us all with the best of both worlds (to borrow a phrase from the new movie).  After all, we were "just about American as you get" - we aren't from a galaxy far, far away.  We crave meaning here, now.  And the ability to whup our enemies via the Jetstream.

And Snyder, et.al., delivered.

The movie is just as strong as its hero.  Acting, effects, writing, themes, etc.  There is only one minor plot flaw in that Zod's world engine seemed to straddle Metropolis at random during terraforming.  No real reason is given as to why he didn't choose Tokyo, Gotham or London, other than that it's a Superman movie.  But this is easily forgivable.  I have determined that all the roughest reviews thus far are coming from late middle-age critics at dead media who long for Reeves & Reeve's sap.  The Superman of their youth is that brightly-colored, sugary character who first appeared in an actual Technicolor cape in the late 50s.  Their "energy" is the pixie stick; mine is the PowerBar.  Therefore, it follows that the Snyder-Nolan-Cavill version with gravitas (that is successfully achieved, contrary to MSN) is going to be rejected by these nostalgic wimps.  I would also argue that the Snyder-Nolan version is more in keeping with the spirit of the Depression-World War II Superman.

Which brings me back to the religious nature of following our hero.  Quite unlike the late 70s and early 80s when Superman was just for kicks, the coverage of Man of Steel has made many overt, direct references to the parallels between his origin story and that of the Lord Jesus Christ.  As part of the Walmart premier night event, we were subjected to a cold-water featurette at the beginning.  But one salvageable comment from it comes from Kevin Costner who says, "We all are looking for someone who can fix everything."  Indeed.

One of the more well-crafted themes of the filmmakers, I think, is their stark portrayal of bureaucratic blockage, be it the Council of Kryptonian Elders, the U.S. Army or The Daily Planet.  Laurence Fishburne's Perry White is a lawsuit-at-the-ready old media editor who congratulates himself for protecting the public from what he thinks they can't understand; Harry Lennix' General Swanwick is a jerk of an officer who could be a Zod-in-waiting.  As the faces of control, all I could think about in these scenes was our President.

Superman and Lois Lane war against these bureaucracies as much as they do an extraterrestrial threat.  In other words, they are trying to save mankind from the big outer space zap as well as from itself!   Yet this is the craving we have as spiritual beings.  This is why Superman has endured for 75 years as a superstory.  Kudos to the storytellers here for highlighting our superneed.  I, at least, believe I have a need.

"The Warrant"

After three years, I have finally published a new story.  You can download it from Amazon either here or from the link above.  BUY IT!  Nowhere else this weekend will you be more entertained for $2.99 than by "The Warrant."

If you read The Princess, you will notice a significant switch in the genre of fiction I've taken up.  In trying to create new, interesting characters for another political story, a secondary person became more interesting to me.  This character was a more spiritual, allegorical personality, and so from there I junked the basic, narrative fiction formula I was in and went fantasy/sci-fi.  Moreover, the political genre is virutally dead - there is more apathy toward it than our actual elections!  Just take a look in a Walmart bulk box to see it packed with Richard North Patterson hardbacks.

But after switching, I began to realize that the angel/demon genre I was in was only slightly less beleaguered.  For good or ill, Frank Peretti defined the genre back in the late 80s with his Present Darkness series.  His "behind the curtain" look at spiritual warfare was novel, sensational, and a landmark in Christian fiction.  In fact, until Peretti, most of us thought Christian fiction something of a scientific impossibility, if not sinful dabbling.  The genre then fell off for several years, both in the Christian and secular presses, only spawning grocery-rack-style romances with any note.  Then recently, different authors, most very new, have tried to revive it a'la Twilight or Harry Potter, hoping angels/demons would provide a vehicle for the next big thing.  And it goes without saying that post-Peretti, most of these genre pieces are syncretistic at best, rarely attempting to conform with any type of conservative theology or spiritual truth.

So, I became anxious during prewriting about whether or not I was in the right genre, or if the genre even held any promise to be interesting.  But, I kept putting fingertips to keyboard, and one day last autumn the story you can read for $2.99 as an e-book exploded out of my mind and onto the computer screen.  I am confident you will find it compelling, and I hope you enjoy it.  It comes more out of the 11-year-old creative recess of my brain.  Once when asked what qualified him to write children's stories as a bachelor, C.S. Lewis replied, "Not only do I know some children, but believe it or not, I used to be one." (paraphrase)

Tell your friends!  "The Warrant" is a unique look at the spirit world all around us.  I thought it was about time to write about it, since they are already looking at us.