You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 29th, 2008.
This is a post I wrote on my very first blog back in 2005. I stumbled across it today and thought it was worth a post.
Down over on Unleashed Weapon [a now-dormant blog], my good friend Missina Kinsey gets to thinking upon seeing an advertisement.
Her perfect poise and beautiful skin are enough to make any female feel inferior, but instead of grimacing as I normally (and somewhat subconsciously) do, I was terrified. I had looked her right in the eyes this time to notice that they, as well as the rest of her body, had been altered by some digital means to enhance them to a level of whatever perfection was needed. Both eyes had three silvery white glimmers to make her look more perky, more awake, beaming, or enticing, and it seemed as though she had no soul.. no identity left about her at all.
….
This was an ad for hair dye, a product to change appearance, with a slogan that being blonde isn’t that great after all. I mean, of course not, when you could look like her instead. And yet, the model isn’t even good enough to sell the product anymore that marketing felt some need to make her over and then go the extra step to tweak and stroke over her picture to take away any sign that she is still human.
How superbly representative of our times! I can’t help but think of Simulation and Simulacra and it’s contention that we have reduced reality in the reproduction of it, and here, we have even reduced the reproduction. It isn’t even an image of an image anymore, but something wholly invented designed to affect how we think about the world. It is distortion rather than representation and it is very essentially dehumanizing.
The line occurs to me from Patti Smith’s “Babelogue:” “We worship the flaw, the mole, the mole on the belly of the exquisite whore,” which has always struck me as, despite the rest of the song-poem, a very well-formed appreciation for the “dappled things” in the world, an appreciation for the world in it’s varied splendor, and an embrace of imperfection as, yes, part of what makes us human. How healthy is it to pretend a thing is as it is not?
In his excellent Letters to a Young Catholic, George Weigel relates a story where a priest once commented to him that he believe he would have to spend the rest of his life convincing people that death and suffering are good for them. I think he may very well be right. We live in an age where we can get surgery to improve our looks or pop a pill to grow us hair and in every way defeat some very basic things about what it means to be human. We have decided, it seems, that there is nothing in suffering worth getting, and if there is, well, we don’t want it, and if we do, we’d rather not endure the unpleasantness. So, we have decided we can’t even be bothered to endure the most mild and basic form of unpleasantness: not being staggeringly beautiful according to the modern mode.
I’ve said before that everything matters, and nothing is in vain, but as a society, we have decided that we are malleable. That our form is irrelevant. We can change our faces, buttocks, even our sex, if we can afford it. Nothing is built in; the forms are incidental.
We are, to put it mildly, minds in a shell, and every effort should be made to remodel that shell until it is more cosmetically pleasing. Missina above makes a very bold, very daring claim: that her improved level of perfection made her less, not more, than she was before. That being enhanced meant being reduced. I think she hit the nail on the head.
We’ve just reached three-thousand hits! I’d like to thank the Academy.
I’d like to welcome Santogold, N*E*R*D and that dude from the Strokes to the show.
It’s all about power, isn’t it?
I spent a good chunk of yesterday reading about the group “Roman Catholic Womenpriests” (hereafter RCWP). The RCWP is, if you aren’t already aware from being a studious blogonaut, a smallish group that holds faux-ordination ceremonies for women, who are thereafter somehow priests, deacons, or in a few cases, bishops. Or, as they call it, womenpriests, womendeacons, and womenbishops.
What language! That language speaks volumes about their views and their aims. As much as they speak about women “reclaiming their spiritual heritage,” and “taking their rightful place within the Church,” I look at those hideous word formations and can only say “then why on earth make the distinction between ‘priest’ and ‘womanpriest?’”
It’s because it’s not about reclaiming jack.
I try to be a pretty charitable guy, and look at people’s understanding of themselves, not just their motives, to try and understand their actions. You can’t make sense of a person’s deeds without making sense of the person. I find it hard, though, to be generous to this scene. Because, in the end, it’s all about power.
People want power. We want it badly. We want to be important and influential, to be respected and, not only heard, but heeded. We want our decisions to matter, and to be given responsibility in areas that matter. We also want to be able to do what we want without someone challenging us. We want to be able to make decisions regardless of anything. We are, all of us, prideful people.
We also, as a whole Church, have not gotten over clericalism, the idea that the clergy is better than us. We haven’t. We think they’re higher, more important than us, because they have power. We don’t consider their responsibility, only their influence. That’s the problem with RCWP — they want power, and believe that the ordained have it. They talk about women’s right to be priests, and women being just as deserving, and women being just as capable, as though any of that was relevant.
It’s relevant in a power structure. It’s not relevant in the Church.
Kevin and I were talking about this yesterday, and he related some pretty bitter parish council power struggles about which his mom had told him. The council at this parish was full of infighting, squabbling, petty backstabbing, and all of it plainly evident in their meetings. When the pastor attended, he promptly dissolved the council, concluding it’s very character was unhealthy and unchristian. The voices of protest were raised, decrying the loss of power, claiming they were the representatives of the people (despite being appointed, not elected), and accusing the priest of seizing more…power.
What they forget, what everyone forgets, is that Christianity isn’t, inna final ‘nalysis, about power, but service. It is the death of self for the life of Christ, self-denial instead of self-assertion, and giving rather than recieving. The Christian should never seek honors or seek power.
Which brings me back to RCWP. Their actions, which they call “prophetic disobedience of unjust law” or something to that effect, are blatant rebellion against the Church, not the submission to which Christ calls us. It is telling that their vows of ordination do not include one of obedience; they are, in the end, their own authorities, rejecting their excommunications because, ya know, they love the Church so much.
It is truly staggering.
