2009-05-21 08:45:30

PURPLE STATE ROADSHOW: THE APOLOGY IN HOUSTON

Filed under: Craig Detweiler, Davidson College, Faith, John Marks, Reasons To Believe, purple state roadshow
Posted by: John

It was a first. After our screening of Purple State of Mind at the glorious old River Oaks movie theatre in Houston, Texas, as forty or so audience members were filing out of the auditorium, a young man approached me.

He was dressed in college casual: a t-shirt and shorts. His skin was pale, his hair and beard were dark red and scraggly. He looked like one of Craig’s students, or possibly a friend of someone in Craig’s class at the Houston extension of Fuller Theological Seminary. I didn’t know for sure. After the fact, Craig couldn’t identity him either. What I did know, what I saw right away, was his anxiety. He was nervous. I could see it in the halting way he stepped forward to speak to me, and I could see it in his eyes, something furtive, as if he didn’t really want to be there.

He wanted to apologize. During the question and answer session after the screening, he’d asked a pointed question, and he thought in hindsight his question had been inappropriate. I couldn’t remember what he’d asked, but I recalled that it was one of the first two or three questions and had been in the spirit of Christian apologetics. Like several other people in the auditorium, many of whom spoke up first, he had wanted to challenge my reasons in the movie for rejecting his faith.

This happens from time to time, mostly before predominantly Christian audiences. As soon as the credits stop, and we invite audience members to ask questions, several hands go up, and every one of them is addressed to me. In Waco, we had something like seven in a row, a drumbeat of vigorous, almost automatic evangelism, one voice leaping into the fray after another, like spawning salmon, none of them addressed to Craig.

In Houston, we had a Cannonball Run of several, and this man was number three or four. As I think about it, I can recall a few more things.

He was sitting about ten rows back. His hadn’t been a long question. It had been succinct and somewhat forceful, which I always appreciate. Some people, when asking me to justify my rejection of their god’s love, will tape and ribbon their challenge in the linguistic equivalent of Christmas wrapping. They apologize before the question, rather than after. They might preface their challenge with an account of their own journey. It’s perfectly fine, of course, but it differs in its tone and style from the more direct assault.

In the Houston audience, for instance, we heard from a Jew who had recently converted to Christianity—a new Christian, as he called himself. He wanted to know whether I’d read the Bible as an adult, because he had recently done so, and found most of the answers to his questions about suffering thoroughly addressed in its pages. His question came couched in the form of a testimony, and he was urging me to go back and read the Bible as a form of apology.

Someone else, on the other hand, getting straight to the point, said that I’d made clear in the movie what I didn’t believe, but I hadn’t articulated a positive worldview. So what did I believe if I didn’t believe in god?

Another raised the issue of how my wife and I handled her Judaism, given that I had no faith. Yet another audience member wondered if I’d read The Brothers Karamazov. In his view, I sounded a lot like a doubting character in the novel’s pages. Why did I choose, like Ivan, to believe “a lie”—i.e. that there is no god—and one underscored by paramilitary Christian Serbs in the Balkans rather than “the truth” as articulated by my friend, who presumably loved me?

I wish now that I could remember what exactly the young man in the t-shirt asked, but what matters more to me, what intrigues me most about our encounter, is that he felt the need to apologize. No one has ever done it. In fact, most people who ask those sorts of questions approach me after the screening to fire away again in the same vein. No apologies in apologetics, or something like that, seems to be the credo.

For the record, I don’t mind. It’s part of the conversation.

So why had he done it, when his question was no different in kind than anyone else’s? Had someone spoken to him? Had he been chastised for being rude by a friend or a professor or even a stranger? Had he not been able to help himself and regretted his words the minute they sprang from his lips? I do remember a certain urgency in the delivery, and had the thought even at the time that the questioner was himself struggling with the same question he’d put to me.

Had he perhaps sat through the rest of the event and slowly stewed, realizing that he’d jumped too soon to a conclusion? Had I said something that shamed him in answer to another question? Or was he finally a polite Texan who upon reflection decided that he’d overstepped a boundary and wanted to make amends?

Whatever the case, I found his impulse poignant because it seemed to transcend questions of mere formality. He apologized more than once, even when I insisted that it wasn’t necessary. I had the feeling that he’d spent the entire question and answer session castigating himself for speaking to me as he had. He was caught in a struggle, in other words, that may or may not have had anything to do with me. His contrition, like his question, belonged to an unseen drama that will play itself out in myriad other encounters and apologies.

Who knows? I’m a novelist by profession, so in the absence of hard fact, I tend to want to confabulate, to empathize my way into the head of the other person. The real truth will remain a mystery.

Meanwhile, there are lessons here. One, maybe, is the unlikely weight of the spoken word, the means by which a single utterance can become as heavy as a stone, often becoming more of a burden to the one who has spoken it than to the receiver.

Another has to do with the distance between a spoken word and the thought in someone’s hand. How far our remarks tend to travel from the deep impulses that give rise to them! The translation is routinely ludicrous, as when we’ve just had a terrible piece of news at work, and yet the only verbalized response comes out as an attack on some minor piece of behavior by one of our kids or a spouse.

Finally, the essence of conversation is inclusion. In our movie we both say things to each other that cross the line. We confront in anger. We poke fun. We don’t apologize.

Our dialogue is meant to encourage all questions and forms of communication except those that have their root either in unfocused hate or rage, or those that reflect a calculated and cynical attempt to take ideological or religious scalps. We don’t actively discourage those kinds of questions either, but we avoid them ourselves, and we call attention to them in our question and answer sessions as examples of problematic discourse.

The guy who apologized to me hadn’t indulged in either unreasoning hostility or manipulative bear-baiting, unless I’m much mistaken.

He’d simply asked a question that meant a great deal to him and hadn’t varnished it with kisses. That he agonized over it afterwards probably says something about him. Another person, in the same circumstance, might have left the theatre as quickly as possible. Still another person might have taken that agony and squeezed it into a new and even more aggressive mold. This guy just felt guilty and did what his conscience bade him.

If you ask me, that’s basic Purple State.

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2009-04-18 06:57:36

TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT: PURPLE STATE OF MIND IS “PROFOUND AND PROVOCATIVE”

Filed under: Books, Craig Detweiler, Davidson College, Jesus Christ, John Marks, Reasons To Believe, purple state roadshow
Posted by: John

It’s a Purple-scented morning in Tallahassee, Florida, as Sharon Kant-Rauch at The Tallahassee Democrat writes beautifully about the movie. The sororities are bursting, the movies are unspooling,the oysters are frying and people are talking. What more can you ask for?

Check out the story here. Or if you take a mind, go out and actually buy a newspaper. Newspapers need and deserve our love and money, and I say that with complete and total bias.

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2009-03-24 16:33:51

BLUE VELVET IN A PURPLE STATE, OR WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT WHEN WE TALKED IN ABILENE

Filed under: 2001:A Space Odyssey, Battlestar Galactica, Books, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Craig Detweiler, David Lynch, Davidson College, Doug Wright, Faith, Fangland, Jesus Christ, John Marks, Journalism, Reasons To Believe, Roberto Bolano, Sex, Television, The Dark Knight, The Wire, Theater, Vampires, Watchmen, purple state roadshow
Posted by: John

“It’s a strange world, Sandy.”

These immortal lines from the David Lynch film Blue Velvet have been ringing in my ears ever since we started to talk to the students and faculty at Abilene Christian University; not because the students and faculty are strange, but because it’s strange to find myself praising David Lynch, reading passages from the Chilean writer Roberto Bolano and uttering the words “prostitute’s vagina” in front of an audience of receptive Christians.

How did we get here?

The first answer, of course, is the documentary. Purple State of Mind made an impression on our host, English professor and novelist Al Haley, and after spending time with Al, I realize what a compliment that is. He felt that students and faculty at Abilene Christian, which is affiliated with the Church of Christ denomination, might benefit from a dose of Detweiler’s Blues, as I like to think of our project, and the school flew us out for a two-day visit.

In the meantime, several other departments set up related events and speaking opportunities. We started in chapel, which might seem an odd place to launch a discussion of fairly transgressive independent American cinema. Yesterday morning, it happened. Craig and I showed clips of favorite movies to the audience. To our amazement, we had a packed house.

I opened the chapel discussion with a five minute clip from Blue Velvet, followed by my explanation of why I revere the movie and how it reflects my aesthetics. Craig closed with a minute or two of Jesus’ Son, a movie based on the Denis Johnson novel of the same name, after discussing his faith-based aesthetics.

We spoke as well about our disagreement over current movies: The Dark Knight and Watchmen. Craig called the Batman movie an account of our own depravity, and I agreed with him—except that I located our depravity in an insatiable necrophilia expressed in the desire of millions to watch the late Heath Ledger play his own reanimated corpse.

That was the beginning of hours of conversation. We followed chapel with an appearance before members of faculty, discussing the Purple State idea, its chances for failure or success. After that, back to the students, we addressed the question of what defines a Christian artist, and we ended the strictly academic portion of the day with a discussion of gender and identity issues.

Craig talked about a gay friend and writing partner in the movie business, and I told the story of my connection to Doug Wright’s Pulitzer-prize-winning play I Am My Own Wife.

I’m not kidding when I say the screening of the documentary felt like a breather, which isn’t usually the case. In every conversation, students and faculty seemed genuinely eager to engage with our project and at every level. After the documentary, the audience stuck around for an hour of questions.

One woman told me that her patience came from God and asked me where I got the patience to deal with someone as evasive as Craig. I thanked her for feeling my pain.

Another student asked Craig why he didn’t give me the straight answer when I asked if he thought I was going to hell. I told her that we had been surrounded by Christians during the conversation, and they had urged him to do the same. Craig told her to take her best shot at me and see what happened.

Another student, a blogger named Joshua, asked if there might be any way for a Christian to approach me on the subject of Jesus without giving offense. He specifically mentioned the moment in the movie where I tell Craig it offends me if he thinks I’m going to eat beans with the devil for all eternity. I told him he shouldn’t worry about giving me offense, but should come to the task with all of the seriousness it merits. Too many times Christians seem to feel that it’s okay to pose silly, reductive and complacent questions about faith to people who’ve actually given serious thought to such questions. I also warned him to be sure about his own beliefs before he takes a pass at mine.

Today offered another smorgasbord of conversation, and I thought to myself: What a pleasure it is to talk to people about their belief systems. Nothing is off limits. I get a natural high from it.

This afternoon, for instance, we spoke to a few dozen Christian art students about the boundaries that may exist for Christians in their depictions of sex, violence and sacred images. Worrying about those boundaries is a dead end for any artist, I believe, and so I tried to provide a counterpoint to Craig, who insisted on pointing out the difference between sacred and profane art. To me, they are the two indispensable elements in all great art.

Sacred art without a lot of profane influence dies before the eyes. Profane art that doesn’t reach for some sacred point kills the joint. Or something like that. Craig and I probably disagree more vehemently about art than anything else. It’s the place where our differences become most apparent, and yet at the same time I see common touchstones. It’s a divide in sensibility, but a few last bridges have yet to be blown.

I talked about Fangland and confessed to a novelistic indiscretion: I wrote about a woman using her sexuality to fend off evil from the point of view of the woman. There was a slight gasp at that revelation, or maybe I’m imagining things.

I brought up the notorious painting The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet, and spoke about this realistic depiction of a prostitute’s vagina as a spectacular example of the blurry—and in this case bushy—line that exists between pornography and art.

Finally, I read a passage from The Savage Detectives in which a man and a woman, having just made love, talk about the Marquis de Sade. The woman asks the man whether de Sade’s plays were pornographic. No, he replies, they’re philosophical, with some sex. I love that.

Did people seem uncomfortable? Maybe a little. Did they stay in their seats and ask questions and engage fully in a response to what we discussed. They did. They listened avidly to both of us, and once again I experienced that high of talking about the most important things with people who have an investment in the conversation.

One student, a Latina, asked about the risks of making art that reflected reality and yet somehow encouraged or supported the worst aspects of that reality.

I quoted Bolano from The Savage Detectives, where someone says that “art isn’t innocent”, and suggested that as an artist, she might not be able to both make good art and stand at a safe enough distance to be spared its consequences. Craig encouraged her to bring her artistic voice to bear on reality, at whatever cost.

That session was probably my favorite. I don’t honestly know what value we bring to these students, but I will certainly leave Abilene with a sense of the value these conversations have had for me.

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