Good Clean Fun: The Theology of the Body in "Groundhog Day"

The movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell turns 21 this year, and I wish I could take it out for a drink ("Sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist, please."). I feel as if I've seen this movie about as many times as Phil Connors lived that day. In college, my roommate and I decided to drive to the tiny hamlet of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania for the real thing. (Warning: the movie bears very little resemblance to the phenomenon that is a thousand screaming drunk people in utter darkness. Learned that the hard way.) After spending the night in a car and freezing for two hours just waiting for a shuttle bus, the highlight of the day was buying a DVD copy of Groundhog Day in the town itself and then driving all the way back to our warm and cozy apartment to watch it. I have high standards for movies, and I confidently declare that this one is the best movies made in my lifetime. Its universal appeal will ensure that it stands the test of time. And what I aim to show here is that the movie's universal appeal is such because it is rooted in what Blessed John Paul II called the Theology of the Body (TOB).

I came to know TOB in ways probably similar to many of you. I read some Christopher West in college. I've attended TOB lecture series and conference talks. I've done a few small group discussions over it with friends. I used it whenever I could when I taught high school theology. Then to prepare for this post, I read Michael Waldstein's impressive and scholarly introduction to the work and finally mined the magnum opus itself for some choice quotes. But even after all of that, I think the best thing I can offer you is the flavah of the ideas as consciously digested and understood by me and less-consciously so by the people who made Groundhog Day. Still, in order to fix the discussion on a couple of key ideas, I will focus on two important fragments from the TOB (General Audience 32:4,6):

4....[A]s a person, "man is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself" and at the same time the one who "cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self" (Gaudium et Spes, 24:3). Concupiscence in general—and the concupiscence of the body in particular—attacks precisely this "sincere gift": it deprives man, one could say, of the dignity of the gift, which is expressed by his body through femininity and masculinity, and in some sense "depersonalizes" man, making him an object "for the other." Instead of being "together with the other"—subject in unity, or better, in the sacramental "unity of the body"—man becomes an object for man, the female for the male and vice versa" [...] 6. "Concupiscence brings with it the loss of the interior freedom of the gift. The spousal meaning of the body in linked exactly to this freedom. Man can become a gift—that is, man and woman can exist in the relationship of the reciprocal gift of self—if each of them masters himself. Concupiscence, which manifests itself as a "constraint 'sui generis' of the body," limits and restricts self-mastery from within, and thereby in some sense makes the interior freedom of the gift impossible.

Summed up in one sentence, JPII is saying that the man who is ruled by concupiscence (which is the desire to possess something as an object to be exploited) cannot freely give of himself in love until he first mortifies those desires. For my purposes, that man is Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors (Murray). The story functions as a philosophical thought experiment: what if you woke up every day and discovered it was yesterday? For Phil, that day is February 2nd, Groundhog Day. When we first meet him he is an arrogant, cynical, prima donna. He is a man driven by concupiscent desires. He is fixated on the idea of landing a bigger network and deeply resentful of the fact that he has to cover the groundhog festival in Punxsutawney for the fourth year in a row.  An attractive, vivacious new producer, Rita (MacDowell) has just joined the news team and she immediately catches Phil's eye while playing with the studio's green screen just like a happy child might. Another weatherman tells Phil that she'll be accompanying him on the trip to Punxsutawney and says, "She really nice. You two are going to have a lot of fun." Even though we viewers see Phil's face soften when first sees Rita, he replies, "Mmmhmm. She's fun. But not my kind of fun." His comments and actions suggest that his preferred fun is of a selfish kind. When he says Rita is not his kind of fun, he means that her innocent joyfulness is not sexy—or at least it doesn't promise the gratification of sexual desire. He's saying that she does not arouse his lust because and thus is not easily objectified for his pleasure.

Phil lives for comfort and status. Throughout the story, those desires are mortified in many different ways so that higher desires can take their place. Even before the main trick of the narrative begins, a seemingly providential transformation of Phil's life is foreshadowed in several scenes in which Phil behaves arrogantly and then is humbled by some apparently random bodily discomfort. After predicting that there would be no blizzard, he gets out of the car with no coat on and shouts, "I make the weather!" at the police officer who is closing the road. He trembles and chatters with cold, a fitting refutation of his self-absorbed claim. Shortly after that, he requests a special phone line for "celebrities" and is hit in the head with a snow shovel. That night, after saying that he'll spend his night taking a hot shower and reading Hustler, the faucet douses him in icy water. Following this pattern, the time warp functions as another example of divine justice, as if God is saying, "No. You're doing it wrong. Try again."

Just as one might expect, the first recurrence of Groundhog Day is just plain weird for Phil. He has no idea what is going on. He asks Rita for a good hard slap on the face and she happily obliges him. He also pops an aspirin. He initially thinks that stimulating his flesh will fix the problem, then he tries numbing it. The following time, he asks Rita for help, and after she expresses her annoyance, he seeks medical, then psychological evaluation. With no answers to be found there, he turns to bowling and boozing with a couple of locals. He shares with them what is happening to him, and remembers his best day ever:

I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over?

He soon realizes that he can have a day like this if he just puts his mind to it. So, he pursues a veritable feast for the flesh with no strings attached. The next day at the diner, he gorges himself on pastries, drinks coffee straight from the carafe, and smokes cigarettes. Rita, watching in disgust, leans in and recites to him part of a poem by Sir Walter Scott:

The wretch, concentred all in self, 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

How perfectly apt for Phil in this moment. Still too pleasure driven to even hear her, he laughs and moves right along with his self-indulgent day, transitioning from food to sex. On his way out of the diner, he collects some biographical information from a very attractive young woman named Nancy so that he can use it to woo her the next day. His plan works perfectly and he is able to have a Virgin Islands-esque romp with her, but in the course of it he reveals that he is fantasizing about Rita—the childlike, good woman—in the midst of it. The next day, he robs a bank truck and spends the money on a fancy car, a Clint Eastwood costume, and manages to trick a woman into dressing up as French maid. Phil is certainly having his "kind of fun." But what's interesting here is that he is not satisfied with replaying versions of this over and over. He knows that he could have his way with Nancy or the French maid every day; but he realizes that what he really wants is Rita.

He asks her what she is looking for in a man, hoping to exploit the information and use her in the same way that he used Nancy. She tells him she what everybody wants: "career, love, marriage, children." John Paul II would smile and nod at this. Then Rita gives her list of desired attributes:

 First of all, he's too humble to know he's perfect. He's intelligent, supportive, funny. He's romantic and courageous. He's got a good body but doesn't have to look in the mirror every two minutes. He's kind, sensitive and gentle. He's not afraid to cry in front of me. He likes animals and children, and he'll change poopy diapers. And he plays an instrument and he loves his mother.

What she has described is a man of virtue—a man is who is striving in self-mastery and therefore has the freedom of authentic self-gift in the way that TOB prescribes. Phil doesn't realize this in the beginning. Instead he views it more as a cheat sheet to getting her into bed. He orchestrates a perfect day for the two of them, and they have many delightful moments. At one point, they build a snowman together, an act that symbolizes the creative power of love in the rendering of another human being. They even talk about childhood and children. Phil says, "I haven't done this since I was a kid." Rita: "Me neither. It's fun!" Phil: "Yeah—good clean fun." He knows this is her kind of fun, and adds that he hopes to do this someday with his own children. At this point, he is doing and saying what he knows she wants to see and hear.  He is not acting genuinely and he's not giving of himself. He taking advantage of her and objectifying her for his own pleasure. I think it's fair to point out that Phil really doesn't know any better. He believes that Rita is good and he wants her goodness somehow, but he is so absorbed in himself that he can't conceive of offering himself in order to receive her. Rita certainly feels drawn to Phil, but she is firm about not wanting to "spoil it"  by making their relationship sexual too soon. Phil thinks that sex is the ultimate goal of the relationship and he fears that all he has is that one day, so he is determined to figure out the exact formula of words and actions that will land her in his bed. But no matter what he does, each day he winds up seriously offending her as expressed in a hilarious sequence of face-slaps. By the end of it, Phil is angry, bitter, and depressed. He hisses a kind of curse at Rita: "I'll give you a prediction—it's gonna be cold, it's gonna be gray, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life." Then, he snaps like a crazy man, kidnaps the groundhog whom he has decided to blame for his ill-fate, and kills the two of them by driving a truck off a cliff. After that comes the despair sequence, in which he commits suicide in just about every way he can fathom day after day. This is the ultimate irresponsible act against his body. He may be imagining it as a kind of mortification, and it may function that way in the story; but it is certainly not the answer to his fundamental desires.

Phil simply does not understand what it takes to be a good man for such a good woman. Because he is a human being made in the image and likeness of God like we all are, he intuits what he wants and what he is but gets lost in the articulation of those things. He needs a guide. After many attempts at self-slaughter, he decides to tell Rita exactly what is happening to him. He starts by saying that he is a god. She replies, "You're not a god. Trust me. This is twelve years of Catholic school talking." This gives us a clue as to what Phil lacks and what he so badly needs—a bit of remedial and illuminative theological education. Deep down he understands this, and at the end of the full-disclosure day, he confesses his feelings and desires to Rita as she sleeps: 

 What I wanted to say was I think you're the kindest, sweetest, prettiest person I've ever met in my life. I've never known anyone who is nicer to people than you are. The first time I saw you... something happened to me. I never told you but... I knew that I wanted to hold you as hard as I could. I don't deserve someone like you. But if I ever could, I swear I would love you... for the rest of my life.

And so begins Phil's education as illustrated by a very enjoyable self-improvement sequence. He reads voraciously, learns to play the piano and ice sculpt, and performs random acts of kindness around town. All of this mortifies his concupiscent urges. It also schools him in virtue so that he begins to live well, which as he discovers, means living for others—serving others through beauty and good deeds. His self-mastery affords him the freedom to choose the good, and finally, to give of himself. 

Rita's idea of fun—"good clean fun"—has become Phil's own. He begins a February 2nd cheerfully and warmly as he quotes Chekov and delivers a beautiful speech about winter to the Gobbler's Knob crowd and the viewing news audience. Instead of treating himself, he brings breakfast for his co-workers and carries their heavy bags. Rita is so intrigued by this that she asks him to spend time with her, but he has a list of "errands" to perform, all of which involve him spending his body for the sake of others: jacking up a car to change a flat tire, catching a boy falling from a tree, and performing the Heimlich on a choking man. At the groundhog party that night, all of these good deeds gather around to praise him like a Medieval allegory play. The beneficiaries of his kindness parade before him to express their gratitude as he dances with Rita. She begins to see that this man is the kind of man she is looking for. At the bachelor auction, which benefits a local charity, Rita unnecessarily cleans out her bank account to bid on Phil as a grand gesture of her wonder at him. To thank her, Phil perfectly sculpts her face in ice, again spending his body to serve her through beauty. Her body, symbolically in his hands, is not a tool of his pleasure but rather a gift that he offers back to her as an icon of his admiration. He tells her that he loves her, and this time there is no face slap, because he has shown her that this is true, and due to his strength of character, she is right glad of it.

Now here is where the movie takes a Hollywood turn instead of a TOB one: 6:00am arrives again, and this time, "something is different"—Rita is in bed next to Phil (JPII face-palm). The movie could have been totally perfect had he awoken to the next day, got down on his knees and thanked God like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Day, and then run through the winter wonderland and into Rita's arms. But I'll take what I can get. The main point is still very well expressed. In his joy at waking up in tomorrow instead of yesterday, Phil turns to Rita and says, "Is there anything... that I can do for you...today?" The man of concupiscence, through self-mastery and self-gift, has found true love; and we have every reason to expect that it will find its full expression in spousal love soon thereafter. 

If you're interested in a study guide for Theology of the Body, I highly recommend Men & Women Are From Eden by Mary Healy. And here is some information on how the groundhog relates to the Christian feast of Candlemas.

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EPILOGUE: To add another layer to this treatment of TOB and  Groundhog Day, I'll share a personal anecdote that fits remarkably well and contributes to my strong identification with the movie. I went through a really rough time in high school when I was miserably lonely but was starting to get a lot of attention from strangers. I was lured into the world of modeling after being given the impression that I had a really good chance of "making it" as long as my unusually tall frame reached a dangerously low weight. So, I began the work of pretty severe anorexia. I was so so bad to my body. There was a point when I was eating about 300 calories per day (disguising this from friends and family) and felt triumphant every time the sun went down. I got that thin, went to a crazy-horrible modeling expo, and—thank God—ran away screaming. But the lingering effect of the eating disorder was that I lost my menstrual cycle for nearly three years. All my life I wanted to be a mom, but the idea became so distant in that difficult time. Yet when a stranger in the ladies' room would ask me if I had any spare supplies, I would cry. Didn't have them, didn't need them. I was pretty sure that I had wrecked my chances of having kids, but I was still so wrapped up in warped thinking that I didn't take any practical steps towards correcting this self-inflicted tragedy. Until...

Shortly after I arrived at college, I had a major reversion to Catholicism. I knew very little of the Church's teaching but I became enraptured with every bit of it once I fell in love with the Mystical Body of Christ. I attended all the Masses and talks at the Newman Center that I could fit between my classes. One evening, I saw that there was a lecture on the Theology of the Body (had never heard of such a thing) and I just showed up. I knew that I had a really bad relationship with my body and I knew that I was suddenly really into theology. I was totally unprepared for what I heard that night from a lovely young Catholic couple who cheerfully and confidently articulated everything that I had never dared hope for in this fleshly life. I learned that my body was not mine (which was a relief because if my body had been my kid, Social Services would have taken her away from me) and that I owed tremendous gratitude to my Creator who loved me unconditionally. I learned about the incredible awesomeness of the Incarnation and the ways in which we can connect to God spiritually with the help of our bodies. I also learned about love between married people as self-gift and self-sacrifice. I felt an unidentified yearning well up inside me, whispering fiat to the Truth spoken that night. During the break, I was a mess of emotion—burning within me was both intense desire and profound regret. Now that I knew what my body was for, I was prepared to live differently—to treat my flesh differently. But was it too late? Was I already doomed to wake up to another Sonny & Cher 6:00am barren wasteland for the rest of my life? even though I had finally realized what my body was and what it meant? when at last I had the tools to be responsible enough to care for myself and perhaps even... someone else??

No. Our God is a God of mercy. To my shock and delight (and I apologize if your TMI-o-meter goes off here), my period returned during the Theology of the Body talk at the Newman Center after three years of nothing. The other girls in the stalls couldn't fathom my joyous laughter. I was so grateful, so happy to have the chance to give life (when the time came, of course)—life which all at once seemed so worth living. I was Phil Connors of February 3rd that day, full of wonder and gratitude. I've tried to stay that way ever since.

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Here's a lovely little bit of news from the Oscars related to this topic.

2014 Sheenazing Awards

 

Huzzah! Through a Glass Brightly has been nominated in two categories for the Sheenazing Blogger Awards! The contest is hosted by Bonnie over at A Knotted Life. You'll find me in "Best Under Appreciated Blog" and "Smartest Blog." Be sure to click around to discover the delights and wonders of the Catholic blogosphere. Have fun and be sure to vote for your favorites!

A thousand thanks to whoever nominated me! I'm truly honored to be associated with Venerable Fulton J. Sheen in any way. I've listened to his wonderful Life is Worth Living talks for years, and I borrowed many of his ideas when I taught high school theology. May he be raised to the altars. 

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UPDATE: I did not win a Sheenazing award, but the person who won "Smartest Blog" is the woman who left the first comment below; so it feels a little bit like winning. :) 

Congratulations Kendra and all you other Sheenazing bloggers! It was an honor to be nominated. Thank you to all who voted me for!

"Poor A.A. Milne": In Which Winnie-the-Pooh is Reclaimed from Disney

*Preface: This is not becoming a MommyBlog. My husband's academic advisor for his PhD in theology told him to read The House at Pooh Corner before his first job interview. So there you go.

This Saturday, January 18th, is Winnie-the-Pooh Day. It is the day on which the author of the beloved stories was born. And today is the best day of the year to remember or learn for the first time that Winnie-the-Pooh was originally a perfectly lovely and delicate story quite distinct from the general awareness of the "adventures" as reinterpreted by Disney from the early 1970s to the present day.

I recently saw the new movie Saving Mr. Banks which is about the author of Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), handing over the film rights to her beloved books to the same Walt Disney (Tom Hanks). Travers resisted Disney's courting for 20 years before she found herself nearly broke; and at the insistence of her lawyer, she flew from England to California to give him one last chance to win her trust. (The movie is especially fun for anglophiles like myself who will relish all of the very British reactions to some bits of American garishness—for instance, a giant platter of Jell-O).

When she arrives at her hotel room, she finds it stuffed with plush Disney creatures, mostly the iconic Mickey Mouse in several sizes. Among them she picks up a Pooh Bear, lifts him up to her face and says, frowningly,  

 "Poor A.A. Milne."

I lit up with a loud, "Ha!" at that moment because I found it very clever and it gave me the idea for this post. Disney had gained to rights to Pooh in 1961 (and dropped the hyphens in the name), the same year in which Saving Mr. Banks takes place. And 52 years later when I saw the movie in December, my four-year-old had just discovered the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories complete with Ernest H. Shepard's subtle and beautiful illustrations. I also scored the excellent audio recordings of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner performed by Judi Dench, Stephen Frye, and others. These are just delightful. You can purchase them right now with those links. I don't care if you don't have kids, you will love them. They will transport you to the sunny moments of your own childhood. I can sit for hours with my son listening and laughing without ever growing tired of it. (He now says "Bother!" with a British accent all the time and it's awesome.) Having this world of Pooh fresh in my mind, I knew exactly what P.L. Travers meant with that sorrowful sigh. And it was precisely what she feared would be her own fate as expressed in her shout at Walt Disney, "I won't have her turned into one of your silly cartoons!" What she feared most was that her own vision of Mary Poppins would be overshadowed by Disney's and of course that is what happened. I certainly didn't know that there were books (illustrated by Ernest Shepard's daughter Mary, I discovered behind the Julie Andrews/Dick van Dyke phenomenon. Now, Saving Mr. Banks is going a long way towards changing that, thankfully. But since there may not be a Saving Edward Bear or somesuch on the big screen, I hope to make a similar contribution here.

 I watched a documentary called  The Making of Mary Poppins and a more recent BBC one about P.L. Travers in preparation for this. I also checked out several academic books on Pooh which made the librarian laugh and puzzle over who might want these and why. Some of it was quite good (Recovering Arcadia) and a few turned out to be very amusing satires (The Pooh Perplex and Postmodern Pooh). I also spent a rather soul-crushing evening watching YouTube videos of the most recent Disney adaptations of Pooh and friends. Fun fact: if you type "Winnie the Pooh" into a Google Image search (or just click that) your retinas with be scorched by bulbous, glowing, cutesyness. All of that research added up to one sentence from Dick van Dyke in the first documentary: "Walt knew what children would like. He never asked the question of what parents like their children to see."

Yes. That is totally it. Walt Disney loved Jell-O and he loved slapstick. He loved sentimentality and he loved silliness. He loved dancing penguin daydreams and so he probably would have loved dancing Heffalump nightmares (he died before The Many Adventures came out in 1977). P.L. Travers said his Mary Poppins, "Like chalk to cheese is the film to the book." And I know for a fact that kids like to eat chalk. Sure—chalk can be a lot of fun. But if you eat chalk, it won't nourish you. That's basically how I feel about all of this: the original Winnie-the-Pooh truly nourishes—emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise. I'm not meaning to hate on Mr. Disney. I have thousands of Disney-themed memories; but most of them have the same feeling as shooting bottle rockets or eating Skittles. Milne & Shepard remind me of discovering a secret crop of cat tails by a pond or drinking chicken noodle soup when I was sick. To put it in the words of Pooh Bear himself, the original is a "Sustaining Book."

There are many ways in which the books and the cartoons differ; but I'll only focus here on what I think is the most important one: the role of Christopher Robin. In A.A. Milne: The Man Behind Winnie-the-Pooh, Ann Thwait explains why the little boy is portrayed as perfect (worth quoting at length):

He is seen in relation to Pooh and the other animals. Pooh and Piglet are the children and the boy himself takes on the role of the adult. The listening or reading child identifies with the superior strength and power he sometimes resents in the adults around him, however much he loves his parents. Christopher Robin is always resourceful and competent; he is the child as hero. [...] It is Christopher Robin who reads sustaining books at moments of crisis, who comes to the rescue, who will make sure that no harm comes to the kidnapped Roo and protects the animals from the teeth of fierce things. ('If Christopher Robin is coming, I don't mind anything.') He dries Eeyore's tail after its immersion in the river and does all of the comforting and useful things that parents do. The boy is brave and godlike to the toys, just as the loving parent is to a small child.

Just occasionally, as any adult does too, Christopher Robin reveals his frailty, his feet of clay, and this surely adds to his appeal. He has forgotten what the North Pole looks like. ('I did know once...') It is Pooh who is childlike [I would use childish], egotistical, hungry, alternately boastful and self-deprecating, occasionally managing to be brave and unselfish, accepting things without really understanding them, as children so often have to accept ununderstandable explanations. The listening or reading child recognizes himself in Pooh and recognizes himself as he longs to be, as he thinks he will be, in Christopher Robin. He recognizes and enjoys the wit and tenderness of the books.

 I think this juxtaposition of Christopher Robin and Pooh is very important modeling for the child who encounters these stories. And it makes them all the more interesting to the parents, as well. Unfortunately, Disney changes this dynamic by turning Christopher Robin into one more child in the Hundred Acre Wood. A good example can be found in Milne's very first chapter, "In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin". In search of honey, Pooh attempts to outsmart the bees with some help from Christopher Robin. The only indication that the bees are really bothering Pooh is that he says "ow!" a few times. But in the Disney version, the bees form an angry army and attack both the bear and the boy.  In Recovering Arcadia, Professor Paula T. Connolly points out that the serious problem here is that:

The child who seems to offer protection in Milne's Forest has his facade of power utterly shattered here as he, too, must flee the bees and hide in a mud pond to escape their sting. This is not a world in which he seems to reign, but rather one from which he, too, must guard himself.

Losing the Godlike figure in the Disney adaptation of these stories is a sad misfortune; and I feel it cheats the child out of a fuller, richer tale of childhood innocence and wonder which can be found in the books. I hope that you'll treat yourself and/or your family to the original boy, bear, and his friends this Winnie-the-Pooh Day. And join me in wishing A.A. Milne, in the words of pedantic yet loveable Owl,

HIPY  PAPY  BTHUTHDTH  THUTHDA

BTHUTHDY.

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Next topic: Theology of the Body in the movie Groundhog Day. Click here for the post.

Eucatastrophe in Everyday Life: A New Year's Resolution

If you haven't laugh/cried or cry/laughed in a while, this is your chance. I want to start with a big *thank you* to whichever one of my Facebook friends posted this Argentine ad for the new drink, "Coca-Cola Life," so that I could find it and celebrate it. It is the greatest sixty seconds I've ever spent after scrolling through my feed at the end of a hard day—the kind day so perfectly captured by the ad itself. Here it is (be sure to activate the sound):

Ok, go ahead and dry your sopping wet smiley face; and feel free to watch it multiple times in a row. There's more to notice with each repeated viewing, and the brilliance of it shines brighter and brighter. It packs as much emotional punch as Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch which sent Harry Crane hurrying out of the conference room in tears.

I think it is perfect in every way. It tells a funny, profound, sympathetic, and inspiring story in a single glorious minute. And the execution of the twist at the end is remarkably effective. You parents know all too well what this young couple feels in each little glimpse into their lives: the joyful expectation, then the utter transformation of the world you once knew with your beloved spouse; all new levels of clutter from baby gear and exhaustion from interrupted sleep; heart-wrenching moments of longing for the easiness of life before and of absolute terror when your little one suddenly disappears and you go looking; a moment as simple as sitting down to lunch disappointed by affectionate pummeling of your head.

KIDS ARE SO HARD. Sometimes, it's so overwhelming that you (...I) have to scream into a pillow. Lately, I've enjoyed sidling up to other parents at parties or after Mass just to say, "Parenting is the hardest thing ever," and then relishing their unanimous reaction of a breathy, "Yeah-oh my gosh-it really is-wow," with that stare and the light head shake as they suddenly relive it all. That is exactly where we find this young couple near the end of the ad when the wife reveals the positive pregnancy test. They feel like they are barely surviving each impossible day and now there is about to be twice as much of all of it.

I'm very pleased with the way the wife is depicted in that shot. She realizes that this might not be the best time to break the news and her facial expression is just vacant—as if she is waiting for her husband to supply the correct emotion. What will he do? What will he say? What do I feel? What should I say? It's like she can't even know her own heart without him. They are one flesh, after all; and this new child is not theirs individually but theirs together. I had this exact experience. My husband and I still felt newly married while I was working hard (in a very enjoyable job) to supplement our graduate student stipend and our NFP efforts started to lack their former diligence. "I think you're pregnant," he told me one day. "Shh!,"I hissed, shooting him a panicked, dear-in-the-headlight look. "Don't even say that out loud. It's not a good time!" Then next day, there it was: a plus sign so clear it seemed to have a giant exclamation mark beside it. That hollow, petrified look is the same one I gave my husband. I needed his help to know how to be in response to such an enormous revelation. I see myself in that actress. What a performance.

Now to the husband. Someone, please give that man a CLIO or an Emmy or whatever award they have in Argentina for his acting in this moment: first the shock and alarm as he eyes the positive test while downing the drink, then the musically-cued shriek freighted with all of the anxiety and helplessness of the whole world gathered together in one terrified father. I totally expected the ad to cut to black at the peak of that scream while the song continued to play (its lyrics rendered ironic) and the Coca-Cola logo gently faded in: Life. I would have laughed for a moment, but would have been left in that moment of the wife's empty yet reaching face. How do we manage? How is it that every single living adult was once born and then raised through those very trying early years? How does the human race keep on? It is so hard. But mercifully and wonderfully, the ad does not leave me in that stupor. It harrows me from it like Christ freeing the righteous from Hell. Dawning over the crest of that despairing yell is pure joy bursting forth over top of it and conquering in the name of Life. As that smile begins to enter his shattered expression, I felt a rush of warmth flood to every part of me. Someone who is really into Coke could wax poetic about how the drink itself achieves this sensation with it's bubbly refreshing goodness and that's what's responsible for the change in the dad. But of course that's not really the point; love is what overcomes this father, just as the Bee Gees sing in the ad's refrain: "You don't know what it's like to love somebody, to love somebody, the way I love you." And of course we Christians know that "God is love" (1 John 4:8) and His son is Life (John 14:6). So if we're looking through a glass brightly, we can find the song and the acting and all of the other elements of the video leading us to God.

The father's scream is the eucatastrophe of which Tolkien wrote so beautifully—the sudden joyous turn that somehow comes as the fruit of apparent disaster at the end of a fairy story. I discovered this concept in college and in that moment a thrill of hope ran through me. It is the essence of the Paschal Mystery—the Resurrection coming from the Crucifixion—as this Mystery is experienced in the microcosm of ordinary family life. These two parents have sacrificed themselves day in and day out for the sake of their little family. Theirs is a white martyrdom of everyday life, and we know that through the fight comes the glory. The wife's heart is filled to the brim by her husband's response as she takes his cue and is then able to celebrate wildly with him. While I watched the ad over and over again, the eucatastrophic sensation that my newly-reverted self once knew was back, and this time more profound than ever; for I am more in love now. I have more to love now—my own husband and our two little children. I thought of the line from Les Miserables, "To love another person is to see the face of God." Bless you, Coca-Cola, for this spontaneous act of beauty.

This was exactly what I need to start the new year. I had gotten too bogged down by the agony of every day life with a four-year-old  and a one-year-old (both very "active") and I needed to be reminded of the ecstasy there to be found, as well: the sweetness, the fun, the rewards of very hard work. I was reminded to be grateful for the gift of my sons and their unique personalities and to mortify the selfish desire to return to the retrospective ease of pre-parenthood that I too-often mourn. I'm reminded of something a friend of mine wrote in a caption under a photo of her husband and children pillow fighting which read, "Family: It's the only life."

 As Pope John Paul II said in his Letter to Families, 

 The contemporary family, like families in every age, is searching for "fairest love". A love which is not "fairest", but reduced only to the satisfaction of concupiscence (cf. 1 John 2:16), or to a man's and a woman's mutual "use" of each other, makes persons slaves to their weaknesses. Do not certain modern "cultural agendas" lead to this enslavement? There are agendas that "play" on man's weaknesses, and thus make him increasingly weak and defenseless.

With this commercial, Coca-Cola seems to reject those modern cultural agendas by promoting the "fairest love" of family life. (Here's what they have to say about it on their own website.) The final shot of the mother and father holding and rocking their son is even like a modern day echo of the Holy Family cherishing their hidden little life together. I might not go out and pop open a Coke right after watching, but I do want what I see.

On this first day of 2014 which is also the solemnity of the Holy Mother of God, I pray that I may better imitate Mary who observed the unfolding moments in her family life—the poignant, the painful, the majestic, and the mundane—and "kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). That is my New Year's resolution: that a life better examined may yield greater joy.

If you would like to read more about this ad, Aleteia has an interesting piece about it. If you have ever thought you're "not a kid-person," drop everything and read this. And if you're looking for some blogs that regularly touch on family life, a few of my favorites are Time Flies When You're Having Babies, Catholic All Year, Carrots for Michaelmas, and of course there's Conversion Diary and I Have to Sit Down. They each have a great blogroll if you want even more.

What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear from you! Also, I just added those little buttons for Gmail, Blogger, Twitter, and Facebook on the bottom of each post. Share the love! ;)

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Next topic: Winnie-the-Pooh Day (January 18th) 

Kindred Spirits: A Juxtaposition of Dante & Dickens

*Charles Dickens' Christmas classic was published 170 years ago either yesterday or tomorrow—the date seems to be disputed, so I thought I'd split the difference and publish my post in honor of him today.

I cannot recall a time when I didn't know the story of A Christmas Carol. The images and themes have delighted or haunted me since my childhood, either in the form of the "Dickens Village" adventure at the mall or the hundredth or so viewing of the Muppet version. (Michael Caine, you will always be my Scrooge.) So when I studied Dante's Commedia in college, it was no leap for me to recognize the countless similarities between the two stories. I would write C.C. in the margin every time I came across another bit of Dickens in Dante. At long last, I can pitch some these ideas to the wider world.

There's no known proof that Dickens was familiar with The Divine Comedy; but there is one historical fact that I recently found which may point to a direct link. Since I knew that my dear G.K. Chesterton had tremendous admiration and affection for Charles Dickens, I thought I ought to finally read some of his essays on the subject. His own "Introduction" (1922) to A Christmas Carol along with "Dickens and Christmas" (1906) are very interesting and filled with little witticisms and paradoxes that cheered me right up (after looking at the above faces). The bit that most intrigued me is Chesterton's claim that Dickens actually wrote his Carol while he was touring Italy. I imagine that although Dickens may not have actually read an English translation of the Comedy he quite possibly encountered the story or at least the spirit of the story in the art and culture that surrounded him as he wrote. Chesterton describes what it must have been like for Dickens to explore in such a foreign land, suggesting that his mind never left England behind for a moment. Thus, he never really understood the roots of the Italian experience: "the Roman legend, the ancient life of the Mediterranean, the world-old civilisation of the vine and olive, the mystery of the immutable Church." However, as Chesterton points out, Dickens seems to have intuited some of these things nonetheless:

Dickens had in his buffoonery and bravery the spirit of the Middle Ages. He was much more medieval in his attacks on medievalism than they were in their defenses of it. [...] He could only see all that was bad in medievalism. But he fought for all that was good in it. And he was all the more really in sympathy with the old strength and simplicity because he only knew that it was good and did not know that it was old.

It is this spirit that permeates A Christmas Carol. It acts like a Medieval morality play because it is one. Here I will juxtapose the Carol and the Comedy in order to illustrate some of these ideas.

First of all, both main characters begin in a dark wood—vividly illustrated as such in the Comedy and similarly rendered in chimney tops, alleyways, and dense fog in the Carol. The Pilgrim and the Miser have lost their way. Hence, they are taken on a mystical journey for the sake of their reclamation: Dante through Hell, Purgatory, & Heaven; Scrooge through the Past, Present, and Future. The three beasts that Dante meets before his journey begins (leopard, lion, and wolf) function similarly to the omens that Scrooge encounters on Christmas Eve: the hearse, the transformed door-knocker, the ringing bell. And when Dante first meets Virgil, the lines run,

And when I saw him standing in this wasteland,
"Have pity on my soul," I cried to him,
"whichever you are, shade or living man!"
"No longer living man, though once I was," [...]

Virgil explains to Dante:

"But you must journey down another road,"
he answered, when he saw me lost in tears,
"if ever you hope to leave this wilderness; [...]"

Likewise (though in the third person), Marley's visit to Scrooge goes,

"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"
"Much!" — Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I was."
"Who were you then?"  said Scrooge, raising his voice.  "You're particular, for a shade."

Marley describes his own condition, the ponderous chain that he wears—a perfect contrapasso (a term used to describe a punishment that illustrates the consequences of an evil deed, which is the organizing principle of the Comedy) for the sins of his life. He then explains his mission, and says to Scrooge that without the visits of the three ghosts, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread." Virgil's writings taught Dante; Marley was Scrooge's partner; and both have been divinely sent to help the men whom they influenced so deeply so that these may not suffer the same fate as themselves—to end up in the outer darkness.

At this point, if you are familiar with both stories, I invite you to think about how closely the plots run alongside one another. I won't go into a ton of detail here, mostly because my memories of the Comedy have sadly faded too much to be immediately recalled. (Sigh.) But consider such similarities as the roles of Beatrice and Belle (and maybe Fan) or Forese and Fred. Or think of the scene in the Carol when the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals from beneath his robes the two children, Ignorance and Want:

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

This sounds like it is straight out of the Inferno in every way. Both Dante and Scrooge undergo a horrifically scathing examination of conscience as they observe all that their guides have to show them.

Though it would be satisfying to a slightly OCD person like myself to have tight parallelism between the three realms of space in the Comedy and the three realms of time in the Carol, the fact is that the latter basically ends where only the second canticle does, in Purgatory. As Dante nears the top of the mountain (Canto XXX), he at last encounters his beloved Beatrice who at first does not speak comfort but rather reprimands him for having wasted his God-given talents and wandering from the path that leads to Truth. Her stern face and words excoriate the Pilgrim. She calls his name—the first time that he hears his own name during his journey—and leads him to the waters of a stream where he looks down as he is filled with shame upon seeing his reflection. He says, "tears and sighs were frozen hard in me," but as the angels sing a song of pity his icy heart thaws, allowing cleansing waters to pour forth from his eyes. Beatrice reveals that her purpose is to move the Pilgrim to "perceive the truth and match his guilt with grief." Doesn't this scene fit so closely with the one where Scrooge is in the graveyard with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? Instead of his own reflection, he sees his name and wishes that he could sponge out the writing on the stone. The haunting visage is sort of an anti-Beatrice in some ways—hideous, dark, faceless, silent—but just as firm and filled with the same motive: to move our hero to accept who he is and what he has done and from there to repent. Scrooge, like Dante, weeps heartily for his sins and the fate that they have earned him.

In the Comedy, Dante faints and then awakens to a new level of peace and joy. Scrooge likewise suddenly wakes to find that it is Christmas Day and he is a changed man: "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy." Oh, how this moment fills my heart with joy every year. But for Dante, the story does not end here, for there is so much yet to come for him—an entire canticle, the Paradiso, in which he will encounter the multitudes of saints and finally God Himself in the Beatific Vision. But it's important to remember that the Comedy is an Easter story while the Carol is a Christmas one. Scrooge even says:

"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge.  "I don't know how long I've been among the Spirits.  I don't know anything.  I'm quite a baby.  Never mind.  I don't care.  I'd rather be a baby."

And here we are in the season of Advent, becoming more childlike in order to properly welcome the baby who came to save the world. To draw out the contrast between this time and that of the Easter cycle, Chesterton said of Dickens:

 And (as I have said) as were his unconscious relations to our European past, so were his unconscious relations to England. He imagined himself to be, if anything, a sort of cosmopolitan; at any rate to be a champion of the charms and merits of continental lands against the arrogance of our island. But he was in truth very much more a champion of the old and genuine England against that comparatively cosmopolitan England which we have all lived to see. And here again the supreme example is Christmas. Christmas is, as I have said, one of numberless old European feasts of which the essence is the combination of religion with merry-making. But among those feasts it is also especially and distinctively English in the style of its merry-making and even in the style of its religion. For the character of Christmas (as distinct, for instance, from the continental Easter) lies chiefly in two things; first on the terrestrial side the note of comfort rather than the note of brightness; and on the spiritual side, Christian charity rather than Christian ecstasy.

That last line is the main difference between these two stories. As Chesterton suggested, Dickens didn't understand the fuller sense of the Mystical Church as Dante did—as the spotless Bride of Christ (beautiful as Beatrice) whose purpose is to lead each human being to union with God. The Comedy is headed for brightness, aiming at ecstasy—much like the natural world does as it blossoms into spring at Easter. But the Carol turns in from the cold, burrows into warm hearth and good wine and loud laughter. It does not ponder the universal church so much as it celebrates the domestic one. It is about comfort and joy—or perhaps more correctly joy in comfort, like the babe tightly and lovingly swaddled in the manger. To every thing there is a season. This is a time to be born.

I highly recommend that you watch your favorite film version of A Christmas Carol with your family or a friend sometime in the coming weeks. (Sure, Scrooged counts, but the Muppet one is seriously the best.) Let it remind you of all of these things; because the fact is, we all end up in a dark wood or a freezing graveyard with the sins of every day. We, too, should live in the past, present, and future to stay aware of our weakness, repent of our sins, and so be purged of them by the merciful God who loves us. And we need never do any of this alone, for we have His spirits—the angels and saints—to be our guides along the way. 

If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On (Part 2, Mumford & Sons)

Preface: After I wrote about Arcade Fire (part 1 of this post), I found a music video for a few of their new songs which appeared on Saturday Night Live. It's loaded with celebrity cameos, including Bono from U2, the band to which Arcade Fire is most often compared.  In the middle of the first song ("Here Comes the Night," probably my favorite from Reflektor), there's a joke at the expense of Mumford & Sons. I'm not surprised by it, as it exemplifies my earlier point about the two bands occupying opposite positions in the hipster gamut. But aside from a couple of funny parts, this music video is just too weird for me and even a bit nightmarish. It reminds me of why I never watched other AF music videos and never really wanted to see them in concert. I love a lot of their music, but I prefer to enjoy it far away from the visual interpretations that often have  been associated with it. I haven't faced that tension in Mumford & Sons; and what I aim to do in this post is to defend Marcus and his friends against those who hate them. Here is an article from First Things titled "Against Mumford" that got me all worked up. Be sure to read the comments, too, a few of which I found particularly satisfying.   

I heard a little snippet of "Little Lion Man" one fall day in 2010 and promptly rushed to my computer to find more of that sound. The first song I clicked on transported me to a place that can best be described as wedding feast celebrating a marriage between my senses and my nostalgia. I had chosen "Sigh No More"—the title track for Mumford & Sons' first album, because I immediately recognized the words of Shakespeare's poem by the same title which is often used in film and theater adaptations of his comedies. As I heard these four male voices singing together, I felt transported into their world—their shared friendship represented by the words carefully shared by all, and also their individual hearts suggested by the different voices. Then I realized that the loveliness of the lyrics reflected the swelling in my soul:

Serve God, love me and mend
This is not the end
Lived unbruised, we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
You know me
You know me

Yes, I know you, whoever you are, I thought; and you seem to know me. How did you manage that? The experience was just as John Waters describes in his talk:

What? What is that? What is that? […] Who is this guy with this voice? This strange voice, this ethereal voice, who seems to know something about me? Who seems to know what I want? Who seems to know what appeals to me. The song seemed to promise some world some place that I’d only dreamed about.

I felt like I was listening to the friendship shared between C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other "Inklings" set to music. I felt like the Four Evangelists were soothing me to a peaceful rest, telling me all together but each in their own unique way that I must serve God, adding that it will be difficult, I will screw it up sometimes, yet I need not dwell in sadness:

But man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Then, as the song picks up in tempo, my heart rose with it and my reaction was not unlike that of the Emotional Baby. These four men (probably from the Shire, I imagined) were singing about love, and the love they described was real love, Love Himself—the love that moves the sun and the other stars. Unlike millions of songwriters before them, these men knew that

Love; it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be

I was utterly enraptured by this song, and it is because of that fact that I take issue with the author of "Against Mumford." He says that their "tradition" is invented and inauthentic, just an eclectic mishmash. Well Jimmy crack corn and I don't care. It is moving to me and millions of other people. It touches on something real, plugging me into the "Deep Magic" described in The Chronicles of Narnia. It might not be firmly rooted in a musical tradition, but it is in a religious and literary one. That's what enlivens me. So many beautiful things that I've read and forgotten about return to the forefront of my mind and heart when I hear some of these songs. I wished that it had been released a few years earlier so that I could have blared it for my high school students when we came across references to love in the New Testament which served as a stumbling block to them in their painful life (and music) experience. Some of them seemed cynical and unmoved when St. Paul told them "Love never fails" (1Cor 13:8) but perhaps they might give that idea another chance if they heard it being proclaimed here and now from a drum, a guitar, a piano, and a banjo at full voice. Mumford & Sons has managed to make St. Paul sing to an enormous amount of people. This, I believe, is what we all have to thank them for: they preach to the masses, as the NPR article said. Of course they are no substitute for actual confessions of faith or liturgical worship; but they can complement those things. I know as well as anyone else who has carefully studied their lyrics or read their sometimes troubling interviews that they aren't perfect and they have plenty of growing to do (just like the rest of us); but their music is like a corporal work of mercy in a world filled with seriously offensive forms of artistic expression.

The next song I heard was "The Cave." I sent it to my brother and he said, "If that song were a woman, I would marry her." From that moment on, I knew I wanted to go with him to a concert. I had never been to a live rock 'n' roll show in my life except for catching a bit of Hootie & the Blowfish when I was a kid. Mumford & Sons reminded me of them—of those very long road trips to visit our extended family each summer. It's the kind of music all five of us could agree to. Hootie colored my childhood with my family by way of heart-filled sounds and words; and I could feel Mumford taking that place in my early adulthood. I really think that nostalgia plays a large role in my enthusiasm for this band. But whereas Hootie mentions crying in almost every one of his songs, Mumford sings of kneeling. I was kneeling the first time I really heard the priest say, "Behold the Lamb of God." I was kneeling when my husband proposed to me. I was kneeling right before I wrote this post and prayed that I would produce something worthwhile. When my brother and I were finally surrounded by thousands of others Mumford & Sons fans who were jumping for joy as they sang about kneeling, I felt very grateful that this band had managed to pull together this crowd in such a way, and that we all at that moment agreed that forgiveness and joy and friendship were what we were cheering for.

I am not naive about the fact that some people surrender themselves to music and wind up very lost, quite apart from a stable community of love searching for God. With the use of drugs or just highly stimulated baser passions, some rock 'n' roll fans whip themselves up into a frenzy of self-indulgence. Pope Benedict identified this problem, and it is his comments on the subject (see bottom of page 9) that inspired the Irish journalist John Waters to build an exposition (the subject of his lecture recommended as a companion to these two posts) in order to say to his beloved pope, 'Yes, rock 'n' roll culture can lead people astray; but it doesn't have to. There is more going on.' He talks at length about the so-called "27 Club" which includes all of the musicians who died at that young age, often as a result of drug and alcohol abuse. He suggests that the real cause of their death is that they misunderstand their own desire. Fans, too, are at risk of this same disordered seeking, and so they must be discerning: Does this music—this particular song—feed love? Is it real love? Is it love that will not betray, dismay, or enslave me? If not, skip it.

Mumford & Sons is criticized for a hundred things and I feel like I've heard it all. Some people just can't stand the banjo. Some people are annoyed by their constructed back-country image and their lack of literal sons. Some boycott them for using the F-word a few times and for saying some strange things about Christian identity. Regarding their sincerity, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Regarding their faith commitments, I'll just say they seem spottily catechized and unsatisfied with the version of Christianity that has been presented to them. As I claimed about the members of Arcade Fire, I think they have a very sacramental world view that wants proper ordering. I wish I could be their Apologetics teacher. I have a great affection for these guys. I see them as very childlike—filled with humility, wonder, and joy; and I hear in them a deep and lasting yarrah (which I described in my previous post) which is almost perfectly illustrated by that laughing, aching "harrr" sound that they so often make when no other sound will do.

If you watch the lecture from Mr. Waters to the very end, you'll  hear him discuss Mumford & Sons. He says that after he heard their first album, he thought they were "this new thing" in which the art is informed by the nitty-gritty of everyday life while contemplating great transcendent truths in a Chestertonian way. He was really disappointed in their second album, however. (I thought the piece in the Atlantic captured the problems with it quite well.) But, wisely, Waters isn't ready to dismiss them yet. He says, "The fact that they were there—that that flame flickered for a little while—tells me that it still could happen." He adds that it's "harder and harder because the culture of misunderstanding gets in the way." I really like most of the new album, but I did notice something off about it. I think that the culture in which they and their fans find themselves did get in the way for them. Instead of playing for God in their midst when two or three (or four in this case) of them were gathered, they played too much for their fans and for their fame. It is like C.S. Lewis said: "Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you get neither." But I join in Waters's hope that it can happen again. And I found that the live show which mixed both albums was brilliantly done. I had the same sensation that I had when I first met them in "Sigh No More." They peacefully, graciously invited me back into their joyful world with "Lover's Eyes," and I soon began to anticipate each song, calling them out to my brother before they started playing again. That familial sense came back to me: I remembered happy times with my parents and brothers; and I imagined myself with the Inklings sharing laughs and pints at The Eagle and Child. I celebrated it heartily.

Perhaps this hilarious parody video of "Hopeless Wanderer" (which the band commissioned in order to make light of themselves, by the way) may help endear them to you. If that doesn't work and you just can't bring yourself to like them, please don't ruin it for any of their fans by making them feel stupid or uncultured. You don't want to wind up like these hipsters discussing their playlists, do you? And to those of you who are already fans, I recommend watching the documentary Big Easy Express, including the deleted scenes which contain some of the finest moments.

I see both of these bands serving as modern day poets who shake us loose from complacency. I believe Mumford & Sons has some great answers for Arcade Fire and lovely reminders for many of us (perhaps as a Brideshead Revisited to a Great Gatsby as I suggest in my earlier two posts); but they still have a long way to go. They're only in their twenties, after all, and their hearts are at least beating very hard indeed. If they keep seeking, acknowledging their weakness, asking for forgiveness, and calling out things like "awake my soul," I trust they will do much more good than harm with their fame.

One of the newest Arcade Fire songs (the one I mentioned at the top) asks the question, "If there's no music up in heaven then what's it for?" I'll leave you with that.

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Next topic: Unless something unexpected like Gravity happens to me again, I plan to see the Coen Brothers' upcoming film, Inside Llewyn Davis and write something about it in early December, followed by a post on Dante and Dickens in time for Christmas.

If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On (Part 1, Arcade Fire)

Preface: I had no idea how hard it would be to write this post. After several false starts, I re-watched a lecture called "Three Chords and the Desire for Truth: Rock 'n' Roll as Search for the Infinite" given by the Irish journalist John Waters, in which he says that the way we feel about music is something we shouldn't talk about. Ah...right. No wonder: I've read dozens of articles and watched just as many performances on YouTube and I still haven't been able to type a word. I've scrawled all over napkins and loose leaf as ideas have come to me; but why am I so reluctant to put these thoughts out there? I suppose because it is so very personal and subjective. I'll just say this: if I achieve nothing in this post accept getting you to click the above link and watch the Waters talk for an hour and a half, then I will have done a great service to God and the whole world. I'll be referring to it throughout both parts of this post, but you needn't watch it in order to follow along.

Inscribed on the back of my iPod are the words, "If music be the food of love, play on." It is a line from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and it is exactly how I feel about the effect that music can have on the soul. It's clear that plenty of chant and symphonies and movie soundtracks (heh) can be the "food of love"; but I submit what every other fan already knows—that rock 'n' roll can be, as well.

For me, two bands stand out for all of the times that have set my soul on fire with joy and pain and life: Arcade Fire and Mumford & Sons. I know that some people who are reading this are already annoyed that those two band names are touching in a sentence with nothing but the word "and" keeping one from tainting the other. From what I can tell, they both are a major part of hipster fandom but seem to be fixed on opposite sides of the gamut. I've discovered that I'm something of an anomaly for loving both bands at the same time—but I hope it's not quite like when one of my classmates in a college course on Tolkien and Lewis said that her two favorite series were The Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials. I then suffered a suppressed freakout since I knew that Phillip Pullman crafted his stories to convey a message exactly opposite to that of Lewis's. The difference here, I think, is that both bands do have the same message, even if it is expressed in different ways and irrespective of how conscious it may be in the intentions of the band members. The message is that we desire so much more than what seems available in this life.

I happened to be watching Saturday Night Live when Arcade Fire made their first appearance to most of America. They performed "Intervention." My first thought was that the lead singer (Win Butler) looked sort of hungry and sad. Then as the music began to swell, my heart rose with it: "What? What is this?" I thought—just as John Waters describes. It wasn't the voices that grabbed me, but what was in the voices—under and surrounding them—: a longing, an intensity, a rawness of emotion, an exquisite talent. There's something here. Then, some the lyrics began to surface:

Working for the church while your family dies
You take what they give you
You keep it inside
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone

Wow. Rough stuff. Over the last seven years of listening to Arcade Fire very faithfully, I find that there is usually a disconnect between my head and my heart. There's a wrestling within me as I ponder the world of Win Butler and friends, yet I always go back for more of their music. Since I have every episode of Seinfeld on file in my brain, I think the best way to capture this struggle is to recall "The Kramer", in which a painting of Kramer himself elicits this interchange between two onlooking art enthusiasts:

WIFE: “I sense great vulnerability. A man-child crying out for love. An innocent orphan in the postmodern world.”
HUSBAND: “I see a parasite. A sexually depraved miscreant who is seeking only to gratify his basest and most immediate urges.”
WIFE: “His struggle is man’s struggle. He lifts my spirits.”
HUSBAND: “He is a loathsome, offensive brute. Yet I can’t look away.”
WIFE: “He transcends time and space.”
HUSBAND: “He sickens me.”
WIFE: “I love it.”
HUSBAND: “Me too.”

I wouldn't be quite as hard on this band as this husband is on the painting; but I would echo the wife's comments exactly. Situated squarely in the midst of the postmodern condition, Arcade Fire is constantly preoccupied with themes of childhood, innocence, wonder, freedom, roots, and dreams, usually lamenting the loss of these precious things. Now, as a mother watching that video clip of "Intervention," the sight of Win Butler's anemic-looking face and droopy eyes triggered my maternal impulse. At the end of the song, several of his guitar strings have broken and, out of disappointment, he smashes it on the stage. He looks just like my son when he has made a tower out of blocks but then obliterates it when he sees that it's not as good as the one in his head or perhaps even in his heart—his interior castle in smooth wooden stones. Looking at Butler's gaunt face and hearing the bottomless desire in his voice and the voices of the instruments, I find deeper meaning in the phrase "starving artist." He is starving for Truth; and he is sad because he thinks reality doesn't meet desire. Christianity offers the belief that reality does meet desire since reality includes the higher Truth of which Butler seems to have despaired.

This longing for truth through rock 'n' roll is the theme of John Water's splendid talk. Quoting music and culture critic Greil Marcus, Waters describes something called the yarrah, which all great musicians have in their voice. He says it has a bit of a yes in it, but the rest is the arrah which expresses resignation, frustration, a deep sense of almost inarticulacy. Music is the attempt to surrender to the yarrah or to make it surrender to the artist, to bury it, to dig it out of the ground, a note so unfinished and so unsatisfied. He then adds that, when one considers the experience of a brilliant piece of music, the question might really be "Is the song singing you?" Arcade Fire delivers this masterfully. Listen to the song "Wake Up" with headphones on and eyes closed. Do you feel the yarrah? Doesn't it feel like it's singing you?

Yes, Arcade Fire sings me. Two of the "Neighborhood" tracks ("Tunnels" and "Kettles") from their first album Funeral have become part of my very being I've listened to them so much. These people seem to know me—something about me that I don't even know myself. But am I as dark as these words?! Sometimes I am. In my fallen state of darkened intellect and weakened will, there are occasions when nothing will help me out of a sad spell more than blaring "No Cars Go" into my ears on the elliptical machine. The lyrics meet me where I am, but the music lifts me out of myself. The yarrah is bifurcated between the words and the instruments: the former cries out in despair while the latter reaches up in hope.

I did feel a sense of satisfaction and even relief when John Waters said that the lyrics don't necessarily matter. I have had this intuition ever since my dad played The Who's "Baba O'Riley" for me in the car when I was a kid and I watched him bliss out to the words "teenage wasteland" being screamed over and over again. The whole is greater than the sums of its parts. It's like when poets describe their work by saying they compose a poem, send it out to be read, and then finally discover what it means in the hearts of their readers. Reading a few interviews that Win Butler has given convinced me that sometimes he doesn't really know what he is singing about. It's a sensation tied up with memories mixed up with dreams and a few words that happen to rhyme. For example, Arcade Fire's second album is titled Neon Bible because Win Butler wrote those two words down one day and thought they sounded cool together. Well after he came up with that title he and his bandmates bought an abandoned church and transformed it into a studio to record that album. As they played their hearts out to the groans of a pipe organ and by the blue light of stained-glass windows, they revealed how very Christ-haunted their music is.

I had the privilege of seeing Kenneth Branagh's new Macbeth through National Theater Live last month and was struck by the choice to stage the play in a de-consecrated Gothic church. The audience sat in pews and most of the play's action took place in the nave, which was filled with mud. I thought of Arcade Fire's church-turned-recording-studio and realized that the feeling I get from their music is much like the feeling I get from Shakespeare's tragedies. I'm dazzled by poetry at the same time that I'm wrenched by suffering. The texture of the songs is so rich and colorful that it reminds me of illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Describing their desires in words and sounds, they hint at a sacramental world view that awakens us to the sacred, accessible right here in the midst of us. I only wish that I could tell them that all of that agony they feel—the loss, the betrayal, the hopelessness—all of it can be sanctified in the sacrifice of the Lamb; and every beautiful thing they've glimpsed in dreams (and have dismissed as merely that) is in truth far more real than their art will ever be able to express.

The lyrics of Arcade Fire do not ever suggest that one could find in God the ground of truth of which the songs sing with such deep desire. Indeed, God is an only implicitly touched-upon topic of their songs, as in the line "working for the Church while your family dies." Christianity (and, implicitly, God) appears here fleetingly, as tied up with past wrongs committed by their loved ones, particularly their parents. The great weight, the deep and abiding wounds inflicted by those whom one ought best to be able to trust—that is the context within which, perhaps, God does not seem so obviously a stabilizing ground.

In the song "Windowsills" Butler cries out: "You can't forgive what you can't forget." Christianity proclaims that God does just this—that he forgives and transforms rather than forgetting—but where, in these lyrics, do we find any evidence that this could seem a plausible answer to Butler's anguish? Anyone experiencing the life described by so many of these songs might understandably find this notion of forgiveness and love to have been already unmasked—as an untrustworthy sham, a fantasy pursued by those who, disavowing with their lives what they profess with their lips, "work" for the Church while their families die. It would be easy to draw from such an example the conviction that "[e]very spark of friendship and love will die without a home."

How can one find a home that others seem already to have shown to be false? Is it possible for the singer depicted by these songs to discover some hope—to perhaps be awakened to an indefatigable steadfast merciful lover (Ps. 100:5)? To be freed by this love even to the point of forgiving those who have so greatly trespassed against us?

Here is where I find Arcade Fire's music especially effective. It is not thoroughly despairing but, in its yarrah, suggests the possibility of transcending the suburban wasteland of despair by inviting the audience into a community of anguish, yes, but also of compassion. Butler's lyrics declare to others who are wounded and adrift: We know what you feel. We yearn for more! Knowing that others feel what one feels, one might be bound with others in friendship and might even discover the ability to turn outward to others in compassion—even, in great time, toward those by whom one has been so deeply wounded. For the compassion to which Butler invites his listeners, containing within itself the suggestion of authentic love, is itself the counterexample to others' lovelessness, from which he has so suffered. If music nourishes compassion, then compassion can become the food of love—and a place where God may make His dwelling place in our hearts.

Play on, Arcade Fire—may your music bring you and your fans closer to God evermore.

Now please, please, please watch the John Waters talk (linked again so you don't even have to scroll!) or at least write down on your calendar when you'll do it. You will be so happy. And here are two really good articles on Arcade Fire's music: The Hipster Conservative's look at the Grammy-winning album The Suburbs plus Aleteia's piece on the newly released Reflektor.

***

After many years of listening to Arcade Fire in addition to most of the bands that are now linked to them on Pandora, I suddenly heard "Little Lion Man" by Mumford & Sons which came like a (banjo-y) bolt out of the blue. I told my husband, "I found a new band! They're sort of like....Arcade Fire...but without despair!" Join me next time for part 2 of this post.