"Television presents the questionable presumption that talking is thinking, that unpremeditated logorrhea offers something of value to the public..."
- Jim Harrison, Off To The Side
Unpremeditated logorrhea?? Lord, what a phrase.
Over the Christmas holy-days, my son and I read The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. He had wanted to see the movie, but we had received numerous emails warning us of this movie and book. Every single one of them smelled of Harrison's searing phrase - "unpremeditated logorrhea." So, I got the book and said, "let's read this together and then we'll go see the movie." I started reading before Will did but he quickly passed me, lapped me in fact. A father has a few more responsibilities over holy-days than his son, as it should be.
We planned to go see the movie the afternoon of New Year's Eve. I finally finished the book that morning. We both loved the book; the movie, however, disappointed us. As the final scene faded to black, my ten-year-old said, "What a rip!" As movies do, much was edited out, details were compressed dramatically, time sequences were rearranged, and an ending different than the book finished it off. Ah, my son, you are being introduced to our culture's scalpel...
Those emails had warned us of daemons and witches and an overall suspicion of the Church; I'd rather they'd warned us of a shoddy cinematic production. They couldn't do that becasue 9/10 of them hadn't seen the movie or read the book. No, they'd heard some authority drop the gavel on the book and decided that forwarding emails is the same as thinking and offers something of value to the public. Let one "name" grunt a few words and we'll quickly stand in line as ambassadors of unpremeditated logorrhea; the questionable presumption that listening to the "experts" is thinking...
Happy "return-to-work" day...angry young man.
ReplyDeleteI hopped over from Mer's blog. She and I have just "met", and have been swapping Estes Park stories, etc., since I was raised in CO and only moved to the Seattle area 7 yr ago.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you posted something about the Golden Compass because I received those email warnings, too. *sigh* I have no idea how to raise these kids as Christians in this world, but I'm doing my best. My son has read the GC, and thought it was okay. He's aware that it's a work of fiction, much as the beloved (in our family) Harry Potter series is. I'm generally disturbed when someone tries to censor novels (or anything else) because it smacks of brainwashing, rather than using one's intelligence and prayer/God's guidance as the deciding factor in whether to read or not read a particular book. Maybe brainwashing is too harsh--legalism is perhaps a better word for my meaning. I also think, if we're going to minister to others, we need to be aware of what's out there, rather than cloistering ourselves away in the name of Jesus. After all...look who He hung out with...
Apparently, your post struck a chord in me. :)