www.andrewmackay.net:

We watch too much Barney around here… No sense trying to hide it. When I was uninitiated I thought I love you was the reason Barney was annoying… Now I know how much worse it is… Go up to a parent of a toddler and sing “What shall we make today…” If they reply “We’ll make something fun,” they’ll be able to explain the problems to you. You might buy them some alcohol. Just kidding.

Anyway, on a certain episode of Barney, they draw picture books and, upon completion, declare themselves to be authors and illustrators.

It got me thinking again about writers and how much we crave external validation from someone who is ostensibly an authority. I think I’m changing my mind about that… Those authorities make decisions based entirely upon whether or not there is sufficient audience for the work to make it commercially viable. If the only question is “Is there an audience” with perhaps a rejoinder of “How large an audience,” what keeps us from making that call? Why do we need someone else to be the gatekeeper?

So, writer, if you have an audience who is engaged in consuming your material, you’re an author (or a writer, or an artist, whatever your preferred term is)… Whether the middleman said so or not.

Sometimes I feel like this all day long… and then I realize that I might be the problem.

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Robert McCloskey

If you live under a rock, you probably don’t know that the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver started last night. The winter olympics are practically an ethnic holiday for Canadians. I will be distracted for the next two weeks straight. Guaranteed.
(Not really if my boss is reading this).

The key to Olympic success in the sport of hockey is tied to the movie Mighty Ducks. The closer a team resembles the Mighty Ducks, the more likely they are to win the gold. With that in mind, here are the top five reasons team Canada will win hockey gold in Vancouver, based on the team’s similarities to the Mighty Ducks:

5. As Greg Goldberg, the goalie who is way better than you expect he could be: Martin Brodeur. Marty is absolutely the best goalie to play the game as far as I’m concerned… the kind of goalie who can carry the team on his back. Actually, he’s nothing like Goldberg.

4. As Tommy Duncan, the little brother who figure skates and skates through the defenders: Jonathan Toews. Quick on his feet, Toews plays for the Blackhawks and is pretty much young and awesome. As his team gets better, he’s going to totally rock.

3. As Fulton Reed, the big goon with a wicked slap shot that scares the defense: Shea Weber. This is a stretch, but I needed a goon, and Shea’s probably as close as Team Canada gets! Chris Pronger could’ve been listed here too… that might make more sense… Fulton was older than his teammates too.

2. As Charlie Conway, the character player who saves the day (and whose mom the coach dates): Dany Heatley… Dany’s had it rough in life… he had a car accident that killed a teammate of his. He’s been shifted around to a couple of different teams. He seems to really be finding himself again in San Jose. The only question that I don’t know the answer to: Would Emilio Estevez date his mom? If so, he’s set.

1. As Adam Banks, the kid who is totally awesome with the puck, if prone to wrist injuries: Sidney Crosby. He will be the difference maker. He will be called cake-eater by someone… probably Eric Staal, since he’s got the experience of growing up with punk little brothers.

So, there you have it. Five similarities between the Mighty Ducks and Team Canada that prove that Team Canada will win the gold.

I was listening to a radio interview (with a rap mogul, but that’s irrelevant to the point I’m going to attempt to make). In this interview, four very hyper-active radio hosts allowed dead air. Why? Because they knew that the person they were interviewing commanded that kind of respect in their industry. When he said, “You know…” and composed his thoughts for a minute (like, full sixty seconds… awkward for radio) they waited. They knew that what he was going to say was worth the wait. They let him set the pace, knowing that it would pay off for both themselves and their listeners.

I’m quite frequently the opposite, rushing to fill space, hoping that what comes out sounds clever… or at least not stupid. I learned a lesson from that rap mogul. Autotune really is a great thing. Wait, no… that’s not it. It’s much better to make people wait and say something worthwhile than to rush to say something and have it be useless.

Hmm… maybe I can put that to work around here… nah! Never mind. Just say something clever… quick!

So, I had recently posted about arguing semantics when it comes to Christian art. The comments really helped me along: particularly, in a response, I said:

There ought to be at least two discussions occurring:

1. What does a movie that reflects/supports/advocates/illustrates a Christian worldview and Christian values look like?

2. What should the quality of a movie that reflects/supports/advocates/illustrates a Christian worldview be like?

Because right now, the conversation breaks down at “is it a Christian movie / song / painting” and breaks down into semantics like, “There’s no such thing as a Christian movie.”

So, I thought perhaps we could try to discuss those two things… and the other day we started with question 2. So, today, it’s on to question one:

1. What does a movie that reflects/supports/advocates/illustrates a Christian world view and Christian values look like?

I’ve come up with three things (I’m sure there are more!) that a movie that reflects a Christian worldview should look like:

a) The characters experience a normal range of emotions

They are not superficially happy all the time. They have character flaws. They struggle. They get angry, upset, sad, happy, manic… they are, in a word, human. There’s a tendency in Christian movies and books to write characters the way we hope other people perceive us. Of course, there’s also a responsive tendency to make bad characters as bad as can be. That’s almost as harmful. The characters need to be like real life people. Strengths, weaknesses, things that are endearing, things that are aggravating.

b) the situations are difficult

Not superficially either. You know, bad boy seeking reform rides back into his hometown and falls into the arms of the girl he’d always loved. While there is power in stories to help us see truth through circumstances that are not necessarily “as mundane as life,” some sense of realism needs to be maintained.

c) Not everything resolves

Happy endings are great… I understand that. But man, when the happy ending involves resolution of every problem that the characters have, truth feels loss. People who get saved by the power of God *still* struggle. It’s kind of like my wife’s broken leg — my wife broke her leg back before we were married. I sent flowers, I came to visit, a few months later, we were engaged. That’s a neat story. But you know what? She still feels the effects of having broken that leg. It hurts. It’s frustrating. Life is like that. For our art to reflect truth, our art needs to be balanced like that.

So, those are my three… what would you add?

Sometimes, I think the technophobes among us are on to something. Not in a “whole hog” sort of way, but in a “yeah, maybe there’s a reason behind that” sort of a way.

You see, much like Tootles in Hook lost his marbles, I’ve lost my attention span. Right there… it just happened. I got to the end of a sentence, typed a period, and thought… I should look that up on IMDB. I stopped myself, but that could’ve become a five minute rabbit trail.

I’ve lost my attention span. It seems like not ten minutes of focus go by when I’m trying to write before I’m thinking about looking something up, checking facebook, making sure the world hasn’t fallen apart in the last ten minutes by checking news headlines.

That’s on top of having a podcast, music, or something else playing in the background. I mean, how many things can I truly track at once?

I’ve lost my attention span, but I think I know where to find it. In college, I had a dear professor who spent some of his time with a few of us young guys, endeavoring to help us succeed in life. He preached the value of discipline. It’s a word I avoid because it evokes negativity in my head. But the reality is that I need it. I need to be able to say no to even the good things that are simply distractions.

I’ve lost my attention span. Do I really want to find it?

The weather channel does this great thing on their website when there’s a winter storm warning in effect. It’s a red band across the top of the page. It looks like this:

The thing about it is, I’ve gotten so incredibly accustomed to having that red bar there that I’ve pretty much stopped
paying attention. At this point, I’m not exclaiming, “oh no, a storm!” but “again, a storm?”

So, I’ve decided to recommend a sliding scale, much akin to the terror watch colors. We could start with a string cyan to indicate that there’s winter weather ahead. A magenta could indicate accumulations of up to 7 inches. Pink could indicate a likelihood of ice accumulations. Orange could indicate up to 14 inches. Red would be 14 on up. And we’d add blAck and orange stripes around the edges when there was wind involved.

That way, instead Of the boy crying wolf, he’d be calling dog, cat, lizard, bird, cow, and giraffe. At least we’d know what exactly to expect: exactly what we expect now… nothing at all like what they forecast.

Well… Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints. If you don’t follow sports, there was a big game yesterday… They call it the super bowl. Peyton Manning decided in the fourth quarter to let the team his dad quarterbacked for 10+ years win their first super bowl. There’s just no other way he could’ve lost. It was nice of him.

And you’ll never be able to tell me otherwise. Nothing like blind ignorance of the facts to start a Monday, right?

The other day, I waxed somewhat eloquent about snow falling. This morning, I’m listening to ice fall. It’s a pretty wild thing to listen to. It’s like someone’s throwing tiny little pebbles at our house. It’s kind of a fun sound… but it wouldn’t be if I didn’t have a 40 second walk to work.

Don’t fall down!

So, I had recently posted about arguing semantics when it comes to Christian art. The comments really helped me along: particularly, in a response, I said:

There ought to be at least two discussions occurring:

1. What does a movie that reflects/supports/advocates/illustrates a Christian world view and Christian values look like?

2. What should the quality of a movie that reflects/supports/advocates/illustrates a Christian world view be like?

Because right now, the conversation breaks down at “is it a Christian movie / song / painting” and breaks down into semantics like, “There’s no such thing as a Christian movie.”

So, I thought perhaps we could try to discuss those two things… and I thought we’d start with… number 2! Because it’s the easy one! Exclamation marks!

What should the quality of a movie that reflects/supports/advocates/illustrates a Christian world view be like?

There are whole Christian industries formed around books, movies, and music. I work in one of those industries (so I guess I should tread lightly). What’s interesting to me is that I can most easily identify the problems with the industries I’m not involved with.

Starting with music, find a 16 year old at your church and ask them what they think of their local Christian radio station. Here’s what you’ll likely find: “I wish they would play more than just the same 20 songs. And they all sound pretty much the same.” There’s not room for a whole lot of artistic differences within Christian music. You need to fit into one of the molds that has been proven to sell for the industry to get behind you. The problem with that isn’t the “proven to sell” part, it’s who the molds are proven to sell to. The primary buyers aren’t kids looking for new artists. The primary buyers are parents and grandparents trying to keep their kids from finding new artists that aren’t safe.

As a result, there’s a lack of depth lyrically and musically. It’s easier that way. If there are never complex lyrics, there are never questions to answer.

You see this in Christian movies, too. If you look across the bulk of the movies made, they are shallow, filled with superficial “tragedy” that in every case resolves perfectly, helping the protagonist to more exciting faith.

This is why so many believers who are artists choose to do art outside of the community of faith — or on the outskirts of it. You can communicate harder things, deeper things, if you’re not constrained by an industry that doesn’t want depth, preferring an easy sell. So, you get a movie like Primer, made by a Believer, that explores hard questions about man’s nature and does it interestingly (time travel and the relationship dynamic between best friends). This movie would be a hard sale into the Christian art buying community (Christian bookstores, web stores, etc). But, ironically, it found an audience with thinking people in the general industry. And it was better done than any Christian movie I’ve ever seen.

So, one thing that Christian art must have is depth.

Another area that current Christian art is lacking is technical excellence. Obviously, technical excellence is not necessary for commercial success these days, but the lack of it does hurt us. You can find this in a lot of different areas — the editorial quality of some Christian fiction, the repetitiveness of guitar solos, production techniques, and styles in some Christian music.

Lastly, instead of “blazing trails,” much of Christian art follows the not-specifically Christian market, usually by a year or two. This lack of originality betrays a bias (it worked for them, let’s try it!) that is harmful.

So, in my opinion, the quality of art supporting a Christian worldview should be marked by depth, excellence, and originality. What else should it be?

(You can find part two of this discussion over here).