On maleficence

(Originally posted on my new personal blog.)

In the over a year that I have not really been an active blogger, several topics have made it onto a list of things I really want to blog about. Knowing, however, that my thoughts on these topics are bound to wane in poignance as well as timeliness, I'm going to skip straight to what made me sit down tonight.

I went to see Maleficent tonight, and I have some thoughts.

Maleficent is both the title of the movie, and the eponymous hero/villain played (awesomely!) by Angelina Jolie. The movie is based on "Sleeping Beauty" Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959), but is recast to tell the story from the perspective of the villain. Like Frozen and "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs." (Spoilers to follow.)

I came out of the movie with some very specific critiques. Like, isn't it hard to make a protagonist out of someone whose name literally means "evil?" Or, I get the whole "bad deeds out of anger and revenge" stuff, but I don't see how that motive connects to proclaiming oneself a queen. It seems like a place where splitting from the original story might be OK. (Disclaimer: I have never seen Sleeping Beauty.)

Here's my big complaint, not just about Maleficent, but about kind of like every Disney movie ever made: they always manage to spin things so that the villain dies, but the hero doesn't have to kill him. The death is usually a direct result of the villain's murderous actions. And often, there is a moment preceding the villain's death where the hero decides not to kill them, or even attempts to save them.

Yes, there are exceptions. But this is what I'm talking about. (Challenge: Find more examples.)

Here's why that is problematic: It gives us the visceral satisfaction of seeing the hated character die (or otherwise suffer--like here), without the moral complexity of seeing our hero commit the sin of killing. It programs us to think good guys are good, and bad guys die.

This isn't a pacifist rant. I watch plenty of violent TV and movies, and I do work that sometimes requires violence. My problem is the sanitation of the violence -- similar to, though not the same as, the violence without consequences we so often see. I can watch Game of Thrones, but the violence in SpongeBob SquarePants makes me sick.

(No, that's not Disney -- but it is the most disgustingly violent show on television.)

In which I don't understand being saved

My junior year of high school, I went with my girlfriend to a Bible study at her friend's house. At some point during the evening we split up into pairs, and I wound up in a small loft, seated on the floor across from a girl I'd never met so we could "share our stories" with each other. Almost immediately, her question for me was, "When were you saved?"

I'm not the kind of Christian that has an answer to that question. I definitely didn't know what to say then, having never been asked before and not really knowing what "saved" meant, so after fumbling around for a while for an answer, I offered:

"Um... always?"

I actually did have what was supposed to be a "saved" experience the year before; it's just nobody had bothered to tell me that's what it was supposed to be. It was at Acquire the Fire, a big indoctrination program Christian event where you go to experience an incredibly long rock concert interspersed with the occasional awkward dramas and sweaty preachers. They asked for those who wanted to accept Jesus into their hearts to come forward, and I thought, "Well heck, that sounds like something people should do."

So I went down onto the floor of the convention center, kneeled in the aisle, felt a stranger put his hand on my shoulder, and got prayed over for a while. I remember when I went back up, my youth pastor hugged me and said he was proud. I didn't know I'd just been saved, but I did know that the experience was an awesome emotional high.

It's hard to remember what went through my head at the age of 16, but I can be sure I didn't know what was going on because of my later answer to the "saved" question at that Bible study. And when my youth group went to ATF the next year, too, I went down to be saved again. Because I wanted that emotional high again. Like drugs. And it didn't hurt that my youth pastor was proud.

Except my youth pastor didn't seem as proud that time. He didn't really say anything or acknowledge me when I came back to where our group was seated. Because being saved once is cool, but being saved twice, two years in a row, at the same event... what, did the first one not take? Did I just want attention? Did I not get it?

I never got the memo that said you only got to invite Jesus into your heart once (or that Jesus wasn't there anyway). I guess maybe it comes down to different views of the meaning of worship (and that's the reason I'm thinking of all this right now -- my theology group was talking about worship tonight). Is it about the adulation of God? The word itself would suggest it should be, but that's not my purpose, and I don't think it's Acquire the Fire's purpose.

I see worship as a communal experience and an opportunity to draw closer to God--which is maybe a euphemistic way to say "achieve that emotional high." That's what I was after, and I got it with the meaningful music and the emotionally charged room and the hand on my shoulder and the proud youth pastor. But by their theology, at least at that event, the idea was to rack up more souls for heaven's army. And I was the guy who enlisted, and then circled right back to the back of the line to enlist again.

And that guy is weird.

Is it just me...

...or do Peter Rollins and Peter Dinklage look a lot alike?