“We need people on the inside,” writes R.J. Moeller from Los Angeles. “We need talented actors, musicians, editors, and screenplay writers who can stake a claim for a differing worldview than that of HBO, David Geffen, and whoever wrote Milk.” Go West, young conservative!
The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Commentary: Young, Entrepreneurial, and Pursuing Good Art in Hollywood…
In the current Acton Commentary, I take a look at what I call a “modern-day Robinson Crusoe,” the survivalist Richard Proenneke of “Alone in the Wilderness” fame.
But as I also note in the piece, there are some other instances of this classic shipwrecked literary device, including the TV show Lost. The basic point of these reflections on community and the human person is that no man is an island, even when they are on an island.
Billy Graham meets John Paul II in 1981.
Carl Trueman of Westminster Seminary makes some salient points about why Protestants should pay any attention at all to the doings in Vatican City (HT: Justin Taylor):
“If I had cash to spend on promoting the values and ideas and policies that I believed were best for this country, you can bet that I would be out finding talented directors, writers, and producers who shared those values,” writes R.J. Moeller. The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Commentary: Hollywood 2012: What Messages are the Movies Sending Us?…
Update: Rev. Jensen has posted part 2 of his review. You can read it here.
Rev. Gregory Jensen, who writes at the Koinonia blog, recently reviewed Rev. Robert Sirico and Jeff Sandefer’s new book A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey.
This is what he had to say about it:
Read more on Review: Rev. Gregory Jensen on ‘Hero’s Journey’…
Check out this video, which is interesting on a number of levels (HT: James R. Otteson):
Hazony points to some really important ideas in this short video. In many ways the culture war, so to speak, really comes down to a clash of worldviews about what work is and ought to be. For a narrative that sets the problem up the same way, but favors the “Leavers” over the “Takers,” see the work of Daniel Quinn, particularly his novel Ishmael.
In his magnificent reflection on the nature of art, Real Presences, polymath George Steiner invites us to make a thought experiment: What if we lived in a city where all talk about art, mere talk about art, was prohibited? In other words, what would follow if we did away with artistic criticism qua criticism, an activity derivative by nature and one Steiner calls “high gossip”? In this posited city, what Steiner calls the Answerable City, the only permitted response to a work of art would be another work of art. Thus participation in the “art scene” could never launch itself from the risk-free loft of criticism, but it must be real participation, a participation that demands that the viewer invest something of his own imaginative capacities. In this city, the word “interpretation” denotes not something exegetical, but something performative; an activity not of professional academics or theater critics, but of actors and directors — as in an actor “interprets a role.” Here, art means incarnation, not judgment.
But such a city is only a thought experiment, and since judgment requires the participant to invest less of himself, it will always be easier to be a critic than to be an artist. And therefore the artist will always be tempted first to pass judgment rather than to respond with his own creativity.
After a decade of trying to walk the slippery ridge between “he who does” and “he who discusses” art, I have tried to avoid criticism these last couple of years to focus only on doing. But I feel the need to again jump into the critical ring, thanks to a recent article in GQ Magazine (it was sent to me by a friend), an article on my own town, Grand Rapids, and its increasingly famous festival, ArtPrize. Read more on The Corruptions of Power: Gossip of the Highest Sort…
Today marks the official launch of the new and improved website for the Journal of Markets & Morality.
In addition to the new design, we also have included a search feature whereby anyone who wants can search back issues for keywords, authors, names, and so on. For example, a search for “Alexis de Tocqueville” yields 29 results, and a search for “subsidiarity” turns up 78! As is our current policy, everything up to the two most recent issues is free to access for the public and all issues are open to subscribers.
I haven’t been able to work out all the specifics (perhaps some of my colleagues would be better suited for that), but somehow I feel like this video of the Casteller festival in Spain is a metaphor for the Eurozone. Thoughts?
Danny O’Dwyer of Gamespot has created an interesting video on religion in video games. As a self-described atheist, he examines the reasons why video games “haven’t reached the point where Islam can be portrayed without a suicide bomb.” The video also looks at various instances of religion in existing games and includes an interview with his Muslim friend Tamoor who works in the game journalism industry. You can watch his 15 minute video below.
Danny’s article over at Gamespot has an interesting quote that touches on truth: “I believe ignoring an entire culture out of some fear of offending their faith is a fantastic way of promoting intolerance.”
