besides the podcasts (let the reader understand) I have been reading a bit and a pile of books by Mark Evan Bonds and Daniel K L Chua on Beethoven veneration is something I want to get to writing about but that is going to be work.
I'm tempted to write about deBoer's recent bit about cultural appropriation as a springboard for finally discussing Randall J Stephens' The Devil's Music. It might not be a surprise that an atheist would not quite land a case that Gospel was white music before it was black music. That's not the best way to put it. A better way to put it would be Mahalia Jackson's remark that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the same whether Thomas Dorsey put a little bounce into it or not; which was to say that whites and blacks and peoples of every skin color who have Jesus in common can share diverse styles of music. Randall Stephens' case has been that when we see that the pioneers of early rock ranging from Sister Tharpe through Little Richard, Franklin, Cash, Presley, Lewis and others were all Pentecostals (however bad they were as Pentecostals) then what might be regarded as cultural appropriation along rigidly racial lines was anything but cultural appropriation for Pentecostals who shared ulta-low storefront church liturgical traditions across color lines. That's a sticking point for me because I grew up Pentecostal and also because I'm the child of an inter-racial marriage (American Indian dad and white mom). But I am not feeling inspired to write a ton lately.
I have been thinking I need to get back to writing about animation again at some point. That Evangelion sequel/reboot was a reminder that Neon Genesis Evangelion remains, to me, one of the most over-hyped anime in the history of anime. The end of the fourth film was maybe supposed to be a big deal but instead of Beethoven's 9th choral movement I would have sooner had Rick Astley's "Together Forever". When we're finally shown what Gendo Ikari's motives and aims are, hey, he chose to move heaven and earth to be with his lost wife, right? That's pretext enough to rickroll the end of Evangelion. :) Anno has been exploring the franchise for decades and yet what he's come up with keeps falling short of, oh, Kon, whose Paprika is both weirder and more poignant than anything I've seen in the Evangelion franchise. Gendo Ikari referencing the Dead Sea Scrolls, uh, nope. Behind all the blender-ized mysticism explosions shaped like crosses ends up being Michael Bay level trope and nobody would fall for it if Michael Bay had explosions turn into yin and yang symbols, would they? So my brother remarked long ago and it seemed worth repeating here. But I don't have the energy mustered up to write about that at much length, either.
I'll try to get back to writing about the podcast series but I'm feeling lethargic at the level of writing these days. Plus I might have a chance to go back and update my Matiegka analyses from Op. 31 to include score analysis. So, there you go. I've written an awful lot at this blog since 2006 but sometimes energy flags where inspiration doesn't.
5 comments:
>Behind all the blender-ized mysticism explosions shaped like crosses ends up being Michael Bay level trope and nobody would fall for it if Michael Bay had explosions turn into yin and yang symbols, would they?
I haven't seen the fourth Rebuild film, but as far as the original series goes? Not really.
No joke, one of my favorite summaries of NGE was from a The Forward article of a journalist reading way too much into a meme. He saw a picture online of Asuka wearing a camouflage MAGA hat with cat ears, found its source, looked up NGE's summary online, and in conjunction with the image tried interpreting Evangelion as an anti-semitic, anti-globalist work. And for all the absurdity of the article's premise and existence, it does have a point even if its proposed themes were not intentional: they actually fit the show's other themes and EoE's ending, which the author seemingly does not know about.
My second favorite is the Evageeks wiki's insistence that the characters playing musical instruments in Evangelion's compilation movie aren't actually the cast, but several completely un-related people in-universe who simply happen to look exactly like them and play musical instruments. It's obviously wrong and the quote he's basing it off of is being blatantly misinterpreted, but the theory and reading are so perfectly stupid that it becomes nigh impossible to disprove to the kind of people who'd run an Evangelion wiki.
wow.
I have to admit I gave up on NGE after a few episodes. What I saw was decently made. Somehow I saw the EoE movie and thought, well, okay.
So the fourth "rebuild" is the one I watched from start to finish and it's well-made enough I did finish it and it has moments. The fifth angel was easily the most memorable. Giving Shinji a happy ending where he substitutes the spears of hope and despair with the spear of Gaia that lets Shinji save the world and reunite Gendo with Yui might be a bit pat and, yeah, Mari Illustrious is basically a manic pixie dream girl but Anno and company decided to get clearer about the wonky global-spanning occultism/mysticism in a way that's laughable for anyone who may have read the Dead Sea Scrolls but I vaguely recall reading that the mysticism was supposed to be so pluriform it couldn't be linked successfully to any outside-the-franchise coherent system. Gotcha! Success!
The fourth rebuild was alright, but I still can't quite see what the fuss has been about overall. As themes of child abuse, utopian cults, the conscription of minors into combat I admit I still prefer the original TV anime run of Eureka Seven to NGE (not Astral Ocean and not the movies).
Space Battleship Yamato 2205 looks like it could be fun, I hope. 2202 was a let-down for but I did follow it all the way to the end. Dessler's return saved 2202 for me because the Gatlantean empire was getting kinda dull for me.
Heh, maybe I could liken Anno to Beethoven and Kon to Haydn. I know there are people who see really profound deep or ghastly things in Anno's work but I prefer Kon.
Sounds like I might want to let other people read Evangelion wikis. ;)
>I have to admit I gave up on NGE after a few episodes. What I saw was decently made. Somehow I saw the EoE movie and thought, well, okay.
Gotta admit, I have never heard of anyone watching EoE without seeing the entire series beforehand. You missed out on A LOT. It's not perfect by any means, but it does use its budget constraints in unusual and very memorable ways, with a lot of strong, often flat-out ballsy direction for a mecha show. It was born and shaped out of hardship and strife (not to mention tax fraud), while the Rebuild films were made by committee and born out of the common artist's mistake of trying to recreate a work "as originally intended," which often misses the circumstances and problems that shaped the original and made it so memorable. The only example of this I can think of that actually worked was Pathologic 2, and that had its own share of hardship to shape it.
I see it this way: when a work of media remains controversial for long periods of time with extremely divided opinions on it, it's probably worth seeing. You may not like it, you made side with one position or another, or even form your own, but you may gain something from the experience and observing the people and opinions around it. Evangelion is horribly overrated, yes, and from what I've seen it had a negative impact on mecha, but there's still something to it.
Man, rambling about Evangelion of all things on a music blog is a new low. You're frankly right to prefer Eureka Seven, even if its ending was a bit underwhelming.
Incidentally, the latest Rise and Fall of Mars Hill episode (the shorter one), is a kind of Wenatchee tribute act.
Ah, just heard it. Thanks for the heads up.
Yeah, asking questions about the various ways Mark's origin story of his call to ministry and his conversion account changed was definitely worth combing through. I remember it being striking how in the WSU op ed years Mark wrote about his conversion process in ways that seemed to not mention Grace at all. She was there, of course, but a college age bro with his issues about manhood on a campus he probably regarded as skeptical about Christianity probably had a gut sense that saying "I became a Christian because of reading this Bible my girlfriend gave me" would discover the apologetics value of that kind of witness has often been negative. Anyone could say, "Well, she's the reason he decided to be a Christian, not because he believes on other grounds". But within the realms of cultural Christendom a story of "I became a Christian by reading the Bible my wife gave me" sells better.
Cosper's references to Mark being described and describing himself as studious reminds me of how Mark talked about being an altar boy and having an artistic streak where he did drawing. Given requirements for altar boys his faith might have been as nominal or non-existent as he claimed it was in his youth ... but, per Cosper's comments, that adds yet another wrinkle. An element to Mars Hill mythology I noticed was people had big incentives to think, speak, write and act as though prior to coming to Mars Hill they had no real or deep Christian roots or formation. I basically grew up in Pentecostal circles and moved away from that as I objected to what I increasingly understood of Latter Rain and futurist dispensationalist teachings without necessarily rejecting the basic stance of continuationism; of course I also became a Calvinist and I admit the late Steve Hays had a role in that (possibly a big sign of how small the Christian blogosphere has been and/or a curious providential moment). I'd also rejected revivalism as too bent toward Christian nationalism (American Indian dad was a big variable there, I realized only in hindsight).
All of that may be stuff I didn't and couldn't think about during my Mars Hill years but hearing the new episode it has gotten me thinking about how Cosper seems to be on to something pointing out that the people who most bought into the simplified Mars Hill/Driscoll calling origin myth got damaged by the crumbling of his credibility. I found it dismaying but I had already spent so much of my adult life deliberately and slowly disconnecting my Christian life and practice from charismatic type mystical processes leaving Mars Hill was awkward but I left with the blessing of my campus pastor and things have been, well, okay considering all that's happened.
I'm also kinda excited toxopom described this as a music blog. :) Gone are the days (I hope) when Driscoll defenders would come by and say all I ever do is rip on Pastor Mark.
Still gotta catch up with the Harris episode. I admit I'm not quite looking forward to that because I'm not quite sure the case has been made Harris is that germane to the history of MHC but as Christian celebrities go who had no observable business being in formal ministry ... I'm open to there being a reason for the Harris bonus episode that will become clearer after I hear it.
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