Thursday’s specials:
JOIN ME AT THE GLEN WORKSHOP, 2006
From the new Image Update:
Announcing Image’s Glen Workshop 2006
“Love and Affliction: Grace, Suffering, and the Artist”
July 30 – August 6, 2005The Glen Workshop is an illuminating conference on the arts and religion, where participants practice and strengthen their craft and vision in community. This weeklong event combines the best elements of a workshop, an arts festival, and a symposium. By exploring this year’s theme, “Love and Affliction: Grace, Suffering, and the Artist,” participants will share a common ground for discussion during the week. Morning workshops are small enough to allow the faculty to give close attention to each participant—to beginners as well as those advanced in their craft. This year’s faculty includes illustrator Barry Moser, playwright Arlene Hutton, poets Scott Cairns and Jeanine Hathaway, Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, fiction writer Bret Lott, mixed-media artist Barry Krammes, porcelain artist Ginger Geyer, and others. Afternoons and evenings at the Glen feature faculty readings, lectures, and presentations. Each evening concludes with an ecumenical worship service that incorporates the arts. This year’s musician-in-residence, Pierce Pettis, will be giving a concert as well as playing during worship throughout the week. Free time offers participants opportunities for writing, conversation, hiking, and exploring the stunning scenery and cultural treasures in and around Santa Fe. Surrounded by the stark, dramatic beauty of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Glen is hosted at St. John’s campus and is within easy reach of the rich cultural, artistic, and spiritual traditions of northern New Mexico.
Look for the 2006 Glen web pages—including registration information—in January. A brochure will be printed and mailed in early February. If you are on the Image subscriber list, you’ll automatically receive a brochure. If you’d like to have one mailed to you, send us an e-mail: glenworkshop@imagejournal.org.
Over the Rhine will be there. Scott Cairns will be there. Pierce Pettis will be there. Greg Wolfe will be there. With a starring cast like that, you’d better believe I’ll be there.
Will you?
NARNIA STRUDEL
A wonderful message from my friend Russ:
Here’s the only substantive comment I can make on NARNIA, as I haven’t seen the film: This morning I was sitting down to eat two apple Toaster Strudels and the individual icing packages had the NARNIA logo and plot trivia printed on them. On the icing packages. The icing packages.
CONDONING TERRORISM?
Here’s the trailer for the new film from the makers of The Matrix… V for Vendetta.
I can’t believe that someone would actually make “V for Vendetta” today. After everything that’s going on in the world today, who’s going to root for some terrorist cross between of bozo the clown and zorro? Did anyone else think that the trailer was in massively poor taste?
It’s more relevant today than at any other point in the last thirty years – terrorism is the only sane response to a rogue superpower, be it foreign or domestic.
See it’s comments like that that make me laugh. Considering the comic books were written back during the days of Thatcher I find it humorous that everything the author worried about for those times NEVER came to pass. Sure they’ll make arguments saying otherwise but the message rings hollow. We aren’t the fascists and someone better start acknowledging that because otherwise it just shows how ignorant one is of what a fascist really is.
And besides, fiction makes everything so nice and neat that the innocent remain unhurt by terrorist acts by the “good guys” there is no such thing as a terrorist act without collateral damage. Just the same as there is no war without collateral damage.
Why wouldn’t “V for Vendetta” be made today? There is nothing any more different about the world of “today” than the world of five years ago. If something has changed, it is that the U.S. has had to face the reality that most other nations have been dealing with for decades. Terrorism is what it is: a fighting tactic. The U.S. has used terrorism in the past, including to gain our independence. We will use it again. Some would argue that we are using terrorism now and that we have allies who use terrorism. Moore’s book is a comment on the fact that neither terrorism nor fascism is a particularly viable option, and on the relationship between the two. Yes, V is the hero of the story. But exactly how much of a hero is clearly up for debate. I don’t have high hopes for the film, but not because of the fact that the protagonist is a terrorist.
I’ve never read the comics, but I’m really looking forward to this movie. I don’t know that it will condone terrorism. V seems to be an ambiguously heroic figure. I have some hopes. The government has done something horrible to V. In a previous trailer, he ays “What was doen to me was monstrous,’ presumably in defense of his crusade against the gov’t. Natalie Portman’s character responds back, “Then they’ve created a monster.”
It is Natalie Portman’s character who is the main character and who, i presume, we are supposed to sympathize with. Not necessarily V. This could be a very interesting film (although I am dreading the W Brothers’ furrowed-brow approach to cinema).
CTDelude:
“See it’s comments like that that make me laugh. Considering the comic books were written back during the days of Thatcher I find it humorous that everything the author worried about for those times NEVER came to pass.”
I haven’t read V for Vandetta…but I’ve read a lot of his work (Watchmen and Swamp Thing being particular favorites). I don’t think V for Vandetta was trying to suggest those things WOULD come to pass. I’ve thought about doing two political post apocolyptic stories for years…one the starts off with a conservative republican president making the mess that causes the downfall, and one story starting with a liberal democrat president causing the downfall in his own way. Yet, I never considered either idea threats of what will come to pass.
I think people see relevance in how the book approaches terrorism. Not because it’s a prophetic story.