Whatever is the world coming to...?

This morning, drinking coffee and reading in bed, deliciously late in the morning, Dan and I were talking about the movie he went to see last night (I didn't want to go) - Django Unchained, by Quentin Tarantino. We know Tarantino's movies are very violent, always, but some students had seen this one and raved about it, and it won Oscars, so... Dan wanted to see it. He felt that it was a good movie, but, horribly violent, in fact, it got more and more violent as it went along. He commented that it is incredible the level of violence and gore we are used to seeing now on the screen. People no longer complain about it, although not everyone likes it obviously, it is just almost always there.

The graphic-ness is partly because special effects have developed so much, that anything can be portrayed realistically, even disembowellings, burnings at the stake, and decapitations.  And then apparently there is the director's urge always to push the boundary, and do the next thing, the next most horrifying, bloodthirsty thing, just because, you can. And it is for the sake of "art", after all. Um, no, I don't think so. I think it is for the sake of being "daring," and shocking.

At the same time, we have been watching a TV series we missed while away, "The Tudors" (which I do not recommend as you will understand in a minute.) Along with many I have a fascination for the Tudor period, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and all that. I enjoy reading novels set in that time. But it was also by all accounts a frightening, violent time to be alive. Then, people went to watch in the flesh the beheadings and burnings, and shouted along. So, maybe I shouldn't feel so concerned... But again, I have been shocked in another way watching this series, about the graphic sex that is shown. Bar actual genitalia, you see ev-er-y-thing. It is strange really, how the most private activities are now acted out, not briefly, not just above the neck, not with one foot on the floor, not with even a scrap of sheet or hair discreetly positioned. This is in a show that would have been aired late evening, and on national TV, not rated as pornography, just, a "historical drama." You have to wonder about the actors - they are basically acting out porn, and, did they really sign up for that? It has changed so much in the course of my adult life, that I am sure older actors must wonder why and how they have ended up stripping off quite so much. I mean, would you do it?

So is it in there for the sake of art? Sometimes they say it is essential to the story - but usually, it isn't. The implication would be enough. Have we have become so used to seeing it that we don't question it? Or, am I really that much more squeamish about both violence and sex than most people - even than most other missionaries?!

When I was first a short-term missionary in Zambia, there was a lovely older American missionary lady, who loved reading, and often lent out her books to both other missionaries and Zambian friends. So, she had gone through all her books and used a black sharpie to blot out all the swear words in her books! And really, there weren't that many! Now, she would have to blot out a good proportion of every book.  Although I laughed about that, I do warn friends when I lend them books about the "rude bits."

Oh dear, what is the world coming to?

Future = present shock

Dan and I went to see a film last night at the cinema  - Looper, a sci-fi future dsytopia type of movie, which we usually, strangely, quite like. But this whole "entertainment" left me feeling a bit yucky, not only about the film but the human condition in general.

For one thing, the ads that came before the film felt to me as though they were advertising a life still surely years ahead of ours. Three of the ads were for computer games - all fast moving, fingers brushing screens, "How many people would YOU kill, to save one?", large-jawed men bearing giant guns. Horrible. Another was for a better-than-ever smart phone with a screen going right out to the edges. Two seemed to be telling complicated stories that left me baffled as to what was actually being advertised.

Then the film itself... it told the story of a young man living in 2044, - and life by then is like the world of Blade Runner, depressed, frightening, streets broken up with trash lying around everywhere, everyone on drugs... - and how gangs in the even further future have hijacked time-travel machines, are kidnapping their targets and sending them back in time to be shot dead by their hired assassins in that time - including the "hero" - whom we see shooting many of these hooded, tied-up victims as they appear from the future. One day, he finds that the victim who appears is his own future self, who manages to escape... sounds like a good story, and it is clever, but... Are we humans really set to descend into this kind of violent, hopeless, threatening future? And if not, why are so many films made with this kind of story-line? Are we that depressed about the human trajectory? Or is it only the movie-makers who are?

Many parts of our world are already like it to some extent, though, and many people do live in fear, and I am just thankful I live in a generally safe country, in a time of peace. (Another thing to thank God for!)

I came away feeling like I wanted to go off into a forest and kick through piles of leaves and breathe in good clean country air, watch birds, and feel the peace and wholesomeness of nature. Get away from everything man-made, which is apparently devolving into slim, shiny black and silver rectangles with curved corners and HD screens that suck us in via our finger tips, bigger cars, taller and sleeker buildings, cynicism and mutual distrust, and guns. I don't think I like the way the human race is going...
I sound so old, I know...!

My fantasy of the future is to live in a stone cottage on Dartmoor, by a stream, growing food and raising chickens, (with a Baker to kill and pluck them of course, and a Florence too!) - reading books by an open fire, - not on my own but with family, and friends close enough to see often, maybe a pony to ride, Frodo of course... sigh...

But maybe the future will be something in between. I wonder what God thinks of the way our race is going. I wonder at what point he will intervene. I hope heaven will be Dartmoor, not a shiny steely city...

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I have just watched this warm, fun movie, about a group of retired Brits who decide for various reasons to move to India for their old age - to the "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel". It has some humorous, and poignant, observations about moving to another culture as well as many very funny lines. Also some beautiful, noisy and colourful scenes of Indian street life. From my very brief trip to India in 2007 for CV Mathews' enthronement, I second that India is "an assault on all the senses," that the comment of one character, "All life is here" is true, and also that the hair-raising shot of an overtaking bus honking and swishing across into its own lane just in time is all too authentic - the driving was noisier and more frightening by far than in Uganda.

It is a comedy, and it has some fairly ridiculous incidents and probably a lot of cliches. But, I enjoyed it very much and I totally recommend it. The most obvious observation on moving into a new culture is the truism that, the more you put into a thing, the more you get out of it. The characters who ventured out into the streets and markets and then into the lives and finally homes of Indian friends, were the ones who came to love it the most and made the best new life in India.  Another point made simply but well was that you must, must show respect toward and interest in people; and when you are invited into someone's home and are not sure what is expected, just be considerate, and real. Just as you would with a new friend of your own culture, in fact. A more insightful observation came across more subtly: early on the narrator described the group as "adapting to new ways and new habits like Darwin's finches"; but towards the end of the film she says, "Perhaps we were foolish to think we could adapt at our ages. We are too stuck in our ways." Early on in transition to a new culture, you can think that you are making fantastic progress, you know so much already, and you are adjusting brilliantly to the new life. But as you go along, you find out more and more how deep culture goes, both for you and for those you now live among, and you find out just how much you do not know and will probably will never know or completely understand. The challenge becomes greater and harder the longer you stay. That is my belief. Doesn't mean you shouldn't keep at it, keep learning - but you have to be humble, and very patient about it!

Two very amusing lines: when one of the wives is annoyed with her husband, she says to him: "When I want your opinion I'll give it to you." And the one that appears in the trailer, - "In India we have a saying, everything will be all right in the end. So if everything is not all right, it means it is not the end yet." Good one. I do recommend this film for a fun and feel-good couple of hours set in another bright and sunny country.