Sunday, March 28, 2010

The Fall and Decline of Tim Burton; More on a Conflict of Visions

  1. Welcome SOB reader Dallas! Feel free to leave a comment.
  2. Alice in Wonderland was a disappointment (Although it was nice to get out). All the character were dumped on us artificially in the beginning of the movie with little introduction and little development. the plot was dumped on us too, not that there was much of one, or that the movement from place to place was explained in any compelling way. I mostly liked Alice, but I got the sense that she was talking to herself most of the time. Part of the fault likes with CGI characters, who didn't interact with each other like they were actually there. 
  3. Aside from a good story to tell, good pacing, and appropriate music, I think one of the key elements to good story telling in movies is showing us character reaction. Remember the scene in Goonies when the kids see the ship for the first time and they are completely amazed? According to the special features, that was the first time they had seen the ship. Watching their reaction is more interesting than looking at the ship. I think that that is one of the main problem with Wonderland: very few reaction shots, or the reaction does not match the spectacle. Part of this is because of CGI. The actor doesn't know what he is reacting to, and that's a particularly big problem for CGI created characters, where interaction is key to believability.
  4. Another problem with CGI is a spin on the uncanny valley hypothesis. No matter how real the CGI looks, there is always something that looks a bit fake, and, thus, it, more often than not distracts rather than enhances the experience. CGI should be used very subtlety, like in Where the Wild Things Are (which suffers from other, unrelated problems). But maybe Avatar disproves this theory.
  5. Seems to me Tim Burton has lost his way. Consider his most recent movies:
    1. Batman Returns--hard to watch.
    2. Planet of the Apes--ugh
    3. Big Fish--a solid movie
    4. Corpse Bride--disappointing compare to Nightmare before Christmas
    5. Sweeney Todd--this could damage my thesis because it could be good, but I haven't seen it.
    6. Alice in Wonderland--see above.
  6. 4 of 5 are disappointments.
  7. Do you think church lessons are primarily for faith-building or primarily for learning? Here's the dilemma I face (you can read some of my thoughts on this topic here). I'll have to teach a lesson and the lesson manual is about 2 pages worth of material, most of which is very, very familiar. Obviously there's got to be a lot of discussion to teach an hour lesson based on that little material. I, therefore, primarily focus my efforts on thinking of good questions to facilitate discussion. About the second or third time through, I usually have some questions I think will prompt a good discussion. But the problem with these questions is that they tend to lead to speculative or ambiguous gospel areas. They also tend to challenge truisms we've accepted in the church. Sometimes discussions in these gray areas aren't necessarily the most faith promoting. So would you ask the question, or what criteria would you use to make that decision? I know this is kind of a hard question to answer in the abstract. (I'll put may partially formed thoughts in the comments later).
  8. I for one welcome our new bureaucratic health care overlords!
  9. Do you think that being a better writer makes you a worse speaker? I don't think I'm any great writer. But I do think I've become a better writer, and I think it's come at the prices of speaking confidently. My theory is that good writing comes from an economy of words and clarify of thought, that requires a lot of reflection and rewriting. It's very hard to do those on the fly. Also, when you write a lot, and get used to that precision, it's hard be less precise, even when speaking. The one exception might be when you are speaking about something you write or think about so frequently that the thoughts are already predigested into ready-made phrases and sentences.
  10. Can't think of anything to write about politics now guys. I can't think of anything original to say about the health care bill (not that it would be truly original anyway). I was going to write about David Frum's Waterloo post and his subsequent split with AEI, but I suspect no one cares.
  11. Here's the quote from A Conflict of Visions that I couldn't find for the last blog post:
  12. Because of conflicting visions of how much knowledge a given individual can have, and how effective that knowledge can be in deciding complex social issues, the two visions attach widely differing importance to sincerity and fidelity. Where the wise and conscientious individual is conceived to be competent to shape socially beneficial outcomes directly, then his sincerity and dedication to the common good are crucial. Godwin's whole purpose was to strengthen the individual's "sincerity, fortitude and justice." The "importance of general sincerity" was a recurring theme in Godwin, and has remained so over the centuries among others with the unconstrained vision. Sincerity tends to "liberate," according to Godwin, and to "bring every other virtue in its train." While conceding that everything is insincere at some time or other, Godwin nevertheless urged " a general and unalterable sincerity" as a powerful, ideal, capable of producing profound social benefits.

    ... 

    Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries' "real" reasons, which must be "unmasked." Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied to reference's to those adversaries' "blindness," "prejudice," or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversarial be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complicated that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken--and dangerously so. They "may do the work of things without being the worst of men," according to Burke. 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I forgot Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was also inferior to the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Brett said...

I was about to say you'd missed that. The original would be pretty hard to beat. According to the internet, he also did a number of other things between Batman Returns and Planet of the Apes. Which begs the question, when was he on his game? I'd say that I liked Beetlejuice, Big Fish, and The Nightmare Before Christmas (I can't remember much about Edward Scissorhands). Oh, and there was Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

4. I don't think that CGI is inherently aversive on some level. If CGI is so well done it's indistinguishable from reality, it just opens up the possibilities of portraying fantasy.

7. Good question. I think that both learning and faith-building have their place in gospel teaching. I can think of conference talks that were heavy on church history, life stories of the reformers, etc. If you're a regular teacher you should avoid one extreme or the other, but for a one time deal it's probably not as crucial. Asking a question that gets someone to rethink a common principle can be a great teaching tool (the goal is for them to come away with something right? whether intellectually or motivationally), but too much speculation can drive away the spirit.

9. Maybe it's that you practice one more than the other.

Anonymous said...

I would say Burton was on his game in Batman, Edward Scissor Hands and Nightmare Before Christmas. He's produced some other movies, but I was mostly just looking at movies he's directed. The one exception to that is the Nightmare Before Christmas, which he didn't direct, but I think we can fairly say he controlled. It's the only Disney film ever to feature a name in the title other than Walt Disney's.

Burton's movies are always visual successes, just not story telling successes.

Let me give you a few examples I have brought up or thought about bringing up in church.

1. Would you discuss that Joseph Smith wrote several versions of the first vision that, in ways, are pretty different?

2. Would you bring up the content of the Nauvoo Expositor issue that caused Joseph Smith to destroy the press? (I didn't know what was published until recently.)

3. Would you bring up that Joseph Smith had several wives?

3. Elsewhere on this blog, I have a post on the legality of the destruction of the Expositor. Would you say that you don't think the destruction was legal or that you think he should not have destroyed it?

4. Would you mention that Joseph Smith and the prisoners in Carthage had some wine the night of the martyrdom? That Joseph tried to escape from the window of the jail, and didn't really fall out?

5. Would you discuss the implications or ambiguities of LDS doctrine on abortion or priesthood keys discussed elsewhere on this blog.(I first thought of the LDS keys paradox in church)

6. In the lesson about 2 or 3 weeks ago there was the mention of intelligences. Would you dwell on the implications of intelligences? why is knowing that important?

7. Would you raise question like: why do we need priesthood ordinances? Why do we need them? why can't anyone perform them?

Anonymous said...

Let me just complete my thought on a conflict of visions.

If you believe that humans are unconstrained, then you think humans can direct society competently, so you need good people to direct society. People that want to make society better.

But why is it necessarily that people who believe that society cannot be direct well are evil? Can't we have an honest disagreement?

But here is my addition/interpretation of Sowell on this point. Few if any of us reason from first principles. That is, Sowell has to write a book explaining the underlying premises because we aren't fully cognizant of the premise ourselves.

Thus, a person with the unconstrained vision, isn't thinking, that conservative A(constrained vision)is reasoning from a different premise. instead, the holder of the unconstrained vision is thinking, we can get to result X by doing Y, and this is self evident, such that opposition of conservative A must be because he doesn't want to reach result X. In other words, when you've bought into the premise, but your also unaware of the premise, then it sort of makes sense to always be accusing conservatives of being evil.

Lindsey said...

I think I would avoid the majority of your questions if I were teaching a manual lesson in Relief Society (except for maybe 6 or 7 where the questions themselves don't already contain some element of information that might cause someone less strong in their testimony to question it). The teachers in our ward have taken the approach to teaching the lessons more from a gospel essentials class perspective. They teach the material almost as if the class didn't know the answers, they focus on becoming more familiar with the scriptures that teach these doctrines, and they emphasize gaining a testimony of these principles and how people developed their testimonies. So far, I have not been too disappointed. A couple of times someone has asked a debatable question like "How long were Adam and Eve in the garden before Eve partook of the fruit?" I felt like it added nothing to the lesson that promoted faith or knowledge. You want your lessons to "light a fire" under your class so they will go out and live more Christlike lives and feel so strongly about the gospel that they want to share their knowledge with others.

However, I was just thinking, perhaps you know the people in your class and their understanding of the Gospel better. I know a lesson was taught recently in our ward where the teacher called attention to the fact that one of the sisters was looking up a scriptural reference in the wrong book ("Alma, it's in the small book!") I felt mortified for this poor lady who I knew hadn't been to church for at least a year and a half, maybe longer. I would worry that too many speculative questions would harm the testimonies of those who are coming back to the church or who are new members, which, to my understanding, is part of why we are doing these lessons for the next two years anyway.

Brett said...

1. I don't see this as too controversial if you're focusing on the additional knowledge that can be learned from each.

2, 3, and 3. Probably not.

4. What would be the point of mentioning the wine?

I don't see the fact that Joseph was trying to get out the window as obscure knowledge or controversial. The D&C Sunday School manual contains the passage,

“Joseph attempted, as the last resort, to leap [from] the same window from whence Mr. Taylor fell, when two balls pierced him from the door, and one entered his right breast from without, and he fell outward, exclaiming, ‘Oh Lord, my God!’ … He fell on his left side a dead man” (History of the Church, 6:619–20).

5. Probably not.

6 and 7. I don't see why not.


I'll agree with Lindsey that it largely depends on the audience, though I think some of these topics, while interesting discussion points in a private setting, wouldn't likely be appropriate for any gospel lesson regardless of the participants.

Anonymous said...

Thanks both of you for your thoughts. And thanks for commenting Lindsey! Good to know someone other than Brett and Danny (and Dallas?) reads this blog.

I think you guys are right. I think these lessons are really designed to build testimony and promote faith, and not really to educate except for in the most basic of gospel principles. If elders quorum lessons were really about education they would move beyond the very basic. I think, instead, the idea is you rekindle or renew your testimony by rehearing the principles you already know.

I have mixed feelings about this. I understand the desire to keep it simple. A lot of "deep" doctrine really isn't doctrine at all. Or if it is doctrine, its distracting, confusing, or just not that important.

On the other hand, I think we have a tendency to sterilize the lessons to the point where we sometimes don't ask difficult questions or confront difficult historic facts. But it seems to me that eventually some people are either going to think of those questions or learn those facts, and then they may not be well prepared to answer them. And they may feel deceived because certain facts were kept from them.

1. I taught a lesson on the first vision in a BYU ward and brought up the fact that there were a bunch of visions and they were all different. I did it because when I found out about the different versions, I kind of wondered why they were so different? And also, I wondered why I had never heard of them before, and felt a little deceived. But after I taught that lesson (including other information, like that Joseph basically never told anyone about the first vision, and most early church members likely would not have been familiar with the story) I kind of felt like I drove away the spirit. I probably wouldn’t do that again, or would do it in a different way.

2. Another instance where when I found out that the expositor was criticizing Joseph Smith's polygamy practices, I felt a little deceived. I think that we should probably at least talk about the impetus for the destruction and acknowledge the fact that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. We seem to be okay acknowledging Brigham Young practiced it, but not Joseph.

3(1). See 2 above.

3(2). See elsewhere on this blog. I find it hard to swallow that destroying a printing press is acceptable except for in the most extreme of circumstances, which may have existed, but I don't weren’t readily apparent. And while the destruction may have been legal at the time, it certainly is illegal today. Maybe it's not appropriate to bring this up in church, but I always think it when someone says "And the destruction was completely legal!" as if the law represents the ultimate authority on what is appropriate.

Anonymous said...

4. Similar thing with wine to 3. probably not appropriate, but whenever I hear the story about how the wine in the Old Testament is really Grape Juice, I feel like saying, do you know Joseph Smith drank alcoholic wine right before he was martyred?

I think that jumping from the window shouldn't be controversial, but is mildly so because it implies he was being cowardly, or trying to avoid the fate he should have known was coming. I'm glad the manual is clear about it, but I've seen church pageants and lessons were the scene was portrayed less than accurately.

5. My thoughts on both these topics are elsewhere on this blog. I would probably never take the lesson there, if only because these doctrines, while pretty clear and interesting, do not have broad applicability.

6. I have little to no knowledge about church doctrine on intelligences, but we talked about it for 10-15 minutes. No one said anything that was I thought was clearly wrong. Have intelligences always existed? Someone thought so? Do intelligences contain some of our personality and proclivity towards sin? That’s what I assumed in my comment. I only felt the slightest twinge of guilt for our completely speculative discussion.

7. I think this is a good question, even though we may not know the actual answer. There are some authoritative answers and some speculative answers that I also think are correct. We need ordinances to be saved, and we know baptism isn't valid without the priesthood. That's God's power to do these ordinances. But I think there are some other answers that are more satisfying but are somewhat speculative. Like, we can probably deduce that if the ordinance is a symbol it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn't lose its symbolism. There may need to be some training on how to perform the ordinance. So there needs to be order and leadership to properly regulate and oversee the ordinance performance. It’s like the police. (Maybe these answers aren’t really that speculative.)