cultural expectations

[rmwilliamsll]

one of the downsides to intensive study is that everything reminds you of and seems to relate to your studies. everywhere i look i see the issues talked about here.

for example, i saw "Phantom of the Opera" and "National Treasure" this weekend. What is interesting about NT is that the critics panned it because they said it was unconvincing and unbelievable. (see: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...e/002-1766950-5229600?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance
)

i'd like to quote my review of it here, for it is this forum that i had in mind when i wrote it

I spend a lot of time arguing online and thinking about how literature presents truth and why we only believe historically and scientifically accurate accounts to be true, anything else is labelled and discarded intellectually as fiction. So please forgive me if i see this theme dominating the movie as well, you know the saying: to a man whose only tool is a hammer, all problems are nails.

The movie is good, compelling, engrossing, absorbing, a good way to spend 2 hours out of the afternoon heat.
It is this link between the artist and his audience, what is believable and persuadable to us that i find useful in the move after leaving the theatre. Is there this enormous wealth hidden under the graveyard just off Wall Street? of course not, but how the author persuades us to believe that it just might be true is marvelous. He does so by realistically giving us enough facts that we find truthful that we jump over the connections to the next set and joyfully embrace the artist's vision, despite it's blatant foolishness. There is enough truth that we suspend disbelief for the important steps, for the awkward things that we would never embrace if presented by themselves. We find the package believable because we recognize the wrapping, in our eagerness to unwrap an adventure and a stimulating chase, we jump to normally unwarranted conclusions.

For example, i watched "Sky Captain" this week. It's mixture of historical and mythical put the whole movie into the comic book genre, fun but unpersuasive. Now are the Masons the descendents of the Knights Templar? Possibly, there has been a rash of books proposing just that for 20 years, but they all are panned and dismissed by the critics. Perhaps the same critics that find this a believable and fun movie, despite the fact that it makes much more unbelievable claims then does _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_. But it does so by leading into the weaknesses of our cultural epistemology not by confronting it directly. This is the secret of such movie successes and the reason for the failure of the literature genre that HB,HG represents. People want to believe the bizzare, the Xfiles garbage, they only want it packaged in historical and scientific wrapping. For it is the wrapping, not the contents that interest most people. They really aren't interested in the science or underlying reasons, they only want the illusion to cover up their itching ears and wandering eyes. We desire to be deceived and seduced, we just don't want to let other people know it and cover it with the legitimatizer of the day-science.

We love racing and outthinking the competition- see the "Amazing Race". We love gadgets and trinkets, toys and things that glitter. But we want to justify these desires by claiming that they are both useful (pragmatic and utilitarian) and good (moral and uplifting). By tying these things together the authors etc of NT both involve us and excuse our weaknesses, justifying our entracement while excusing the fact that we justify the unbelievable by making it look like history. This is the magic of the historical novel, unlike the comic book or the fantasy like Shriek, we can be persuaded that it just might have happened. That it is believable because the package conforms to our societal notions of truthfulness as outlined by science and historical research.

It is the Xfiles phenomena, we unrighteously suspend disbelief because the authors have given us a package wrapped in our favorite and most persuasive stories.
It is Kipling's just so stories updated to the greed of the 21st century with the amazing race thrown in since we love a winner.
and the winner gets not just the pretty girl, the manorhouse on the green but a really hot red sports car.

The thread about parables is similiar. some would said that in order for Lazarus to be true it must be 'real'. but what do we mean by real?

that is the heart of this idea of cultural expectations. it setsup and to a surprisingly great extent colors and even determines what we think of as persuasive.

think about the last movie or tv show you saw that the hero wreaked vengence upon his enemies. i will bet that the stage was set for this action by giving the hero adequate emotional reason, kill his wife, burn his favorite hat etc etc.
why?
because unwarranted, unprovoked violence is unacceptable in our culture for a hero, he has to have a reason for this violent outburst. movies, maybe tv shows are the closest thing we have to parables and often told stories in our culture. and they follow predictable patterns based on cultural expectations.

now when we look at ANE or NT images and stories, we miss those cultural clues as to presuasiveness because we don't share them with the first readers. How many of us realize the depth of the degradation for the prodigal son when it describes him as a swine herder and eating swine food? But the elements we find most important, history, science, chronological order etc are elements important to our culture, not necessary the dominant ones for the NT or OT writers. This fact seems lost in the conversation here, perhaps a greater awareness of our cultural expectations by watching movies more closely will help with this analysis.

....

 

[Vance]

As for the NT "insights" based on culture and how they would have understood the messages, I find Tom Wright (NT Wright) very interesting. I know his view of Paul may rub you a bit raw, but as both an expert on the NT historical period, and an expert on the NT Scripture (you don't always get them both together), his insights are very intriguing.

But overall, I couldn't agree more.