Obsession

It seems that most teenagers are obsessed with something. I suppose as parents the best we can hope for is that the obsession is harmless. I have been thinking about this for a while, ever since my youngest daughter became a bona fide GLEEK, that is, a fan of the TV series Glee, about a high school show choir consisting of geeks and freaks and various other "uncool" types in the American high school culture. (Honestly - these programmes, and the various high school movies, make me soooo thankful we live in NZ.)

Currently the other major obsession I know of is everything vampire, focused mostly on Twilight and its various sequels. I have read the Twilight books and enjoyed the first one as I enjoy most romance novels - it was like candy floss, nice but not good for me and not much to it. But I must confess I do not think vampire obsession is healthy.

Twilight is about adolescent love - a love that is obsessive and juvenile, a manipulative boy who controls the actions of his so-called beloved and a masochistic girl who laps up the danger and is willing to literally die for love. Her willingness to embrace eternal death for his sake is chilling. (On an unwittingly telling note, he is freezing cold to the touch and hard like marble.) She is in constant danger, not least from him, and is seriously damaged many times, until, in the most gruesome birth scene I have ever read ... anyway suffice to say she gets her desire and becomes one of the undead to be dead with him for ever. Shudder.

And some grown women say this story has spoilt them for their husbands. Eh? What is this teaching our girls about real love and relationships? That a cold, manipulative dangerous man is worth dying for? Has anyone considered how totally boring being a vampire would really be?

OK. So back to Glee. Is that really as bad? No - I can't bring myself to say so. It is very affirming of geeks and freaks and has some really fantastic music - my kids are now familiar with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and show tunes from ages past. However, it is preoccupied with the sex lives of its characters, a recent episode was all about whether certain characters should lose their virginity or not (is sex really the most important thing in life? Really?) Also, while it is just possible stories about teen pregnancy and coming to terms with being gay are relevant for teenagers, the break up of a teacher's marriage and his subsequent (almost) relationship with another staff member are not. I think this story line introduces something far too adult into the mix.

BTW - Sue Sylvester, the cheer coach, is one of the best comic characters to appear on TV in ages.

As usual, parental guidance recommended.

The Idolatry of Bernada Alba

We do not frequently attend the theatre, but on Saturday my husband and I ventured forth to see The House of Bernada Alba at TAPAC here in Auckland. We had many reasons for this, not least we both knew the main actor and the director (from a long time ago) and I, personally, like the writings of Frederico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish playwright who was executed by Franco's army shortly after the play was written - either because he was a communist or because he was gay - take your pick.

The play was pretty much standard socialist fare - ie, playing up the injustice and prejudice of the "upper classes" against the honest desires of the proletariat. The main character reminded me of many old women I knew in my childhood - bitter and oppressed and always worrying about what people think. Those who are ignorant believe this is the lot of Christian women. Others of us know such women have replaced the opinion of others for the genuine love of God.

The cast was entirely female - those who worship the idol of public (or the neighbours') opinion and those who worship the idol of sex. Bernada Alba, a widow with five daughters, was malevolently controlling, and her daughters by turn subservient and rebellious. Repressed passions abounded. Obviously they came to a bad end.

By the way - the production was fantastic and our friend in the title role was brilliant.

And the programme was a work of art - a bargain for a gold coin donation.

The perplexity of endings

Endings. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, in the wake of the recent demise of LOST and the more distant last episode of ER, after 11 years, some sort of prime time record.

I am not a LOST fan. I was cured of the "mysterious" in TV series in the 90s when I sat through a couple of seasons of the "X Files" which promised "the truth was out there" until I discovered it wasn't and gave up. So with LOST I watched a couple of the first episodes, then whenever I caught up it was so incomprehensible, I couldn't be bothered. However, after reading a magazine article about the difficulties of ending a long running, and very popular TV series, I watched the final episode of LOST and was intrigued by the old cliches that it relied on to tie up what was obviously a very complicated saga.

What we got was essentially the "happy ever after in heaven" thing - which was probably very annoying for the sci fi freaks who were addicted to the thing and wouldn't embrace visions of heaven if paid to. For myself, of course, the heaven depicted was so unlike the real thing I'm not offended, just perplexed. Why do such a cliched thing? I'm left wondering if the whole series was Jack's hallucination as he lay dying. What was the point, really?

But beyond LOST, the article I read spoke about endings in general, and I realised that almost every ending I can remember, of a long term story, has been disappointing. When I say long term, I mean a long term TV series or a movie franchise that includes some sense of ongoing story.

I have noted here before that I dislike the third Lord of the Rings movie because (although the books actually end OK, because they were conceived as one book) Peter Jackson did not honour the whole story of all his characters. Specifically, he left Eowyn and Faramir dangling. He spent time on their stories and their triumphing over their individual struggles, but he did not give them enough screen time to triumph. In the book they fall in love. Even in the extended DVD version he gives them a brief incomprehesible head-leaning scene.

The Matrix trilogy is my favourite example of a trilogy that should have remained one movie. The Matrix is a brilliant sci fi story channeling Alice in Wonderland and the Gospel (oh yes, forget that the film makers are very woolly about this). The second and third movies are muddled rubbish. I don't even remember them that well. Too much money spent on too little imagination.

Star Wars, alas, is probably the highest profile and most expensive example of this phenomenon. The first Star Wars movie was brilliant, ground breaking (name a block buster from before?????) fun. Number two was great (movie geek types say it's the best, I like the sheer romance of the first better), number 3 was stupid, but it finished the story. The last three Lucas made were .... execrable rubbish. Wish he hadn't bothered.

I could go on and on. Especially film makers, but I regret to say book writers also often, fall prey to the impulse to try and end things off, and relapse into silliness, triteness, or sheer craziness. Mostly things should be left in mid air. Real life endings are messy. Let's not bother with them in our made up stories! (Books that end badly - Twilight. First book - fantastic teen romance with added vampires, book 4 - yeech! Harry Potter - actually book 7 is OK, despite or perhaps because of trite happy ending - but some of the in between volumes (no 5????) forget it!)

So why am I writing a sequel to ASKAR? I hope I'm writing a Godfather II and not a Godfather III - that's why.

The new Who

It's time to commit to some opinions about the new Dr Who, although I haven't quite made up my mind. Also, we don't get terrific reception on Prime, so I haven't had a proper look at him yet. But he seems young and angular and awkward enough to be geeky and still be attractive. Kind of perfect for a very young Doctor.

He is, however, quite cranky. He is often wrong (tonight he made an error in leaving Amy alone in the dark) and he was critical of River Song when in the end she saved the day. He lies as well, when it suits him, and is brutally honest when that suits him. He loses his temper and shouts a lot. But we've only seen four episodes (sadly missing the first one about the stone angels) so he could grow on me.

However, I've decided I don't like Amy. Or perhaps I don't like what the writers are choosing to do with her character, because on the whole she's the usual perky help mate the Doctor usually requires.

However, whoever is in charge of Dr Who REALLY doesn't like matrimony or any sort of committed relationship. Rose's relationship with her boyfriend was completely despised by both Rose and the script; Donna's putative marriage was a fraud; and this Amy person has taken off with the Doctor on the eve of her wedding. Furthermore tonight she tried to jump the Doctor's bones, which wasn't only wrong because I don't approve of it, but was also wrong because the Doctor's relationship with his companion is always based on love - usually deep affection and respect, sometimes (as with Rose) romantic love, sometimes merely affectionate irritation - but always some sort of care. What Amy was proposing was the opposite of love - sex for sex's sake is a complete affront to love, and to the affection that Amy and the Doctor have already shown to each other. Of course the Doctor declined (basically protesting he was far too old for her "I'm 907!"). He had to. Dr Who is first and foremost a family show. Meaningless sex between two main characters would be completely contrary to the spirit of the thing.

But why include it at all? And why have a girl about to get married propose such a thing?

The creators of this show really hate matrimony.

Our wonderful teenagers

Last week I had the privilege of taking some of my daughter's year 11 English class to the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival. There was a special day for secondary school English students and they listened to three authors present their works and talk about the life of a writer and Ivy Lies talking about writing pop songs. Ivy Lies came to life when they played their music. Obviously happier expressing themselves in music than the spoken word.
But it was also the week when a King's College student drank himself to death, and this week, we learn that another boy from that college has died. Also last week a 13 year old knifed his maths teacher. What's going on with our young people?
I was, I must admit, impressed with the intelligence and depth of the questions asked by the young people at the readers and writers programme. I was impressed with their behaviour. I was completely unimpressed by one of the MCs, who decided telling off colour jokes was appropriate for a secondary schools programme. I don't know the name of the MC, although his face was familiar to me, I think from TV comedy programmes, but his likening of reading to making love to a woman (in graphic detail) and his joke about an octopus and a set of bagpipes (use your imagination) were completely inappropriate, and our lovely Christian College kids were not the only ones gasping in disbelief.
How do I connect this to the horrible events in the news?
I can only conclude that somehow we are selling our teenagers short. We are forcing them to grow up too early. We are teaching them that adult stuff - drinking, sex etc - is fun, and that there is no price to pay. So the young man who drank himself to death was kicking over the traces just one night. He almost certainly had no idea that a bottle of vodka could kill him. Why not? Because we are selling lies about adult vices. We are telling them it's fun, there is no price to pay. They can play in the adult's play pen and not pay a price. And the MC was pandering to this. "Hey kids, I know you really want to be adults so I'm going to treat you like adults. Not like your nasty teachers and parents who want to keep you children."
Research has shown that our brains are not fully formed, not connected up completely, until around 25 years of age. That means that all of our secondary age children are still growing, still susceptible, still able to suffer damage from careless adults peddling adult things. It's time we, as a society, took better care of them.
Someone asked me the other day if I thought I was wrapping may children in cotton wool having them at a Christian school.
My answer is - until they are adults (legally 18, biologically 25) - I am going to protect them from the adults that do not have their best interests at heart, who want to exploit their natural inclination to want to separate from me, to protect them from a society that is determined they experiment and experience everything before they are mature enough to work out what they really want from life.
And I do not apologise.
BTW I know King's College very well. I know that the events of the last week would have had a completely devastating effect upon the community of that school. I know that, as far as it is possible to tell, the events of the last two weeks have nothing to do with the school.

48 Hours of disagreement with the judges

As usual I didn't agree with the judges at the 48 hours Auckland finals on Saturday night. I felt there were at least three movies among the 16 finalists that outdid the winner and runner up.
Runner up was Confessions of a Fabricator - dodgy undergraduate sexual insinuation with a sock (yawn). Winner was Only Son, by the Downlow Concept who have won before with something very similar. This wasn't a bad movie, just not exceptional among the 16 on offer.
One made it from our heat (heat 10). This was Humanity: the Last Seven Minutes which was at least original - the filmmaker obviously has contacts all over the world and they sent in their contributions over the net - and IMO boasted the best performance by an actress of the night (a woman in a subway train somewhere - in Europe or Australia, I couldn't quite figure out where). The judges' "best actor" was one decision I agreed with - this was the desperate father in Carousel - a magnificent exercise in suspense, marred somewhat by a weak ending.
OK - my favourites (I actually can't pick a winner):
The Pool - car pool goes wrong. Clever idea, neat trick ending, cool use of the required line.
Lost Call - ghost movie. An idea I have heard somewhere before, but still very well done and subtle.
Two Timer - a rarity. A love story that champions commitment, marriage, kids - the whole deal.
There was some stylish work among this lot - how the judges came up with the two winners is beyond me.

Taking on a sacred cow

I've been contemplating our "state religion", wondering why it is so sacred to New Zealanders and what its prominence means for our country.

When I was a child, and there were a lot of WW2 veterans around, Anzac Day was commemorated with poppies and we sang God Save the Queen (our national anthem then) at school. I think we even raised the flag. But it was a day - we commemorated the fallen, we were grateful - but it was just a day.

Sometime in the last 20 years, just as the veterans were disappearing, the whole Anzac thing has taken off and thousands of the younger generation (younger than me) are turning up for dawn parades and solemnly praying - something ...

And that is my problem. We have lost our religion in this country. Many of us still believe in something, but as a nation we have lost it. God is invisible in our public spheres. So Anzac Day has become a kind of secular celebration, an elevating of fallen heroes with no acknowledgment of who we are praying to. Are we praying to them as their ghostly shades haunt our land? Are we simply going through a form of words unable to acknowledge that there is nothing to which we pray? Or should we perhaps acknowledge that they died not only in the service of their country but also in the service of the freedom endowed upon them by their Creator?

Alas, Anzac commemorations are the only form of public spirituality available to Europeans in this country. (In a curious twist it is OK for Maori and Polynesian and the different Asian communities to be publicly spiritual.) I believe Anzac Day has become so prominent because we are being denied other public avenues for expressing the sacred in our lives.

And we have an odd attitude to war itself. I recently read an article about the shock expressed when it emerged NZers had actually fired shots in Afghanistan. The article basically said: "Well, d'oh, in a war you shoot people." I would say we're almost schizophrenic about war. At the same time as we honour our war heroes, our culture dislikes and devalues the current defence forces, consistently downsizing them and reducing their resources. I saw Gaylene Preston on TV recently (Sunday April 18 TV1), in a clip promoting her film memoir of her father's war (Home by Christmas), say war was always pointless - "Just remember, don't go." "There's no need for war." "There's no just war." (Actual quotes from TVNZ OnDemand.)

I don't think that's very honouring to our war dead and veterans.

War should always be a last resort. Many modern conflicts do seem pointless, resembling tangles more than the nice surgical operations the politicians tout before the event. But we need to think very carefully before we decide all war is pointless. Gaylene's movie was about WW2. Has she thought about the implications of allowing the aggressors their way in that conflict?

Simply put - sometimes the enemy is bent on aggression, injustice and intimidation. If you don't fight them, you lie down and die.

And that's pointless.