What is a Queer Reading?

Scene from "Frozen"- Elsa looking nervous at her coronation. Image source.

Sometimes in progressive/feminist/queer circles, I happen upon someone doing some kind of "reading" of some media. "Here's a queer reading of [some movie]." "Here's a feminist reading of [something]." "Here's a reading of [something] through the lens of [some niche feminist topic]."

What does this mean? What is a "reading"?

I haven't seen anyone define it directly, but as best as I can tell, here's what it is: You take a piece of media, and you project your opinions about the experiences of some marginalized subgroup onto it. What, uh, is the point of this? If it's just your opinions about a queer/feminist/whatever topic, why does it matter that you're able to connect those opinions to things that happened in a work of fiction? When people do these "readings," they're not claiming that this is what the creators "really meant." So, what's the point?

I think the point is, people like stories. You can say "here are some facts about what it's like to be queer [or whatever identity group]." But it feels more powerful if you say "this experience that this fictional character had is similar to things that many queer people have experienced." Still, though, why should anyone take it seriously? These aren't even true stories! And your "reading" is not what the piece of media was really intended to mean. And also these "readings" aren't supposed to be vigorously fact-checked- ie, if you claim that some element of the story is a common thing that queer people have experienced, well, what do you mean by "common"?

What if you say "Here's a queer reading. This character is right-handed. That is similar to what queer people experience, because most queer people are right-handed." Your audience would be like "???" Like, okay so factually it's true that most queer people are right-handed, but that's not seen as like, a thing that's related to being queer. So that wouldn't be the proper way to do a queer reading.

What if you say "Here's a queer reading. This character has conflicts with their family members. That is a common thing that queer people experience." People will read your reading and nod along, because yes, that's something that is generally believed to be a common thing that queer people experience. But... I mean, a lot of groups of people have various reasons to have conflicts with their family. It doesn't have to be connected to being queer. 

What if you say "Here's a queer reading. This character has a certain hobby, and that hobby is more popular among queer people than among the general population." And also you are a researcher who has studied this- you have the statistics to back it up, though you haven't published it yet, so nobody else knows about this really interesting statistical connection between some certain hobby and being queer. Is this a valid queer reading? Well, your audience is just going to say "???" because they've never heard that there's any kind of significance related to this hobby and being queer. So it won't be viewed as a good queer reading, even though factually it is true.

So a queer reading is about taking concepts that, within the community of queer people and allies, are generally seen as being related to being queer, and then connecting them to things that happened in a piece of media. How on earth do you define "generally seen as being related", though? Also, how is this meaningful at all, if it's just based on what people generally believe is "common", rather than being based on some kind of objective standard?

Again, I think it's about the story. If you've experienced something, and you see a fictional character experiencing something similar, maybe you *feel* like you are understood, like you're not alone. On some level I want to say "this doesn't make any sense, because it's a fictional character," but I really think this is a powerful thing in human psychology.

Okay, here's another question: Is it possible for people to get mad at your "reading" of some story? Yes! What if some anti-trans person came along and gave their "reading" of a story, and they said something from the story is similar to how people are trying to coerce children into being trans, or some nonsense like that? We would be mad at them; we would find that really offensive. But why? They're just projecting their opinion onto the story. If they're claiming that's what the story "really means", well, no, it doesn't- in the same way that the story doesn't "really mean" the queer readings we like. Really, the reason their "reading" is offensive is because their anti-trans opinions themselves are offensive. Does their attempt to draw connections between those bad opinions and a piece of media make it worse?

Or, here's an example I actually saw: I read a blog post one time, from a conservative perspective, about the movie "Frozen" and how it could be interpreted as encouraging gay people to accept themselves. The way Elsa feels when she's in public and trying to hide her powers is similar to how gay people hope that they don't accidentally do any stereotypically-gay behaviors that would cause people to suspect that they're gay. And then, Elsa realizes she doesn't need to hide anymore and she should just accept herself. This blogger was really upset about the movie "Frozen" because they felt that this gay reading was so obvious, and that is was a harmful message to be sending. (Because they themself were anti-gay and did not agree that gay people should accept themselves.)

I found this really surprising, when I came across that blog post. So... the movie is about accepting yourself, and then *you're* the one who brought in the concept of being gay, which was not in the movie at all, and you're saying the movie is telling us that we should accept gay people's gayness, and then you're saying *actually that's bad* and therefore the movie is bad... it just felt so convoluted to me. If you're against the concept of "accepting yourself" because you think it secretly means "if you're gay, you should accept yourself" and you think that's a bad thing, well that sounds like a *you* problem, I don't know how to help you.

Just so odd, how this person did a queer reading of "Frozen", and then was like, mad about it.

Anyway, as I said in my post about "The Kingdom of Children," I never thought I could do a "reading" of some story, because I always supposed people need some kind of Official Feminist Qualifications before they're allowed to just put their opinions on the internet and call it A Feminist Reading Of [something]. But maybe it shouldn't really be taken that seriously. When we come across "a reading" of something, we should take it as, this is just someone's opinion, and if we think they have some good insights then we like it.

(I mean, I absolutely do post my opinions about how various pieces of media connect to the experiences of some demographic group, but I have never called that "a reading." Maybe I should!)

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Related

"The Kingdom of Children" (a book about child liberation theology)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani (November 7, via) "God, did I love this. An “alienated view of the world”! Not by, like, trying to pay rent or having an insurance claim denied—no, no, it was probably the Foucault you read in 2003."

2. I get knocked down, but I get up again (November 12) "But I’m not sure those writers fully appreciate that they’ve written an accurate summary not just of this one weird individual, but of the overwhelming character of white evangelical discipleship and white evangelical devotion, practice, hermeneutics, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, spirituality, piety, ethics, and soteriology."

This is spot-on.

3. 2024 Ace Community Survey Summary Report (October 20)

4. Why housing shortages cause homelessness (2024) "Her story echoes the widely repeated observation that ‘people don’t become homeless when they run out of money, they become homeless when they run out of relationships’."

5. Scientific study on types of detransitioners (November 16) "I think, the vast vast majority of the time, if someone mistakenly believes they’re gender dysphoric, they will sort it out within a year or two. We need to create norms where this mistake, most of the time, doesn’t have severe negative consequences."

6. Life After Death: A Widow’s Fight for Her IVF Baby (November 17) "At the time, sperm banks and medical institutions in China were banned from providing unmarried women — which Guo technically now was — with services involving assisted reproductive technologies under technical and ethical guidelines introduced in 2003 by the Ministry of Health."

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. How We’re Taking Trump’s Deportation Machine to Court (October 29) "The administration’s agenda is clear: forcing immigrants to endure months or even years of detention under inhumane conditions while their cases make their way through the backlogged immigration system ensures that people will give up and agree to return to their home countries. Even when their cases are likely to succeed, eventually giving them the right to remain lawfully in the U.S., many are unwilling to endure the squalor and uncertainty."

2. Veterans Group Urges States To Pass Protective Policies In Response To Trump Trans Bans (November 14) "Roughly 3,500 newly discharged transgender service members have been forced out of their jobs and stripped of health and housing benefits by the federal government."

3. “I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime (November 13) "Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names."

4. Feds Pepper-Spray 1-Year-Old In Cicero, Use Tear Gas On Little Village Neighbors (November 9)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 17-year-old trans girl’s suicide over NHS wait times was preventable, coroner rules (October 9, via) "Wait times for each clinic vary massively, from just three months in Nottingham, to 41 years in Belfast, and a staggering 224 years in Glasgow."

2. What Would Billy Say? (October 10) and also Slacktivist's comments about it. Franklin Graham has withdrawn two large evangelical organizations (Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an organization which keeps an eye on the leaders of evangelical groups to make sure they're not stealing money or abusing people. Uh... why is Franklin Graham withdrawing from this oversight group? Seems very suspicious. As the Slacktivist put it, "Or maybe you’ve got to ask if there could be any possible explanation for this other than the simplest, most obvious one."

3. 男高音艺术歌曲《我会自己上厕所》转自抖音 (2023) This is extremely funny if you understand Chinese.

Okay I'll explain it: So there's a song for Chinese toddlers called “我会自己上厕所” (I can use the bathroom by myself) featuring such profound content as “上厕所时不能吃东西” (you can't eat while using the bathroom), and apparently it became something of a meme on the Chinese internet because everyone found it hilarious, and people were making their own covers of this song. This video is an opera-style cover of it.

See this is what happens if you have kids. You have to listen to songs about potty training, and find humor in them or else you will just lose your mind.

4. Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 13, 34-minute video) Video about Bari Weiss and her media outlet "The Free Press"- apparently she is one of those people who claims to be too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals. Whenever I've come across writing from people like that, it's confusing to me because they might have some "liberal" opinions on specific issues, but they don't seem to really understand the overall big-picture of why liberals would have those opinions, and how they would connect to other issues too.

5. A ‘Hardcore’ theological crisis (October 15) "She is his child and he is going to try to save her even if Almighty God has already decreed since eternity past that she is predestined for damnation."

6. Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” (October 15, via) "This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured, says Greta Thunberg."

7. Photos: Ceasefire in Gaza brings reunions amid devastation (October 15)

8. Doctors Without Borders permanently closes its emergency center in Haiti's capital (October 16) "'The building has already been hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to the combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for both patients and staff,' said Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF head of mission in Haiti."

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Links related to the antichrist:

(I hope someday some historian finds my blog and says "wow, people back then believed Trump was the antichrist.")

1. There will be No Kings protests on Saturday, October 18~

2. Opinion: Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass (October 14) "Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document, which warns that journalists may lose their press credentials for "soliciting" even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for release. That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable."

Also related: Pentagon reporters have now turned in their badges – but plan to keep reporting (October 15) "Current and former Pentagon correspondents who spoke with the Guardian said that coverage would undoubtedly suffer from a lack of proximity to administration decision-makers – though many are intent on proving that the restrictions won’t stop the work, with some even saying they plan to take a more aggressive tack."

3. Protesters and Members of the Press Challenge First Amendment Violations by Federal Forces at ICE Facility in Broadview, Illinois (October 6) "A new lawsuit filed this morning argues that this wanton violence by the federal government is a blatant attempt to interfere with the most cherished and fundamental rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious belief, and the right to peaceably assemble and express disagreement with the government."

4. Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver (October 12, via) 

5. Gavin Newsom Vetoes Important HRT Stockpiling Bill For Trans Californians, Signs Other Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills (October 14) "Among all of the legislation passed this year, few bills would have offered such tangible protection for transgender people as SB 418—and yet, it’s the one that won’t become law."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Fenway Health Restricts Treatment for Patients Under 19 In Capitulation To Trump (October 15) "This is a fundamental betrayal to the core mission of Fenway and the patients they serve. Trans patients cannot trust this organization has their best interests at heart."

6. ‘We’re saving God’ (October 16) "The creeds would have to be completely rewritten to be compatible with the Trumpian theology of 'We’re saving God.' Think of all the arguments among different branches of Christianity, every doctrinal dispute about the nature of God, the relationship between God and humanity, eschatology, sin, salvation, sacrament, whatever. Every Christian in every era on every side of every one of those disputes would recoil at the blasphemous nonsense of 'We are saving God.'"

Blogaround

1. I've seen a lot of people on the internet talking about this, and I think it's really important: You don't have to burn yourself out constantly being horrified by everything the orange antichrist is doing. It doesn't actually help anyone if you read every news article and feel bad all the time. Figure out a tangible action you can take to help people (for example, donating money to trans people), and do that, instead of trying to keep up with all the news.

Soooo you don't have to read any of these links, if it's not good for your mental health. Go do something nice for a trans person instead.

2. A German Eye On Elon Musk's Hitler Salute (Yes, That's A Hitler Salute) (January 22) "The gesture speaks for itself; it's documented on video."

3. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde confronts Trump in sermon (January 21) "Towards the end of her sermon Budde said, 'I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.'"

Yes! Love this!

But wow the reaction from MAGA land. My goodness. They hear the *actual teachings of Christianity* and they post screeds on social media about how it's extremist "woke" Trump-hating political ideology. These people are gonna be all *surprised pikachu* on that day when Jesus says to them "I never knew you." 

In particular, the orange antichrist called Budde's sermon "nasty", which, uh, what? She wasn't nasty at all. Her remarks were extremely polite, she didn't say anything bad about him at all, she just asked him to have mercy on vulnerable people who are scared- specifically, gay people, trans people, and immigrants. He hears that as an attack on himself. That says a lot about him.

Additional links on this: The Bishop Who Pleaded With Trump: ‘Was Anyone Going to Say Anything?’ and Bishop Mariann Budde tells NPR 'I won't apologize' for sermon addressing Trump

4. I love the Washington Post's new mission statement and so should you (January 16) "We do not speak truth to power; we do not uncover scandals by those put in positions of public trust, we do not have anything there about Facts or Accuracy or Democracy or Information. All of it is sidelined to bring you an almost violently generic mission statement scraped off any one of hundreds of television and movie pitches."

5. Judge blocks Trump’s ‘blatantly unconstitutional’ executive order that aims to end birthright citizenship (January 23) "'Where were the lawyers' when the decision to sign the executive order was made, the judge asked. He said that it 'boggled' his mind that a member of the bar would claim the order was constitutional."

6. Reddit won’t interfere with users revolting against X with subreddit bans (January 23, via) "Since Tuesday, hundreds of subreddits have discussed and/or implemented bans against the site formerly called Twitter, as reported by 404 Media. Dozens of subreddits have already agreed to disallow the sharing of any links to X, with moderators (volunteer Reddit users) agreeing to enforce the bans."

Blogaround

1. What does it mean that AI is “remixing existing work”? (January 13) "What does that even mean?"

2. Zendaya and Tom Holland Are Engaged! (January 6) 

3. With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘RedNote’ (January 13) "As of Monday, Xiaohongshu was the number one most-downloaded app in Apple’s US App Store, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have an official English name."

I wrote this comment about it on Pillowfort:

Lollll I'm in China so I have to weigh in on this. (I'm American, my husband is Chinese.) I haven't used xiaohongshu but my husband has it on his phone and has used it very occasionally.

So last night my husband hands me his phone and shows me how his whole xiaohongshu feed is all Americans- "tiktok refugees." And then I get to work this morning and my Chinese colleagues are talking about "why are there a bunch of foreigners on xiaohongshu all of a sudden?"

I find the whole thing extremely funny!

I've typically seen xiaohongshu described as a Chinese equivalent to Instagram. It's known for having mostly women users, and people use it to post about their lifestyle/ travel/ things like that. (The linked article does a good job describing it.) My husband says it's mainly used by the people who have enough money to travel and who live in the biggest cities in China, so it doesn't show what the "average" Chinese person's life is like.

When we wanted to take our daughter to get pictures taken, we searched for a local photographer on xiaohongshu. It's useful for that because businesses post there to advertise. And one time we took a cruise to Japan, and we were looking for information on what to do in the various Japanese cities we docked at- we searched on xiaohongshu and found posts by other Chinese tourists, showing interesting things you can do in the area near the dock. Really useful and practical, with maps and photos. Xiaohongshu is good for things like that.

And over the past few days that this has been going on, my husband has been showing me a lot of videos of Americans talking about the things they've learned about normal life for Chinese users of xiaohongshu. Americans are finding out that the cost of living is SO MUCH LOWER in China than in the US. Chinese people finding out about frankly dystopian aspects of US society, like school lunch debt, kids in school saying the pledge of allegiance every day, people in the midst of a medical emergency asking everyone to NOT call an ambulance because it would cost thousands of dollars... and so on.

I think this is great. Just normal people talking about their normal lives. To show you what is really going on, which isn't like what you see in the news or the way politicians talk about China. Seeing that the problems we have in the US aren't inevitable- there are other countries which simply don't have those problems. A better world is possible.

In some of the videos from American tiktok users talking about what they learned about China, though, I'm seeing them making statements which very much oversimplify the situation. (Which is not their fault I guess- it's their first time finding out about these things, so obviously they don't understand all the details.) For example, talking about how in China you can buy a home... uh... what... in reality, it's SO EXPENSIVE to buy a home in big cities in China. We're talking about a husband and wife getting their parents on both sides to contribute their life savings, that's how expensive it is, and that's seen as normal. (And there's nonsense gender roles involved in this too- people talk about how a man has to own an apartment or else no woman would agree to marry him, ugh. In practical terms though I think both partners are contributing to the cost- but people always *say* it's a requirement for the man.) 

And also, it's normal for a mortgage to be WAYYY HIGHER than the price of renting an equivalent apartment. I was super confused when I heard this is the case in Shanghai- isn't a mortgage supposed to be lower than renting, because when you rent you're also paying for the landlord to do maintenance if necessary? That's what the typical financial advice in the US says. But in China people view buying a home as an investment. People will buy an apartment and just leave it empty because the money you could make on rent is not really that much in comparison. Personally I feel like it's a bad idea to buy an apartment as an investment, because what if the market then goes down? 

(I mean, the housing market in Shanghai is absurd though- maybe this is not true of smaller cities.)

But I think the American tiktok users were excited about how China doesn't require homeowners to pay property tax every year. And Chinese users were super confused about the concept of property tax. And like, somehow that message mutated into "people in China can buy homes and everything is wonderful."

And the cost of living is much lower in China than in the US, and for someone like me who works as an engineer, that's great- my salary is lower than what I would get in the US, but it's much higher than the average salary for an average person in Shanghai. So because the average salary is so low, I'm not sure how much it really *helps* that the cost of living is low (in absolute terms compared to US dollars). 

But anyway, I think it would be great if these Americans stick around on xiaohongshu and keep learning more about the world.

4. Democrats Rail Against "GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act" (January 16) "What followed was a series of Democratic representatives hammering the same point home with fiery rhetoric. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the notion that the bill was about protecting women and girls, stating, 'Republicans, who have voted consistently against the Violence Against Women Act, who have taken the rights of all women to have control over their own body, who as women are bleeding out in parking lots, now want to pretend today that they care about women… And why? To open up genital inspection on little girls across this country in the name of attacking trans girls. We have two words. Not today.'"

See, THIS is what I want to see. Democrats actually taking a stand for trans people. Normally what I see in news stories in Republicans taking a strong stand that trans people are disgusting sexual predators, and Democrats kinda waffling around like "uh I don't know, maybe it's politically beneficial to throw trans people under the bus?" and "yeah I guess I'm not really supposed to say this but I do feel uncomfortable with my daughters playing sports with biological males." Come on! 

This is a clear moral issue, not something to be embarrassed about. Trans people are just normal people who just want to go to the bathroom like everybody else. For sports, let's be reasonable about it and base it on actual scientific evidence, not just ban trans people entirely. It is DISGUSTING that Republicans are spending so much energy attacking this tiny group of people.

5. 'Concerns About A Stronger-Than-Expected Economy' Is A Real CNN Thing We Just Read (January 12) 

6. Resentment vs. gratitude: from parking spaces to ASL (January 14) "I suppose they can shoehorn this into the generic category of a “my tax dollars are being spent on other people who aren’t me, personally” complaint."

So, some right-wing weirdos think there shouldn't be ASL interpreters on tv during the broadcasts about the fires. I mean... this is so absurd, but I feel like I kind of understand it, because I grew up around Republicans and they often made little comments about how exhausting it is that we constantly have to be "politically correct" about some new thing. (Yeah back then it was called "politically correct" instead of "woke.") The logic goes like this: The way things are now is fine for regular people. And now apparently we have to change it, we're not allowed to say certain things, we have to hear "press 2 for Spanish" on the phone, it's like there's always another group we have to "be inclusive" of, and it's just too much. All these things are meaningless- they're just things that we're told we have to do now, otherwise we're not "politically correct" but there's no actual reason for any of it. Just a bunch of inconveniences to regular people. Enough is enough.

And then I found out, those things that we labelled as "politically-correct nonsense"- those things actually matter for people who are affected by them. They are real people. This isn't just some pointless contest about who can be the most politically correct. 

The argument only makes sense if you think deaf people don't actually benefit from having ASL interpreters on tv. Or if you think that they matter so little compared to "regular people" that they should just have to rely on imperfect closed-captioning, in order to not potentially inconvenience any "regular people" by reminding us of their existence. Once you realize that they are real people and ASL helps them a lot, the whining from these MAGA types comes across as obviously ridiculous. 

And, I mean, when I was a child it was understandable that I bought into that, because my Republican role models were very negative about efforts to "be inclusive", and I had to believe that they had a good reason for that- but if you're an adult and you still can't grasp that people who are different from you are people... I don't know what to tell you. That's a YOU problem.

7. Radon (January 13) "When was the planet under this house built?"

I also liked the Chess Zoo.

8. Flags to be raised for Trump's inauguration, despite half-staff order for Carter's death (January 15) What is this nonsense

9. Immigrant workers are helping investigate labor abuses. Will Trump let them stay? (January 15) "'Employers look at you completely differently when you have a social security number,' he says. 'In every sense you feel safe. You feel comfortable. You are free to go anywhere.'"

This is really interesting! I had never heard about this before. The US government gives legal protections to undocumented immigrants who are helping give evidence about employers breaking the law. This is really clever, because it's a big problem that businesses can get away with mistreating undocumented workers, who feel like they can't report it because they'll be deported. 

And it shows that maybe it's easier to give them legal status than one might think. That's great. I support all immigrants.

10. Trump coverage needs to change and here’s how (December 31) "'You’ve got to stop covering him like he’s just another politician, with a different agenda,' Johnston told me recently. 'He’s a criminal and a con artist. And that has to be central to everything you cover about him.'"

11. Lifeboat Capitalism (January 9) "If the term 'crime against humanity' has any meaning, it must apply to very wealthy people who—knowing that their actions are causing a climate change crisis that will devastate future generations and destroy hundreds of millions of lives—chose not to stop those actions, but instead to undertake a systematic campaign of lies and propaganda in order to continue making themselves money. Is there anything, really, more contemptible than this?"

Blogaround

1. Paul Alexander, forced into an iron lung by polio in 1952, dies at 78 (March 13) "He was eventually recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest-surviving iron lung patient."

2. It Matters That Mainstream Media Missed Katie Britt's Lie (March 11) "Where was the mainstream press on this? Why did it take an independent journalist like Katz digging into the details of this story for it to come to light that the points within were built on misrepresentations, if not outright lies?"

3. Islands of Insight teaches logic puzzles (March 18) "So not only does the game have a massive number of high quality logical puzzles within a single flexible framework, it also teaches players how to get good at solving logic puzzles."

4. AstraZeneca to cap out-of-pocket inhaler costs in US, following rival Boehringer's move (March 19) "Breztri Aerosphere costs $645 in the U.S. but $49 in the UK, according to a letter by Sanders and other lawmakers sent to the four companies earlier this year."

5. Preacher John MacArthur faces backlash after saying MLK was "not a Christian at all" (March 14) What on earth.

Blogaround

1. Dig All Day in the Hot Sun: Prison Labor & the Ethos of Productive Suffering at Camp Green Lake [Meta] (2020) "More broadly, this also positions Camp Green Lake's mission as deliberately individualistic, in opposition to collaboration and teamwork. The hard work of hole digging needs to be undertaken alone in order for prisoners to supposedly 'learn their lesson.' This means that the 'lesson' they're supposed to be learning is explicitly not anything to do with cooperation, coordination, or learning how to get along and work well with others. Otherwise, if these skills/values were compatible with 'building character' as the authorities understand it, then there should have been no reason to object to prisoners working together to dig the same amount of holes." (An analysis of the movie "Holes.")

Also from Coyote (osteophage): The Violence of Fate (or, How To Tell the True Kind of Lie) [Meta] (2022) "Reflecting on this helps to articulate my understanding of the concept of 'fate.' Becoming legible in terms of 'fate' requires highlighting that an outcome is unresponsive to any attempt to change it. It is something that happens to matter what you do, what you choose, or what you want. It is a way of conceptualizing events to say that your will—desire, permission, consent—fundamentally does not matter. In this way, it requires the capacity for violence."

2. ‘Too much to bear.’ The incalculable emotional toll of the Maui wildfires (August 19) "At least 114 people have died in the western Maui wildfires and more than 1,000 people remain missing."

3. This tweet: 

I was talking to my dad about those 1-10 pain scales they use at doctors' offices and how they don't really work and my dad, an engineer, said they should have a standardized needle they stab you with as a benchmark and tell you, "This is 5."

— Abby Denton's favorite Digimon is Koemon (@mizabitha) August 18, 2023

Wow I love the way this guy thinks. Remember when I blogged about the 1-10 pain scale and what it actually means?

4. The Queer Vibes of Guardians of the Galaxy (August 19) 2-hour-15-minute video from Jessie Gender. "I relate to [Nebula] so hard as a trans person, because both of us have had our bodies literally forced to be something that we didn't want them to be."

Also, I love this song from "Guardians of the Galaxy 3": Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 - Dog Days Are Over 

5. A Brand New Puzzle Type - This Is LOVELY (August 12) 31-minute video. Wow this is a cool little puzzle. I didn't understand the rules at first- I thought you were supposed to put a number in every box, like a fillomino (and that wouldn't be possible). No, you don't put any numbers in at all, it's just about dividing the grid up into regions such that the given numbers are in valid places.

6. Meet ‘creation care,’ the evangelical substitute for environmental activism (July 13) "As part of their self-declared role as ambassadors, evangelicals pretend that Jesus is very nicely allowing his most beloved and trusted followers to manage things for him in his absence, like parents allowing small children to help with light housework so they feel involved."

The Slacktivist has also written about how "creation care" is seen as "controversial" in evangelical culture, because it's "liberal" or something:
The Late Great Planet Earth (2017)
Climate change (2005)

When I was an evangelical... typically nobody discussed the question "should we protect the environment?" in a serious way, but there was a lot of mocking of environmentalists- which taught me that Christians aren't supposed to care about the environment, but never gave any reasons why. There was 1 time though, I was at an InterVarsity conference, and we did a bible study about why "creation care" is important. And a lot of us kind of responded like "I always thought Christians shouldn't care about this, but... but yeah, of course we should protect the environment." Like if you actually think about it, there aren't any good arguments to support "let's trash the planet, it doesn't matter" even though we all had been implicitly taught that's what Christians are supposed to believe. (Possible arguments given are: Jesus is going to come back any minute now, so no need to care about the future; the bible says the world was perfect when God created it, and just getting worse and worse since then, and there's nothing we can do to change that; climate change isn't real. None of these arguments really work, though.)

7. Customers wing it, as fried chicken store drums up crowd (August 20) A Popeye's restaurant opened in Shanghai.

8. What put Hurricane Hilary on a collision course with California? (August 20, via) "For at least the last 165 years, these conditions have kept California hurricane-free, experts say."

Blogaround

From link #1, AI-generated image of "studio photo of a playful black cat wearing a turtle costume". "It has also taken the libery of adding a pumpkin to the costume, I see."

1. AI imagines my cat in costumes (October 28) 

2. Rhett sings himself ‘Overboard’ and out of his faith (October 22) It's a country music album about leaving Christianity and becoming non-religious. This is so good.

3. The Ethics of Looking And The “Harmless” Peeping Tom (March 22) [content note: rape culture] It's about how SO MANY MOVIES have men spying on women who are taking their clothes off, and this is presented like it's no big deal and that's just how men are. Yeah, this trope is really NOT COOL, and it's good that Pop Culture Detective made a video to point out how messed-up this is.

4. What we know about the attack on Paul Pelosi (November 1)

5. Gunman kills 2 at a St. Louis high school, officials say (October 24)

6. John Oliver Roasts the U.K.'s "Very Weird" 10 Days of Mourning for Queen Elizabeth (September 20)

7. Atop a Lonely Sichuan Mountain, Grit, Hope, and Survival (October 30) I've posted links about this before- this is about Gan Yu, a power station worker who was stuck on a mountain alone after an earthquake, for 17 days, before he was rescued. This article gives a lot of details about what happened.

8. Do You Believe in Halloween Jesus? (October 31) "I was taught that Jesus was fully human and fully divine—a doctrine that has confounded and confused the greatest philosophical and theological minds for the past two millennia—but in reality, it was divine Jesus who got all the play."

9. WI State Senate candidate Jessica Katzenmeyer: ‘We could be headed to a dark reality’ (November 1) "I am openly transgender. There’s never been a transgender representative here elected to the state legislature in Wisconsin. I would truly be honored to be the first."

10. Why doesn’t the IRS care when churches endorse candidates from the pulpit? (October 31) 

11. What does it mean to be ‘open-minded’ about sex? (November 1) Wow, I am very impressed by this article- this might possibly be the first time I've ever seen an article about sex, written for a mainstream audience (ie not specifically for an asexual audience) which is genuinely inclusive of asexuals. Usually I see articles that are like, describing sex or giving advice about sex in a way that makes no sense to me as an asexual, and then somewhere near the end there's a little disclaimer about "oh also some people are asexual"- like if you know you're asexual, then the writer is saying you shouldn't take their advice, but everyone else should! This is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

But this article, "What does it mean to be ‘open-minded’ about sex?" talks about how the concept of "being open-minded" can be used to pressure people into sexual things they don't want to do. This is certainly a concern for asexuals, but hey, even if you're not asexual, there must be some sexual things you don't want to do, and it's NOT COOL if people are pressuring you to do them in order to be "open-minded" or "sex positive." The article mentions the word "asexual" just 1 time- but it's not as a disclaimer, like "none of this applies to you if you're asexual"; no, instead it's an example of a reason why someone might not want to try all the sex things. Just one example of many. There are many many valid reasons to not want to try all the sex things. ("I don't want to" is a good enough reason all by itself!)

Yes, this is how you should write about sex.

Feminism 101: The Bechdel Test

The 6 Avengers at the Battle of New York. One (Black Widow) is a woman and five are men. This movie doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Image source.

Feminism 101 is a series where I define words related to feminism~

Today's entry: The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a test we can use when we talk about women in movies. It originally appeared in the comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For", by Alison Bechdel. To pass the test, a movie must meet these 3 requirements:

1. There are 2 named female characters
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

Seems like this is a pretty low bar to meet, right? But a surprisingly high proportion of popular movies don't pass. The site bechdeltest.com has a database of 7760 movies, 57.8% of which pass. 7 of 9 2018 Best Picture Oscar nominees pass, and 5 of 9 2017 nominees pass. 4 of 8 Star Wars episodes pass (the original 3 all fail). 9 of 11 Disney princess movies pass (according to this 2013 post).

Not passing the test means that every single line of dialogue (between named characters) is related to men. Wow. And yet that's the case, for maybe half of our movies. And actually, a lot of the ones that pass did so just barely. When applying the Bechdel Test to a movie, it's common to get into little hair-splitting details like "does this character count as a 'named character'", "if their conversation was mostly about a man but there was a little part that wasn't, does that count", "their 'conversation' consisted of only 1 word, are we counting that or not", and so on. (Like look at all this hair-splitting over "Avengers: Infinity War.")

I want to be clear that the Bechdel Test isn't about whether a movie is feminist or not, whether it portrays women in a good way or a sexist way, or anything like that. It's not about that at all. Passing does NOT mean the movie is a good movie or a feminist movie, and failing does not mean the movie is bad. There are lots of movies that have great female characters but fail the Bechdel Test. And it's possible that a movie can pass on a technicality even though it doesn't treat its female characters well. (Listen, if you ignore the "named character" requirement, the song "Baby Got Back" passes the Bechdel Test.) Like, seriously, passing means that there exists at least 1 line of dialogue that's not about men at all. Let's not go around giving congratulations for this. How on earth could a standard so incredibly low be used to reassure us that the movie is not sexist?

The Bechdel Test should not be used as a way to make judgments about individual movies. Instead, it tells us about our culture's entertainment system as a whole. How is it possible that such a huge proportion of movies can fail such a simple test? Why is a movie with 1 "strong female character" such a big deal, people love it and talk about how great it is, how she's a role model for girls- while no one seems to think it's odd that all the other main characters in her movie are men? Why are movies where the whole cast is male seen as normal and popular for all genders, while movies with all women characters are "chick flicks" rather than serious movies, and men aren't supposed to like them?

It's not about whether "Star Wars: A New Hope" is good or bad; it's about the number of female characters overall, in all movies. There are far too few, and often they are just there to support a story about a man. The Bechdel Test is a simple way to quantify this phenomenon on a society-wide scale, but it doesn't tell us anything about if one specific movie is "feminist" or not. 

---------------------------------

You asked and I answered~ In my 2018 Reader Survey, one of the top 5 topics you voted for was "feminism." Hence this post. :)

Dr. Strange's Ways Are Higher Than Our Ways

Dr. Strange. Image source.

[content note: spoilers for “Avengers: Infinity War”]

Ever since the movie “Avengers: Infinity War” came out, fans all over the internet have been asking questions and making theories about it. Much has been made of the fact that Dr. Strange saw millions of hypothetical futures. For example, I saw a video addressing the fact that we are all mad at Peter Quill (Star-Lord) because of that scene where Mantis has Thanos in a trance, everybody is trying to pull the infinity gauntlet off him, and Star-Lord realizes that Thanos killed Gamora, so he starts punching Thanos in the face, breaking him out of the trance and ruining everything. This video said that actually, it’s okay, we shouldn’t be mad at Star-Lord. Because Dr. Strange already knew this would happen, and he didn’t intervene and stop Star-Lord. So actually this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s all okay.

And besides that example, I’ve seen a lot of people asking questions about “why didn’t Dr. Strange do THIS” and “why didn’t Dr. Strange do THAT” and the answer is always “he saw all the hypothetical futures resulting from those actions and they weren’t good.” Whatever Dr. Strange chooses to do, we can’t question it, because he knows things we don’t.

And I say, well that’s AWFULLY CONVENIENT.

In the type of Christianity I used to believe, God always “had a plan.” If something bad happened, we trusted that “God is in control” and that it was all part of the plan. Even if it seemed bad, we had faith that God would “use it for good.” Everything is okay.

God has seen all the possible hypothetical futures. God is all-powerful and involved in every tiny detail of your life, making sure everything goes according to plan. So it’s not possible that anything truly bad could ever happen. Just keep waiting and believing- you’ll see that actually it was a good thing.

There’s no way to disprove this line of thinking. If everything seems bad and you think God can’t possibly have really planned for things to happen this way, well, you’re wrong. God knows things you don’t know. He won’t say a word, he won’t give any explanation- you just have to trust him.

Yes, very convenient.

I saw this theology on display in a tweet from Tim Keller recently:

God always answers your prayers in precisely the way you want them to be answered if you knew everything he knew. Prayer. https://t.co/fmpWsIE9qx pic.twitter.com/GBidAMcvUc

— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) 2018年3月16日

[Tweet from @timkellernyc from 3/16/18 that says "God always answers your prayers in precisely the way you want them to be answered if you knew everything he knew. Prayer."]

Yes, no matter what happens, Tim Keller is SURE that we would all agree that the reality we live in is the ideal version of reality, if only we knew what God knows. If something terrible happens, Tim Keller trusts that it's not actually terrible- in some mysterious way that only God can understand, it's part of God's good plan. If it doesn’t seem like that’s true, well, we just have to trust God. His ways are higher than ours. Reality is the best reality there could be, the problem is just that our minds are too small to *get* that.

Yeah, I’m not a fan.

It’s too easy. Too convenient. This line of thinking can be used to excuse any kind of atrocity. It tells us that we can’t trust our own senses and our own emotions. It’s heartless and callous towards people who are suffering.

So here’s the deal, Dr. Strange. I will give you a chance to prove yourself. I will give you time- one more movie. “Avengers 4” will tell us whether we were right to put our faith in Stephen Strange.

And that’s it. That’s all. One movie. No more chances after that. If we don’t see any evidence in “Avengers 4” that justifies Dr. Strange’s actions in “Infinity War,” then I will tear him apart on the internet. I’m not going to have any tolerance for “just keep waiting for the next movie- surely he really does have a plan!” or “must be that in some mysterious way, it’s actually NOT bad that character XYZ died- after all, Dr. Strange could have prevented it and he chose not to- there must be a reason.” No. None of that. No more faith after that.

… but I’m not actually talking about Marvel.

I don’t actually think we’re going to come out of “Avengers 4” with no evidence to justify what Dr. Strange did. I don’t actually think that fans will be told they’re wrong to criticize Strange because “just keep waiting, he has a plan.” I’m not talking about Marvel, I’m talking about the God I used to believe in. I don’t expect I will actually “tear [Dr. Strange] apart on the internet.” But… well, you know why I write this blog.

For now, I trust Dr. Strange. I’m willing to give him a chance to prove himself. But if he doesn’t prove himself in the next movie, then that’s it. I’m not going to stand for any crap about how I just can’t comprehend his grand plan. He doesn’t get infinite chances. And neither does Jesus.

-------------------------

Related:
Thanos Tested
It Was Beautiful When Star-Lord Rejected the Gospel

And this post from Samantha Field is extremely good:
for Thanos loved the world

Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales (Master Post)

Larry the Cucumber watches "Barbara Manatee." Image source.

In November 2017, I decided to do a rewatch and analysis of all the VeggieTales movies, because they were an important part of my childhood in Christian culture. I've been doing this on Twitter and then using Storify to gather the tweets, and then moving them here to my blog.

Anyway, here are all the episodes I've done so far. This post will be updated as I continue watching more VeggieTales movies.

"Where's God When I'm S-Scared?" (1993)
"God Wants Me To Forgive Them!?!" (1994)
"Are You My Neighbor?" (1995)
"Rack, Shack, & Benny" (1995)
"Dave & the Giant Pickle" (1996)
"The Toy That Saved Christmas" (1996)
"LarryBoy and the Fib From Outer Space" (1997)
"Josh and the Big Wall" (1997)
"Madame Blueberry" (1998)
"LarryBoy and the Rumor Weed" (1999)
"King George and the Ducky" (1999)
"Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen" (2000)
"Lyle the Kindly Viking" (2001)
"Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie" (2002)
"The Star of Christmas" (2002)
"The Wonderful World of Autotainment" (2003)
"The Ballad of Little Joe" (2003)
"An Easter Carol" (2004)
"A Snoodle's Tale" (2004)
"Sumo of the Opera" (2004)
"Duke and the Great Pie War" (2005)
"Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson's Hairbrush" (2005)
"Lord of the Beans" (2005)
"Sheerluck Holmes & The Golden Ruler" (2006)
"LarryBoy and the Bad Apple" (2006)
"Gideon: Tuba Warrior" (2006)
"Moe and the Big Exit" (2007)

And a few posts about the morality lessons in VeggieTales overall:
My Thoughts on VeggieTales Thus Far
From "Virtues Morality" To "Boundaries Morality"

Blogaround

Two pandas. Image source.

1. the complicated misery of #metoo (posted February 5) [content note: description of sexual assault] "It was her job to stop it, and not his job to care."

2. How John Piper’s Church Handles Domestic Violence Will Make You Cringe (posted March 1) "Until evangelical churches like Bethlehem Baptist can rethinking their priorities and start valuing people over marriage, this cycle will repeat, and the hemming and hawing over whether an abuse victim can divorce, or (God forbid) remarry will continue."

3. From Original Sin to Flattering Mirror: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (posted January 14) "A movement that had challenged the very fabric of US politics and society was turned into one that demonstrated how great and expansive the country was—a story of individual bravery, natural evolution, and the long march to 'a more perfect union.'"

4. A frightened child in Chicago and an immigration policy unbecoming of America (posted February 28) "I don’t know what kind of country handcuffs a mother who fears for her life and hauls her young daughter more than 2,000 miles away."

5. Love-struck hero or creepy harasser? Suddenly we’re seeing our favorite rom-coms in a new light. (posted February 27) "This film is rated #MeToo, for a man making three sexual innuendos on a sales conference call, and for a woman laughing them off because she didn’t want to lose the account."

6. Fawkes' Original Owner | Harry Potter Theory (posted March 1)

7. Billy Graham is dead (posted February 22) "So did Billy Graham “reach” his own son? Is Franklin Graham a convert of his father’s gospel?"

And also: I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine "But — and here’s where the paradox comes in — at the same time as all of these pieces rightly assert that Billy Graham personally defined and embodied the meaning and substance of evangelicalism, they also all take pains to explain that white evangelicalism in 21st-century America has very little in common with Billy Graham."

And: It's always the other way around "I’ve read and studied several dozen books by earnest Christian writers earnestly arguing that our political views must derive from our religious or “biblical” convictions, and not the other way around. That is what all of those authors and all of those books purport to do themselves (even as they all “arrive” at different political conclusions, all of which seem suspiciously like the political preferences of the authors)."

8. Concerned Women for America’s Bizarre “Esther Moment” Rhetoric (posted March 6) "If evangelicals are anyone in that story, they’re Haman." Oooooh burn.

9. Stalking for Love (posted February 28) [content note: stalking portrayed as romantic] "There's an undercurrent of coercion running through these scenes, because they set up situations where the woman in question will appear callous or heartless if she rejects the guy again after he's gone through all the trouble of pulling off his elaborate stunt."

Christmas Music Round-Up

Hi everyone! I love Christmas music. I'm that person playing Christmas songs the day after Thanksgiving. ^_^

So here's my annual post of my favorite Christmas songs. Leave a comment with your favorite Christmas/holiday songs too~

"Let There Be Light" Point of Grace



"Joy to the World" Whitney Houston



"Gloria" Michael W. Smith



"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" Casting Crowns



"Happy Xmas [War is Over]" John Lennon



"All I Want For Christmas Is You" Mariah Carey



"Emmanuel" Michael W. Smith



"O Holy Night" Celtic Woman



And my new favorite version of "Mary Did You Know":

🎼 🎤 Mary freaking knew, that her baby boy would one day rule the nations
Mary freaking knew, that her baby boy was Lord of all creation.
Yes she knew! Read Luke 1, you fool, she sang about it then
It helps, if when you're reading, you listen to
the
WOMENNNNNNNN!

— Megan Westra (@mwestramke) 2017年11月27日

Blogaround

Mr. Incredible holding baby Jack Jack in the "Incredibles 2" trailer. Image source.

1. Biggest-Ever Singles' Day Buying Binge Has Left Behind a Record-Setting Pile of Trash (posted November 17) "Singles' Day" is what November 11 is called in China (11/11, see there are four 1's, like, they are single, get it??? Or 双十一 [shuāng shíyī] in Chinese, which literally translates to "double eleven") and it's a day when online retailers have huge sales and people buy tons of stuff. (Like Black Friday, except online, and without "I'm buying Christmas gifts for other people" available as an excuse for spending so much money [because giving Christmas gifts isn't a thing in China].)

Anyway this article is about the "estimated 160,000 tons of packaging waste" produced as a result of all these items being shipped. Let me tell you: It is MIND-BLOWINGLY convenient to buy stuff online in China. It is ABSURDLY convenient and cheap. I live in Shanghai and typically when I order stuff online it arrives within 1 or 2 days, and it's often cheaper than buying stuff at a store. It is also RIDICULOUSLY convenient to order food through an app and have it delivered. I do this EVERY DAY because I don't want to spend a ton of time cooking or going out somewhere to get food.

I cannot emphasize enough how cheap and convenient China's delivery system is- especially in big cities. Tons and tons of stuff packaged up in disposable packaging and delivered to people individually. There's so much of it because it's just so damn convenient and cheap. So yeah, I can definitely see that this would create a huge problem with the amount of waste it produces.

2. The Sorting Hat's BIG Secret | Harry Potter Theory (posted November 16) "I'm sorry but I feel like the logic there is a little flawed. But so is the [Fidelius] charm altogether, a little bit. Like, what are the limitations of this thing? Can you just hide any information inside of someone? Like for example, how to use a doorknob. Could I just, like, hide the knowledge and information about how to do that inside of somebody? And then even though lots of people used to know how to open doors, we'll now all be stuck behind doors. Unless that one person tells everyone."

3. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Rack, Shack, & Benny" Follow along as I livetweet this episode of VeggieTales~

And here's the next one: Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Dave & the Giant Pickle"

4. On public mourning when Evangelical culture kept you in the dark (posted 2016) "When the rest of the culture engages in these displays of public mourning for departed pop stars, I feel like I’m left here mourning the childhood evangelicalism stole from me."

5. Top 10 Hardest to Animate Things in Pixar (posted November 21)

Blogaround

Cat sitting on a couch, with its back toward you. Image source.

1. I'm Tired Of My Queer Identity Being Ignored & Erased On TV (posted June 28) "The TV shows I watched certainly never suggested that someone like me could exist."

2. The virginity fraud (posted May 18) "The absurdity of virgin-testing is illustrated in a study done on 36 pregnant teenagers. When doctors examined their hymens, they could only find clear signs of penetration in 2 out of the 36 girls."

3. All the Ways Christian Education and the Church Have Failed Me (posted May 4) "If God could see me, hear me and read my thoughts, I would give Him fake things to read. If anyone asked me a question, I would give them answers I thought God wanted to hear. I was extra nice to people because I thought God would want me to be nice. He would never know what I actually thought of everyone, what I actually wanted to say or anything else."

4. I Can't Be Your Gay Friend (posted June 27) "And I’ll be honest, you almost won me over with the promise of paying for coffee when we sit down so you can “hear my story.” However, I have some concerns."

5. I Don’t Accommodate Uncontrolled Men (posted June 26) "So I’m going to be that woman. I’m going to stand up and look that man in the eye and tell him that his inability to control himself is not normal, healthy, or God-given, and I have no sympathy for his struggles." Well amen to all of this.

6. I'm Intersex, And It's WAY More Common Than You Think (posted July 2) "If you had surgeries that... you've never felt completely believed that the reasons they gave you were the real reasons. Those are some of the things you can look back at and help you discover if you might be intersex or not."

It Was Beautiful When Star-Lord Rejected the Gospel

Chinese movie poster for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2." Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"]

In "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", Peter Quill, otherwise known as Star-Lord, meets Ego, who claims to be Peter's father. (Peter is played by Chris Pratt.) Ego is a "celestial," which means he is like a god, and created his own planet. He says that Peter also has god-like power and immortality, and together they can create amazing new worlds.

Initially Peter is suspicious of Ego and angry at him for abandoning Peter's mother when she was dying of cancer. But as he tries out his newfound power and listens to Ego describing big dreams that they could accomplish together, he is convinced. Meanwhile, Mantis, an empathic woman who lives with Ego, warns the other Guardians of the Galaxy that Ego is lying and they are all in danger.

And then, just when Peter has decided to join Ego, Ego says, "It broke my heart to put that tumor in your mother's brain."

AND HOLY HELL that's when I realized, this character is God. Specifically, Ego is the God I was taught to believe in, in the evangelical church. The God who causes people he supposedly "loves" to become sick and die.

Immediately, Peter pulls out two guns and shoots Ego, over and over. There is no apologetics discussion. There is no "here's a book you can read about why a good God allows suffering." There is no calm debate about whether God "allows" or "causes" suffering. There's no "everything happens for a reasons." When God kills your mother, you don't give that God a chance to explain himself. It's over. And Peter shoots him again and again and again. (Ego isn't really hurt by being shot though. He regenerates himself pretty quickly.)

And as Ego continues to talk and try to convince Peter again, we find that Ego doesn't actually care about people. He just wants to grow himself bigger and bigger, to take over every planet. I thought of John Piper's ideology, which says everything is about glorifying God. God loves us because it brings glory to God. God created the universe in order to glorify himself. Jesus died because it brings glory to God- and yeah it saves us and all, but that's not the point, the point is glory to God. Ego is a God who focuses on himself, who is interested in other people's lives only to the extent that they bring him amusement. He wants to take over every planet, with complete disregard for the people and aliens who live there.

Furthermore, Ego offers Peter eternal life. The chance to leave everyone else behind- they're all doomed anyway, you don't want to be like them. Become like God and live forever, and stay out of the way while God sends everyone else to hell- for his glory, of course. As Ego and Peter fight each other, Ego warns him that if Ego dies, Peter will lose his god-powers and immortality.

And Peter does the right thing and rejects the gospel.

That was the gospel I was taught in church. Everyone is doomed to hell, and that's so sad but it's right, it's right for God to do that to us. And luckily, God gives us a chance to escape everyone else's fate. We just have to join his side. We get eternal life, and screw everyone else.

They didn't say it in those words, not exactly. Church people talked about God's amazing love and care for each of us individually. And probably a lot of them would disagree with Piper, and say that the primary reason Jesus died was because of love for people. But yes, they did teach that God makes bad things happen on purpose, as part of some big plan. Yes, God gave your mother cancer. And they did teach that we all deserve to go to hell, that God makes the rules and by definition everything he does it good and right, so it's right for him to send everyone to hell. And aren't we lucky that he gives us a chance to escape that fate, we can be special and do amazing things with God, if we just take his side and agree that yes, we all deserve to go to hell.

Star-Lord isn't taking any of this crap. If God killed your mother, having any kind of "loving" "relationship" with that God is completely out of the question- no matter how sad he acts. If God wants to kill all of humanity and save you, the moral thing to do is fight against that God- reject his offer of eternal life. In the movie, it's so obvious that Ego is a "bad guy," but then Christians go to church and worship a God who's just like him.

But if that's who God is, and if that's what the gospel is, don't worship him. Don't thank him for his "mercy." Don't do evangelism, to convince others to join his side. Fight him.

----------------

Related: I Didn't Like the Ocean in "Moana" Because it was Too Much Like God

Good Friday is R-Rated

Scene from a church Easter play. Image source.

[content note: graphic violence, crucifixion]

[also, this has got to be the weirdest spoiler warning I've ever written, but: spoilers for "The Passion of the Christ"]

The movie "The Passion of the Christ" came out in 2004, when I was in high school. I remember reading the gushing reviews from Focus on the Family- they were like, "This movie is really great because it actually is a biblically-correct, Christian movie! Not like all those other times Hollywood tries to make a 'biblical' movie but embellishes the story all wrong, adding all kinds of false teaching. So everyone should go see 'The Passion of the Christ,' and see it on opening weekend so it will make a lot of money, and we'll show this secular society that a lot of people really do want to see good, biblical movies." (Because God forbid the directors and writers have some creativity and play with the story a little, and it strays from "correct" evangelical doctrine.)

So I was super-excited to see it. But then my parents and I read the reviews in the newspaper, that said it was extremely, shockingly violent. (Wikipedia says that one reviewer wrote, "The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.") We started to wonder if maybe I shouldn't see it.

My parents went on opening weekend, and afterward said it wasn't that bad, it was fine for me to see it. So the next weekend I went with my mom and we saw it, and I was like "yeah that wasn't that violent, it was pretty much exactly what I expected."

We chalked it up to Christian persecution. "The media" didn't want people to see such a good, biblical movie, so they made a big huge deal out of the violence, when it really wasn't that bad.

From the time I was a little kid, growing up in church, I saw tons of images of Jesus being tortured. It was so normal. Books, movies, Easter musicals, all showing a man being beaten and tortured to death. Little kids see Jesus beaten, flogged, covered in blood and screaming in pain, and finally nailed to a cross. It feels so normal that Christians don't even realize how disturbing, how graphic, how horrifically violent it is.

There is artwork with Jesus "wearing" the crown of thorns. Holy crap. Long thorns being stabbed into his brain, and that's just a completely normal image to have in your church lobby, people walk by it every day and barely notice. There is so much artwork with Jesus bleeding out incredible, scary amounts of blood.

Furthermore, Christian culture makes a big deal about how it's so important that Jesus' death was so violent and painful. I've heard church people say things like, "Crucifixion was the most painful method of execution ever invented- that's why Jesus was born during the time of the Roman empire, because he needed to have the worst death possible." (Nevermind that he died pretty quickly after being nailed to the cross- the other 2 victims had their legs broken because they hadn't died yet. Seems like maybe they suffered worse than he did.) I've read articles which went on and on about how horribly painful it is to be nailed through the wrist. For some reason, a lot of Christians believe that it's absolutely necessary that Jesus' death be so tortuous and painful.

And there's guilt that comes along with that. Sunday school teachers tell kids that Jesus suffered all this pain for you and because of you. Your sin is so bad; you tortured and killed Jesus. And kids are taught that because Jesus suffered so much for you, you HAVE TO devote your life to him. Guilting them into it. This is spiritual abuse.

Church people seem to think that, if only people KNEW just how much Jesus suffered FOR THEM, then they would definitely become Christians. We wanted our Easter musical to look realistic. One time, a kid in my Sunday school class said, "If we could actually crucify someone, and people could see how bad it was, then they would believe. But probably we can't find anyone willing to be crucified, so, oh well." That's just the opinion of one naive kid, don't worry, none of the church leaders literally believed "it's too bad we can't actually kill the actor in our Easter musical." But it is consistent with the idea that "if only people could really see how much Jesus suffered for them, then they would believe."

So we grow up seeing, over and over, images of incredibly graphic violence, not suitable for children, and we get used to them, desensitized, and then pastors keep trying to come up with innovative new ways to describe just how horrifically painful Jesus' death was- to try to shock us and get us to commit our lives to Jesus even more. It's a pretty messed-up dynamic.

So when I went to see "The Passion of the Christ," it was pretty much exactly what I expected. I expected to see Jesus beaten and flogged, his entire body covered in blood. I expected to see him fall down and scream in pain during the flogging. I expected to see him collapse when they tried to get him to carry his cross- again, totally covered in blood. I expected that he would scream when they pounded nails into his wrists and feet. I expected a huge amount of blood to gush out when the soldier thrust the spear into Jesus' side.

It was the same thing I had seen over and over in books, movies, and church musicals that told the story. The only difference was "The Passion of the Christ" was the most realistic-looking.

Oh, wait. There was one bit I didn't expect. I didn't expect a bird to peck out the eyes of the thief who mocked Jesus. My mom told me to cover my eyes for that part. That was the only thing in the movie that we thought was "too scary." Because none of the other depictions I had seen of Jesus' death included it. (It's not from the bible.)

Christians become desensitized to the violence in the story of Good Friday. We don't even realize how graphic and disturbing it is. Like the time I posted the lyrics "What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus" on facebook, and a non-Christian friend was like "HOLY CRAP what is this?" But Christians talk about being "covered in Jesus' blood", not realizing it sounds like something out of a horror movie.

So what's my point? What should we do differently? I have 4 suggestions:

1. Content notes/ trigger warnings. It's fine to have images, movies, and musicals depicting graphic violence, but you should warn people first. Don't put a picture of Jesus all bloody on the cross somewhere that an unsuspecting passerby will suddenly see it with no warning- that is extremely graphic and it's understandable that people might not want to see it. If you post pictures on social media of Jesus on the cross, or being flogged, or with a crown of thorns, make sure to put a content note or trigger warning on it and post it in such a way that people can choose not to look at it.
2. Let's reconsider how we tell this story to children. Is it really appropriate for kids to see images- even cartoon images- of Jesus covered in blood? Is it appropriate for kids to see an actor in your church play being (fake) nailed to a cross? That is scary and disturbing. I believe it really happened and it's important, but we need to seriously have a talk about how we tell this story, especially to children.
3. The meaning of Jesus' death isn't in the sheer amount of suffering he endured. Within Christianity, there are many different perspectives on the meaning of Jesus' death. I was taught that "the gospel" was penal substitutionary atonement, which means that people deserve to be punished for our sin, but Jesus was punished instead. From this perspective, it makes sense to go on and on about just how bad the pain was for Jesus. It needed to be The Worst Suffering Ever in order to pay for all of humanity's sins. But I no longer believe in penal substitution, and I no longer think we need to focus on just how incredibly violent the crucifixion was in order to *get* the meaning of what Jesus did for us. Other factors like politics and systemic injustice are much more important than the sheer amount of pain. There's no value in trying to shock ourselves with more and more graphic and realistic descriptions of the pain Jesus suffered.
4. Don't guilt people. The idea that "Jesus died because of your sin- you killed Jesus" is spiritual abuse which can do long-term damage to people's emotional and mental health. But in my experience in the evangelical church, this was a completely normal thing to say to children. And pastors and Sunday school teachers would go on and on about how because Jesus suffered so much for you, you owe him your life- you need to devote your life to Jesus or else you are being ungrateful and mean to him. This is extremely coercive and abusive. How about we stop teaching it in church?

The story of Jesus' death is extremely, horrifically graphic and violent. It's easy for Christians not to even notice that because we're so used to seeing extremely graphic images of Jesus' suffering. We need to reconsider how we tell this story.

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Credit goes to Morgan for some of the ideas in this post~ I first heard the idea of "people really need to have content notes if they talk about crucifixion" from them.

Also, funny story: When "The Passion of the Christ" came out, some church people were like "but isn't it a sin to see R-rated movies? so can we see it or not?" lololol as if the movie rating people have the power to decide what is and isn't "sin."