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Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Avatar and the Myth of Originality

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ng on your perspective and imagination: a tale of American colonization, a cheap rip-off of Pocahantas or Russian science fiction, an allegory for the Chinese industrialization process. Writing in the New York Times last week, Dave Itzkoff outlined the many ways in which James Cameron’s Avatar has been praised and/or condemned, the ways viewers have interpreted the movie as an allegory for this or that, the way it might even serve as a “Rorschach…

Pop-Eye: Meat The Wrestler

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ronofsky’s tale is disinvested of tacky teardrops falling from the sky and cheap-trick resurrections. The reason reviewers passed over the religious is not simply, I suspect, because of religious illiteracy, but because of the received wisdom of late-modern culture that continues to dwell on a body-soul dualism, with the soul in power, the body a mere marionette. Several of the religious review sites described Randy’s body in metaphorical terms: R…

The Birth of Un-Cool: How Disgusted Liberals Became Neoconservatives

By Michelle Goldberg

…e staid mores of their class by celebrating NASCAR, megachurches, guns and cheap American beer. They congratulated themselves for being more in touch with everyday people than their snobby peers. And then something changed, and suddenly they realized they had little in common with people like Joe the Plumber and the acolytes of Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. Social conservatives, especially the religious right, have become a bit of an embarrassmen…

Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…he Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan vehicle Joe Versus the Volcano addresses many of the American Catholic Church’s gravest concerns of the last 50 years; most obviously the abuse scandals, but also the shrinking priesthood, the changing role of women, the civil rights movement, and the cross-pollination of secular and religious cultures. Set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 (taken from Shanley’s own childhood experience), the school’s principal, Sister Aloys…

This is Not a Religion Column: Christian Candidate Quiz Bowl

By Jeff Sharlet

…story of right-wing defeat and liberalism ascendant doesn’t unravel like a cheap suit on a blue dog Dem voting more money for the war. “Fundamentalism” is bigger than Ted Haggard, bigger than Jerry Falwell, bigger than the president, who, if defectors from his regime are to be believed, has lost all but a sliver of his religion. It’s bigger and older and more enduring than the political coalition currently called the “Christian Right,” soon to be…

Body Language: Michael Jackson and the Illogic of White Superiority

By Anthony B. Pinn

…of internalized racism made manifest through wealth; plastic surgery isn’t cheap! Toni Morrison pointed out the ‘wish’ of sameness—the desire on the part of some African Americans to see reflected in themselves and through themselves the ‘ideal’ depicted in US popular culture. Morrison referenced blue eyes, and Michael Jackson’s body came to mirror this desire to be different, to change the flesh to fit the dominant ideal. There is certainly somet…

70th National Prayer Breakfast Made ‘Cosmetic’ Changes, But Biden Delivered the Same Old Tone-Deaf ‘Unity’ Message

By Chrissy Stroop

…individual. Biden went on to hit many notes that are alienating to secular Americans and much of the Democratic base, sacralizing American political life and calling for “unity” and “comity” with those who want to deprive the marginalized of their rights. Gushing over the NPB itself, Biden stated that he was “honored to continue the tradition started by President Eisenhower.” From there, he launched into what amounts to a Christian sermon peppered…

First Things First: Sexual Equality Just Is

By Kate Blanchard

…thorities. The purpose of his article is to address a horrible trend: that Americans are having less sex than they used to. Now, if Regnerus were making an openly Christian argument, he might have a hard time explaining why this is a bad thing. Although every evangelical pastor in America today must have a beautiful wife to put on ostentatious display (preferably with a brood of beautiful babies), sexual pleasure was until recently viewed by most…

Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse

By Peter Laarman

…he lethal nuclear fission process might be seen as but another mainstay of American prosperity, powering our homes and factories with new supplies of electric power that would be “too cheap to meter.” In 1957 Walt Disney even released a movie titled Our Friend, the Atom. Looking back now, it’s quite easy to see why the happy talk from Ike and Walt failed to quell our nuclear nightmares. In somewhat the same way that climate change denialism functi…

The Moral Bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Asceticism

By Vlad Chituc

…is unethical, I wonder how he imagines those clothes in China are made so cheaply, and whether an industrial factory qualifies as a gauntlet. If Rhinehart washed his clothes himself, however, he would need a washing machine, which takes energy, and he couldn’t say he lived on a battery anymore. A commenter on Rhinehart’s post aptly called this brand of asceticism “consumption laundering”; because Rinehart doesn’t do the consumption himself, it do…