The Audacity of Certainty

Since I was pretty young, I've had a real affinity for Jewish religion and culture. One of my very first friends from preschool on up is Jewish (now living in Israel, actually), and since then I've had the privilege of participating in various Jewish traditions with her and her family. From Chanukah to Passover to Rosh Hashanah to Shabbat dinner with her Bubby and Zaideh, those times had a huge impact on me, and I enjoyed every minute. On top of that exposure, I went to an Episcopalian school whose amazing religion program made ample room for learning about both Judaism and Islam. There weren't any outspoken Muslims in my school while I was there, but the Jews in my class (my friend JK included) actively bolstered the curriculum with input about their knowledge and experiences. Additionally, my parents (mom especially) were the kind of Christians who embraced Jesus as a Jew, never failing to remind me that the Last Supper was a Seder, and fully acknowledged the overlap between the two religions. I never understood how any Christian could hate (anyone, especially) Jews.

Back in high school and early college, I was thinking somewhat seriously about converting to Judaism. My mom wasn't very happy about it, not at all because of any feelings about the religion itself (see above), but because doing so would full-on negate everything raising me (pretty hardcore) Christian was all about: at the very core, either you believe the Savior's come already, or you don't. For me, it's never been that simple. Forget all of that hogwash about who killed whom; it really means nothing to me, and it makes no sense to hold an entire people accountable for something that supposedly would already have been planned for by an omniscient God-figure, right? Among many other things. But I guess at this point, I have to concede that my attraction is a lot more cultural than religious. I personally have no problem making a sort of land bridge of logic between the two religions in my mind, but the actual particulars and holes waiting to be poked in my own convictions is a lot harder articulated than believed, not to mention I don't even have a hard and fast religious take on anything. I have no answers. And maybe that's what's attractive to me about it after all: (not to go totally overboard with this, but I am a cinephile and a Coen Bros fan...) in A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers attempt to sum up the faith this way:

Larry Gopnik: I don't want it to just go away! I want an answer!
Rabbi Nachtner: Sure! We all want the answer! But Hashem doesn't owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn't owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way.
Larry Gopnik: Why does he make us feel the questions if he's not gonna give us any answers?
Rabbi Nachtner: He hasn't told me.

Perhaps this is why the Catholic funeral I attended just a few days after discussing this with SR was so disturbing to me. Even in talking things out with her then, I noted one thing I hate about organized religion: "I just wish religious people would stop the whole right/wrong thing, though," I said. "They put stakes on your soul which doesn't seem fair. But to some people, that's the whole point." While questioning everything (without necessarily finding all the answers, while at the same time placing meaning on things we do know) is a core part of who I strive to be and something I see in Judaism, Catholicism struck me as the exact opposite.

I'd heard about Catholic guilt, but I hadn't really been in the same room with it during my last and only Mass experience about 7 years ago, Christmas. This time, the air was ripe with it. I don't want to get into details about the heart-wrenching service, but I was angered by the opportunities that were taken by the Church to further their agenda. Mrs. L. had lived in New York for over 20 years, so the staff at the church didn't know her. The priest and his helpers (whom we met at the wake the night before) were just so impersonal, reading from binders without looking up, and calling her a "woman of God." I didn't know her, and I don't want to take anything from her, but they didn't know anything about her, how she lived her life, or if she'd even been to Mass in the last 10 years. They proceeded to talk about how those who are saved will be consoled, phrasing it as an ultimatum, a trade of a soul for relief from grief. The service felt so routinized and cold, and I couldn't relate sitting and standing periodically to consoling my friends.

Maybe a Jewish funeral feels the same way, but it was striking how much my feelings on religion in general had swung the opposite way in a matter of three days. Part of what I'd liked so much about my Jewish experiences growing up was their strong associations with family. I see it in the traditions, I see it in my memories, I see it in my friends. In such a crucial time for someone and something to lean on, I didn't see Catholicism doing any of that. Instead, it just felt like they co-opted the situation for the propagation of their own ideas. It's the very sentiment that's pushed me away from the protestant upbringing in which I was raised. So many of my friends are atheist or agnostic, and over the years I've gradually kept my own beliefs to myself. In reality, I don't think it will ever be an option for me to believe that there is no God, but I respect others' desire to do so. In keeping to myself, I've had a growing feeling that religion and spirituality is only what you know and feel it to be, and I don't spend much time trying to explain myself anymore. Coupled with my University of Chicago education, the only thing I'm sure of is that I don't know anything. The most impressive nature to me is one of questioning and humility, and I want that in my faith too. To barter souls for peace of mind assumes one holds the key, that they know, that they are confident and sure, that they are done searching. I don't think I can stand for that.

Snowballs

Do you ever have those experiences in which you have an idea you attempt to fill out in your head, but then a series of experiences causes the idea to grow into, not one, fleshed out idea, but several related ideas?

In high school, MCS and I would preface many of our latest thoughts and discoveries with a quick rundown of the train of thought that led to the epiphany. Here's mine: first I was fleshing out a post centered around these articles and my personal experiences and reactions to them as a black female, but then I started relating those thoughts to the book I'm currently reading, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. After that, I was talking to KAC about the book as well as what another meaning sellout could be nowadays, especially since sometimes the most visible black people are those making a "bad name" for us and perpetuating terrible stereotypes that even our friends are guilty of believing we are only an exception to, as opposed to members of a heterogeneous race with many different types of people (see: "Kids 'Make it Rain' on Mom"). And then it all came back home with a stressful situation at work that I won't go into. All of this in a matter of about 2 weeks.

I don't even know where to go from here, especially since the work situation continues to stress me out and make me want to cry (as I did yesterday, alone in my office).

I can only conclude this: Race is a very complicated issue that has not yet gone away. I wonder, though, how much will things have changed by the time our generation are the ones running the world? How much of current attitudes (in multiracial communities) reflect the tension between the older generations -- so close to the Civil Rights Movement and its aftermath -- and the younger? I am pretty confident that while our generation is not by any means completely "post-racial," the playing field has and will continue to change along those lines. (That is not to say, however, that something bigger, like huge class-related problems, is on the horizon.) The question is, what effect have all of those multiracial TGIF shows and textbooks had on the growing adults of America? How much will be changed once we rule the world?

Talkin' Film and Droppin' Names

First off, RIP Dennis Hopper. Huge fan. Personal favorites, most to least: Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Cool Hand Luke, Blue Velvet.

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I had the great opportunity to meet and learn from Haskell Wexler on both Thursday and Friday of this past week. On Thursday he visited The University of Chicago Film Studies Center's screening of his film, Medium Cool. Friday I was invited to a small Master Class where we screened and critiqued student work.

Medium Cool was fantastic. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical at first, and didn't really know how everything was going to fit together, but by the time I got into the rhythm of it, I was definitely enjoying myself. There are so many questions it asks, so many themes it explores. My favorites were the objective and amoral position of the cameraman (you might watch a terrible scene unfold, but do you do anything to help? no); fiction vs. reality (Wexler had written a fiction film that anticipated serious things happening at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, but he hadn't expected anything close to the violence and tragedy that he actually ended up catching on film); and the parallels setup quite subtly at the beginning and end of the film (car crashes, violence, freedom). After the screening, I found the man himself a lot more rambling and deaf than I'd anticipated, but he was still great.

Interestingly, he didn't seem to enjoy talking about the craft itself. He was more like, it is what it is: someone asked him if he has any certain things he does to achieve such stunning photography, and he replied, "no. It's just cinematography." I was telling DP about this after the fact, and it struck me that there are so many tips and rules that are thrown out there by our teachers, but it doesn't seem that anyone wants to listen. Not to simplify the craft, but stuff like good lighting and composition, the Rule of Thirds, zooming in to focus on the subject, leaving the camera running (capturing as much as possible, as opposed to just trying to get the shot you want, especially in documentary filmmaking), sifting through to find the gem of a shot in the editing room, they're all important, and they can make for some beautiful shots. I think his answer was so apt. There's nothing you can really do but do it well, you know?

The Master Class was awesome, and it really made me miss class. I miss sitting in a room with smart people who think critically, trading thoughts and debating consequences. It was really fun. He was very honest with his criticisms and doled out his accolades subtly. Again, though, he was very matter-of-fact about the whole business, and sometimes it was as if was going between questioning why he even needed to be there and just taking part of the discussion like just another quiet student in one of Judy's classes.

It also made me miss Film in general. One reason I was drawn to the subject was because of its superior balance of theory and practice. I could never be one of those boring schmucks who talks about film in a purely theoretical sense, but it also didn't sit right with me to just go to film school and learn the craft without tapping into the rich history and the more abstract and academic potential of the medium. I've rolled my eyes in the presence of both camps. But the academic aspects mesh really well with the nostalgia I feel sometimes when I think about what drew me into cinema and media studies - film. There's so much there on both sides of the emulsion: a careful and historical practice that takes some serious skill on one side, and the consequences of capturing reality and the history of the ontological image (<3 Bazin) on the other. Nowadays, though, none of that really carries over into the cheaper, more convenient, and DIY video medium. I use it, and I know it, but I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy everything about base, emulsion, halide crystals, mirrors, lights, and everything captured on it.

So what to do when you're just born at the wrong time? Film's expensive and slowly dying. My American Cinematographer magazines splash the latest digital hotness on its pages. I like to think too much about what I'm putting out there to actually go to film school for the craft. Freelance is all about video, where my heart just isn't. Meanwhile film theory is full of ridiculous people who abhor touching cameras. This transitional period in the world of film and video is like coming of age in the town in The Last Picture Show, where the town is dying just as you're old enough to enjoy it, but you can't bring yourself to ever leave.