Are art and violence connected?

This summer’s tragic shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Madison, Wis., raise a question that often comes up with such events: the relationship of art and violence.

The July 19 shooting by James E. Holmes in Aurora happened in a cineplex at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. 

The shooting  on Aug. 5 at a Sikh temple in Madison killed six people and wounded three others. The shooter, Wade M. Page, had performed in notorious white power bands, such as Youngland, Intimidation One, End Apathy and Definite Hate.

Did the movie or the music contribute to the killings? Or do they reflect the violence in our culture? Or are the relationship of art to violence different in the two incidents?

In a July 26 New York Times article, “Don’t Blame the Movie, but Don’t Ignore It Either,” Stephen Marche claims the answers aren’t so simple.

He writes that while we have largely passed the point where we ask whether art causes such disasters, a new cliché has taken hold “that insists on an absolute separation between violent art and real violence.”

He claims that real violence and violent art have been connected historically. “Some of the most violent scenes in American history have emerged from theatrical spaces,” he writes.

One example was the Astor Place riot in 1849, which started in competing performances of “Macbeth,” one by the Englishman William Charles Macready and the other by the American Edwin Forrest. “The theater in that case brought to the surface underlying tensions that were rampant in New York at the time,” he writes, “between immigrants and nativists, between the lower classes and the police. More than 20 people died in the ensuing struggle.”

Further, he notes that John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln during the play “Our American Cousin.” Booth was an actor and was imitating Brutus from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

Holmes allegedly said, “I am the Joker” before opening fire, and an employee at the jail where he was arraigned told a reporter, “He thinks he’s acting in a movie.”

This does not show that the Batman movie caused the shooting, but it does point to the power of art to affect individuals prone to violence.

In an Aug. 8 New York Times article, “The Sound of Hate,” Robert Futrell and Pete Simi write about “hidden spaces of hate” where Neo-Nazis, who often straddle the worlds of white power and mainstream society, thrive.

One of the most important of these hidden spaces is the white power music scene. “Neo-Nazis are particularly adept at incorporating music into just about every aspect of the movement,” Futrell and Simi write, “having grasped the medium’s capacity to bring adherents together into shared experiences and sustain communities anchored in Aryan ideology.”

This music scene drew Page to the movement. While the music conveyed anger, hatred and outrage toward racial enemies, it also created “a collective bond that strengthens members’ commitment to the cause,” they write.

Isn’t this what churches do? We use music as well as sermons and prayers in our worship to help bind us together as followers of Jesus Christ.

The obvious difference is that our hymns (we hope) do not promote hatred and violence but love and peace.

Art has power we should not ignore, but in itself it does not produce violence. That requires an already fertile field.

The consequences of separation

When I made my list of the best films of 2011 (see my Jan. 20 blog), I hadn't seen A Separation, which recently won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Now that I have, I would place it in the top three. It is outstanding.

It opens with a married couple arguing in front of the camera. Simin wants to live abroad to provide better opportunities for their only daughter, Termeh, who is 11. Nader, on the other hand, wants to stay in Iran and take care of his father, who suffers from Alzheimers. Simin, however, is determined to get a divorce and leave the country with her daughter.
Termeh chooses to live with her father. Her strategy, we learn later, is that as long as she is with her father, her mother will not leave the country, because she doesn't want to leave her daughter. So while they are living separately, they are not divorced.
 Asghar Farhadi, who wrote and directed the film, introduces us to an array of characters that capture our interest. Nader hires Razieh to clean his apartment and care for his father while he is at work and Termeh is at school. He doesn't know that Razieh is pregnant and working without her husband's permission or that her husband is out of work, in debt and unstable.
Events soon unfold, and a major confrontation takes Nader, Rezieh and her husband before a local magistrate (or whatever the Iranian equivalent is). Nader lies to avoid going to prison, and Termeh confronts him on this.
Mix in devotion to the Quaran and some cultural practices regarding debt, and the various actions of these characters lead to a mess that might have been avoided with truthtelling from the beginning by all concerned. Or, and perhaps this is one of the film's lessons, the mess might have been avoided if there had been no separation between Simin and Nader.
The film wisely refuses to take sides or present simple solutions. In fact, at the end we're left in limbo, uncertain what will happen. Instead it presents the messes we make in our fumbling of relationships. And it shows how our pride and inability to compromise or put ourselves in others' shoes can lead to destructive consequences. 
Another possible lesson from this film concerns the universality of art. When he accepted his Oscar for this film, Farhadi made the point that this film is not about the politics of Iran and the West but about human relationships. This is true and worth paying attention to. Films are one medium for helping us learn about other cultures and recognizing our common humanity in their stories and how they intersect with our own.
A Separation is a film worth seeing and pondering and discussing. 

Welcoming Jesus

You shall love the alien as yourself.--Leviticus 19:34
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.--Matthew 25:35

The other night I watched the 2011 film A Better Life, which had come up on my Netflix queue. The previous night, watching the Academy Awards telecast, I saw a clip from this film showing Demián Bichir, who was nominated for Best Actor. After seeing the film, I decided he deserved his nomination.

 
He plays Carlos Galindo, a gardener in East L.A. who struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while trying to give his son the opportunities he never had. Early on, the film feels topical, but soon it gets more specific and tells the story of this man who tries to live a moral life in the midst of hardship and trying circumstances that feel like rotten luck.
He borrows money from his sister to buy a truck so that he can have his own gardening business and make some money in order to get him and his son into a better situation. But another immigrant that he hires steals his truck and sells it in order to send money to relatives back in Mexico. Carlos enlists the help of his son to find this man, and when they do, the son can't understand why his father isn't angrier or more vengeful toward the man who stole his truck.
The film helps viewers get into the skin of an immigrant who lives in constant fear of being caught and removed from his son, who is legal because he was born in the United States. This describes the situation of thousands of people in our country. We also see that immigrants are not a homogeneous group. Neither are Hispanics. Although Carlos shares a language and culture with many other Hispanics in L.A., he feels out of place with many of them as well. 
What makes the film better than most is that while it gives us a glimpse of this "issue," it mainly tells the moving story of a father and son caught in the grip of larger forces and doing their best to get buy. That helps make this specific story a universal one as well.
At church the previous day, last Sunday, I spoke with Jesus, who was visiting with his wife and two children. They'd been there a few weeks earlier as well. He and his son, Alejandro, helped us set up tables and chairs for our twice-monthly potluck after worship. Jesus told me a bit of his story, his going to Michigan from Mexico five years ago, then moving to Wichita, Kan., to find work, then bringing his family here. When I said, "I'm glad you're here," he smiled. It's not the message he hears much in our culture. There seems to be a lot of vitriol expressed toward immigrants, and too much of it comes from people who call themselves Christians.
I'm not claiming it's a simple issue. There are many complexities. But the Bible verses quoted above represent a thread in Scripture that ties strongly to the Golden Rule: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). 
The argument in Leviticus is that you love aliens (that word sounds strange, as if they're from Mars) because you were once aliens. In Matthew 25, Jesus identifies with the stranger, saying we welcome him when we welcome a stranger.
Yesterday I had lunch with Caleb Lazaro, a young pastor from Colorado Springs who is scholar-in-residence at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., for six months. I'd heard him at our church back in January, where he talked about his own church. Most of the 45 or so in his church are undocumented, and he says the main issue he and others address with them is their anxiety. They often feel shame, he said. And their kids are often raised without a sense of home, which leads some to join gangs. Caleb said there has been no reform in citizenship laws since 1965. There needs to be a redefinition of citizenship, he said, so that people who've been living like citizens (paying taxes, contributing to the economy) for, say, five years, should be recognized as citizens.
In a letter in a recent New Yorker (Feb. 27), Katherine Fennelly notes that "immigration prosecutions now make up nearly half of federal felony prosecutions." NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) brought a freer flow of goods and capital, she writes, but not an increase in visas for blue-collar workers. "Over 20,000 immigrants now languish in federal prison for no crime other than entering the United States without a valid visa."
A Better Life tells a story that helps us see in a clearer way the experience of many undocumented workers. It doesn't explore why people are leaving other countries and coming to the United States at such risk. A documentary that does that is Dying to Live: A Migrant's Journey,which is available from Mennonite Central Committee (www.mcc.org). It's a 35-minute film and shows the desperate straits that drive people to leave their families to try to find work here. I recommend it.
Immigration is a huge issue, but it involves real people. As people seeking to follow Jesus, we need to summon the courage and the decency to welcome people some call aliens. In doing so, we may be welcoming the Lord we claim to follow.