Anyway, I’m debating what to do about that…

Week One (intro)
5/22-5/28
525 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 1827-2104, 1-7

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 1-28

Martin Buber
On The Bible
p. 1-13

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 3-38

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 3-38, 41-91

James P. Sanders
Torah And Canon
p. vii-53

Week Two (Genesis)
5/29-6/4
621 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 8-101

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 29-60

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 43-61

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 95-155

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
The Beginning Of Desire
p. xi-381

Week Three (Exodus, ch. 1-20)
6/5-6/11
550 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 102-152

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 61-72

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 62-71

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 156-178

Michael Walzer
Exodus And Revolution
p. ix-149

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
The Particulars Of Rapture
p. 1-287

Week Four (Exodus, ch. 21-40; Leviticus)
6/12-6/18
625 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 152-202, 203-280

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 73-84

Mary Douglas
Leviticus As Literature
p. 1-251

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
The Particulars Of Rapture
p. 288-498

Week Five (Numbers; Deuteronomy)
6/26-7/2
570 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 281-355, 356-450

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 85-94

Mary Douglas
In The Wilderness
p. 15-247

Bernard Levinson
Deuteronomy And The Hermeneutics Of Legal Innovation
p. 3-157

Week Six (Nevi’im: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings)
7/24-7/30
713 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 451-779

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 95-128, 137-148

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 72-83, 108-124

Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Prophets
p. xiii-237

James P. Sanders
Torah And Canon
p. 54-110

Week Seven (Nevi’im: Isaiah)
7/31-8/6
634 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 780-916

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 161-172, 199-208

Martin Buber
On The Bible
p. 160-165

Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Prophets
p. 238-625

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 213-275

Week Eight (Nevi’im: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, The Twelve)
8/7-8/13
520 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 917-1274

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 173-198, 149-160

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 276-416

Week Nine (Kethuvim: Psalms, Proverbs, Song Of Songs, Lamentations)
8/14-8/20
553 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 1275-1498, 1564-1577, 1587-1602

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 219-230, 257-266

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 84-107

John Morgan
Between Text & Community
p. 1-147

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 419-483

James P. Sanders
Torah And Canon
p. 111-141

Week Ten
(Kethuvim: Job, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles)
8/21-8/27
449 pages

Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler (eds)
The Jewish Study Bible
p. 1499-1562, 1578-1586, 1603-1825

Marc Zvi Brettler
How To Read The Jewish Bible
p. 129-36, 209-18, 231-56, 267-78

Martin Buber
On The Bible
p. 160-165, 211-216

J. David Pleins
Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible
p. 484-535

Week Eleven (intro, Mark)
9/4-9/10
616 pages

Harold W. Attridge (ed)
Harper-Collins Study Bible
p. xiii-xxv, xxxix-lxvi, 1722-1758

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 141-149

Wes Howard-Brook, Sharon Ringe (eds)
The New Testament
p. 1-15

Ched Myers
Binding The Strong Man
p. xvii-472

Week Twelve (Matthew)
9/11-9/17
635 pages

Harold W. Attridge (ed)
Harper-Collins Study Bible
p. 1665-1721

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 150-168

Warren Carter
Matthew And The Margins
p. xvii-554

Week Thirteen (Luke, Acts)
9/18-9/24
686 pages

Harold W. Attridge (ed)
Harper-Collins Study Bible
p. 1759-1907

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 179-186

Justo Gonzalez
Acts
p. 1-280

Sharon H. Ringe
Luke
p. 1-290

Week Fourteen (Pauline epistles)
9/25-10/1
443 pages

Harold W. Attridge (ed)
Harper-Collins Study Bible
p. 1909-2071, 2083-2085

Neil Elliott
Liberating Paul
p. ix-230

Wes Howard-Brook, Sharon Ringe (eds)
The New Testament
p. 148-187

Week Fifteen (John)
10/2-10/8
539 pages

Harold W. Attridge (ed)
Harper-Collins Study Bible
p. 1814-1854

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 169-178

Wes Howard-Brook
Becoming Children Of God
p. xiii-482

Week Sixteen (Johannine epistles, Revelation)
10/9-10/15
709 pages

Harold W. Attridge (ed)
Harper-Collins Study Bible
p. 2072-2082, 2086-2114

John Buehrens
Understanding The Bible
p. 187-196

Wes Howard-Brook , Anthony Gwyther
Unveiling Empire
p. xv-277

David Rensberger
The Epistles Of John
p. 1-127

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza
The Book Of Revelation
p. v-236

Now, I don’t think that the Bible addresses everything worth addressing, or that it’s a complete document that fully addresses every part of existence. But I do think that every book in it is included because a bunch of people thought that that book addresses some important things. I want to commit myself to reckoning with those things – not taking the easy way out of being bored or disinterested (which are often just psychological cover for avoiding that which is most difficult or challenging).

How To Approach?

How to construct the syllabus… The point of my doing this was to begin to craft a cornerstone of my currently-gestating radically-inclusive, justice-centered, and spiritually-alive ministry. So, I wanted texts that might have some relevance to inclusivity, justice, and spirituality. And I wanted them to be unabashedly in favor of those things. I think that objectivity tends, more often than not, to be a toxic mimic of “fair and balanced”. So, instead, I wanted to head straight for texts that might be useful to me in my not-at-all-pretending-to-be-objective ministry.

Since I fancy myself more suited to autodidacticism than academia, I put a good deal of time and effort into a syllabus that would seem to suit my purposes. I’ll sketch out the process below, in case it might inspire or instruct anyone else. One quick disclaimer: I’ve attempted to reconstruct the process in a linear format, but in reality it was anything but: a little taste here, a little wander there, a lot of ironing out and web searches in my free time.

First Steps

First, I started with the basic structure that I thought would be most helpful and the books that I knew that I wanted to include. The structure that seemed most immediately helpful was one based around the individual books of the Bible. Since this would be an introductory course, I wanted to start my (probably life-long) studies of the Bible with a look at the differing voices involved. Once I’ve laid a foundation of understanding the basics of the complementary and differing pieces of the canon(s), I hope to do more reading that jumps between them and ties them together.

First among the books that I chose was Binding The Strong Man: A Political Reading Of Mark’s Story Of Jesus by Ched Myers. From what I know of his work and his reputation, he seemed very well-suited to the project. One of the things that particularly appealed to me about this book was that it had a particular perspective that it was coming from – which was indicated in the title itself. Rather than a boring title like Mark: A Something Something Gospel, it lead with an evocative invocation from the text: binding the strong man. Unlike the broadness (and uncoincidental blandness) of a textbook, I wanted texts that took a particular stance and argued for it. My interest, after all, is not academic – I want to learn to use these texts in my ministry. And, to use them, I’ll need to have a particular perspective that I’m working from. It doesn’t make much sense to me to attempt some kind of fake objectivity from the outset – particularly if I have no plans to use the knowledge in such a fashion. (Which is not to say that I wish to be uncritical. On the contrary: I feel so confident in my ability – in my absolute proclivity – to be critical of the reading that I’m unconcerned about jumping into more storified analyses of scripture.)

In the anniversary introduction to his book, Myers mentioned a few other people who have done similar work, such as Warren Carter, Wes Howard-Brook, and Neil Elliott. All of these men, as it turns out, have a publisher in common: Orbis Books, a Catholic publishing house that also (for bonus points) publishes Dorothy Day books. I looked for more New Testament books from Orbis that focused on particular books of the Bible and found an anthology of essays called The New Testament: Introducing The Way Of Discipleship, edited by Wes Howard-Brook and Sharon H. Ringe, which I decided to use as a sourcebook for further exploration of authors and publishers.

Backtracking To The Hebrew Bible

As for the Hebrew Bible, I decided that I really wanted to learn it from a Jewish perspective; reading it from a Christian perspective seemed too anachronistic to me. I wanted to get a sense of the context in which Jesus lived, from what might be a more similar perspective to his own Jewish one. (The Rabbinic Judaism of today is certainly different from the Temple-oriented Judaism from Biblical times – but, still, I guessed that there was more continuity within Judaism than between it and Christianity.)

[All of which is not to say that Christian writings on the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") are necessarily anachronistic - I suspect that a great many (if not most) are not. I'm very excited to read folks like Walter Brueggemann, for instance. But I'd rather wait until I think that I've got a fuller picture of both the Tanakh and the Christian New Testament (in other words: until this particular first-pass project is complete) before venturing into books such as his. That's just the direction in which I feel drawn - not a judgment on the right way to do it.]

I specifically looked for Jewish publishers to see what was out there and, unfortunately, didn’t find much that seemed to fit quite what I wanted to do with the project. One author that I did find that seemed really interesting was Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, who wrote a book on Genesis and one on Exodus that looked really fascinating. She incorporated insights from psychology (for which I have a penchant) and midrashic interpretation (bringing in the terribly-important Oral Torah to complement the Written Torah), which I thought would be particularly valuable.

A Second Pass

Having already found texts for Genesis, Exodus, and Mark, I tried to fill in the Gospels with some folks from Ched Myers’ circle. For Matthew, I went with Matthew And The Margins: A Socio-Political And Religious Reading by Warren Carter. For John, I went with Becoming Children Of God: John’s Gospel And Radical Discipleship by Wes Howard-Brook. Luke was a little bit more difficult. I wanted a book that came from a particular perspective, like the other two – but the only one I found was published back in the seventies and was supposedly a little outdated (by the innovative scholarship of Myers and others). So, I went with the book on Luke by the co-editor of the above-noted anthology. Not my ideal: it was a boring title and a typical, basic book of commentary, but I didn’t find anything that looked more appealing. And, besides, her essay in the New Testament volume indicated that she had a similar perspective to what I was looking for.

The other three books of the Torah took a bit longer. I came across a book on Deuteronomy that looked interesting (by looking up the authors of the introductory essays in The Jewish Study Bible) and included it. Then, while reading some of the commentary about Leviticus in Everett Fox’s The Five Books Of Moses, I came across an intriguing reference to the work of Mary Douglas, a Catholic anthropologist who wrote a book on Leviticus and one on Numbers – and, boom! I had one volume for each book of the Torah.

Filling In The Blanks

Now, if I was going to read a separate volume about every book in the Bible, the project would take forever. So, instead, I decided to focus most closely on the hearts of the Jewish and Christian lectionary years: the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and go through the rest a little more quickly. Using the divisions that are already in circulation, I decided to group most of the other books under the Prophets, Writings, and Pauline Epistles. I’ve been excited about Abraham Heschel’s The Prophets for awhile, and, so, assigned myself that to cover that section (although it doesn’t cover the first few, narrative books – but I knew that I’d also be reading other, supporting texts that would cover that to some degree). Neil Elliott’s Liberating Paul: The Justice Of God & The Politics Of The Apostle was already on my list, since it was once published by Orbis, Myers had name-dropped him, and he was the one who wrote the essay about Paul in the anthology mentioned above. That left the Writings. There aren’t that many books written about them as a whole – so my options were few – and so I decided on Morgan’s Between Text And Community that directly addressed the issues of canon (which seemed relevant since the Writings are so diverse) and sought a basis for Jewish-Christian dialogue in the latest books of the Hebrew Bible.

That left a few books which group less easily: Acts, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation. I ended up selecting three books to cover them. Since there was an Orbis book about each of them, Acts and Revelation were fairly easy. And, for the Johannine Epistles, I picked one of the two commentaries penned by David Rensberger (one commentary for Westminster John Knox and the other for Fortress-Augsburg – both of which seem in-line with the direction I’m going [the former of which also published the commentary by Ringe on "Luke" that I'm using]).

Other Texts

I also wanted to include at least a few books that might tie everything together, and so added the essays at the end of The Jewish Study Bible, Marc Zvi Brettler’s How To Read The Jewish Bible (a very introductory text that I thought might be helpful), John Buehrens’ Understanding The Bible (also a very introductory text that I thought might be helpful, considering the particular “location” from which I’m approaching the text), J. David Pleins’ Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible (which my girlfriend spoke convincingly of), James P. Sanders’ Torah And Canon (since this whole project deals only with those books in the Protestant Christian canon, the issue of canon needed to be directly and substantively addressed, I thought), Michael Walzer’s Exodus And Revolution (an extra book on Exodus, just because it’s short and deals entirely with how the text has been applied in real-life political circumstances), some essays by Martin Buber (since I And Thou is such an important book for me, I thought that I should see what Buber had to say about the Bible), an essay by Richard Horsley and a couple by Katherine Grieb from the The New Testament (to provide some archaeological discussion of the setting of the New Testament from an anti-imperialist standpoint, and then directly discuss the Pauline Epistles that were likely not written by Paul), and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza’s book of essays on Revelation (which a coworker spoke convincingly of). And, as I was writing this, a friend recommended a Marvin Sweeney book that I’m going to try to incorporate a few essays from.

Epilogue

So, then, that’s all the books (at this point). How to order them? Well, I counted pages and put them in order of the texts, ironing out the different secondary-text groupings (Brettler would group the books in one way and Buehrens in another, for instance) as best I could. Then I tried to overlay it onto my own schedule, trying to figure out the most viable way of going through it all. I’ll list the entire syllabus in my next post.

Most practically: I need to have at least some understanding of the Bible in order to be a minister (both as a matter of credentialing and as a matter of practical application). All of the Bible courses on offer at my school happen to be of two (similar) strains, neither of which seem suited to that purpose for me. The first strain is that of transmuting culturally-transmitted Bible knowledge into something to be engaged with more critically and with a certain degree of scholastic rigor. The second strain is that of filling out culturally-transmitted Bible knowledge into something to be engaged with with more granularity and depth. However, I was raised without much Bible knowledge being transmitted to me – so I have a different access point. I want to get to that critical engagement, scholastic rigor, granularity, depth, and so forth – but first I need to establish some kind of substitute for the cultural transmission that I’m lacking. Toward that end, I’ve put a good deal of time and energy into crafting a syllabus for myself that I hope will do that. Before discussing the structure of it, though, I should dip into some of the other, less-directly-practical-for-my-specific-purposes reasons that I’m doing this.

In John Buehrens’ slim volume Understanding The Bible: An Introduction For Skeptics, Seekers, And Religious Liberals, he spends his first chapter (“Reasons: Why Bother With The Bible?”) describing those reasons. I find that most of his reasons apply well to where I’m coming from as a skeptic/seeker/religious liberal. Briefly, then, here are bolded summary points with some of my (non-bolded) commentary following them – with direct quotes thrown in where it seems best:

*The Bible is so foundational to Western civilization that any attempt at cultural fluency must include its study. I’ve never been one to really believe that the classics (be they literature or philosophy or sacred text or whatever else) can function as prerequisites. I think that this might have been the case prior to the invention of the printing press, but the sheer volume of texts in circulation since then (and, so, the breadth of “the conversation”) seems to me to make that claim more tenuous. However, the degree to which the Bible is directly referenced and used in the course of day-to-day life in the U.S. is simply unparalleled by any other “classic” – and, hence, I think that a good argument can be made that (if any) the Bible can still be considered a prerequisite. This flows nicely into his second point:

*The Bible is in such broad use in contemporary U.S. society that we “simply cede [ou]r power to opponents when [we] leave interpretation of our religious heritage, or the meaning of our nation, or authentic ‘family values,’ to the reactionaries, the chauvinists, and the bigots.” It has never been a good strategy to allow the mean people to dictate the terms of debate. That was true in middle school, when simply wearing different clothes wouldn’t substantively shift the bullying away – and it is true in adult circles, when leaving the Bible to only the most literalist interpreters merely solidifies their power.

*There are vitally important, powerful things that the Bible is about that we must lift up. “Understood properly, [the Bible] is also a remarkably honest look at the true religious spirit itself being taken captive, even crucified, by hierarchies of church and state, and at the perennial need to resurrect and renew a true discipleship of equals.” I’m suspicious of the perspective that something so key to the work of people like Martin Luther King, Jr. can be lacking for power and good. I want discover what’s there beyond “what those fundamentalists say that it says and means” – I want to play a part in reclaiming the “spiritual truth that has managed to endure through the ages.”

*Rejecting the Bible because others are misusing it doesn’t address the problem of its misuse; it just results in more harmful side effects. Just as making drugs illegal doesn’t actually get rid of drugs – it just drives them underground, resulting in rising likelihoods of accidental overdoses; a vast, violent, underworld; and the criminalization of a large portion of the population – so, too, does the rejection of the Bible result in “it end[ing] up only in the hands and on the lips of others – often reactionary others – where it can and will be used against you.”

*Being skeptical of the Bible points to a serious social-psychological problem: the tendency to be more skeptical of others than ourselves. In order to really engage with sacred texts, I think that there needs to be a certain amount of openness and vulnerability. “Is it possible that we have turned away from eternally important questions because we are uncomfortable with the idea that the Eternal, the God of history, actually might require something from us? Is that why we have replaced that question with the more comfortable questions of a consumerist age: ‘What do I require?’” Similarly: I understand that not everyone is in a place where they’re interested in engaging the Bible, in particular, with such openness and vulnerability. But engaging with openness and vulnerability is vital, and it is often easier to encounter the exotic at a comfortable distance than something from one’s own culture and heritage.

*Thinking for oneself does not involve turning away from cultural touchstones – however oppressively they’ve been used – but, rather, engaging with them. That others find such use and power in the Bible seems to indicate its importance, just as the fact that a book is banned somewhere would seem to indicate its potency, as well.

*“You […] can’t be spiritually mature or wise by simply rejecting the Bible as oppressive. The oppressive uses of the Bible are real, but unless you learn to understand that there are other readings possible, the Bible will, indeed, simply continue to be a source of oppression for you, and not a source of inspiration, liberation, creation, and even exultation as you understand it anew for yourself, at a deeper and less literal level.” In my own search for deeper spirituality, I’m suspicious of the desire within me to look first to other cultures’ religions and sacred texts. It just seems so obviously a manifestation of a desire to repress something within myself. And I’d much rather head toward reclamation than repression.

*It’s important “to direct [ your skepticism] where it really matters” – rather than to such questions as whether either of the creation stories in Genesis is factually true (in the dawn-of-the-third-millenium-since-the-life-of-Jesus-of-Nazareth sense “factual truth”). The kind of “humanism” that seeks “only to tear apart or dismiss the religious experience of others in the name of my supposed ‘scientific’ superiority or cultural modernity” is the kind that “partakes of the cultural, pseudo-scientific superiority proclaimed by the Nazis.”

*What the Bible does is “challenge[...] every attempt to worship the part in place of the whole. That’s its very definition of idolatry. Approached as a humanist, it still challenges the human tendency to idolatries of self, of self-interest, of blood, soil, nation, or race.” The material ecological destruction in the world today, as well as the spiritual and emotional destructiveness of the “marketplace”, testify to the importance of attuning oneself to the whole over the part. I imagine that it would be helpful to turn toward already-established, vital cultural narratives that point in the other direction.

For these and other reasons, I am undertaking the development of a basic understanding of the Bible.

For those that want to follow along, here’s my reading list for this week:

John Buehrens, Understanding The Bible, p. 3-38
Martin Buber, On The Bible, p. 1-13
Marc Zvi Brettler, How To Read The Jewish Bible, p. 1-28
J. David Pleins, Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible, p. 3-38
Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, p. 1827-2104
James P. Sanders, Torah And Canon, p. vii-53
Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, p. 1-7
J. David Pleins, Social Visions Of The Hebrew Bible, p. 41-91

Looking forward to it!

So, having just seen the film, I enjoyed reading this piece on the MPAA. I posted the following in the comments section:

I agree with Noel’s larger point that the frustration aimed at the MPAA is generally misplaced. It’s not exactly the MPAA hurting box office, etc. with NC-17s, it’s the theater chains. And the standards that the MPAA uses are those of mainstream US culture (a point that I thought Dick’s film did a great job of bringing up and a terrible job of addressing).

But an important aspect is missing from both Noel’s and Scott’s arguments: the cultural feedback loop. Mainstream US cultural mores didn’t come in a box as-is. They perpetuate themselves, to some degree.

And, so, Noel: the extent to which we are babies is due in part to the extent to which we are treated as such. When an anonymous, unaccountable body classifies films by letter, it shifts the relationship from a purely cyclical one. That body becomes the leader, and pays attention to the culture as a whole (the followers) only insofar as it needs to to protect itself. And so the active, oppressive reactionaries gain the most influence.

And, so, Scott: the extent to which smoking seems cool to us is due in part to the extent to which we are exposed to situations in which it seems cool. That a society should declare “Hands off!” when it comes to such a clearly dangerous habit seems a bit disconcerting to me.

UPDATE: Further down, Derek expands on some of what I was saying:

I’m jumping into this discussion pretty late, and I have to admit that I haven’t read all of the comments posted by other readers, but from what I have read it seems like there is a point about the MPAA that people have hovered around but not explicitly mentioned: the dual nature of its role as both a descriptive force and a normative one in the film industry. On the one hand, the MPAA posits itself as descriptive, which implies that it does nothing more than simply inform the public about the content of a film and allow potential audience members the opportunity to make a rational decision based on that information. On the other hand, the MPAA attempts to act in a normative manner, banning anyone under certain ages for certain ratings, which in turn affects advertising, screenings, and later sales.

A lot of the disagreements between Noel and Scott seem (at least to me) to be based on the fact that Noel argues along the lines of a descriptive MPAA and Scott along the lines of a normative MPAA – including the 90-95% accuracy claims (regardless of its statistical merit, as Noel pointed out in his response to comments) and the failure of the NC-17 rating.

I went through this (probably fairly pedantic) setup because I think it might help not only to set up one of the more fundamental divides in the debate, but also to add to the point regarding the problem that people have with the values espoused by the the MPAA rating system. To argue that the MPAA merely reflects the values of the broader society and that the subsequent results of its assigned ratings in terms of a film’s success are in no way the result of its actions is to argue that the MPAA’s role is purely descriptive. However, the MPAA does not simply describe the reality of social values in the USA. It REINFORCES and helps shape such values. Newspapers, theaters, and rental stores may not be involved in some grand corporate conspiracy as one reader suggested, but neither do they base their decisions solely on angry letters from parents. The MPAA ratings have a very real impact on issues of advertisement, screenings, rentals, and sales of a given film. Consequently, if an individual or group hopes to challenge and even change those ideas that are supposedly held by mainstream Americans (such as homophobia, fear of sex in general, veneration of violence, etc.), they have a more difficult time doing so through film because of the reification of those very same ideas in the standards governing the MPAA and the influence their ratings have.

In my mind, that’s a powerful reason to abolish the current system.

forehead-slap-induction

those sweet ossifers

I’m-Sure-This-Is-Not-At-All-Related Dept.

a pretty good broad analysis of global economic strategy (although the payoff could be better)

oh, NPR

interesting article about the new SDS

interesting look at how climate change is being addressed at the G8

another example of how systems can be relied upon to uphold certain ideals and values and not others