What is your choice?

What is your choice? When professor Leeper was talking about this I was confused. But now I kinda understand. For example if you were working for a company and they had a new ad for you to work on but it had alcohol in it and suggestive scenes would you take it. Would you take that offer up just for the contract and money and popularity. Or go to God and pray and talk it out. And talk to your wife if you are married. All of these are tough choices in life. I know i would never take this offer cause I have seen first hand the effects of alcohol family stuff, and its not right to use women to promote an ad or beverage. I just hate how we use females in so many ads when you dont really need to ad them in. We are over using them just for sex appeal and for publicity. For example the latest go daddy ad. I would tare that ad off the air even though its a good ad you dont need to make it suggestive at all.


Last year in senior year of high school I took a semester class of Literature in Media and society. We mostly analyzed ads and posters, and magazine ads.

And most of all no company owns us and no one owns us. The only person who does own us is Jesus. He owns us with his blood and salvation and death on the cross.

romans 10:9
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Mad Men: Meet Don Draper

Just wanted to talk about my favorite television show pretty much ever, the wonderful series on AMC 'Mad Men". This show has everything that I love style, relationships, 1960's setting, and a very complex story line to keep track of with all the characters. I started watching Mad Men about a year ago on a boring summer day when it was a million degrees outside it seemed, so I turned my netflix account on and started watching season 1, I always have heard that it was well done. I was so hooked on it from the very beginning, the first seen of the show you see Don Draper smoking that cigarette, and just looking like a badass business man would in the 60's. Don is my favorite character in the whole series, there are just so many good stories lines, and a very interesting one with him. So I do recommend this show if you haven't ever seen it.


Austin

A Most Audacious Claim

 

 

     I am going to make a claim that is so brazen, so audacious, that by the time you are done reading this you will either think me brilliant or a batty, egotistical lunatic. What is this claim, you ask? Well, the claim is this: in one sentence I can summarize not only Professor Leeper's critiques of the church, but also the problems of the modern church in general. Now, to clarify, when I say "summarize", I mean "summarize". No different than a summary of a book, I will not be able delve into each and every little nuance. But I do think that I can summarize the problems as a whole. Before I do so, I think that this topic is relevant to DMA simply because it is a part of life, and life affects our stories. Also, it is part of being a Christian, whether it be Christian artist, businessman, etc.

     Here is the sentence summary: "The problem with the church is that Christians expect non-Christians to act like Christians." Now you may say, "But God expects non-Christians to act like Christians." In all my readings of the Bible I have yet to find a passage that supports that statement. God wants all people to be and act like Christians, but He does not expect them to. The key word in the summary is expect. God does not expect them to act in a Christian manner. It breaks His heart when they don't, but that does not change the fact that it does not surprise Him. Let us compare that with the church's view on the subject, and the problems it causes.

     Modern Christians take a brazen and foolish look at the non-Christians around us. They do not take the view that non-Christians are lost souls who are looking for love and meaning, and, by virtue of that, God. Rather, Christians think that because they happen to be Christian, others should act like Christians too, whether the others are Christian or not. To be perfectly blunt, this is about as logical as expecting a car to act and quack like a duck when it is near water. Yet this is what the church expects. The church has somehow forgotten that we are missionaries in a lost world. Rather, it has taken up the view that we will somehow convince a non-Christian world to abide by our Christian principles. This is a lost cause from the get-go. There will be such a beautiful world, one day, but it will not come about until our Lord and Saviour returns. Until then, we must realize that we live in a fallen world, and come to terms with that, as the Apostles did. They did not expect the heathen to act like Christians, but they did expect Christians to do so. That is why Christians are given laws to live by, and that is also why the Bible provides for a way to throw people out of the church if they do not follow these laws. They desired that the non-Christinas would come to Christ, but they did not expect them to act like Christians until they (hopefully) became Christians.  

      I will end by saying that I fully respect, support, and appreciate those who truly work to bring about a better world. There efforts are not in vain. We would do well to support and act like them. I do not think that Christians should just sit on the sidelines while things fall apart. There is nothing wrong with being against pornography, unnecessarily R-rated movies, drugs, etc. But you should not be surprised and vindictive when you see others doing these things. This will simply cause you to get into arguments that will only decrease your chance of fixing an already bad enough problem (there are countless examples of the moder church showing this).Remember, if you help the broken people in the broken institution, you might just have a chance to help fix the broken institution.

Amelie

I love foreign films. They're so impressive to me in a way. It's so interesting to see how different cultures experience life over all, which is reflected best in films, I think. In films the person chooses what and how they want to depict whatever their depicting, and in Amelie the director chose to depict his country in such a wonderful way.
It's funny as an American viewer to see the interactions, the dialogue, all of it foreign, and yet understandable. It's really quite amazing when you consider the fact that Amelie is a foreign film, so you would think that it would be difficult for American viewers to understand it. Quite the contrary, actually. Although some parts were slightly confusing, the film's main theme were understood completely. They are understood because they are universal. That's part of what makes a good film a good film.
I adore the French's deep felt emotions. France has such a beautiful way of expressing art and expressing life.
Over all I'm very happy with Amelie. Although it is not perfect, it is defiantly a film worth watching.

Open To Interpretation: Good Or Bad?

75% of television shows and motion pictures have endings that tend to be pretty self-explanitory. You can easily understand that the good guy won, the nerd got the girl, and the villain did in fact die. However some shows and movies end leaving endings sorta unexplained and the characters fates are unkown.

For example: In the Robin Williams movie The World According To Garp, the audience isn't told whether he lived after being shot or not. In Pink Floyd's The Wall, the fate of Pink is not explained after his "wall" has been broken down. In The Sopranos we don't have a clue what happens to Tony and his family.

Now you might think that this is alright but really is the idea of not knowing if someone dead or not really a good thing. People tend to get really invested in some specific characters. Is leaving the audience very disoriented very concerned a good idea?

Lets get off of death for a second and get to what movie I want to talk about. In Chris Wedge's short film Bunny it appears that the Bunny goes to Heaven at the end though some don't want to take the video at face value. To Chris Wedge that what he interepreted the ending of the film. She fell asleep in a chair, had a dream that she saw the bright light and in fact she did die during her sleep

Now not every ending has to be happy, but its still better to know whatever the outcome is. I'm glad that I found out what Chris Wedge meant.

The Help

This weekend I watched a film called "The Help" If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. "An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis." This is the summary that IMDB gave for the movie. I feel that there is so much more that can be expanded on this. From what I understand, there is much more in the book than there is in the movie. Which occurs a lot with films based off books. Throughout the whole film, you can feel the emotions running through by the way it's portrayed. The suffering that these maids' went though and how the white families treated them. There are only a few families that treat the maids as equals, one particular person is Skeeter, who is played by Emma Stone, who feels for these maids, and doesn't like the way they are treated.  This inspires her to write a book on the maid's point of view and how they feel about life pretty much. If you want to see what they go though, I would just go right to watching it. With the book Skeeter writes, she uses non realistic names of the maids and it goes through the stories they all had. The book then becomes popular and it becomes a big part of the civil rights movement. Reflecting on the movie, I just can't believe how we rested african-americans. I've seen a lot of movies about civil rights movements and it just shocks me every time I watch them how anyone could treat another person like they did. 

Is Art Necessary for the Christian?

In the reading is Art Necessary for the Christian? there is some interesting points and questions raised. To answer the question is art necessary for Christians is very simple. The answer is yes. Art can aide Christians in worship. Art in the form of music is very important to Christians. For example, every Sunday Christians from all over the world gather together and sing songs of praise and worship. There are thousands of Christian music radio stations that people listen to every day. Art also makes Christians question themselves. It makes their beliefs and faith stronger overall. Art can remind Christians of heaven. There are many different types of art that show heaven. It reminds us what we get to look forward to someday. Saying all of this it just shows how important art is to Christians. I even believe that art might be more important to us, then none Christians. The people that believe in the creator best show Art about the creator. The reading also talks about how the modern world is loosing its vision of beauty and that maybe the church can bring it back through art.