Year: 2015

IC2S Playlist Update 08/07/2015

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First up this week on the playlist is “She is Beautiful” by Andrew W.K. from his debut album, I Get Wet. This has to be one of the most badass love songs ever. Between the really fast tempo, the heavy sound and Andrew W.K.’s harsh vocals, it just creates a freight train of awesome barreling straight towards your pleasure centers. I have warmed up a bit towards Andrew W.K. since I last posted a song of his (although, for whatever baffling reason, he is apparently a program host on The Blaze!?!). I rather like I Get Wet, but I was really disappointed to see that Andrew W.K. ditched the harsh vocals in his later albums. This basically killed any interest I might have had in those albums, but at least there’s still some good stuff on his first 2. I dunno, I don’t really have any more to say about it than that, “She is Beautiful” is just a pretty straightforward, but awesome, song.

Stepping into something a little darker, we have “American Made” by Living Sacrifice from their album, Ghost Thief. I have been aware of Living Sacrifice for quite some time (one of their former guitarists played for P.O.D. from 2003-2006), but I never actually listened to anything of theirs until this past year. “American Made” has been on regular rotation on Weathered Steel for the past year, and it hasn’t become tired in all that time for me. The song doesn’t exactly break any new ground (very heavy sound, anti-consumerist message, etc), but it is very technically proficient and sounds great, even if you can’t tell what the hell the vocalist is saying about 95% of the time. I’m going to have to start digging into Living Sacrifice’s back catalogue to see just how good they can get, but if “American Made” is any indication, then I’ll probably be in for an enjoyable time.

Translating Ideology

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So the other day I had the horrifying idea of checking out what The Blaze thought about the gay marriage ruling a couple weeks ago in the United States. This was partially due to some unresolved thoughts that cropped up in my previous encounter with The Blaze, when one of their contributors claimed (extremely poorly) that Christians were obligated to support the death penalty. At the time, I had never head of The Blaze, but I was left under the impression from their “About Us” page that they were supposed to be non-partisan news source which was only concerned with “the truth”… which just so happens to be ultra-conservative American traditions. Uh oh.

Well, even with that in mind, my search ended up being even worse than I had expected. Page after page of outright hatred and doomsaying over something that isn’t going to affect the vast majority of the readership in the slightest… it’s like they don’t even realize that most other Western nations have allowed gay marriage for quite some time now without society breaking down into anarchy, or religious freedoms being adversely affected.

However, the worst article of them all, titled “Gay Marriage Still Doesn’t Exist, No Matter What the Supreme Court Says” by Matt Walsh, just left me absolutely dumbfounded. Here’s the link if you’re interested, but I’m not going to break it down point by point like I normally would, because that would give it too much credit. After reading this, I actually felt quite troubled for a long time, trying to process what I had read. Normally I would put out an impassioned rebuttal, refuting the idiocy on display. However, this time it was different. There is no nuance to this rant. It is either extreme ignorance at best, or pure, unadulterated, blind hatred. As a result, I can’t really address the content of the message, but rather the frameworks which make something this vile and pants-on-head-stupid possible.

First of all, this message is endorsed and given a voice on a freaking news site. Sure, the disclaimer at the bottom of the article claims that “TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author”, but c’mon – an article does not make its way onto a news source without getting approved through the editorial process, which effectively endorses the content whether they want to make it official or not. When they post up the article I’m going to write up about how 90% of Christians say they enjoyed gay sex when they tried it, then maybe I’ll start giving that disclaimer the benefit of the doubt.

Also, The Blaze hardly counts as “journalism”, but it has an audience and the pretenses of being a news source, so it gives this article way more legitimacy than it would have on the shit-slinging blog it would normally appear on. As of the time of this writing, Walsh’s article has gotten almost 100,000 shares, which is incredibly distressing. I imagine that a good portion of those are probably people making fun of the authour, but those shares are still exposing more people to this awful perspective and drawing more people to The Blaze.

Just as intended.

The most important factor in the creation of Walsh’s article though is ideology. This is actually why I can’t respond to the article directly, and why you either didn’t need me to break it down for you to understand why it was insane, or have no idea what I’m going on about right now. Walsh is so far ingrained into his own ideological framework (which seems to consist of ultra-conservatism, evangelicalism and/or fundamentalism, American nationalism and apparently the divine inspiration of the US constitution, among other things), that it becomes basically impossible to reason with him unless you share the same ideology. Obviously this can be applied to any ideology, including my own, but I would at least like to think that my own is based in rationality and logic, making it accessible to the majority of society to understand, and I try to hold my beliefs in some humility (rather than harping them as the concrete “TRUTH” as Walsh and The Blaze do).

With websites like The Blaze and Fox News catering to, and spreading, this sort of extreme ideology, the existence of articles such as this leaves me rather disturbed. I like to believe that my arguments can at least get through to someone, whether they agree with them or not (and that is ultimately up to them to decide of course). However, when faced with someone whose ideology is so different from my own that our respective thought processes and realities are basically night and day, I don’t know how to even respond. It’s like we speak entirely different languages, or aren’t even the same species.

For the sake of this argument, let’s say that this is what Matt Walsh looks like.

You probably encounter this conundrum all the time. For example, look at the conservative church’s ideology regarding Israel. They believe that the modern nation of Israel is God’s chosen people still and give them their support no matter the circumstances (which they generally don’t look into anyway). Furthermore, they view all Arabic states as Israel’s enemies, who mindlessly are drawn into attempting to destroy the nation in a battle of good vs evil. However, this ideological framework is incredibly dehumanizing towards the innocent Palestinians who get caught up in the conflict. It ignores all the flagrant human rights violations that Israel is committing (and in fact, our unwavering support for Israel empowers their ability to get away with it). It also makes it seem like conflict is inevitable, part of a conflict that has been going on endlessly for a thousand years, but this completely misses the modern roots of the conflict which stretch back to the era of colonialism and can be potentially defused in time. The extremely bitter sides of the abortion “debate” also can be boiled down into a conflict of ideology – one side views it as a human being at conception, others as a fetus.

As long as we stubbornly hold onto our ideologies and refuse to even consider anyone else’s perspectives, we’re going to continue to run into situations like these where we can’t engage in any meaningful dialogue. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this issue: it takes time for people to change, so the only real solutions are to work on them with compassion, or ignore them. I’m hoping that, through education, we can someday see an end to hateful ideologies, such as those held by Matt Walsh and The Blaze… until then though, we’re going to have to bust out Google translate and try to get through to those whose thought processes are so radically divergent from our own.

IC2S Playlist Update 01/07/2015

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I’m just going to get right into it this week, so without further adieu, our first song is “A Man for All Seasons” by Robbie Williams from the Johnny English soundtrack. I have a bit of a weird relationship with Johnny English. For one thing, I think it was one of the very first movies I saw as a kid which left me feeling profoundly disappointed. On the other hand, it’s enjoyable enough that feels like it has all of the makings of a comedy classic, if not for the overly-silly third act and a non-sense plot. In any case though, the film’s theme song, “A Man for All Seasons”, nails the spy spoof tone with a very deadpan delivery, hyping up the hero to be a generic super-spy (which he obviously isn’t). It’s a pretty great song in its own right; it makes me want to sing along whenever I hear it.

Secondly, we have “Memories” by XXI (formerly A Feast for Crows), which was recently released as a single. I mentioned this song a few weeks ago when XXI announced their rebranding, but I hadn’t realized it was on Spotify yet until this past week (for whatever reason, a lot of Christian bands either don’t tend to utilize Spotify, they take longer to utilize it, or have huge chunks of their catalogue completely missing from it). As I said before, this song rocks and is a very fitting tribute to former lead vocalist Eric Gentry, who died in a construction accident. The song just plain bleeds emotion, and nails everything it needs to: as a eulogy, as a signifier of the band’s future and just as a really epic metal tune. I can’t wait for some news from XXI about their coming album, but I’m confident that “Memories” is going to be a fitting preview of what is to come.

Quick Fix: Don’t Panic

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I can be pretty negative around here at times. Cynicism seems to be the rule of the day in politics (“the nation is losing its founding values!!!”), religion (“Armageddon is coming!”), science (climate change) and media (the obsession with apocalypse scenarios). However, I think it’s worth remembering that, in spite of all the cynicism and worry that people spout, we might be living in the best, safest and most exciting period of human history up until now.

Think about it for just a moment. Your odds of dying a violent death are miniscule, and most of us can be expected to live happy and healthy into our 70s. Infant mortality is exceedingly rare. We understand the concept of cleanliness and have eradicated a number of formerly lethal diseases. Worldwide hunger has dropped (although we still have work to do if we want to eradicate it). We have realized that our actions affect the environment and are working to minimize that impact. The world is truly connected. We’re able to empathize with those unlike us. Minorities are finally getting equal rights. Education is on a sharp incline. We understand the workings of the universe and our place in it far better. When you step back and look at all these things, it makes our cynicism about the world going to hell in a hand basket look rather foolish, doesn’t it?

So what’s with all the negativity these days if things are actually as good as they’ve ever been? I think you can actually liken it to the rise and fall of grunge and nu-metal in the 90s and early 2000s. There’s a pretty compelling theory that these musical genres became popular in the post-Soviet era because they offered an outlet for angst when America and other Western nations were at a point of prosperity and felt practically invincible. However, when 9/11 happened and completely shook our society, suddenly we found ourselves with real problems that made our former angst outlets look childish. While I’m not saying that all negativity is unfounded, I do believe that we have a negativity bias and a deep need to complain, even when our complaints are relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

So what is leading to mass negativity? Why are people claiming that the gay marriage ruling in the States is going to bring about God’s wrath? Why are people afraid of ISIS launching organized terror attacks on the West? I think we can break down the sources of negativity into five categories:

  1. Fear-mongering means that more people will pay attention. Human beings have a natural inclination towards negativity. News media, book sellers, apocalyptic preachers, etc all want the widest, easiest, most sustainable audience, so they’ll shill the negative to keep them hooked for a fear of life or death.
  2. Things are changing at a hither-to-unheard-of rate, and people fear change more than anything, and will cling to it irrationally. Just think of the hell that used to happen whenever Facebook would institute a much-needed change, and all the people who whined about bringing back the “old Facebook”, even though they had had the exact same complaints about that Facebook when it replaced the previous version.
  3. The powerful are afraid of losing their power, and so they’ll do whatever they can to incite the masses in order to hang onto their power for as long as possible.
  4. On a related note, the largest, loudest, most powerful demographic – the Baby Boomer generation – are now getting increasingly older and are at the “the world was so much better back in the day” phase as they are no longer marketed towards, and fall behind the times as things continue to change on a yearly basis (eg, trans-awareness just shot up within less than 5 years).
  5. They maybe, just maybe, have a legitimate complaint every once in a while – it’s possible, and actually changing in some ways is why our society has managed to get to where it is now. Considering how quickly things are changing, sometimes these complaints are a valid part of navigating new developments (eg, questions of privacy in social media), other times not so much (eg, CHEMTRAILS!!!).

So hopefully you can try to remember these truths and keep everything in its proper perspective. Don’t feel guilty for enjoying your life and appreciate the profound luck you have in being born in the best time period in human history thus far – and maybe watch the news just a little less.

Deliberate Inequality

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So I was recently reading this article on Polygon about unequal racial representations in gaming, and it got my mind jogging. Oftentimes, when someone calls out a system or representation for being racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever, people less versed in the subject are quick to come out and ask what the big deal is, that the person is looking too far into things, claim that it’s a part of the “creative vision” or that SJWs are trying to censor art (that they agree with, of course), etc. In any case, I believe that some of these responses stem from a misunderstanding of some of the basics of social justice analysis.

I think that many people believe that racism et al are only actually worthy of being pointed out if examples of them were done deliberately with malicious intent. For example, my father complains about how the media seems to always be complaining about racism in regards to police activity or their representation in Hollywood, and yet would quite likely stand up for someone if somebody was slinging racial slurs at them in public and discriminating against them in an obvious manner. People like him probably find these “smaller issue” social justice concerns to be extremely frivilous, get burnt out from hearing them all the time and definitely do not consider themselves racist. Unfortunately, due to a lack of interest or education on the subject, they are missing the underlying, unconscious issues in society which are contributing to the lingering of racism/sexism/etc. This often means that people concerned with social equality need to be concerned not so much with the less-common and clearly unacceptable examples of deliberate racism, but moreso with the unintentional examples.

Honestly, I find that deliberate examples of inequality are potentially less offensive than the unintentional, ingrained ones where people don’t even realize that they’re being potentially offensive. To link back to the start of the article, think about how big budget video games and movies rarely feature a hero who is a white, a male and a power fantasy of some sort. Think of how Assassin’s Creed: Unity ditched the option to play as a female assassin, claiming that they didn’t have the development time or budget to do it (which was promptly revealed to be a bullshit excuse, they just didn’t prioritize the female audience). Another good example is in Warhammer 40,000. Every couple months, someone comes onto the Dakka Dakka forums and asks where all the non-whites are in 40k. The simple answer is that there ARE other races in the Warhammer universe, and there are a handful of examples of them in 40k art, but it has literally not even occurred to the painters to paint any of their soldiers non-white. Honestly, I fell into the same trap with my 40k armies. When I was growing up, it never even occurred to me to paint any of my Space Wolves anything other than white. When I started an Imperial Guard army years later, I still didn’t think to paint them anything other than white for quite some time, until one of those Dakka Dakka topics pointed out the issue. We all have our own blind spots where we don’t even realize that we’re missing out on a chance at equality, or at least to make a conscious artistic decision one way or the other.

This is why the Bechdel test is so crazy – women rarely speak to one another about something other than a man because of the way that the screenplay is written. When 2 women speak, they have to advance the plot in some way by the very nature of the narrative. However, the fact that most movies fail the Bechdel test really shows how marginalized women are in movies, and that they aren’t generally the ones who the movie really cares for. It shows that women are not prioritized in the scripts, nor are they generally the focus, and generally serve as little more than plot convenience, especially when they speak to one another (because rarely do they bother to have 2 real women characters with any agency). My friend and I were watching the 1998 Godzilla, which isn’t an overtly sexist film by any means. However, we were commenting on it the whole time, when halfway through I was suddenly struck by the realization that the film had bombed the Bechdel test. There were only a couple scenes in the whole movie which featured two women talking to one another, and they spent all of them talking about a guy as the focal point to set up the love story subplot. It really illustrates where the film’s real focus is, and the fact that it’s so common is distressing (and let’s not even mention the 2014 Godzilla, which doesn’t even feature a single scene with more than one woman in it with a speaking role… this is a frighteningly common reality in movies).

What about deliberate examples of inequality though? The Witcher 3 is getting taken to task for apparent sexism in the game (although I’ll admit, Feminist Frequency does not have the best track record of picking good, clear examples). I haven’t played The Witcher 3 unfortunately, so I can’t comment, but one complaint that sounds valid is that the game features a lot of gendered insults when you play as a female character (or when they’re around at least… again, haven’t played it). Moral judgments about it aside, can we at least agree that having such marked differences in the insults directed at male and female characters is sexist? How odd would it be if enemies taunted your male game hero by saying they were weak, had a small dick, couldn’t pleasure their partner, or threatened to sexually assault them if they fail? Unfortunately, this is a strangely common trope for women in video games: quite a long time ago I wrote about Lollipop Chainsaw, a game I actually rather enjoyed, but lamented how the enemies will frequently call the protagonist a “bitch”, “slut” and threaten to violently sexually assault her. This also apparently happens all the time when you play as Catwoman in Batman: Arkham City – there’s a 6 minute video on Youtube of nothing but the instances where enemies hurl gendered insults at her, which is kind of insane. On the more positive end of the scale, I recently replayed the Tomb Raider reboot on PS4 and, despite the island being inhabited by violent, insane, foul-mouthed sailors, I didn’t find the game any less “realistic” for not having them sling gendered insults at Lara all the time. Rather, they simply act as if she was any other badass running around kicking their asses, and shout out her actions (“she’s flanking us!”) rather than taunts.

While gendered insults are undeniably sexist just by definition (male characters get generic taunts, female characters are taunted based on their gender), that isn’t to say that this is something that needs to be eliminated necessarily. I’m wondering if the point that Sarkseesan is trying to make (and the one she tries to make whenever she picks a really questionable example) is simply pointing this out to bring awareness to this potential issue in gaming, rather than saying “This is bad and needs to be eliminated from gaming RIGHT NOW.” If anything, it is more likely stopping devs from taking this sort of thing for granted and trying to get them to be more deliberate when they utilize gendered insults and female characters – is being beaten down and shamed for their gender key to the experience that the devs want to give the player when playing as a female character?

One common mistake that inexperienced writers make is when they try to make their story “mature”, they tend to overcompensate and just saturate it in misery, rape and constant violence. This causes the plot to be completely forgotten or overshadowed, and the acts themselves to feel meaningless. The fix, of course, is for the writer to be more deliberate with the use of mature themes, so that they have the impact that they SHOULD have. Rape, sexism and the like can be used in fiction effectively, but artists should be very deliberate when doing so and do it with the expectation of some potential backlash.

Like, in Season 6 can we finally get to a storyline other than “Who is going to try to rape Sansa this year?”

For example, I hardly want to call myself a great writer, but this deliberate inequality is something I have tried to take into account with my own sci-fi novel I have been working on. It takes place around a thousand years after humanity undergoes a biological revolution and colonizes the galaxy. Racism and sexism aren’t totally dead, but they are significantly diminished because the fearful have turned their attention towards bio-engineered organisms. As a result, women and men (of various races) hold equally prominent positions within the civilian and military structures without people having to comment on it. Homo/trans-phobia is also considered a non-issue in the universe of the story. One major character is bisexual and hated by basically everyone, but no one even thinks to belittle him for his “queerness”. When deliberate inequality is brought up, it is done to show characterization, not just because I decreed that this story featuring six foot spiders and space magic has to be “realistic”. This is not pressuring me to conform to diversity, this is making my story far more interesting and opening up more avenues for creativity than if I stuck to my own narrow “vision”.

People seem to assume that criticism is an attempt at censorship (a misunderstanding which helped kickstart the whole GamerGate movement…). They claim that criticizing media for just fitting with the status quo and featuring “realistic” examples of sexism/racism/etc is an attack on the creative rights of the artist. However, I think that criticism should be seen more as an attempt at artistic improvement. By pointing out examples of inequality, critics are effectively saying “this art would be improved if the female characters weren’t such a flat plot device, consider making them more interesting in the future, because it will enrich the narrative”, or “I would enjoy this more if they weren’t calling the female protagonist a ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ all the time, this is grating for me because I hear these sorts of insults get hurled at my sex all the time”. The artist is free to accept or dismiss that criticism however they wish, but if they dismiss it then they shouldn’t expect not to be criticized for it.

IC2S Playlist Update 24/06/2015

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As you have probably noticed, I have found some time to start writing again, thankfully. It’s not so much that I have gotten more time, but moreso that I just decided to nut up and shut up, and just clamp down to get some of the stuff I wanted to write down. I still have a couple articles in the pipeline so hopefully I can stay reasonably active in the meantime.

First up this week is “Murderer” by Impending Doom from their album Baptized in Filth. I have been wanting to put up some Impending Doom for quite a while, but haven’t really gotten around to doing so. This is due in part to whoever is in charge of putting their music on Spotify, because they have done a piss-poor job of it. Only 3 of their albums are up on Spotify… two of which suck (in my opinion), and one of which is good… but appears on Spotify twice for some reason. Even worse, their two best albums are completely absent, with only a couple of tracks from them included from the Killing Floor 2 soundtrack. That kerfuffle aside, “Murderer” is a pretty awesome song. Impending Doom have to be simultaneously one of the most relentlessly heaviest bands I have ever heard, while remaining eminently listenable in the process (to show how fine that line is, I can’t stand the more guttural death growls on their first couple albums). It’s also worth noting that they’re a Christian band, which is pretty obvious when you actually listen to the lyrics, but also seemingly insane considering how dark and heavy their music is.

I had another song slotted into this place, but I literally had a last minute change of plans when Disturbed decided to blow our minds with an unexpected annihilation of their hiatus and new music debut. As a result, the second song this week is “The Vengeful One” by Disturbed, from their forthcoming album, Immortalized… and like I said a couple weeks ago, I’m already all aboard the hype train. I’m digging the song, but it doesn’t feel like a major departure from any of their previous works… maybe just a slight refinement like Asylum was if anything. That’s a little disappointing considering that we had to wait 4 years for new music, but I love their sound as it is anyway, so I’d be lying if I said I was truly bummed.

Also – holy shit. P.O.D.’s The Awakening and Immortalized are going to be dropping on THE EXACT SAME DAY. I might need to get a new change of pants on the 21st. Plus August also marks the release of Sovereign Council’s Laniakea, so it’s gonna be an epic month for me in music!!!

Two Wrongs: The Desire to Repay Evil With Evil

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So the other day I was on my lunch break and one of the people I sit with mentioned that an imprisoned child rapist was gang raped by 20 cell mates, stitched back up, and then had his stitches torn back up so he could be gang raped again. Just everything about this story left me horrified and disgusted, but I think I ended up even more disgusted when the person who told me the story said “Good, he got what he deserved.” When I replied that they didn’t deserve that, they replied that they should get worse, because they did the worst thing you can do. This was probably just a throw-away moment in her day, but it has stuck with me and left me really troubled for a number of reasons.

Look, I’m gonna make a controversial statement here: child rape is bad. However, that doesn’t mean that this guy deserved to be brutally gang raped. NO ONE deserves to get raped. It’s the whole reason why we consider it to be bad in the first place. And just because he violated this principle in such an awful way still doesn’t mean that he deserves to have his basic human decency taken away as well. I have a hard time wrapping my head around how a perfectly normal person can say that this was a good thing. I mean, I think that they probably aren’t really thinking about the implications of what they are saying, because if they are then that’s a really screwed up outlook on life. When I was younger and far more conservative, I might have agreed with their sentiments, but I didn’t even view criminals as real human beings in a sense, nor would I have actually examined what I was advocating. I mean, think about what you’re saying: you’re claiming that it is good for a person to be forcibly gang raped until they are left bloodied, and then thrown back to the wolves immediately after being given medical care to be gang raped again. You’re saying that it is good for someone to suffer so severely. You’re saying that it’s good to make a conscious decision to commit an act of brutality on someone in a really sadistic, torturous manner to maximize suffering.

Society does not get better by the principle of an eye-for-an-eye. Violence only breeds more violence. I’m obviously letting my own faith and sense of morality shine through here, but c’mon… there’s a reason why vigilantism is illegal, why revenge isn’t a free pass to commit crime and why religions have been drilling in the idea of forgiveness as the height of morality for millenia. Awful stuff like this doesn’t solve anything or fix the fact that a child was raped and killed. A proper legal system will determine the punishment this man should receive, and any retribution beyond that should be dealt with as if the man were totally innocent as far as I’m concerned. I’m extremely curious to see how this story would be received by feminists, Christians and especially Men’s Rights Activists (since one of their few valid goals is seeking the elimination of prison rape)… I might have to take this story to Reddit to get a general consensus, but my suspicion is that they will all be pretty evenly split between disgust and gleeful retribution, since this comes across more as a personal morality litmus test than a group signifier.

On another note, the victims’ reaction to the recent Charleston shooting has shown a really powerful example of how we should respond to injustice. When faced with the man who had killed their friends and families, a man who was fueled by pure hatred, they forgave him. Dealing out revenge may be cathartic, but it is ultimately shallow, selfish and doesn’t bring any real justice to the world. Repaying evil with mercy is a truly inspirational act and makes the world a better place, helping to undo some of the evil which was initially perpetrated. As David Wong put it so eloquently, the rape of a rapist doesn’t cancel the other out, it just means that there’s more rapes in the world, and ultimately means that “rape” wins. Just try to remember that the next time you feel wronged – you can get some temporary personal satisfaction, or you can make the world just a little bit nicer.

I know which one I’ll try to live out.

Christian Media Industries Part II: Movies & Video Games

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So in my previous post on Christian media industries, I ended up covering a lot of ground and a lot of different facets of the subject. However, I unfortunately covered so much ground that I skimmed over some stuff that I wanted to mention when I first conceptualized that article, and before it ballooned out of my control and turned from an overview into my concerns with Christian media. I’ll probably turn this into a small series, I already have a Part III outlined that I would like to write about. So with that in mind, we’re going to dive back into the surprisingly interesting world of Christian media industries…

When I first sat down to write about Christian media, I had intended to dedicate a section each to both Christian movies and video games, but I ended up cutting this out because I had a bunch of other things I wanted to mention instead. Previously I had said that “many Christian artists actually want to reach out to the broader culture, but their message doesn’t get the needed reach” due to the insulated marketing of the Christian media. This principle doesn’t really seem to apply to Christian movies or video games for the most part – almost all of them seem to be completely and exclusively marketed towards the Christian audience. The reason for this should be pretty simple: even low-budget movies and video games are very likely going to be more expensive to produce than books or music. This means that the risks that the producers are taking on are going to be substantially more compared to other segments of the Christian media. Considering that they are already cutting down on their potential audience with their low production and marketing budgets and Christian themes, it makes basically no sense for producers to market to the general public, especially if they want to turn a profit. The Christian market is, after all, rather large and potentially quite lucrative.

Low budgets and basically non-existent marketing campaigns have proven to be a good strategy for the Christian movie and video game industry, since Christians have basically proven that they will buy anything, quality be damned, as long as it has a Christian label slapped on it. There’s a reason why even major studios, such as Fox, have their own Christian division (specifically, an evangelical-targeted division). Hell, even The Asylum (the most notoriously parasitic, profit-focused studio out there) has a Christian division, and it’s not because they’re trying to push their sense of morality on anyone – this is the same studio that creates “mockbusters” and softcore porn, because it’s the most efficient way for them to get money. It has been proven time and again that producers can choose to invest so little in a Christian movie that they are basically guaranteed to turn a small profit, because many Christians don’t seem to be very discerning about the quality of their media, as long as it has the “right” message (hence why utter shit like Bibleman is able to get made and get God knows how many sequels).

Video games have a more difficult time on this front though. Video games are hugely expensive to produce and tend to take huge teams to actually see them through. As a result, the ones that do exist are generally made by parasitic publishers who are just looking to make a quick buck off a low-quality game, or are made on shoe-string budgets by well-meaning (but potentially crazy) people who drown the product in an obtuse level of preachiness to justify the expense. They also tend to be really derivative: on the best end of the scale, you get Guitar Praise, which is basically Guitar Hero with Christian rock music, and on the worst end, you get stuff like Bible Adventures (I actually used to play this game in my childhood… all I really remember is that it controlled horrendously and the art is pretty awful for a NES game). Games that try to do something different, like Left Behind: Eternal Forces, are hamstrung by their low budgets and get plagued with technical issues (not to mention that Eternal Forces has been mired in controversy, even if its gameplay wasn’t a buggy mess). Luckily for Christian video game publishers, parents who buy Christian games tend to not be very discerning about the quality of the game, so many of these games are able to scrape back their budgets.

One thing that helps Christian movies to succeed (and also why there has been a growing trend over the past couple of years for there to be one or two “big” Christian movies receiving a wide release) is the concept of word of mouth. Street-level buzz is a key factor that basically every movie wants in order to get maximized profits, but Christian media has it built-in with weekly church gatherings. This is the reason why The Passion of the Christ was such a massive success, why studios can risk a large budget on a mildly-Christian blockbuster such as Evan Almighty or The Chronicles of Narnia* and why we’re seeing more and more movies like God’s Not Dead and Expelled (low budget, limited theatrical release movies aimed squarely at the Christian market) – churches basically provide free advertising whenever a Christian movie gets any sort of theatrical release. This follows the social marketing principle of influencers, where you get market to a few key members in a group, who will in turn market to a wider audience with far more effectiveness than a traditional advertising campaign could accomplish. This was demonstrated quite effectively when church pastors were calling on their congregations to go see The Passion of the Christ, or when Sunday school leaders were putting up posters for Evan Almighty or The Chronicles of Narnia (not to mention that a large number of churches are going to buy up copies of the movies for their libraries).

Aside from the costs involved, I would argue that the second biggest issue with Christian movies and video games is the lack of talent involved. Unlike Christian musicians, there is no system built in to most churches which fosters movie making or programming talent, so these kinds of artists will have to search elsewhere to develop. Furthermore, those who do have talent will likely be turned off of the Christian media industry anyway due to the very limited number of opportunities and the industry’s notoriously awful reputation. Any who do stick around will probably find their talents stifled by creative restriction, shoestring budgets and those with significantly less talent.

Even when there is a modicum of talent, there still tend to be some major issues which keep Christian movies from achieving any sort of mainstream recognition. I would argue that the Kendrick brothers are probably the most talented Christian filmmakers out there at the moment, but they still get poor-to-mixed reviews… and for good reason. They can shoot a movie quite professionally, but their films struggle in most other departments due to a lack of talent elsewhere. First of all, their films usually feature amateur actors, which is really problematic because all of their films are dramas – arguably the genre which depends the most on good acting to succeed. Secondly, their scripts tend to be weak, relying really heavily on cliche, tropes and literal “deus” ex machina to solve the conflicts, with basically no subtlety whatsoever. Most egregiously though, their movies are RIDICULOUSLY PREACHY. As one review stated about their film, Fireproof, it “stops becoming relatable to us all and only to the already, or easily, indoctrinated.” I remember that when I saw Facing the Giants I thought it was pretty good, but lamented that you could never show this to a non-believer because it was clearly made for the already-converted, preaching about how good God is to us in basically every scene. Hell, it honestly even becomes grating to those who already believe – I get it, already, do we have to grind the film to a halt every 5 minutes to remind us that God is where our strength comes from? Bloody hell, some subtlety would instantly take the Kendrick brothers to higher places.

As you can probably see, Christian movies and video games have the rawest deal in the Christian media industry. Christian books and music have an easier time succeeding due to the lower costs involved and the fact that the church itself helps to foster their development, but movies and video games are basically left to the desperate faithful trying to get out their message, or predatory studios looking to make a quick buck off the undiscerning masses. With the recent high-profile disaster that was the Left Behind remake stinking up theaters, I can’t see this trend changing any time soon, unfortunately… However, I do have some hope with the increasingly growing indie development scene potentially producing some great Christian media which doesn’t seek to pander to the evangelical market, but rather seeks to portray Christian themes and foster thoughtful spiritual dialogue. One can only hope at least.

*However, they water it down quite a bit so that it still appeals to the masses of course, but play up the Christian elements when marketing it to the church.

IC2S Playlist Update 17/06/2015

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

So… unfortunately this work assignment looks like it’ll be going on for another week at least, but hopefully not much longer than that. I have a couple articles started that I just need to have some time to think over and sit down with, so hopefully they’ll see the light of day soon…

First up this week is “the Patriot” by Countless Thousands, from their album We’re Just Really Excited to Be Here. I was exposed to Countless Thousands from the Unpopular Opinion Podcast, since the lead singer is a friend of Adam Tod Brown. They’re sort of an indie-rock/alternative band, and while I’m ambivalent to most of their stuff, some of it is just fantastic. I wish they had “Gang Fight” on Spotify, but “the Patriot” is great in its own right. It’s really catchy, with some excellent musicianship and vocals. It’s also an extremely scathing criticism of overbearing, self-righteous neo-nationalists who lord their national superiority over others, without actually putting anything on the line in the process… and if that’s not an IC2S-worthy song, then I don’t know what is.

Secondly we have “This Goes Out to You” by P.O.D., from their upcoming album The Awakening. I was actually going to institute a playlist “rule” this week where we don’t repeat songs by the same artist within a 6 week time frame unless something special happens… of course, then suddenly P.O.D. dropped this single on Spotify on the very day I had decided to go forward with that announcement.

In any case though, this definitely feels how you would expect a “first single” to – it’s energetic, radio-friendly and lyrically simple, but it’s still quite catchy. Musically, it seems to be hewing close to Murdered Love, so that’s a good sign, since it was their best album in quite some time, and I would expect the album itself to actually be heavier than this would have you believe (eg, think Korn’s single “Never, Never” from The Paradigm Shift, which sounded nothing like the rest of the album, thankfully). Plus, it’s a nice shout-out to the fans who have stuck with P.O.D. over the years. The only thing I could have done without for the playlist is the end bit… what do you call it? An epilogue? The transition? Whatever it is, I could have done without it for a single track – I’m sure it’ll be fine on the album itself, but when you’re listening to it at the end of a single track within a diverse playlist, it’s kind of annoying (not to mention that Tim’s voice is rather annoying already).

IC2S Playlist Update 10/06/2015 + Stannis Rant

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Normally I’d try to make this little intro as short as possible just out of obligation, but this week I’m going to rant a little bit about Game of Thrones… so SPOILERS if you haven’t seen Season 5 Episode 9, in which case I’d recommend skipping down past the album art…

So, if you know me personally, then you’d know that I really like Stannis Baratheon. He’s probably not the ideal ruler in Westeros, or even have a snowball’s chance in hell to pull through to the end (because, believe it or not, Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire tends to be rather predictable). However, he is a great character and the only one with a truly legitimate claim to the throne thanks to the right of a popularly-accepted conquest. He is the most righteous man in Westeros, and always tries to do the honourable thing (although Melisandre does cause his moral center to shift a bit on occasion).

However, Game of Thrones just screwed him up so spectacularly that it has me fuming at the show: with little provocation, Stannis went and burned his own daughter, Shireen, alive in order to offer her as a sacrifice to R’hllor. Don’t get me wrong – I think everyone knew that Shireen was going to die this season (because, again, GoT is rather predictable). However, I take issue with how it was presented, because it made absolutely no sense, turned Stannis into a big idiot and basically made his storyline going forward almost pointless. The only way I could see him killing Shireen was if Ramsay’s troops had fatally injured her, at which point Stannis would decide to make the most of an awful situation… but of course, this doesn’t happen and he basically does it with little justification.

First of all, Stannis loves his daughter above all else, and she’s basically the only person he actually feels any love for at all. That said, Stannis believes that he is Azor Ahai reborn, and a key part of that prophecy involves the hero sacrificing the person closest to him in order to save the world from eternal darkness. As a result, I’m not even opposed to the idea of Stannis sacrificing Shireen, because she obviously would have to be sacrificed if he wanted to follow the prophecy. Unfortunately, GoT tends to cut these sorts of contextual details out of the storyline, so in the show Stannis basically kills Shireen because he’s in a bit of desperation. Book Stannis basically says “screw this snow” and forces his troops to march through it regardless, which is the Stannis-ethos in a nutshell (remember, he also refused to surrender during the Siege of Storm’s End, even when all the food ran out and his troops were having to cannibalize each other to survive, and has been described as one who will “break before he bends”). Also, remember that he agonized about killing a bastard who he cared little for in order to acquire king’s blood, so you’re telling me that he’ll suddenly make the decision to kill his own daughter, his only heir, on a whim? Why wouldn’t he just take a bit of her blood like he did with Edric Storm/Gendry?

Furthermore, this move has basically made Stannis into a gigantic idiot. First of all, taking his wife and daughter with him on campaign was just an incredibly idiotic and contrived move in the first place. Book-Stannis leaves them with guards at Castle Black in the King’s Tower, which just makes so much more sense (and also means that if she gets burned, there’s a very good chance that Stannis will not give the order and be unaware of it). Secondly, he just lost his Hand of the King and probably a ton of soldiers with this act. The only reason Ser Davos has followed Stannis is because he sees him as the most righteous man in Westeros. Now that he has killed his own daughter (with a certain amount of deception directed towards Davos in the process), he basically has to kill Davos or he’s going to end up getting betrayed for certain. Who knows how Stannis’ troops are going to react to this, although I doubt that watching their lord’s child get burned alive is going to galvanize their spirits all that much… It’s just a stupid situation, and one in which the books handled things SO much better.

Anyway, enough of that, onto this week’s first selection, “Imposter” by Red from their newest album of Beauty and Rage. I really liked Red’s first two albums, but they got perceptibly weaker on their third album, Until We Have Faces. Their fourth album, Release the Panic, was basically generic crap with way too much dubstep influence. After Release the Panic, I basically swore off of following the band, but luckily they seem to have realized their mistakes and have gone back to their roots for of Beauty and Rage. “Imposter” is one of the best songs on the album in my opinion, it’s just a really solid opening track with a very polished sound. It’s nice to see Red getting back into the swing of things, and I hope that they can keep it up for any future endeavours… at which point I might consider myself a fan again.

Secondly, we have “The Game” by Disturbed, from their debut album, The Sickness. I really like Disturbed, having seen them in concert twice now. However, my enthusiasm for them has dulled somewhat since they have gone on hiatus 4 years ago. That said, if they announced tomorrow that they were releasing a new album, I’d be right back on the hype train in an instant. I think that “The Game” is one of their more interesting songs. I take the lyrics one of two ways. On the surface layer, it’s about a girl who stupidly keeps cheating on her boyfriend until it drives him into a murderous rampage. My preferred interpretation (and probably the more likely of the two anyway) is that the boyfriend is an abusive and paranoid asshole who constantly freaks out at his girlfriend who he thinks is a cheating whore, until his insanity drives him to go on a murderous rampage. So, um, yeah… it’s a pretty happy song. Oh, and that’s not even mentioning that it just has a really catch sound to it.

IC2S Playlist Update 03/06/2015

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

I have to apologize for the reduced blogging output this past week – I have been temporarily transferred to a different department at work so it has been cutting down on my thinking and writing. I should be done this in a week or two with any luck though, so I will hopefully be putting out stuff other than Playlist updates and Quick Fixes soon enough.

First up this week is “Devil’s Cave” by Sleeping Romance, from their debut album, Enlighten. I believe that a couple months ago I called Sleeping Romance “Evanescence, but slightly more metal and significantly less angsty”, which has to be the most accurate description of the band that there is. They’re a really young symphonic metal band, having only released Enlighten and a single since 2013, but their sound is already shaping up to be quite promising. “Devil’s Cave” is probably their most “metal” song, but it is easily their best as far as I’m concerned, and I hope that they continue to explore this side of their sound more in the future. That wicked guitar solo near the latter-half of the song is particularly noteworthy.

Secondly, we have “Rise of Evil” by Sabaton, from their album Attero Dominatus. As a power metal band, Sabaton is simultaneously silly and epic, and is one of my favourite bands. For the most part, their songs are all based on historical wars (their best album, Carolus Rex, taught me more about the rise and fall of the Swedish empire and European politics than any other educational source before or since). I wasn’t a big fan of them until The Art of War, at which point their musical quality shot up significantly with each successive album. However, I recently decided to go back into their first three albums and found some old gems that I missed the first time I went through. Perhaps the best of these old gems is “Rise of Evil”, a rather disturbing track about the rise of the Nazi government and the days leading up to the second World War. Sabaton have been accused of being neo-Nazis many times in the past, and I kind of wonder if this song has something to do with that… despite the song itself simply stating the facts really obviously condemning Nazism in the title. There is actually an even more tragic companion piece to this song dealing exclusively with the evils of the Holocaust, called “The Final Solution” (from the album Coat of Arms), which I recommend checking out as well if your day was looking just a little too positive.

IC2S Playlist Update 27/05/2015

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Before we start this week’s IC2S Playlist update, I have a bit of timely good news. Last week I mentioned that A Feast For Kings’ lead singer, Eric Gentry, had died in an accident about a year ago and was hoping that they would be able to keep going without it hurting their sound. Well, not even 3 days passed between me writing that and a news article about the band popping up on my Facebook feed. The band has officially signed with Tooth & Nail records and has rebranded themselves as XXI. Most importantly, they have released a new song as a tribute to Gentry, and it ROCKS. The music video is in the link, I really recommend checking it out, it’s both heartbreaking and face-melting at the same time. All fears I had for the band’s future have been laid to rest, so you can expect more from XXI when their debut album drops.

First up this week is a cover of “Habits (Stay High)” by David Unger. You might know David Unger from his parody videos on Youtube where he takes a pop culture subject (eg, Home Alone, The Walking Dead, Star Wars, etc), then writes a really heartfelt love song about it, and then superimposes the band’s faces onto scenes from the movie/show. They’re pretty funny, while managing to be good songs on their own merits. He also does covers, and I really like this one in particular – in fact, I prefer it over the original version by Tove Lo, partially due to Unger’s really emotional singing, and partially because the song makes more sense to me when it’s sung by a man (might just be bias on my part, but the lyrics just come across as something a guy would be singing rather than a woman IMHO).

Next up is “Set It Off” by P.O.D. from their best album, Satellite. I have an embarrassing confession – for some reason I thought that I had already put the acoustic version of “Panic & Run” on this playlist, because of that post I had made about how much I liked The So-Cal Sessions. If I had realized this earlier, then I would have thrown in some P.O.D. within week 2 or 3. And speaking of surprises, I was also surprised this week when I discovered that P.O.D. has a new album coming out this August. I might have heard some rumblings a while ago, but if I did then I totally forgot about it because of all the buzz surrounding The So-Cal Sessions. Naturally, now I’m totally stoked and can’t wait til August rolls around!

Anyway, as for the actual song, “Set It Off” is just plain kick-ass from start to finish. Appropriately, this song is the one that kicked off quite a few things for me. In the summer of 2002, my parents had sent me off to a Christian camp for a week, and my counselor would listen to this album all the time. This song served as my introduction to, and started my love for, hard rock/metal and P.O.D., and has had such a massive impact on my life that I have a hard time truly quantifying it. I can’t really say what direction my life would have gone without that week at camp; I wouldn’t like half of the bands I do now, and who knows what sort of music I would be listening to. So, um… yeah. Great song, I love listening to it, and am glad that it’s finally getting its due on the IC2S Playlist.

SHOULD Christians Support Capital Punishment?

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This weekend, I stumbled upon a news article that absolutely floored me. It was called “Why Christians Can, And Should, Support the Death Penalty” by Mary Ramirez, and was posted on The Blaze in response to the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial verdict… bloody hell, I never expected that I would be writing so many damned posts on religion when I started this blog back up…

Look, I can understand why someone would potentially support the death penalty, so this isn’t intended to be a political critique. This is an issue that can cut across party lines (but tends to be more common amongst conservatives). Where I take issue with this article is that Ramirez claims that there is some sort of compelling evidence that makes it so that Christians should support the death penalty, which is just a baffling statement. Now obviously I don’t know Ramirez personally so I’m going to have to go off of some speculation, but I would argue that Ramirez’s political and cultural stance has definitely coloured her opinion on this issue, far more-so than any actual Biblical study.

First of all, she cites a single verse to claim that the Bible condones capital punishment, Romans 13:4:

“For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” (NIV)

It would seem pretty cut and dry if not for one problem – Paul is not Jesus, and the gospels themselves are pretty cut-and-dry on the issue of capital punishment. John 8:3-11 states that:

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, 2 but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. 3 As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.
4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
11 “No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

Now, I am well aware of the textual issues of this passage, but I quite like a pair of justifications for it: that it was removed from the earliest copies of the gospels to avoid claims of condoning adultery (which I can totally see happening), or that it was a well-known event which was recorded elsewhere and added to the Gosepels at a later time. That said, even if it is not a part of the original passage, I have two rebuttals. The first is that it is consistent with Jesus’ other teachings (eg, Matthew 5, Matthew 7:1-3, Matthew 22:36-40). Secondly, its original “authenticity” should irrelevant to a Biblical literalist, since they believe that the Bible was basically written by God and is inerrant and without contradiction (in case my tone hasn’t given it away, I am not a literalist myself).

This leaves us with Jesus making one definitive statement while Paul makes another, so what should we make of it? Well, I would look at it thusly: Jesus’ commands supersede Paul’s. Paul’s writings are still important obviously, but he still boils down to a major evangelist interpreting the gospels and preaching them to people. This also can go some way to explaining some of the problematic or outright false statements in Paul’s gospels*. For example, read the rest of Romans 13 and you’ll see what I mean. Are we supposed to believe that the Taliban or ISIS are God’s servants because they have been put in a place of authority? Are we wrong to call out government programs, such as apartheid, unjust since Paul says that only wrong-doers need fear the government? Is state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing an acceptable use of the government’s power? Obviously the answer to all of these is no, which flies in the face of what Paul’s actual writing says if you’re a literalist.

That said, you don’t have to throw out this verse by any means – with the context of John 8:3-11 in place, Romans 13:4 suddenly changes from a command to support capital punishment to an endorsement of separation of church and state. It is within the state’s abilities to perform capital punishment, but it is not the place for a Christian to partake in it.

Anyway, moving on to Ramirez’s second point, she decides to focus in on the literal meaning of the commandment “thou shalt not commit murder”. I’m honestly not entirely sure why she does this, because it doesn’t seem to support her argument all that well, but I’ll go with it for now. It seems to me she’s trying to justify capital punishment by saying that the Bible doesn’t count it as murder, because the commandment against murder applies to unjust and unlawful killing only. This… is a strange argument, to put it lightly. For one thing, it feels like a regression on her previous point (and my arguments regarding that point have basically already refuted this point as well, so the more I talk about it, the more time I feel that I’m wasting). This just feels like someone grasping for a technicality to try to justify their own position, as follows:

Premise 1: The Bible commands that “thou shalt not commit murder”.
Premise 2: Murder refers to an unlawful and malicious act.
Conclusions: It is permissible for the government to perform capital punishment.

As you can probably see, this is a rather shaky argument and one that could easily get knocked down (eg, sure, maybe it doesn’t count as murder, but does that mean it’s still okay for the state to kill people? When it is permissible?). In any case, it feels redundant even giving time to this point.

Finally, Ramirez addresses a third point, the defence of society. You’ll probably notice that this isn’t a “Christian” argument, it’s a political/personal one. Now this is fine normally, but for an article that’s supposed to offer Christian reasons why to support the death penalty (and is doing a fantastically poor job of convincing me), this is an out of place point and simply illustrates that she is shockingly lacking in evidence for her actual point. Again though, let’s just go with this one in any case. She starts her argument referring to a movie where someone overcomes conscientious objection in WWI, arguing that the need to defend their loved ones supersedes their convictions regarding killing. This is a fair enough point honestly, and one which I am not sure where I lie: as much as I like Benjamin L. Corey, I have trouble getting entirely on board the Christian pacifist train, despite largely agreeing on a philosophical level.

However, this point is rendered moot when Ramirez throws down the most outrageous sentence in the whole article:

“Did you ever stop to think about how ending the life of a monster like Tsarnaev is an act of self defense?”

This is just an insane mischaracterization for so many reasons. Most importantly, it is comparing two things incorrectly. If she was comparing conscientious objection to a police officer having to shoot someone who is actually an active danger to the public, then that would be one thing (in fact, this can be applied to Tsarnaev’s brother without a second thought). However, Tsarnaev himself is in custody and would have faced a lifetime in prison if he hadn’t been handed the death penalty – put simply, he isn’t going to hurt anybody anymore (and in fact, he’s probably going to get the shit kicked out of him by the other prisoners). Strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter whether Tsarnaev gets the death penalty or life in prison, because in both cases, as long as he serves his sentence, then that it justice. Considering that Tsarnaev isn’t a danger to the public, a Christian should hope that his death penalty sentence will be overturned and he will instead get life in prison.

There are a few very practical reasons why a life sentence is preferable to death. First of all, from the Christian perspective, it would be pretty reprehensible to take someone’s life without allowing them to attain salvation. On a related point is that so many years pass between the sentence and the execution that people generally have changed significantly. I’m not saying that they should be released by any means, but what are the chances that in ten years, Tsarnaev will understand the enormity and evil of his actions? Having someone who can speak out about extremism and delusion is far more valuable than eliminating them outright. That brings us to our next practical reason why not to execute prisoners, and that is that Tsarnaev will become a martyr to the cause. This has happened time and time again, and you could argue pretty convincingly that this is what Tsarnaev wants right now – which, again, is reason enough to deny it and work at reforming him. Also worth considering is the costs: many people think it’s too expensive to keep prisoners locked up, but it’s nothing compared to the cost of executing a prisoner, due to the necessity of the appeals process. And why is the appeals process necessary? Because of my last point, because innocent people have been executed in the past. Obviously Tsarnaev isn’t one of them, but in a more general sense, people have been sentence to death unjustly. I know that the existence of people executed unjustly flies in the face of Romans 13, but trust me on this one – in principle, the state should not end lives on the presumption that anyone can be exonerated if evidence of their innocent exists.

After all of that though, I have to say this: Mary Ramirez is more than entitled to support the death penalty. I myself supported the death penalty when I was in high school, which was probably the most devout period of my life up until this past year. However, my support of the idea at the time did not come from my faith, it came from my political principles at the time. However, if you support the death penalty then that’s one thing, but if you’re going to try to use the Bible to justify it and to claim that all Christians should do so as well, then you’ll need to do MUCH better than this.

*Paul’s epistles tend to be rooted very specifically in a time and place, but this conflicts often with “modern sensibilities” (slavery, feminism, etc). It was a reality at the time that slavery was a thing, that men were the uncontested heads of the household and that capital punishment was a common punishment for damn near anything. However, considering that times have changed and that these (amongst any other issues in Paul) are no longer everyday realities, can we argue that, for example, women are required to submit to their husbands or cannot lead a church congregation? I would argue that no, they do not – Paul’s letters were intended to teach the people of the day in the climate of the day, so interpretation is far more necessary than in other sections of the Bible.

IC2S Playlist Update 20/05/2015

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

A bit of a post-script on my last post, regarding Mad Max and feminism: I was actually originally planning to write a different post which would have actually been arguably slightly pro-MRA (because, while I obviously identify as a feminist, a progressive Christian and a left-winger in general, I’m not someone who is defined by my “groups”). However, of course the idiots in the MRA-camp went and stirred up a new shitstorm elsewhere which needed to be addressed… so good job. I’ll still write it, but at least let it be on the record that I do not support MRAs in the slightest… (Edit: Eh, you know what? Screw it, I have lost all enthusiasm for the topic. Great job Clarey.)

Anyway, first up this week is “Separation” by A Feast for Kings from their EP Hell on Earth. This whole EP is filled with very personal, top-notch hard rock/metal and is well worth the $6 asking price. “Separation” in particular seems to be coming from the songwriter’s own experiences with a lying, unfaithful father. It’s truly tragic that A Feast for Kings’ lead singer died in an accident recently, doubly-so since they were days away from getting signed. I can only hope that the band can carry on without him, because the talent on display in Hell on Earth is truly astonishing.

Finally, we have “Never Let Down” by Andrew W.K. from his album, The Wolf. I guy from work recommended this song to me, and while I don’t really care for Andrew W.K. in general, some of his songs (like this one) are pretty awesome. He also described his musical style as “life metal” as opposed to death metal, and I can certainly see what he meant. His voice and music scream “metal”, but his lyrics are almost 100% based on partying, love/sex and general positivity, making it sound more like a pop or lighter rock song. Considering that he debuted in 2001, I imagine this was in response to the overbearing angst permeating nu metal at the time.