Comments on: Commit This “Speech” to Memory

By: Deacon Scott

Deacon Scott — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:09:22 +0000

"what a Catholic has the right to demand of art. Which comes down to the question, What do we desire? And if in the end my desire is limitless, and an entertainment calling itself art panders to a reduced desire in me, then is it art, Catholic or otherwise?" I agree. Heck, I think Kerouac's On the Road is a very Catholic novel. I am pretty sure I am part of a very small minority on that point!

By: Webster Bull

Webster Bull — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:02:06 +0000

Thanks Scott, You help me to frame the question more clearly. Perhaps it’s not exactly a question of what Catholic art should be but rather what judgments a Catholic should make about art, indeed, what a Catholic has the right to demand of art. Which comes down to the question, What do we desire? And if in the end my desire is limitless, and an entertainment calling itself art panders to a reduced desire in me, then is it art, Catholic or otherwise?

By: Deacon Scott

Deacon Scott — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:17:11 +0000

Thanks for your movie takes, Webster. I am even more excited now to see The King's Speech. Keep your insightful commentaries coming! Given the limited time I have to go to the movies, I have to be highly selective about what I see. To be honest, The Social Network was never on my list, but this film has been from the beginning. This, too, constitutes a necessary judgment, which, like all my judgments, is incomplete, no matter how many cross checks I accomplish before making them. Sometimes reality forces us to judge a book by its cover because we are limited. As for the rest, I am not worried in the least about what constiutes Catholic art, which designator strikes me as a chimera. Any attempt to define Catholic art is doomed and incomplete from the get-go. I can only judge a film, a book, a song, a painting, a symphony, an oratorio, opera, or play by the way it affects me, which is neither wholly subjective nor solipsistic. I am interested in how artistic works affect and effect others. As Hopkins accurately observed: "For Christ plays in ten thousand places..." If I can catch just one every once in awhile I am grateful, but then such encounters only whet my appetite for more, more, more, which brings me back to...

By: vincent

vincent — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:42:42 +0000

I haven’t seen true grit yet ….. Don’t you know how hard it is to get a baby sitter?

By: Alicia Van Hecke

Alicia Van Hecke — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:59:32 +0000

Great article. I saw the King’s Speech a few days ago and absolutely loved it. The quality was exquisite and the the scope, both breathtaking and paradoxical. Haven’t seen The Social Network.

By: Webster Bull

Webster Bull — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:50:44 +0000

I understand “art involving the absence of a moral center.” I grew up with such art in high school and college of the 1960s and 1970s. But consider a further problem with The Social Network: However you and I may perceive it as practicing Christians, the fact is, most non-practicing young people will be wowed by the club scenes, the sex, the drugs, the booze, the music, “the life, the players,” the absolute coolness, more than by any internal response of their hearts to the lack of a moral center. So the message they will take away is not, I don’t want to be like that. On the contrary, they want to be like that: happy, high, $12-billionaires, just please add in a girlfriend who will friend me on Facebook.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:48:21 +0000

Webster,

Everything you said is fair enough. I guess I just also see space for us, as Catholics, to be moved and instructed as much by art involving the absence of a moral center and exploring its conspicuous consequences as we are by art that states that moral center explicitly. And this is especially true for that art explores the consequences of modernity; the alienation that befalls the main character in the Social Network is tragic and jarring precisely because all he has done is lived life as modern culture assumes we should want to live it. That fact instructs an interested viewer in much the same way that a film involving some kind of redemption does. For the record, I also think this is the key to enjoying O’Connor and what she was trying to do. If you’re interested in a more full explanation of this theme from someone who was deeply committed to it, her writings in “Mystery and Manners” do a very nice job.

By: Webster Bull

Webster Bull — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:24:15 +0000

Chris, I appreciate your insights. And yes, it is true, I “seem to be promoting a particular vision of what Catholic art must be.” I admit that I find Flannery O’Connor pretty heavy going, and I suppose that if The Godfather is “Catholic art” then my vision is sorely limited indeed. But I find myself preferring Walker Percy to O’Connor because in Percy, no matter how dysfunctional the narrator and other characters, after “The Moviegoer,” which I don’t particularly care for, there is a still, moral center in each of his novels. Including notably the mad priest in the watchtower of “The Thanatos Syndrome.” I think that as Catholics we might be well served to speak out in favor of an art that instructs, that inspires, that somehow moves us further along the “trajectory of salvation.” Which is why I also liked “True Grit.”

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:02:43 +0000

I haven’t seen “The King’s Speech” yet, so i will refrain from judgment as to what is a better movie. But I think you misunderstand the purpose and meaning of Social Network, or, at least, seem to be promoting a particular vision of what Catholic art must be that is incomplete.

I don’t think the Social Network ended in despair per se so much as it ended up being a tale about one man’s pursuit of an abstract ideal of greatness that ultimately ended in his descending into his own personal hell. That it does not show him finding redemption is not fatal; it is potentially realistic. In this — and no, I am not claiming the Social Network is as good a work of art, though its Aaron Sorkin penned script is surely among the finest of the past decade — it fits keenly into the tradition of the Godfather and a number of Flannery O’Connor stories.