Culture: July 2007 Archive Page

Statistics collected over two decades show an alarming decline in the performance of America's boys--in some respects, a virtual free fall. Boys were doing poorly in school, abusing drugs, committing violent crimes and engaging in promiscuous sex. Young males lost ground by many behavioral indicators at some point in the 1980s and '90s: sharp plunges on some scales, long erosions on others. I was forced to confront a fact that I had secretly known all along: that teens of 30 years ago--my generation--were the leading edge of an epidemic of thugs, dolts and cads.

No wonder so many writers began calling for change in the late 1990s. Reliable social-science data often lag a couple of years behind the calendar; it takes time to gather and compile a nation's worth of numbers. Stories about social trends that you read today may be describing the reality of 2004 or 2005. The groundbreaking boy books were a response to statistics portraying the worst of a physical, mental and moral health crisis.

There's more to the story, however. That downward slide has leveled off--and in many cases, turned around. Boys today look pretty good compared with their dads and older cousins. By some measures, our boys are doing better than ever. --David Von Drehle --The Boys are All Right (Time)

I've blogged about the "boy crisis" before, and this is a thoughtful, moderating rebuttal.

The filmmakers hope that "Paradise Lost" will prove enticing to Christian audiences. Mr. Hazeldine said he read "several theological tomes" because "I'm adapting Milton, and then Milton's kind of adapting Genesis, and I wanted to make sure that for the faith audience, I guess, that they will see it more as 'The Passion of the Christ' than 'The Last Temptation of Christ' " -- that is, more a reverent treatment of Biblical material than a reconsideration. Both he and Mr. Derrickson said they are Christians, as are Mr. Newman and the script's original writers. Even so, Mr. Newman said the film is not "a Christian endeavor or Christian movie."

But he added that it would be "made with total adherence and respect to any of the three religions' involvement in the story of God, the Devil and the archangels," referring to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. But "it's a war movie at the end of the day," Mr. Newman said.

As a Christian, Mr. Hazeldine said, the project poses "a challenge for people like Scott and I, who have a faith, but we just love movies." He added, "We often find that we are wondering, are we too worldly for the church and too churchy for the world?" --It's God vs. Satan. But What About the Nudity? (NY Times)

I loved this correction notice at the bottom of the page: "A picture on March 4 with an article about a screenplay of 'Paradise Lost' was printed upside down. The rebel angels should have appeared in the lower half of the illustration by Gustave Doré, which was inverted by Art Resource." Somehow, that doesn't seem like a good sign.

Via Kelo the Great.

The power class was buzzing around in the sky, watching the ruination of someone's life way down below - making buckets of cash by broadcasting someone else's tragedy, then - WHAM - the real bursts into their own life, they become the live tragedy - but we're still viewing the whole thing through the lens of a t.v. camera. How tragic and fascinating. --Baby_Balrog

I'm sad for the deceased. I'm sad for their families. I wish someone had used some good judgment at some point to prevent such a tragedy. | I'm also hoping it leads to less of this kind of "content" on the news, but recognise how futile that hope is even as I type it. --batmonkey --''This may be the end of this thing...'' (MetaFilter)

From comments posted on MetaFilter's coverage of today's midair helicopter crash in Phoenix.

Sometimes called the reptilian brain because its basic structure dates back to our reptile ancestors, the brain stem is largely devoted to our most primal instincts, far removed from the complex, higher-brain skills that allow us to understand humor. And yet somehow, in this primitive region, we find the urge to laugh. --Steven Johnson --What's So Friggin' Funny? (Discover)

Barker: "I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker."

Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic"? --Games vs. Art: Ebert vs. Barker (Roger Ebert | Sun Times)

Film reviewer Roger Ebert fisks novelist and gamer Clive Barker. Filing this for a rainy day.

Not knowing what they could and should do to plan for the future was a constant refrain among the undergrads. Whether or not college faculties and administrators are comfortable acknowledging that a majority of students have enrolled because of their belief that a college degree will lead to an attractive and secure career, the fact remains: Some professional level of advisement is an expectation by virtually all young people on campuses today. --Howard and Matthew Greene --The Next (Real) World: Are you preparing your students for it? (University Business)

And yet, outside the anthologies and beyond the campus, these outlooks have influenced public policy at the highest levels. Their endurance in public life is a rebuke to the humanities reading list, and it recasts the putative sophistication of the curriculum into its opposite: campus parochialism. The damage it does to humanities students can last a lifetime, and I've run into far too many intelligent and active colleagues who can rattle off phrases from "What Is an Author?" and Gender Trouble, but who stare blankly at the mention of The Public Interest and A Nation at Risk.

This is a one-sided education, and the reading list needs to expand. To that end, here are a few texts to add to this fall's syllabus. They reflect a mixture of liberal, libertarian, conservative, and neoconservative positions, and they serve an essential purpose: to broaden humanistic training and introduce students to the full range of commentary on cultural values and experience. --Mark Bauerlein --An Anti-Progressive Syllabus (Inside Higher Ed)

Just filing this for future reference. I taught a lit-crit class for the first time last term. It was organized around a core of four or five literary texts that we kept reading and re-reading under different critical lenses, so there wasn't much room in the course for a free-floating political diatribe that was unconnected to primary reading. I did add "Tradition and the Individual Talent," which wasn't in the anthology, but is on Bauerlein's list.

As a journalism teacher I have a professional interest in objectivity, so it was natural for me to seek an anthology that was organized with contrast and multiple perspectives in mind, rather than one that promoted institutional branding. Still, that course was already fairly intense...

We are starting up a new "Writing about Literature" course, which is for all English majors (lit, creative writing, and new media journalism), so it makes sense to offer a very broad range of ideas in that course, while I taught the "Literary Criticism" course in order to prepare students to deal with criticism in grad school.