Posts tagged copying | Culture Making

10 September 2008

Day for Night (La Nuit américaine) trailer," directed by François Truffaut, 1973, and My Life, My Card ad, directed by Wes Anderson, 2006

One of my favorite movies of the past year is François Truffaut's Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine), which manages to be both an engaging light comedy and a wonderfully thrilling meta-meditation on the art (and inevitable compromises) of filmmaking. Truffaut plays a director, essentially himself, trying to keep a not-that-great movie production on the rails. All this reminded (pre-minded) me of some of the better moments of Wes Anderson movies—so I was thrilled to see Anderson himself offering homage (the nicest form of cultural copying) in, of all things, an American Express ad.

re: 3 12 120, advertising, copying, film, france, homage, influence, movies

Nate:

8 September 2008

from Kerusso.com :: via Collide Magazine

When I speak on the posture of "copying culture" I usually show a "Christian" T-shirt (scare quotes are definitely required here)—lately it's been a ring-collar shirt with appliqué letters that say "JESUS DIED FOR PEDRO." But I think this one may replace it. There is so much wrong with this I honestly don't know where to begin. Very impressive.

re: consumption, copying, pop culture

Andy:

15 August 2008

Apart from size (and, I guess, the Central Florida location), the parallel really is more McDonald's than Megachurch -- which makes sense when religious devotion has more in common with regular meals (i.e. several times a day) than a once-a-week banquet. One could argue that this is just a form of cultural copying, though I suspect that it's more akin to using the language of fast-food marketing to reclaim a function that mosques have had, in other contexts, for centuries.

re: copying, fast food, islam, prayer

Nate:

an Utne Reader post by Bennett Gordon, 24 July 2008 :: via Culture Log

Taking a page from the evangelical mega-churches that have popped up around the country, Muslims have begun setting up multi-site “mosque chains” to accommodate increasingly large religious services, Mallika Rao reports for the Religion News Service. Often branded as more progressive than other mosques, some of the organizations have begun offering gymnasiums, adult education classes, and even mixed-gender prayer areas. The strategy seems to be paying off, both financially and organizationally. Abeer Abdulla, a media specialist for the Islamic Society of Central Florida in Orlando, told Rao, “because of how streamlined we are, you can get off the highway from anywhere and find a mosque that is well-maintained, well-structured and that will always be open."

(Thanks, Pew Forum.)

8 August 2008

There is a real danger that Christians' enthusiasm for God's work in human cultures will lead to simply baptizing whatever the culture is doing. Rarely has this been seen so clearly as in this communiqué from the Lutheran World Federation in 1975. As Sanneh describes it, "The communiqué insisted that the time had passed when Christianity could raise questions for China, pointing out that these questions were already settled for Chinese Christians who had long ago reached the conclusion that Christianity was, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, inimical to China's interests." Thirty years later, of course, we would never be so uncritical about culture. Of course not.

re: asia, china, copying, gestures and postures, lamin sanneh, mission

Andy:

from "The Louvain Consultation on China," Pro Mundi Vita 54 (1975) : : via Lamin Sanneh, Disciples of All Nations, p. 253–254

“Love your neighbour to the point of denying yourself” is the ethical core of the Gospel. “Fight selfishness; serve the people” is the ethical core of Mao Tse-Tung Thought. “By their fruits you shall know them” is the decisive criterion of the Gospel. Marxism has sworn by the same test of “fruits” or “practice,” and in the case of China at least has both preached and practiced “continuing revolution” in its name. . . .

The social and political transformations brought about in China through the application of the Thought of Mao Tse-Tung have unified and consolidated a quarter of the world population into a form of society and life-style at once pointing to some of the basic characteristics of the kingdom of God. . . .

Christians . . . have to free themselves from the parochial Western context in which many of their Churches have developed and realize that the Gospel might be more powerfully expressed and fulfilled in the new type of society which is promoted in China.