Ahh… I see where you’re going with those quotes now.

Yes, I think you’re right to mention the scandal of the incarnation as a really profound lens through which to interpret a lot of the symbolism here. I actually spent a lot of time reflecting on the tension the movie creates with Clifford’s character. It seemed (to me) to oscillate back and forth between emphasizing his humanity (mostly the brokenness inherent in his humanity), and portraying him as a corrupted and broken god. I couldn’t tell if this was intentional or not, but the effect was certainly interesting. You’re definitely right to note that while the kind of pity and disappointment I’m noting is distinct, the cannon did acquaint us with both.

The subtle Christian nuance of a god-man seems to be mostly absent (at least in Clifford’s character). He wasn’t fully man and fully God (at any one time) such that he could serve as a bridge between heaven and Earth, nor did he exemplify the virtues we associate with the Christian god-man. He vacillated violently between the worst kind of human and the worst kind of god, such that it burnt the bridge between heaven and Earth. The movie flirted with this interesting idea that there’s a heavenly analogue to the concept of “worldliness” – a way in which a person’s soul can be corrupted by the heavens in all the same ways as it can be corrupted by the world. “Otherworldliness,” perhaps?

I actually thought the movie spent a lot more time presenting Roy as the Christ figure. It’s obviously not a direct comparison, but the association was hard to ignore. It’s established by narrative that he has “one foot on Earth and the other in heaven”. He follows in his father’s footsteps, is notable for his patience, bears the sins of mankind, goes on a journey to reconcile mankind with God…etc. But, there are also far too many narrative facts that break that interpretation – or, at least, break a clean attempt at that interpretation. We might think of him as a sort of “fallen Christ?” Maybe? I couldn’t reach a satisfying conclusion about that.

If you’re up for it, I’d be interested to hear more on your thoughts about the Christ symbolism in the movie. Did you get more from Clifford than Roy?

I also, by the way, think that SpaceCom is a pretty clear symbol for the institutional church. Did you pick up on that or have any thoughts about it? I didn’t think the movie developed that idea very thoroughly, but it laid all the groundwork for it.

There actually is something of a connection between paganism and modern dystheism. It’s notable, historically, that dystheistic gods were common in the pantheons of many polytheisms and that the concept mostly faded into the background until the rise of Romanticism (a time when interest in ancient Greek literature (and, by extension, its theology) was undergoing a renaissance and many such texts were, for the first time, being made available to wide audiences). That’s when we really begin to see Western monotheism (which had, over the intervening years, become the dominant theology of the first-world) being directly evaluated using dystheistic assumptions.

There’s also the idea that what ancient polytheism did was manifest, in the pantheon, the entire set of ontological properties (which included the spectrum of human virtues and ills). With the rise of Christianity (and to a lesser extent, Judaism, which to this day has a more nuanced take on the concept), we discarded the idea of a divine manifestation of “ills”, leaving part of our ontology (and a fundamental part of our experience) unrepresented in the divine realm. That’s given birth to the somewhat awkward field of theodicy – a field that, were it not for eutheism, we wouldn’t need in order to make sense of the totality of our experience.

Process theology and dystheism would be a much more complicated conversation – the two certainly, as a logical matter, could get along well with each other. But, in terms of process theology as a body of work, dystheism doesn’t actually come up very often. Process theologians tend to concentrate on the “omnipotence” prong of the Epicurean Paradox, which allows them to maintain a conception of the absolute goodness of God by instead recontextualizing the limits on his power to act. So, you don’t actually hear very much in the way of clear expressions of dystheism from that camp.

I really, really like your hero’s journey read. That’s fantastic stuff. I think you’re spot on with the narrative that there are no actually heroes, only degrees of morally ambiguous. I was actually struck by how… modern the ending of the movie seemed – how it felt like it was venturing a timely answer to an age-old problem. Your thoughts help me understand why I felt that way 🙂

I wrestled with the “let me go” statement too. I think what’s interesting about it is that it nicely book-ends several different interpretations, leaving room for discussion about what, precisely, we’re being told to let go… and even whether we’re supposed to heed that advice, or not.

What complicates the narrative about bravely marching into the future (at least insofar as we’re going to take it as some general, optimistic ending) is that the movie gives us plenty of reason to suspect that it’s not all roses in the future. Long before the surges, humanity was already in a tenuous situation. We see some signs of cooperation, but every indication is that humanity is taking its soulless corporatism and violent conflict and exporting it to the heavens. With the “death of God” at the end of the movie (on my interpretation, that is), the trajectory seems established that humanity will, given enough time, colonize the heavens with worldliness and destroy everything of ultimate value in the universe.

…unless, perhaps, you pin the hopes of all humanity on Roy’s personal revelation? Or, maybe we’re supposed to hope that something resembling Roy’s realization is a model for others to follow, necessitating, presumably, a similar journey taken by each of them? I don’t know.

But yes, great point that it leaves us in an unexpected place – a hero’s journey where the culmination of the story is the repudiation both of the hero and of the idea of heroes! How interesting is that!? Good stuff.

Oh the piece I found ironic was the line “the canon doesn’t prepare us for… pity…”

“A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him.”

for “disappointment”

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

for “God… reduced to the image of a man.”

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?”

In the scandal of the incarnation and the God made weak, you capture all of those elements. Though of course, I’m twising your quote a bit to serve my ends, you’re talking about a DIFFERENT kind of pity, disappointment, and “god made man”. Exactly like you said in 3), it flips the idea on its head. Its not the shocking discovery that God has been made weak, but rather, that god is pathetic. The wierd thing about disenthiesm is that “God” is just “god”, in the sense that he can’t be the Infinite, Beyond Being, Source of all that is, he’s sort of just this moraly ambigious character. I guess there are degrees to this, but is there a connection between disenthiesm and paganism? Where there are multiple, moraly ambigious gods? Or what about something like process theism? Is there any connection between those?

Leaving that asside for now, another angle you might want to explore in the film is the one I was thinking of as I watched. I thought the film was a sort of twist on the hero’s journey where the son goes to rescue the father and finds out in the process that the father is currupt. The father, he finds out, wasn’t a hero, and neither is he. In the end, the son gives up on being a hero–he realizes what trying to be a hero in the likeness of his father cost him–and relies on others. I connect this with the current moment in the US where people are sort of questioning their own history, exploring the legacy of the “heros” of the past. Like Clifford, they are journing into the past and discovering that those great heros of the founding–the men on the frontier who sacrficied everything and ran roughshod over it all to chase their goals–are actually moraly ambigious characters. There are no heros. Clifford models his own life after his father, he wants to be a hero–to chase the frontier like his father– in accordance with the great cloud of witnesses before him. But the son must pay for the sins of the father, the great founding sin of the nation–its ruthless ambition–continues to infect Clifford and destroys his life. He sacrifices everything on this alter of ambition. We see how the sins of the past are carried into the patterns of life of the present, perpetuated by the “sons of the father”, who continue to the same destructive lust for ambition. Indeed, the past itself–the father–is now sending rays of distruction into the present, disrupting civilization itself. Clifford’s father is held up as hero by the institution, it cannot face its past, you write “SPACECOM would never allow their image to be shattered…so they made him a hero to protect themselves.” I would connect this to the current moment with the statues–the image of the hero is being challenged, and those who want to protect the image of the nation, do not like the national heros are shown to be mearly human. So Clifford travels back in time to reconcile with his past. When he meets his Father, he finds, not a hero, but a moral abigious human, possessed by ambition. It is the ruggid, self reliant individual of the great american fronteer–but not the white washed version you see in the statue–but rather, a grizzly human, in need of grace. I’m not entirely sure what the movie is saying when Clifford’s father tells him to let him go, and then he drifts off into space to his death. Is he telling Clifford to let go of his whitewashed conception of history, the idea that heros exist? Is it calling for a severing of the past and a brave new march into the future? I’m not sure. But in the end, Clifford gives up the idea of a heroic past, and gives up on the idea of being a hero himself. The ending line was striking, we see a straight out repudiation of the myth of the great, self reliant individual who needs no one but himself: “I will rely on those closest to me. And I will share their burdens, as they share mine. I will live, and love. Submit.”

What do you think of that read? 🙂

Thanks, and OK.

Yep. I’d be interested to hear precisely what you found ironic about it; I suspect it’s not identical to what I intended to be ironic about it, so that’d be interesting 🙂

This was probably the philosophical climax of the movie. The movie had been alluding to this theme of man being created in the image of a broken God, destined to manifest all of his flaws. I thought it was an interesting scene because:

1) It was a really nuanced way of communicating the experience of being profoundly disappointed that God wasn’t the hero he was made out to be – there’s a parallel to the experience of a child’s growing up and learning that their parents aren’t the beneficent demigods we as children considered them, but are just humans who make mistakes, like everyone else.

2) The movie had been toying with this theme that brokenness is what unites man and God, leaving us to reflect on whether brokenness is a divine property that man is stricken with, or an earthly property that God is stricken with. So, I thought it was interesting to see God being, if you will, “brought down to Earth” in this scene – made out to be a timid animal just like the rest of us.

3) It flips on its head the expectation that it is God who seeks reconciliation with man, and man who pulls away. It does a good job of capturing the feeling of chasing after an absent god – trying to establish a relationship only to be rebuffed by him. Also interesting that there is the added symbolism that Roy is, in effect, trying to pull God down from heaven and returning him “home” to Earth. Perhaps he’s right to pull back in that case? Then again, the movie portrays heaven as a place of profound isolation, and God as an obsessive man trapped in a realm of divine, solitary confinement. So, maybe God has been on that island all alone, for so long, that he doesn’t know how to leave. Or, maybe, he can’t bring himself to face his children on Earth and admit that he failed.

So much captured in that scene.

I thought this was a ironic paragraph: 🙂

We were prepared, upon meeting God, to feel awe. We were prepared for terror, and majesty, and wonder, and humility, and amazement. We weren’t prepared… for pity. The cannon never prepared us for disappointment. “It’s time to go,” Roy answers patiently, stretching out his hand for his father’s grasp. God pulls back, reduced now to the image of a timid animal – reduced, to the image of a man.