Evan More Bad News

A follow up.

I don't so much care if Evan Almighty stinks (which I'm told it does), or if it's a commercial flop (which it seems to be floating toward). What I care about is if it tells me true things about God and faith and reality. This Slate review sums it up well. Good parts:

If they succeed, it will be tragic, not because Evan Almighty is unfunny (although it certainly is), but because it will validate Hollywood's embarrassingly stupid approach to religion and faith.

And,

...what's disturbing about Evan Almighty is its flaccid approach to faith. All that is compelling, moving, and profound about the Noah story has been systematically excised. In the Bible, God chooses Noah to survive because Noah is a righteous man. But Evan is faithless and stupid, and comes to believe in God only because God hammers him over the head with about 137 miracles.

Well, I won't pretend I'm not faithless and stupid. I suspect I frequently ignore miracles. But the point is valid. Finally,

Evan Almighty also strips away anything Christian (or Jewish) about the story and replaces it with a message of universal hokum. God's entire instruction to his flock? Practice "acts of random kindness." (Look at the initial letters of that phrase.) That's not religion or even morality. It's a coffee mug slogan.

There's the stake in that vampire. You can tell a dumb story, but take out the true parts, and it's a waste of everyone's time.

Okay, I think I've spent enough brain cells on this. As always, thank you for your patience.

Almighty Dollar

Just yesterday I was thinking that I hadn't seen any enormous, secularly funded attempts to grab Christian cash lately. Is my trend-spotting spotty?

Probably! But then today I read this article from the Houston Chronicle about Evan Almighty:

...if Evan Almighty turns into a summer hit, as several competing studio executives predict, the movie could put Hollywood back in the business of making big-budget movies that intentionally embrace sacred subjects.

"For some reason, Hollywood doesn't make this kind of movie," says Tom Shadyac, the director of both Evan Almighty and its racier predecessor, 2003's Bruce Almighty, whose religious message was less palpable. "I don't know if it's out of fear. I really don't. Maybe we're not living as closely to these themes."

For some crazy reason, they're not doing it, huh Tom? Well it's not JUST fear. Don't forget ignorance and disdain!

Our man, John Bock is back too, with ArkALMIGHTY.com, a Craigslist for churchy good deeds. John Goodman (what's in a name?) even pops onto the site to explain the deal:

1. Register your church.
   
2. Tell people in your church to post needs to the site.
3. People at your church check it out and volunteer to meet needs.

This is a not-terrible idea, except that arkalmighty has a movie commercial with viral aspirations artlessly tacked on. Also, the execution is dumb. From the About page:

Maybe there’s a college student who could use help moving into her first apartment, or a widow that could use a helping hand washing her windows, or a recently laid-off worker who could use help polishing up his resume. There are countless needs out there that, up until now, have had no way to be met. But now they do, thanks to ArkALMIGHTY.

Really? There was no way to meet needs before you dropped arkalmighty on us? We couldn't have, say, set up our own mailing list? Or maybe just talked to each other like Christians have been doing for thousands of years? And what if I don't go to a particular church? Do I not get to help people from other places?

I just did a quick check of Philadelphia churches. Thirteen are signed up. Zero have "needs posted." This never-before need-meeter is lighting the Philadelphia church community ON FIRE!

Turns out, Christendom in flyover country was already doing fine, sans condescension.

The privacy policy isn't awful, but the usual marketing stealthspeak means the only information they get out of me is that someone from my ISP visited them and clicked around.

==

Look, you can make the not-unconvincing argument that we can promote a movie AND encourage people to do good things at the same time. I am on this boat! Capitalism and kindness can co-exist! Kinditalism, maybe. Have to work up a better portmanteau.

But the boat I'll watch from the pier is the one where we try to float two gods. That boat will sink. A web site for Jesus with a URL and graphics that clearly indicate its commercial origin does not need a blatant advert on its front page. It does not need to detail my marketing opt-out options. It does not need the avuncular aegis of John Goodman to help sell it. Once again, a Grace Hill Media joint has uncomfortably strange bedfellows.

I'm still willing to give Bock some room. I've never met the guy, and maybe he's glorifying God. I'm willing to be convinced. However, I see more signs of nascent cupidity here than the Big Theta, and that's not the order we've been told to do things in.

One thing I feel pretty good about though: Morgan Freeman plays a better God than George Burns.

Horse Race to the Glue Factory

I just started reading about Ron Paul, Republican contender for the U.S. presidency in 2008. Now I don't know which doomed candidate to vocally, but not materially support.

I really like Mike Huckabee. I'm unenthused by his views of what the U.S. needs to be doing in Iraq, because he is saying borderline-nonsensical things like "We must win in Iraq," rather than, "We must solve the ridiculous problems our Commander-in-Chief created for us in Iraq." Other than that, the guy is saying the kinds of things I want to hear from a presidential candidate.

However, Mr. Paul is saying things like:

The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars. We must have new leadership in the White House to ensure this never happens again.

Which, I mean, yeah.

Paul is more libertarian than I really want in a POTUS. But I wouldn't mind sending a Libertarian into national government to start swinging things his or her way. I don't want the Libertarian to control the whole swingset. But I want him on the playground right now. And unlike many Libertarians I've had the displeasure of sitting next to, Paul is both firm in his convictions and yet not belittling of others. How novel.

The strange thing to me is that both of these candidates are Republicans. I have approximately zero giveadamn for political parties, but for the last decade or so, I haven't heard many sensible things come out of Republican mouths. Suddenly, a cloudburst!

The Constitution party might have to work for my vote in 2008.

iHard

ZOMG, Mac guy is going to appeal to the 18-25 demographic in the next Die Hard movie with Bruce Willis! Fond memories and cynicism locked in EPIC STRUGGLE!

I love betting on wides eyes and fresh-scrubbed faces, but my money’s backing cynicism this time. Despite tempting shots of the Capitol, several someones seem to have failed to grasp the Die Hard high concept: the action takes place on, around, or in concert with a man-made structure.

Instead, we have what looks like 24 with a shorter run time (I hope).

Oh, fond memories. We’ll still have 1988, I suppose.

*Alternate post title: Yippiek-i-i-yay-Macerfucker.

Inspiration/Perspiration

I read this New York Magazine article a few weeks ago, lost it, then stumbled back onto it yesterday. Ignoring convention, I will identify it by its subtitle, The Inverse Power of Praise. From the article:

The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.”

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

The rest of the article explains and expounds on this phenomenon. It's a moderately involved read, but you can do it, because you're such a hard worker!

==

I have almost always been a "smart" kid. I'm trying to retrain myself to be an "effortful" kid.

I'm spelling out something the article doesn't seem to explicitly say; i.e., don't praise something a person has no control over. If I'm naturally smart, reinforcing that sends the message that the praiseworthy thing happens independently of me.

Which sucks because when I want more praise, I can't smarten up for it. All I can hope to do is maintain. This quickly becomes a lose-lose proposition: If I don't try for fear of looking dumber, I look dumber for not trying.

Instead, the trick is to reinforce aspects that people can control: effort, technique, time investment, practice. Then, there's a clear line to improve, and therefore, to get more praise. The natural abilities will kick in anyway, augmenting whatever effort is there.

Off and on, I've been applying this sort of talk to myself (and anyone else praiseworthy) for a few weeks. Meredith and I make kind of a game out of it.

I suspect drastic effects as described in the article are best observed in children. But I'm willing to accept less dramatic returns as long as I improve. All I need to do is keep working at it.

This also dovetails with another idea I've recently fiddled with: The most useful life skill to teach (and practice) is how to handle novelty and strangeness with curiosity. If you have some intelligence and that curiosity, whatever excellence you need will show up eventually. If you don't have it, you can still excel, but it will be a slog rather than a game.

I'd rather play games.