Man Talking To God Talking To Man

Bruno Latour, Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech

Try this thought experiment: can you believe and not believe simultaneously? Now notice your speech, your morphology, your interior monologue. How do your faithful and rational sides communicate? French sociologist Bruno Latour attempts exactly this, unpacking human religious motivation and linguistic intent, arriving at some unexpected conclusions. Though not everyone will embrace his dense, theoretical discursus, his conclusions are remarkably timely and revealing.

The Apostles commenced their missions when, on Pentecost, they spoke to everyone in their own language. Latour loves Pentecostal imagery, because it demonstrates an outward orientation: we speak to others, we don’t force them to conform to us. Supposedly. Too often, though, adherents and agnostics alike would freeze language in amber, compelling everyone to speak our language, never speaking theirs. We kill language by separating it from its audience. Then we act offended when others walk away.

Latour attempts to bestride the debate, seeking not any facile resolution, but to define the terms. He perceives the struggle between religious and secularized language as essentially contested: that is, the sides take definition from the debate, and therefore cannot win, since resolution robs them of meaning. To communicate with others, we must sacrifice certainty for context. All truth becomes a lie, Latour says, when we try to fix meanings decisively.

This approach requires all readers, believers and unbelievers alike, to sacrifice sacred cows. Latour uses important philosophical concepts in unconventional ways: his definition of “God” will make most theists squirm, and his definition of “belief” runs almost diametrically counter to Bentham and Locke’s usage. He thus implicitly rejects both anti-modernist beliefs in linguistic continuity, and Enlightenment belief in temporal triumphalism. Latour doesn’t let us consider any concept unquestionable or sacrosanct.

By prodding religious language from both ends, Latour uncovers a profound gap between how devout and secularized people use seemingly interchangeable language. Specifically, he contends, religious language doesn’t have what secularized ontology would call “meaning.” That is, we don’t use liturgy to transfer literally knowable information; we use liturgy to transform ourselves. Arguers straddling today’s religious divide get frustrated, because they don’t realize the same vocabulary serves incompatible purposes.

Bruno Latour

Apparently, Latour considers this conclusion subversive, to believers and skeptics alike. Maybe it is, to readers unfamiliar with contemporary philosophy. Latour conflates ideas familiar from authors like Foucault and Bonhoeffer, in a way that more highlights previously unrecognized concurrence than really adds anything new. Basically, he spotlights what seasoned readers didn’t realize they already knew. (Lacking either bibliography or index, it’s hard to say how deliberate Latour’s coevality is.)

Yet it explains contemporary American religious trends. While many Protestant and Evangelical churches embrace Enlightenment rationality, or some derivative thereof, several centuries late, many rank-and-file believers defect to Catholic and Orthodox worship, citing specifically the experiences’ antiquity. And though Latour’s approach treats “religion” and “Christianity” synonymously, it explains the Pagan resurgence, purporting as it does to restore humanity’s oldest, most undiluted worship practices.

Latour attempts to analyze religious discourse from a complete outside perspective, neither believer nor smug academic atheist. He pursues complete agnosticism, meaning he tries to avoid allying himself with any existing religious (or irreligious) doctrine. Thus, he describes attending Mass and following the liturgy without investing any belief in it. He purposes to discuss religion without recourse to God. He thinks this “shocking,” but I’ve read Émile Durkheim.

He achieves this putative agnosticism sometimes better than others. He treats religious credulity more fairly than, say, Freud. His approach invites comparison to Durkheim and Giambattista Vico, and more recent thinkers like John Polkinghorne and Stephen Jay Gould. But his mask periodically slips, permitting glimpses of a limp demi-Marxist undercarriage, laced with open distaste for anti-modernism. He avoids that annoying postgraduate password, lumpenproletariat, but only just.

This book sets new benchmarks for the expression “not meant for everyone.” Latour eschews such conventions as chapter breaks, and organizes his ideas in free-association panorama, meaning he runs 174 pages without letting readers pause to collect their thoughts. His dense école normal prose requires extreme dedication. Take copious notes; you’ll consult them often. Only truly resolute readers should undertake this book, and only with great forethought and caution.

Yet for Latour’s intended readers, this intriguing thought experiment will undoubtedly encourage spirited debate and much-needed introspection. It will force marked re-evaluations of dogmas and golden calfs, of both sacred and secular belief. Nobody will embrace Latour’s conclusions altogether, but most honest readers will recognize themselves in his polemics. Once we own our limitations, and only then, we become able to speak across the divide.

The Identity Vendors

Kelley Lebrock's classic Pantene ad. Click
to enlarge and read the smaller text.

I never know how to process advertisements that claim a social conscience. Sure, in the video above, Pantene accurately spotlights the double standards that hamper high-achieving women in today’s business environment. Women shouldn’t feel impeded by judgments that only apply based on their chromosomes. But Pantene still wants to sell you shampoo. Would their sudden feminist turn have occurred if women worldwide felt okay with their hair?

This campaign is of a piece with Pantene’s classic 1980s “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” ads. Kelly LeBrock claimed she shampooed and blow-dried, same as any other woman, and therefore didn’t deserve women’s envy. Yet LeBrock’s highly styled ad, slathered in cosmetics, nevertheless reinforces the archetype that women should spend copious time on their appearance. Time they shouldn’t spend on jobs, or family, or… y’know… a life.

Such messages enforce class-based judgments on women—on people, really. Early male style icon Beau Brummell claimed he spent five hours daily getting dressed, which implicitly declared that he had five hours daily to waste on clothes. Many female beauty accessories, like high heels and concealer, originated at the court of Louis XIV, who was short and had smallpox scars. People mimicked these accoutrements in an attempt to look courtly.

Time hasn’t dulled beauty’s economic subtext. Pantene’s ad, above, correlates physical beauty, in the form of lustrous, full-bodied hair, with executive authority and wealth. In Pantene’s glamorous parallel universe, corporate accomplishment apparently includes a make-up team to smooth lady bosses’ skin tone and ensure they have no powder on their blouses. “Accomplish your utmost,” this ad whispers alluringly, “provided you never neglect your outward appearance.”

Promo still from Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty "Sketch Artist" ad.
Note how the "beautiful" image, right, looks more stereotypically Caucasian.

Attentive readers might recall Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which distributed an online ad recently comparing how women described themselves to how others described them. A police sketch artist created matching images. Not surprisingly, to anybody who knows women, the subjects described themselves plainer, dumpier, and less attractive than others described them. Barraged by unrealistic images of “normal” beauty, women become their own worst critics.

But the Campaign itself came under fire for spotlighting fair-haired, fair-skinned visions of beauty. Despite brief flashes of good-looking Hispanic and African American women, more than three minutes of this three-minute-thirty-second ad foregrounded white women, mostly blondes. The ad was as diverse as a Viking raid. Instead of subverting mainstream beauty ideals, it reinforced significant traditional attitudes, in a putatively empowering package.

Then, in the most appalling turn, it finished with an attractive middle-aged Caucasian woman stating that a woman’s perception of her own beauty colors her every other perception. If she doesn’t consider herself beautiful, it’ll drain her confidence, impede her career, and submarine her romantic prospects. So love your outward appearance, ladies! It’s the new, secular salvation! Wow, what a bitchslap to women not born with Baywatch looks.

Dove and Pantene don’t exist to uplift women or instill redeeming values. If you want that, buy a book or go to church. These corporations exist to sell you product, which they accomplish in part by first convincing you that you need what they sell. Your hair lacks shine! Your lizard-like skin needs moisture! We’ll fix it if you give us money! But if they said that aloud, they’d face outraged blowback, and for good reason.

This Eisenhower-era cosmetics ad is hardly a model
of enlightened gender roles. But at least it doesn't
pretend to feminist ideals it doesn't really possess.

Consider all the companies that actively tell women they’re currently inadequate. Hast thou uneven skin? L’oreal gives you that unblemished complexion. Saggy boobs? Victoria’s Secret will turn you into a runway model. Vera Wang and Calvin Klein will highlight your legs, butt, and whatever randomly selected feature fashion designers claim needs attention this season. And Prada accessories will make you appear wealthy and ambitious, independent but a good catch.

If women truly appreciated themselves, they could blow a hole in America’s economy overnight. American women spent over $33 billion on beauty supplies in 2010, according to the Commerce Department—enough to provide clean water, decent nutrition, and a high-school education to the entire developing world, twice. Yet according to my doctor, most women could achieve similar beauty effects by exercising, watching their diet, and drinking adequate quantities of water.

I like and admire women. So when major American corporations try to pitch uplifting messages, I want to thank them. But I can’t separate the moral lessons Pantene, Dove, and other corporations peddle, from their deeper business model. Even in telling women to seize their own destiny, these companies ultimately profit by selling dissatisfaction and want. Sometimes the message matters. But sometimes we can’t divide the message from the messenger.

Yuletide Gifts To Suit the Senses

Vision

I don't understand the science behind the Verilux Happylight. However, I understand how diminished access to sunlight can have an effect on people's psychology. The manufacturer markets this powerful, focused light for Seasonal Affective Disorder, but as a graveyard shift worker, I get limited sunlight year-round. And I've learned there's a concrete reason why shift workers often shuffle around like the undead.

And I also know that, if I sit for one hour bathing in this light, I have more energy going into the shift, emerge feeling much less depleted, and have sufficient wherewithal to keep accomplishing things rather than going straight to bed. I don't even have to stare into the light like I feared; I get the benefit if I have the light on while I reading or cooking. (Don't use it with anything that generates contradictory light, like watching TV of noodling on the computer.)

The light produced by this device is much whiter and warmer than that produced by supposed full-spectrum lights you can buy at the store. I've gone to the kitchen with this light on, looked back, and thought I'd left the drapes open. It really looks like sunlight. And it has the lingering effects you'd get from a picnic in the park, especially handy when your work schedule, or the season, limit your available sunlight.

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Hearing

When I pulled the Turtle Shell 2.0 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker from its package and noted how small it was, my heart sank. How could something so tiny have decent sound? But I gamely paired it to my smartphone and fired up Pandora, and it filled my living room with warm, full sound. Compared to my phone's onboard speakers, which sound like someone playing 78s through a cardboard tube, this arrangement sounds like an actual home stereo system.

Besides its complete, rich sound and compact size, this speaker has a durable outdoorsy construction, hardy yet flexible, which makes it great for yard work, cycling, or just chilling on the porch. Its rubberized base makes it shock resistant, and the speaker grille has holes small enough to resist accumulating grit. And by attaching it to a compatible bike mount (sold separately), it travels well. Take your streaming players, YouTube, or other media with you.

Most laptops, smartphones, and other streaming devices these days have lousy speakers. The first time you tried to play your favorite web radio station on your laptop, you hated the sound, right?. But not only does this speaker improve the sound of prerecorded media, its integrated microphone lets you get more life from live media, like Skype. Though it can't access your media, it brings new richness and depth to the media you already have.

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Taste

Who woulda thunk the shape of the ice in your drink matters? Surely ice spheres are just plain frivolous. But when I popped the first ice ball from my DeluxIce Premium Ice Ball Mold, it was only slightly narrower than a standard drink tumbler, meaning that even if I pour water, juice, or liquor into my glass warm, I’m still guaranteed a nice cool sip when it hits my lips.

Not to disparage the novelty value. Spherical ice makes for added value in swirling your cocktail, adding debonair points to your next party. (Dear Santa: I prefer Wild Turkey.) And because spheres have less surface area by volume than cubes, your ice will melt slower and last longer. One ice ball lasted me through two big glasses of water and three fingers of whiskey.

These molds come in pairs, so make ahead before your party, or order multiple sets. Their flexible structure absorbs ice’s natural expansion, and their two-part design snaps together snugly for easy use. They’re made of food-quality silicone, used in making pans, oven mitts, and spatulas, so you probably already have this material in your kitchen.

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And finally, your fashion sense

If you're anything like me, your collar stays have an annoying tendency to curl with age, crack, and finally die quietly when you forget to take them out before tossing your shirt in the dryer. Because typical plastic or cardboard stays age badly, your shirts often look old and cheap despite your best efforts to keep them fresh. I really appreciate NeoStays’ durable, age-resistant, and economical stays for multiple shirt sizes.

NeoStays Magnetic Metal Collar Stays are made of metal, so they won't curl or split with time. They weigh no more than typical store-bought collar stays, yet resist age and deterioration and continue lying flat, even if you accidentally run them through a wash cycle. I can wear them to work, church, or out on a date, and my collars look as crisp and businesslike at the end of the day as they did when I got dressed in the morning.

For most purposes where you have occasion to wear a collared shirt, this simple addition will keep you looking good throughout the day, with a precise, businesslike edge that won't wear off just because your stays aren't new. If your appearance matters, and you want to keep that crisp, fresh-ironed look through a long day, these are the fashion accessory you've looked for.

Jenga Horror

Kate Maruyama, Harrowgate

Let us pause in reading’s pleasures, and toast publishing’s most underrated writer: the guy who does dust-flap synopses for mass-market novels. This uncredited mensch must tell just enough of somebody else’s story to make us want to buy the book, but not so much that we feel we’ve already read it. Particularly when novels like Kate Maruyama’s debut balance on a lattice of secrets, it’s tough not to divulge everything.

Michael Gould was stuck in Canada when his wife suffered premature labor in Manhattan. Arriving late, he finds his wife Sarah and son Tim waiting at the Harrowgate apartments. But why won’t his formerly gregarious wife leave the flat? Why does she appear distraught every time he fetches groceries? And who is Greta, Sarah’s new friend and mentor, whose cheerful smile hides a personality like a carnivorous twelve-step coach?

Maruyama superficially co-opts Stephen King’s classic family horror model, though she attempts something far more complex, with mixed results. She launches with the sort of hallucinatory twist that M. Night Shyamalan would use to clinch his films, but then she keeps going. I thought I’d spotted the big climactic reveal on page 29 (seriously), only to discover, this was only Act One; Maruyama had bigger plans afoot.

Describing her plot, though, feels risky at best. Ever play Jenga? If you have, you’ve spent time prodding pieces, knowing that touching the wrong one would cause a collapse both calamitous and embarrassing. This book is like that. Maruyama cantilevers numerous narrative bricks into an edifice so intricate and subtle that it’s hard to determine which is the central plot. She handles conventional stories in unconventional, cliché-defying ways.

Michael wants to commence normal family life. He wants to change diapers and rock the baby. But having their son brings out Sarah’s dark side: alternately outraged and tearful, baby Tim colors their relationship. And when Michael ducks out for supplies or mail, he inevitably returns to find Sarah tear-stricken, fearing she’s been abandoned. Michael’s confusion only deepens when Greta apparently has his flat key, and hijacks his marriage.

But while Maruyama’s plot suddenly reveals multiple facets and upends readers’ expectations, her prose lumbers solemnly, sometimes failing to notice important moments. Like a diesel engine in February, Maruyama’s writing awakens by degrees, not so much seizing readers as slowly building power. She has no climax as such, but builds an overwhelming sense of dread. Whether this constitutes incremental Shirley Jackson-ish horror, or merely bores, readers must decide individually.

Where horror happens, it happens because Maruyama submarines common white bourgeois expectations of family and domesticity. Rather than settling comfortably into incipient middle age, Michael finds everything he thought he knew about himself challenged. His marriage, his aspirations, and even the ground beneath his feet become questionable. If the American dream is comfy hominess, American horror arises from discovering home is founded on a lie.

Not everyone will appreciate this novel. Maruyama’s languorous prose requires an investment from readers, which not everybody will appreciate. She doesn’t really gain traction until nearly page 100, and I contemplated stopping, though I’m glad I didn’t. Maruyama deliberately courts an audience willing to sit patiently, observing events unfold. Anyone looking for airplane reading will find her leisurely pace and lack of spectacle tiring.

More prominently, Maruyama’s narrative proceeds in a juddering, episodic manner. On her website, Maruyama describes herself as “raised on books and weaned on movies,” but her pace more resembles Dark Shadows, Twin Peaks, and other semi-horror TV classics. She never really achieves that HP Lovecraft moment of overwhelming agony; instead, it feels like she’s withholding something special for the next episode. I found this limitation harder to work around.

If Maruyama’s story makes sense, it makes sense for readers who eschew that “holy trinity” of rising action, climax, and denouement. It’s more like listening to Philip Glass: we don’t seek blatant themes, we absorb patterns below the level of consciousness. Maruyama gradually erodes our foundations, until we realize we’re standing on sand. This novel lacks a succession of big, dramatic moments; it’s the Chinese Water Torture of contemporary horror.

Rereading myself, it appears I’ve been awkwardly cagey about Maruyama’s actual story. Like the back-cover copywriter who misrepresented this novel by omission, I want to avoid spoiling her story. Because despite Maruyama’s severe limitations, this is a good novel for its intended audience. Cerebral horror has become much harder to find these days. If Maruyama’s debut succeeds, hopefully it will usher in more that share her sense of compounding dread.

They All Fall Down

The Fall, Series 1, BBC Northern Ireland

The first episode opening shots in the BBC’s The Fall show Gillian Anderson as DS Stella Gibson wearing flannel pyjamas and a clay beauty mask, scrubbing the bathtub with no bra on. Casting an actress famed for physical beauty and poise, then immediately stealing both, presages what this series offers. It’s a dark-hued, unromantic explosion of police efficiency and criminal precision, making us question who’s the real villain here.

When a murder goes unsolved one month on, Belfast police contract London Metropolitan legend Stella Gibson to audit their system. She quickly notices the connections between this and another unsolved murder, but Belfast refuses to acknowledge a serial killer. That is, until dispassionate, meticulous Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) takes his third victim, and begins stalking his fourth. Suddenly, police must dodge blame while tracking a killer who knows their strategies.

Anyone watching this series expecting Anderson to reprise her classic X-Files role will feel acutely disappointed. DS Gibson lacks either Dana Scully’s early reasoned efficiency or later credulous zeal. Gibson is professionally ruthless, intellectually aggressive, sexually voracious, and masks an vengeful core beneath protocol and dispassion. If you were a crime victim, you’d want her on your investigation, but you’d never buy her a drink.

In a parallel narrative, serial killer Spector leads a dual life. By day, he has a beautiful young family, exercises obsessively, and counsels bereaved parents. By night, he stalks dark-haired thirtysomething professionals. He has perfected the art of scaring his victims in ways police can’t prosecute. And he’s meticulous in keeping an impenetrable wall between his bucolic middle-class life and his midnight murders. Spector and Gibson never meet.

Gibson and Spector’s mutual hunt unfolds against Belfast’s brick-paved backdrop, where lingering sectarian divides mean standing on the wrong street could get you killed. Police must weigh every action, not just via the law, but against political ramifications that could start riots. Though The Troubles are long over, factional divides survive, and two arrests on the same street can resemble political oppression, as Gibson learns only too late.

Audiences unaccustomed to British TV conventions might find this series’ pacing offbeat. The languid narrative tempo more resembles French horror films than American cop dramas. Events unfold with Andrei Tarkovsky-like lack of haste, punctuated with sudden stabs of action so abrupt, they touch deep, primal, pre-evolutionary fears. But this better emphasizes the show’s innately horrifying themes, for viewers who can adjust themselves to its idiosyncratic rhythms.

Director Jakob Verbruggen cherry-picks his favorite components from thriller formulae, crafting an arc that sometimes obeys audience expectation, sometimes subverts it. From sooty streets to CSI nerd-talk to police infighting, many scenes will appear downright comfortable. But nobody saves the puppy in Act III. Every time we attempt to predict the story’s twists, Verbruggen submarines us, rekindling the sense of dislocation that first attracted many audiences to classic crime thrillers.

While Spector’s crime spree permeates this five-episode series’ core, subplots develop as police involved with the investigation, or involved with Gibson, prove darkly corrupt. Gibson has an incautious liaison with a Belfast detective who gets assassinated less than twenty-four hours later; and as Detective Olson’s sordid side business becomes visible, Gibson finds herself tainted. The two plots form a self-feeding cycle of crime and sleaze.

The camera loves both Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan. Though Anderson’s beauty is already renowned, Verbruggen never squanders an opportunity to showcase her with blouse open, or in a swimsuit, or charmingly unkempt. Dornan, a former Armani model, is less famous, but about the third time he does shirtless chin-ups, you’ll understand his casting as Christian Grey. Fair warning: despite minimal violence, this series’ frank sexuality may curl parents’ hair.

Even Belfast itself plays a remarkable character in this story. The contrast between the slick, glass-and-steel city centre, and the cobblestone residential streets, is frequently jarring. Gibson’s hotel has no trace of anything antique or genuinely Irish, while Spector has the kind of Victorian rowhouse that Americans consider quintessentially British. But Gibson and Spector’s pursuits take them into crumbling Shankhill and Falls Road areas where poverty has a manifest odor.

Dramas like this seldom play well on American TV. The closest I can recall is Steven Bochco’s Murder One, which never found its audience in the mid-1990s. This more resembles a novel than a bog-standard cop drama. But the audience seeking that level of intricacy, that deep investment in character, will find it here. But prepare yourself for a level of intensity to make typical American TV audiences cringe.



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