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Empty Chairs At Empty Tables: “Les Miz” and Sandy Hook

I got through Tom Hooper’s “Les Miz” (*there are spoilers in this post] without the cathartic cry so many experienced. I thought the movie was only just pretty good , with fantastic performances by Hugh Jackman (Huge Ackman, as I like to call him), Eddie Redmayne as Marius and Samantha Barks as Eponine. I felt that only the three of them managed to serve both the demands of the camera and the musical score. I left an eight- minute review of the film on my Facebook page (there’s a link on the bottom of this page if you’re interested in following me there) if you want to hear more on that.

I had fun giggling to myself over alternate title for the film, things like “White People In Trouble.” I finally settled on “White People Walking Toward the Camera Crying and Singing.”

I have seen the show many times and identified with various characters along the way. My mom gave me the score (on a cassette tape!) as a gift for my birthday when I was in college. I will never forget the thrill I got when I first heard that four-note cascade of twinkling sound that signaled the start of the show and serves as its theme. “One day more…!” I had been planning to go out that night, but I hung up my coat, called my boyfriend (on the DIAL PHONE that plugged into the wall — there was no coordinating to “meet up later” in those days, as there was no way to get in touch once you left the house) and cancelled our date. I sat on the floor of my bedroom and listened to the entire score, sobbing at “I Dreamed a Dream” and feeling ecstatically wrung out by the time the friendly ghosts surrounded Jean Valjean to accompany him to heaven.

I have been Fantine, I have been Eponine. I have been little Cosette. I have been Javert, and the Thénadiers (and of course, Mme. Thenadier is a dream role). I have been Valjean, and Marius, and I have been Enjolras, the student revolutionary.

This time, for the first time, I was Gavroche.

Gavroche (Daniel Huttlestone) is the little street urchin who delivers messages between the barricade and the streets, and who is shot several times by soldiers as he cockily attempts one last dodge through the front line. In what was the most moving moment for me in the movie, Inspector Javert pins a medal from his own jacket onto Gavroche’s dead body. They are fighting for different sides of the rebellion, but Javert knows that here lies a truly courageous soldier.

While previous viewings of “Les Miz” provided a delicious sort of romantic pain –oh, the lovelorn Eponine! Oh, the neglected child Cosette! Oh, the tormented obsession of neurotic Javert! — this viewing just hurt. It hurt because of the shooting, at almost point-blank range, of pre-adolescent Gavroche. It hurt because, although some cultural critics have raised the issue of the studio’s silence around the shooting of a child in their blockbuster release, we all know there is nothing to say. How can we be such ridiculous hypocrites as to protest the shooting death of a fictitious child in a movie about a student revolution in 19th century France while we live the way we live in 21st century America?

Spare me the hand-wringing. Of course it’s responsible and considerate to inform American viewers in December of 2012 that the film includes a scene of a child being shot and killed. But let’s not waste our time debating the emotional harm that might be caused by that scene, or any other scenes of violence depicted in the movies. Scenes of violence always cause emotional harm. It’s just that humans decided long, long ago that violence is an acceptable form of public entertainment, not just for sadists and psychopaths, but for everyone.

I wonder how many shooting deaths I’ve seen in the movies and television in my life? It has to be in the thousands, and I’m not a big action genre fan (although I do enjoy it, and some of my favorite movies are extremely violent). You could argue that even before moving picture entertainment, people could read about shooting deaths. Sure they could. But they almost never saw them with their own eyes unless they had been to war.

We have all been de-sensitized. We’re mostly pretty numb to gun violence unless it has taken someone we personally know. Children are killed by guns all the time in the cities and so far, America has not much cared. Kill them one by one on a street corner, one by one walking from school through the empty parking lot, one by one through the walls of their bedrooms while they sleep and no one much cares. Kill them by the classroom full and suddenly we realize that we’re sacrificing our nation’s children to the false idol of a monstrous interpretation of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, perverted by paranoid domestic terrorists and sustained by the insatiable greed of the gun lobby, is now impossible not to see in anthropomorphized form as a monster, dripping with the blood of human sacrifice.

I will never again be able to hear this song, sung with heart-wrenching beauty in the film by Eddie Redmayne, without thinking of little kids coloring or playing or talking at kindergarten tables, while attentive, loyal teachers hover around. There’s a pain that can’t be spoken.

At least little Gavroche knew what he was dying for.

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone….

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me.

That I live and you are gone
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on.

Phantom faces at the window
Phantom shadows on the floor
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

Oh my friends, my friends, don’t ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more.

– from “Les Miserables,” music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. Lyrics by Alain Boublil (French), English by Herbert Kreztmer

 

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What We Mean By “Transformation”

Doug Muder writes a great article about being an introvert at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. Although he writes with affection and appreciation for the enthusiasm and commitment he encounters among fellow UUs there, he reminds us that we are a diverse people and that some of us struggle with the pep rally atmosphere of GA.

I am a strong extrovert, and I struggle with GA for the same reason, although my discomfort has a different origin than Doug’s. My problem isn’t the way that our General Assembly event privileges strong extroverted personalities, it is the way that the event frames the very mission of Unitarian  Universalism, and particularly the way it defines “transformation.”

I have never gone away “transformed” by a General Assembly. I arrived with a set of liberal social justice convictions that I may have had affirmed and strengthened at GA, but I have never been “transformed.”

I have been validated.

I have been informed.

I have been educated.

And I have often been emotionally charged to engage in more action.

None of that, to me, equals “transformation.” Religious transformation, which I believe is the mission of any religious organization, is a far deeper, more challenging, intimidating and permanent work than getting jazzed up about a social issue at GA, or experiencing some fantastic “rah-rah UU” moments in huge worship services (“rah rah” sentiments always give me the creeps, actually. I think they play into our most immature needs and desires).

Religious transformation is not just about my awareness of someone else’s plight. It is first and foremost about my awareness of my own plight as a regular old screwed up human being.  A sinner, in old-school church terminology! Or, if you prefer, my condition as a human being who needs daily to challenge herself to move beyond her own ego and keep prying her hands, eyes and mind open with a crowbar, because everything in the world wants to convince her that she’s awesome, she’s right all the time, and she should be comfortable at every moment.  There is so much more transforming that I, and all of us, need to engage in. Being evangelized to get involved in social justice is just one very limited definition of transformation.

My God, the disconnect between our high UU aspirations around what we are called to do “out there” and our crappy behavior “in here!” And by “in here,” I mean the inner life, the life of community, neighborhoods, work place and family relationships, and the life in our congregations. You know I’m a church consultant and talk to hundreds of ministers every year, don’t you? You know how many stories of our incredible dysfunction and nastiness I hear, don’t you? Okay, to be fair, I am an unofficial mentor and (unpaid) consultant to church folk in a wide variety of traditions, but let me say that although UUs like to think of themselves as a particularly sophisticated and intelligent people, we ain’t either. What we are is particularly opinionated, mouthy and self-centered. Most of us think we’d be a much better leader than the person leading. Most of us hear an idea, and immediately have a better idea. Most of us listen “for” rather than listen “to.” We listen for things that we can disagree with, things we can refute, and things that will offend us. We do not like to listen “to.” We mistake hyper-vigilance for attentiveness. Most of us could sorely benefit from, as the kids say, “chilling.”

We don’t need to attract more people like that (like ME!). We need to attract more truly thoughtful people, more kind people, more patient people, more genuinely tolerant and accepting people. That’s the kind of person I want to be. I don’t need more fires lit under my furious, self-righteous, easily agitated posterior. I need a daily dose of “Honey, our first principle is NOT that we affirm and inherent worth and dignity of everything that comes out of your mouth.”*

It’s HARD!! Dammit! And that’s why I know I need church. Desperately need it.

Do we really think our Unitarian Universalist movement is limping and declining because we’re not committed enough to social justice? Do we really believe that our transformation from someone who doesn’t really care about immigration issues to someone who sends a check every month to “No Mas Muertes” and who protests Sherrif Arapaio in 110 degree heat is the goal for all those who consider themselves members or friends of our UU faith tradition? I would certainly be proud to be counted among a group who broadly makes such generous use of their money and time, but that kind of transformation is only part of what we need to talk about, open ourselves to, and promote.

I have heard the grumbles from some UUs: “we don’t do enough.” “We should be marching against war.” “We should be descending upon Washington, DC to demand gun control reform.” “We should be …”

WE are around 100,000 people in the USA. Total. There are dozens of humanitarian organizations and activist groups out there for Americans to join. Most of them share our 7 Principles and have, when you get involved with them, a kind of religious zeal to them. They require meetings, and organizing, and commitment, and heart.

What they don’t have is congregations. What they don’t have is institutional presence in communities. What they don’t have is a long history as a religious tradition. What they don’t have is the concept of covenant, or the act of weekly worship to remind them of the larger cycle of birth, death, struggle, sorrow, joy, celebration, sin, shame, reverence, awe, healing, learning, transforming and growing “into harmony with the Divine” which has always been the purpose of our lives in religious community.

That is our job; our calling. When people arrive at our congregations on a Sunday morning, they aren’t coming to find a group of social justice activists. They are coming to engage in religious community so that they can understand the deeper theological foundation beneath their instincts for justice, beneath their frustration with the world as it is, beneath their sense of longing. They are not coming to be transformed into protest marchers. They can do that through any number of other organizations.

It is not our job simply to grow activists but to minister to activists who are informed in their ethic of service and love by our religious commitments, our religious mission, and our religious principles. It is our job to help all who join with us find a deeper life, a life more abundant, and a way to articulate and live their deepest convictions. It is our job to discover life more abundant in responsible and mature ways, and to mightily resist the temptation to gather life-minded people in a self-congratulatory mode.

Because we are a church, we should gather in a spirit of humility, not pride and certainty. Because we are a church, we should broaden our definition of the word “activist” to include all who move beyond the littleness of their opinions, preferences and comforts and into the world as a helper, a healer, an advocate, and an intimate in the human struggle.

The young woman who bakes a cake for the new widow, then goes and sits with her in awkward, caring silence in the kitchen over a cup of tea, is an activist.  If this act is new for her, and she is moving beyond her comfort zone, and she is learning to push herself beyond her own daily concerns and to think about how she might support someone around her (who is not the kind of person she would choose to “hang out with”), she is a religious activist. When she sits in church and thinks, “I swear, this week I’m going to actually do something for someone. I have to stop saying I’m going to, and just do it,” she is in a process of transformation.

The guy who hears at coffee hour about another guy who can’t find a job and asks the minister if he can start a support group for the unemployed — and he’s never done this before and he has never been the kind of man who thought he would ever attend a support group, let alone start one — he is an activist in the process of transformation.

The woman in the choir who, after years of protesting any Theistic or Christian language in the anthems, starts to realize that she isn’t upset by sacred music any more, and doesn’t find the need to censor or edit it, is in a process of transformation. She has done work on coming to peace with her religious past, or her assumptions about what God language means to everyone (and the damage she believes it does), and she is able to sing “Shall We Gather At The River” and appreciate it as a beloved old-school hymn… she is being transformed.

The group of people in the church who absolutely believe that the expansion of the parking lot and repairs to the roof should take precedence over the addition of the RE wing, but who take counsel with each other and decide, together, that even though they know they’re right, it might be okay to wait and support the RE construction project for now… they’re experiencing transformation, too.

The woman who hears a sermon on domestic abuse and goes home, picks up the phone and calls her minister to say that she is in an abusive relationship, and could they meet right away before her girlfriend gets home – she is also in transformation.

Any time we find ourselves thinking jerky thoughts in worship and admonish ourselves to stop being so mean and critical or judgmental: that is the work of religious transformation. It requires confession of short-comings, determination to obey the dictates of conscience, and willingness to change.

It is not our calling to change the world. It is our responsibility and calling to change ourselves so that we are better able to participate in the world in a way that does credit to our values, our principles and our heritage.

* Our first Unitarian Universalist Principle is “we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

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“The Muppets” A PeaceBang Review

Of course I loved it. I was raised on the Muppets, and remember the very first ever episode of “Sesame Street,” which replaced my favorite show at the time, “Kimba the White Lion.”

“The Muppets” (2011) is a charming movie about the Muppets. You don’t need to know the plot – it’s the same thing you’ve seen many times. The Muppets are in danger of losing their theatre, so they have to reunite for a big fundraising show.

The two main characters are Gary (Jason Segal) and Walter (a muppet) who is Gary’s brother who doesn’t quite know if he’s a muppet or a man. Gary has a girlfriend named Mary, played by the always-charming Amy Adams.

I get that the movie is a bit retro in its attitudes, as it’s trying to keep things innocent and fresh. I appreciate that. What I did not appreciate, however, is that the screenplay makes a strong point that women are nothing without their men (or frog, as the case may be). Really, Muppets? In 2012? In 2012, the female character can’t go out for the day by herself or eat lunch by herself without falling into despair about it (and singing a big musical number about it)? Her big first number has to voice her ultimate (and apparently only) desire that her boyfriend marry her?

Male characters in this movie have dreams. They make things happen. They save the theatre, and find their talent. The ladies just go along for the ride and complain about not getting the guy. After the muppets save the theatre and treat us to a big, happy ensemble number, the movie comes to a satisfying conclusion. However, just to emphasize the point that all happiness comes from gettin’ yer man, the film adds a penultimate scene with Gary getting down on one knee and proposing to Mary. Blergh.

Worse than “The Muppets'” inability to envision a self-respecting 21st century human female character (Rashida Jones gets to play the other female role of the stereotypical cold-hearted Career Gal, all business suits and Blackberry) is its treatment of the glorious Miss Piggy, porcine diva extraordinaire.

When the muppets go to find Miss Piggy to bring her back to the theater for the show, we find out that she is living in Paris and has the dream job of all time: plus-size fashion editor at Vogue!!  The funniest scene in the movie features the fabulous Emily Blunt (in a wink to her role as the assistant to Miranda Priestley in “The Devil Wears Prada”) imperiously blocking entrance to Miss Piggy’s ultra-glam office. When we see Piggy, she is a vision in Chanel (although stuffing her face with donuts):

Miss Piggy is living the dream! She’s not wasting her life away at a dive bar in Reno like Fozzy or wiling away her days in a gated mansion like her old paramour, Kermit. Piggy is important, successful and happy.

However, in what I’m sure most people thought was a throwaway moment, Kermit confesses to Miss Piggy that he misses her and needs her, and asks her to stay in Hollywood “for him.” Without hesitation, Piggy squeals, “Of course, Kermie.”

Are you kidding!? Piggy!! Who let that dialogue happen? She should have said, “Oh, Kermie, come with me to PARIS!” Then, voila, set-up for a Muppet movie in France!

I don’t care if these are puppets with plastic eyes, when you hear parents say things like, “I plan to raise my kids on this movie,” it’s worth paying attention to the messages that the movie communicates. And this movie clearly communicates that girls have no desires apart from being with their guys, and that no matter how amazing a gal’s life ever gets, she’ll be willing to drop it all in a heartbeat (and leave Paris! Paris!!) the second her guy asks her to.

I love my Muppets and I loved all the references to 1986. I just wish that they could have written a screenplay that didn’t have such a throwback treatment of female characters. Our little girls deserve better.