Word Pictures Guy

The Invention of Truth

2010-07-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I lied. Today's blog is not going to be a direct statement of belief, but an examination of a movie. This past spring we watched The Invention of Lying, a movie that got mixed reviews and not very strong box-office. I'm writing about it because, though I'm not sure what the makers of the film intended, I get the feeling they thought they were creating a masterful satire of religion that makes it look foolish.

Spoiler alert-- I give away a lot of this movie's plot below!

The movie is set in a world where nobody lies; everybody tells the truth about what they are feeling and thinking, all the time. There is no fiction, including in movies, which are all lectures, and apparently no religion. Ricky Gervais stars as Mark, a screenplay writer who loses his job, can't get the girl he loves to love him back, and is about to be thrown out of his apartment. This desperate situation pushes him to tell a lie, and once he starts, he can't stop. He makes up fake history for a lecture film, thus creating fiction, and restarts his career. Everyone believes all his lies because the concept of lying is foreign to them.

He eventually tells his dying mother that there is a place where everyone goes when they die where they get a house and be with everyone they love-- on other words, the popular conception of heaven. When word of heaven gets out, Mark is pressured to reveal more, and he eventually writes down ten rules on pizza boxes, and reveals to the world the existence of the "big man in the sky" who decides who gets to go to heaven who doesn't, based on how good each person's level of goodness or badness. This speech eventually leads to the founding of churches, one of which is called "A Quiet Place to Think About the Big Man in the Sky."

On the surface, it might appear that the filmmakers have succeeded in revealing religion as ridiculous. But a deeper reading of the film brings some other insights to the surface. For one, as I've often discovered when people attack religion, the movie parodies a version of religion that is so simplistic that the religion is almost a parody in and of itself. The idea of God as a "big man in the sky" is a child's picture of God. The idea of God punishing and rewarding is certainly in the Bible, is not in the simplistic, legalistic way is is presented here. The satire here is an assault on a seven-year-old's religion. Granted, many adults have the religious sensibilities of seven year-olds, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

What I find more interesting, though, is that while Mark tells the girl he loves that he "did a bad thing" in making up the big man in the sky, the rest of his lies generally have positive consequences. Even more interesting is the fact that world as he knows it, a world of only facts, is not only deadly dull, but is a world of despair. As Mark walks through a nursing home ("A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People") the residents clamour about every day being worse than the last. A man in his apartment building is opening thinking of suicide, and in this world, no one cares. The girl Mark loves, Anna, played by Jennifer Garner, is only interested in a good-looking genetic match (played by Rob Lowe) for a husband. Other considerations are irrelevent-- only genetics matter.

In fact, this world of cold, hard facts is a wretched place to live until Mark begins telling his lies. In a telling scene, Anna sees a boy being teased for his appearance in a park, and, under Mark's influence, tells him there is more to him than meets the eye. And there probably is. She isn't telling the boy a lie-- she's telling him a truth. As always, there is a difference between the truth and the facts.

Although I think the movie is intended as a send up of religion, and although it does parody the lies of advertising well, I think that The Invention of Lying is less a parody of religion than an unintended satire about what it would be like to live in a world where scientific fact is the only truth. In the end, it is looking beyond the obvious facts of surface appearances that matters. It is finding value in people that can't be proved or quantified that makes us truly human and life worth living. The world of The Invention of Lying is a godless dystopia that shows us that when facts are all we have, we aren't left with much.

The world is made better, not necessarily by Mark's lies, but by his seeing beyond, and above, the facts to value being human in a way that the facts alone can't support. The Invention of Lying sets out to make religion look bad, but ultimately shows us how a empty a purely materialist world might be. And that's the truth.

Believing in Beliefs

2010-06-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

This blog has been dormant far too long, and since I'm on summer vacation, I decided to reboot it. I've been writing my blot on teaching, The Real Mr. Fitz, much more regularly, because it has a more definite focus. But I think I've finally found my focus here, in this comic strip I published in my newest book. I have a whole lot of beliefs, and since I started this blog with beliefs, I've decided to go with that idea and see where it leads.

I do believe in having beliefs. I think the word believe gets a bad rap, just like the word faith does. But I don't think you can live your life without beliefs. I have a book on my stack of "to read" books (actually it's more like two stacks, and a couple of crates of "to read" books) called Things I Believe But Cannot Prove, written by a bunch of scientists. Having glanced through it, they have plenty to say. Even the most empirical mind around must rest on the belief that the only things worth paying attention to are those that can be proved. You cannot, however, prove that those are the only things worth paying attention to. It is a belief like any other...

And so as I reboot this blog, I'll be considering the things I believe, and why I believe them...

2009-03-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

We've been writing poetry in class lately, and I wound up writing this one, inspired by some of my students who don't "get" why we need to take some things seriously, and by news stories with the same theme.

Fun
Is a funny word.
Fun
Is in the eye of the beholder,
Fun
Comes in many forms.
And not all of them are really
Fun.
The vandals who spray-paint the murals downtown
And rip apart the playground equipment
Are having fun
Depending on how you define it.
They probably laugh hysterically.
The girls who point and laugh
At people to make themselves superior
Are having fun, too.
Laughter has its dark side too.
Is fun really fun
If it’s at someone else’s expense?
The distinctions can be more subtle.
It can be fun
To take something serious
And poke fun at it—
If the target is worthy of deflating.
Parody’s an honorable art.
And yet…
If all you can do is look at things and make fun of them
You lose the things themselves.
True parody entails affection for the thing itself.
But just making a joke out of things,
Having fun by laughing at worthy things
Rather than really experiencing them,
Appreciating them,
Feeling them in your soul
Is to lose the things themselves.
To say you just want to make things fun
When you are really making fun of things
Is to ruin things.
Holding the paddle over your head and trying to use it as a sail
May be fun, but it isn’t canoeing.
To have a food fight may be fun,
But it isn’t sitting down to a candlelight dinner and quiet talk.
To read a story and just to laugh at it
Isn’t the same as listening to, appreciating, and trying to understand a story
On all its levels
And letting it speak to you, make you think,
Change you.
But really taking the journey down the river is fun, too.
And so is the dinner conversation
And the story deeply felt.
Laughing at something is fun one way.
Really experiencing that thing is fun in another.
The real experience is the flow experience
Being into the thing itself
Getting out of the way
And appreciating something
Rather than pointing and laughing.
Taking something seriously doesn’t mean it can’t be fun
It means the fun is found in the flow, the focus,
The experience itself.
There is such a thing as serious fun.

2008-12-20T18:58:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2008 - the Big Idea and the Specific Picture

I wrote my This I Believe Essay about the big idea and the little detail. As we approach Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I thought I’d expand on that idea in a way I considered doing in the essay, but couldn’t quite find a way to do gracefully, because the format for This I Believe is so short, and these thoughts really deserve an essay all their own.
I do believe that all of life is a balance between the big idea and the specific detail, the abstract concept and the specific picture that illustrates it. And nowhere does that idea become more relevant to me than in my faith. Faith has become a dirty word in many circles these days, but everyone their lives by faith. Even the most committed atheist believes in the importance of truth, and though you can prove specific facts to be true, you cannot really prove that truth itself is of any importance, or of any more importance than anything else. Anything truly, deeply important cannot be proved. In the movie Contact, based on the novel by supposed atheist Carl Sagan, Joss, a preacher, asks Ellie Arroway, our heroine why she doesn’t believe in God. When she says that she can’t because there’s no proof, he asks her if she loved her father. She says yes. And he says, “Prove it.”
But that’s a subject for another whole essay.
This essay is about the big concept and the specific illustration. This is the story of the Incarnation. God is too big, too Other, for our brains to comprehend, though we try very hard sometimes to shoe-horn him into a comprehensible box. The concept is too much for us to “get.” And so he sent us a specific picture: Jesus. A certain person, living in a certain time period, under very particular circumstances. As Madeleine L’Engle quotes someone as saying, “Jesus was God’s ‘Show and Tell.’”
The Incarnation is the word made flesh, but it is also the Big Idea expressed as the specific illustration. To further deepen the point, within his own specific story, Jesus told stories (word illustrations) himself. Stories within stories. Some people would have us believe, like Macbeth, that life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing (in which case why does it really matter if people think otherwise?), but I tend to see life in terms of Story, and in stories everything has meaning if we only take time to find it.
Jesus’ story is such a complex and multi-layered one, that there are, despite claims to the contrary, many ways to get meaning out of it. This doesn’t mean that every interpretation is right, but that the story is so rich that there are multiple layers of meaning to get out of any one part of it. It’s as if God tried to contain himself in one Man’s story, and that Man’s story bursts at the seams with meaning because of it. There The mythic archetypes of sacrifice, death, and resurrection are there, and are so rich in meaning that their significance can be played out and understood in many ways. “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” offers one take on its meaning. But so does “E.T.: the Extraterrestrial.” So does “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” So does, amazingly, Phillip Pullman’s “The Amber Spyglass,” the third book in a blatantly anti-religion (especially anti-Christian) fantasy book series about children on a mission to kill “the Authority” (God). But even as he tries to show his disdain and hatred for Christianity and Christians everywhere, he can’t help but make Christ figures out of his heroes. When even a writer who wants to undermine Christianity is drawn to the truth of it despite his best efforts to rip it down, this ultimately strengthens my faith.
The story of the incarnation resonates with my life on every level. As a teacher, I believe in the power of stories, just as Jesus did. As a writer I believe in the power of the specific and the abstract working together. As a husband and a father, I believe that I am only as good as the “life pictures” I create—the specific actions I take to play my role well.
And this birth, this limiting of the power that created, well, everything, tells us that being human is significant. That we matter. That there is a bigger picture, a big idea behind everything. Without that bigger picture, life is empty and bleak. Without the specific pictures, the details of our lives, we have no way to connect to the bigger pictures.
And so Christmas is, to me, the very place where the abstract and the specific meet, where the transcendent shines down to become a specific picture of the Holy. And all of this ties in with my writing, my teaching, and yes, even drawing cartoons. Those abstract words floating in bubbles don’t mean much until the pictures are there to en-flesh them. The pattern is everywhere, and always. It’s all part of the same fabric, and the Christmas story runs right through all of it for me, all year long.

2008-12-20T16:40:00.000-08:00

This post is actually a draft of an essay I'm writing for NPR's This I Believe radio series. I am not sure if I am satisfied with it. I am going to try a couple of other ideas. This is my first try. I am asking my students to write This I Believe essays, so I figured I'd better give it a shot!

THIS I BELIEVE

As a middle school English teacher, I try to teach my students that it isn’t enough to tell us the main idea of your writing—you have to make us see the idea. I tell them it is all about the pictures.
For instance, if I ask a class to write about a best friend, I will get a slew of generic essays: my friend is funny, my friend is fun, my friend is nice. Sometimes I read portions of essays like that aloud and the students can’t tell who wrote them—they all sound alike. But when I ask them to list specific, concrete nouns and action verbs, these friends suddenly come to life. Pictures appeared. My friend and I go and try on crazy socks at J.C. Penny. My friend told a joke so funny, I laughed chocolate thick shake out my nose. My friend let me stay on his couch when my parents were fighting.
This is the oldest writing lesson in the world, but I think it is more than that. I tell my students, and try to show them, that this idea of general and specific isn’t just about writing. It’s about life. If we think about the kind of people we want to be, the ideals we aspire to become the main ideas we want to express with our lives. And the only way to live out those main ideas, is to do specific things—to create pictures with our lives. I can’t just say I want to be a good father. I need to make a Rubik’s Cube Halloween costume for my son or play a board game with my daughter. I can’t just say I want to be a good husband; I need to help with the dishes. I can’t just say I want to be a good teacher; I need to stand at the door each class period and call them by name.
I read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with my eighth graders this year. Near the end, a character talks about his grandfather and all the things he did with his hands: built things, changed things, helped people. The book’s protagonist, Guy Montag, thinks about his wife Mildred. Her hands never really did anything. She watched TV. She smoked cigarettes.
I ask my students to think about what their hands accomplish. Do they change channels? Instant message? Play video games? Or do they actually do things that matter? What do your specific pictures say about the main idea of your life? Do you even have a main idea?
I draw a comic strip about teaching for my local newspaper, and every day I try to take my general thoughts about education, school, and teaching, and turn them into specific little framed pictures about pencils, gum, books, and middle school students. The general and the specific again. And the comic strip is something I create with my hands—a specific act that also shows what I believe.
I believe that all of life is found in the balance between the general and the specific, the big idea and the little detail, the ideals we aim for and the actions that help us live out our ideals. It’s all about the pictures we create with our lives, and what those pictures say.
This I believe.

My Non-Compartmentalized Life

2008-09-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

I am a middle school Language Arts (what they used to call English) teacher in Florida who is also a cartoonist, sometimes novelist, author of a book for teachers, amateur theologian, animation buff, reading junky, father of two, husband, and... well probably a lot of other things that will come into play eventually.

This blog will not be strictly about teaching, mainly because I find it very difficult to compartmentalize my life. I teach all day, and it's my job. But my wife (whose blog is at oldnewteacher.blogspot.com) also teaches Language Arts at my school, so that compartment is gone. My two children, grades 6 and 8, also attend our middle school-- and they are both in my class this year. The wall between the "teacher" and "father" compartments is pretty thin.

I draw a comic strip 5 times a week for the Daytona Beach News-Journal called "Mr. Fitz" (www.mrfitz.com), that is about-- you guessed it-- a middle school Language Arts teacher. Mr. Fitz has two kids and wife, so my family also winds up in the strip. I wrote a young adult novel called Making My Escape a few years ago, and I now teach it to my students. I just had a book for teachers published by Scholastic Professional books called Writing Extraordinary Essays which contains my ideas about teaching writing to middle-schoolers. It also contains 84 of my cartoons, uses work samples from my students (including my son), and is dedicated to my wife.

I find it very hard to separate the various parts of my life. Maybe this is bad. It can occasionally be inconvenient. But mostly it's good. I tend to see connections everywhere-- not just between the different areas of my life, but different areas of... well, everything. I see patterns everywhere, connections everywhere, and not all of it fits well into Mr. Fitz. Hence my starting a blog. I may go off on education issues, on something theological, on books I love or books I hate, on movies, on political issues (though I am non-partisan in public and apolitical by nature) that affect my life.

And I will always try to make it specific. This blog is called word pictures guy because word pictures, words and pictures, pictures and words, all seem to be a big thing for me right now. When I teach my students to write, I tell them they must create word pictures: Not "The teacher was angry," but "The teacher slammed down a dictionary, threw an eraser across the room, tipped over a stool, and yelled 'I'm not going to take this any more.'" You can see that. The new, second book I am writing for Scholastic is all about word pictures. Every day I sit down at my drawing board and create a combination of words and pictures with my comic strip. And so I will always try to pin what I'm writing about to something specific.

Tonight I am sitting in a brown recliner in my living room in Florida, typing on my relatively new Gateway laptop and listening to a Star Trek soundtrack that's loaded on the hard drive. I'm wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Earlier this evening I finished a chapter of a novel called Portents that I'm writing with my twelve year old son. After I finish this blog, I'll work on my lesson plans, write down scripts for my October comic strips, and then hang out with my wife. A little writing, a little drawing, a little down time. No compartments. Flow.

Until next time...