Watch your language!

Paul:  We start this week with an item that I would rather not be bringing more publicity.  However, it was our gateway into discussing the week's topic.  Please know we are in no way endorsing or recommending this film.  We are merely mentioning it.  Although I have my suspicions that our demographic of blog readers is most likely not a group we really need to worry about in this case.

Someone within the scope of my vision on the vast Twitter wasteland mentioned a forthcoming remake or "reboot" of the 1980s "classic" horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Off I went to Youtube and squandered 10 minutes of my life in front of two trailers for said film for reasons that I am now at a total loss to explain.  I had a number of reactions, many of them were horror for reasons I assume were not the ones intended by the film makers.  One reaction I had was surprise at how much of the material I was familiar with.  It seems to be a compilation of favorite bits from the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series (the angry mob burning the human Krueger, the children with that imbecilic numerical song-poem about Freddy, the hand in the bathtub, the amazing, invisible, levitating evisceration) reenacted by the same caliber of teenage actors as the original (minus any Depp) and a version of Freddy Krueger played by a new actor made to look more accurately like a burn victim (Robert Englund, the original Krueger, is somewhere in his mid-60s by now.)

Laurie:  Well, I'm ashamed (or should I say "proud"?) to say that I've never seen a single one of those films.  I outgrew my love for the horror genre a year or so before these came out.  The horrors that I had enjoyed were never human.  They were zombies, ghosts, sharks, monsters, etc. The idea of replacing monsters with human actors seemed to me then as they do now, 1) too scary by way of being far too possible and 2) too scary by way of knowing this might just be putting sick ideas in the head of someone who sitting just a row or two away from me at that very moment. In fact, I would likely have avoided dating anyone I knew to be into those kinds of films...

Paul: First of all, zombies and ghosts used to be human just like Freddy Krueger used to be human, but I understand what you're saying.  It's gone even further with the more recent fad of torture-tainment movies like the "Saw" franchise.  I would like to say I wouldn't have dated anyone who was into such things, but you've seen my ex-girlfriends.

Laurie:  Well, not to be difficult, but I don't believe in zombies or ghosts, and do am not afraid of what they might do to me.  I do, however, believe in humans...
 
Paul: "Wait a minute," I hear our readers cry, "why are we talking about this?"  And why do I, Paul Mathers, know so much about this?  Well, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would refer you to earlier posts regarding my mis-spent youth, although even I was a little surprised to discover how much of my brain is devoted to storing information about a series of slasher films, a genre that I've never liked.  The only explanation I have to give is that I spent a lot of my young years doing things I didn't particularly like or enjoy in the company of peers who at the very least pretended  they wanted to be doing those things.  Because people aren't exactly seeking out my company for my good looks.  In short, I was the textbook sucker for peer pressure.

So, it's another example of the stark realization of the many years I spent starving to death eating only Circus Peanuts while a nourishing and delicious feast was right in front of me for the partaking of.  Awakening to my jejune cultural diet was one of the key plot points and directional forces in my adult life.  Now I want to run down the street and grab people by the collar and shout "Do you realize Pride and Prejudice is so much better without zombies?!!?"   

Laurie: In the spirit of ongoing honesty, yes, that was the sound of me clicking the pronunciation tool at www.dictionary.com, while looking up the definition of "jejune".


Paul:  Now, more to my point, one could argue that the Nightmare franchise explored more varied and complex themes than other slasher films of its day (mind you, I am not personally making that argument).   They certainly didn't go into the rather Catholic morality of the Friday the XIII movies and did not quite hit the sadistic voyeurism of the Hellraiser films.  Instead they were firmly planted in post-Piaget, Spock, and Free To Be You and Me pop-child psychology, specifically exploring: neglect of children, fear, insomnia, mob mentalities and the destruction they cause, the long-term, far reaching effects of tragedy, cycles of abuse, cruelty to animals and the red flags that sends up in regards to a person's moral compass, perhaps one might say something about socio-economics in that Krueger was a lonely, working class janitor (the modern remake seems from the trailers to suggest he was falsely accused of child murder and killed as a scapegoat by bourgeois families in the area), and in the first and highly bizarre sequel (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2) Freddy seemed to be a manifestation of a young man's latent homosexuality.

Laurie:  Ah, sorry, I know I'm interrupting, but you skittered over a topic that's on my mind a lot: "cruelty to animals and the red flags that sends up in regards to a person's moral compass".  I can't tell you how often I've observed in the course of 4.6 decades how reflective one's treatment of animals tends to be of one's treatment of humanity in general, and of children in particular. I don't want to open that can of worms right now, but perhaps we could in a future discussion.

Paul: I think we might be able to work ourselves into a whole blog post over that.

But I want to say that what I said above about the varieties of themes the Nightmare films discuss is way overstating a case.  This is what is referred to as "egghead" discussion akin to writing a doctoral thesis on the social dynamics of the Three Stooges or the feminist view of Baywatch.  It's an unfortunate marriage between the high and low brow which generally neglects the former, the sign of a mind mired in the latter.  Unfortunately, such things are epidemic in the modern academic community.  It's the "I can't believe we're actually talking about this in this manner" conversation and, I'll admit, I brought the whole subject up to elicit that response from you.  I apologize for the emotional manipulation in my attempt to drive my points home.  As it were. Which brings me to my point.

Laurie: Ah, there is a point. I was just wondering.

Paul:  Well, I'll let you be the judge of that.

I'm not entirely sure people should be using the word "classic" in this case and it is now my intention to explore the meaning of that word.  I'm not sure it's appropriate to assign the same term one uses for Cicero, Robert Burns, and Goethe.  It is not a Joseph Campbell style, eternally recurring archetype expressing fear of the unknown and man's inhumanity to man.  Let's not kid ourselves.  It is a series of films designed to make teenage boys say "Whoa!  Didja see how she got killed there?!!?"  And, indeed, any such discussion of more complex social issues within the series I assure you probably comprises about a 30 minute block of film out of eight full length feature films of episodic surrealistically violent eye-candy.

And yet we do throw that term around lightly.  We have classic cars, classic cartoons, carbonated sugar water called Classic, whole radio stations committed to the eternal replay of what they call "classic rock and roll". 

Laurie: Well, I think the word "classic" has come to mean anything from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to, well, the kind of thing you're talking about.  It has about as much range as the word "love" - (I love ice cream; I love Jesus; I love buttons, I love flossing my teeth, and I love you.) We really do seem to be suffering from a language dearth, and a bad habit of getting a word, falling in love with it, and, like an old 45 record, playing it over and over in every possible situation until it has lost its umpf and eventually its effect.   Anyway, classic can refer to Led Zeppelin, or to Huey Lewis - depending on who you ask.   It can mean "something so great, it has stood the test of generations". Or, it can mean "something that makes me feel nostalgic".  I think these days nostalgia is what most folks have in mind -  that is, whatever puts us in mind of "the good old days", which invariably translates into "the days when I had no real responsibility and was too young to know how bad things really were". (I've noticed, by the way, the time it takes for something to achieve "nostalgia" status is almost exactly two decades. Think Happy Days in the 70's, Vietnam war movies in the '80's, "'80's nights" in nightclubs in the '00's. It took 18-20 years before we could listen to the BeeGee's again without feeling ill, assuming we ever could in the first place.  Really.)

Paul:   Which is hardly "standing the test of time."

Along with "love" and "classic" one might add some other movable words like "life," "beautiful," "art," "genius."  All of those are thrown at a wide variety of subjects.  "Crazy" may fit the bill.  "Real life" or "reality" are getting a little fuzzy in some areas.  I would give a nod here to the many people reading this who I consider my friends whom I have never met in person and am not likely to.

But I wonder if this is good and wise to throw these words around so widely and undermine definitions.  Or maybe we're reaching the point where we might benefit from new, more specific words for clarification.  "Classic" does seem to carry some weight of qualitative judgment, but it's difficult to distinguish how.  I don't see people often calling something a "classic" if they hate it, even if it has stood the test of time.  Of course, "standing the test of time" is also becoming a movable definition.  I think a work should at least be old enough that if it were human it could collect Social Security before we consider whether or not we're going to call it a classic.  As it is, popular music that wouldn't even be old enough to buy cigarettes is being played on "Classic rock" radio stations.

Laurie: Oh, and that reminds me of that other definition of classic: old. Pretty much anything that was made in black and white gets called "classic", as does anything on vinyl.

Paul: Well, if we're talking definitions, there's also Classical in the sense of "in the manner of the Ancient Greeks."  But we're talking about the undermining of the association with excellence in the term "Classic."

But I think it would take a very rare person to put Wes Craven on the level of Beethoven. Some might say "apples and oranges", but most would probably agree that there is no need for future generations to be taught about Freddy Krueger in the classroom.  However, when something creeps into the collective consciousness and becomes a myth that we all share... But I'm doing it again, aren't I?  That egghead thing.  But believe it or not, there is a ripe, valid and valuable life lesson within plucking reach here.

Because we know about the very real, tangible power of language.  We know that at times and situations words can literally cure some diseases or at least curb pain, words can put people to sleep, words can cause people to fall in love with one another, to worship any number of things, to kill one another.  So, what happens to someone, or a society even, who can turn on one channel where a twee British man in a smoking jacket sipping 14 year old brandy from a snifter says, "Thomas Hardy wrote some of the greatest classics in the history of the novel form", and then press a button and an eyeblink later on a different channel  hear someone say, "Come on down and try our new dinner meal featuring Arby's classic roast beef sandwich."  Even if you've read Thomas Hardy and agree with the Masterpiece Theater guy and you hate Arby's sandwiches (or, at least, you're a vegetarian and won't eat them) that does something to a brain which I would think also does something to a society.

Laurie:  Hmm. You've brought something to mind..... Leveling. In the study I've been doing through Jonathan Edwards' lectures on Christian love, this week's lesson focused specifically on humility -  about love not being puffed up and parading itself and the like. One of the points Edwards made was that humility prevents "leveling behavior," meaning, true humility is happy to see true greatness recognized for what it is, and does not wish to see it brought low.  Conversely, it does not like to see what is ignoble raised up to greatness, and even more especially when it leads to the diminishing of that which is truly praiseworthy.  Love and humility are content to see everything great praised to the extent of its greatness, everything un-praiseworthy receive no praise, and everything in between regarded appropriately according to its true merit. Could it be, that what we are dealing with is a matter of arrogance - an unwillingness to evaluate things according to common standards of objective value and greatness, but rather to rank them by subjecting them to our own limited scope and understanding? In other words, "I have very good taste. I like it, and I've liked it for what seems like a really long time to me, therefore it is a classic." Everything becomes subjective. Everything means what I want it to mean, and has the value I place on it.

Paul:  This is what is at the heart of two of my most used phrases.  If you have a few conversations with me you'll inevitably hear me say either "Doctrine dictates lifestyle" or "Morality is not a movable feast" or both at some point.  So often we see words twisted to where hate is done in the name of love, war in the name of peace, selfishness in the name of compassion.  At the risk of opening a fresh barrel of worms here as we're trying to wrap up, oftentimes there is some guru, some twisted individual behind these twistings with an agenda, or at the very least a book to sell.  Cui bono?

Although not always.  Sometimes it's just the key symptom of an ailing culture as we see in the case of people who are willing to bring Caravaggio down and the Arby's roast beef sandwich up to the same level with a word.  If anyone's interested, I would prescribe very scant use of the word "classic" and instead stretch your vocabulary to employ words like "excellent."

Laurie: Or "lovely", or "delicate", or "carefully crafted", or "timelessly beautiful", or "worthy of emulation"....boy, my vocabulary needs work.  I'm more a product of the age than I care to admit. My first thought when you handed me the Cadbury Creme Egg just now was, "Ah, a classic!"

Paul: Whereas, were we being precise, which it is my argument that we should be, we would say "I find this to be excellent and it has stood the test of time!"  We say "Ah, a classic" because it is expedient, although if the word becomes diluted enough it ceases to have any meaning at all.  This importance on precision and sticking to actual meaning carries into all parts of our lives and characters. 

Laurie: Yes, it does. You know I'm a stickler for precision in language.  One thing that really drives me bats is ambiguous language, and even more so when someone (perhaps that guru you mentioned earlier) uses it intentionally to deceive, mislead, distract, or confuse. I've found such language used commonly in doctrinal statements of ministries.  I've heard it from the mouths of door to door cult recruiters. I detest hearing, for instance, the use of the word "grace" by a person who is trying to tell me how to earn it.

Paul:  Yeah, no kidding!  You want to talk about nightmares, I can think of little worse than if God required us to earn our salvation.  Nothing could be more hopeless.  Thank God for His undeserved grace.