A hermeneutic of heroes

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

I did a seminar on culture over the weekend. I may get around to posting a write-up of my notes, but in the meantime…

As part of the talk, I attempted to use some TV programs as examples of modern and post-modern worldviews. (Slightly mis-judged the popularity of some shows, but there we go.) So the examples don’t go to waste, let’s recycle them here.

In fact, I’ll start with one that has been rolling around my mind for a very very very long time. I didn’t use it over the weekend, but maybe I should have. It seems to me the the X-files is the perfect enactment of the modern/post-modern clash. (I guess someone somewhere has done this before.)

On the one side we had the Thoroughly Modern Scully. Everything is science-based and we need only examine properly to overcome our ignorance. On the other side, the archetypally post-modern Mulder — accepting of all myths and local stories, without any attempt to fit them into some overarching worldview; suspicious of the authorities and the narratives they weave, assuming that these narratives are there to hide and control; not driven primarily by a search for truth, but a relational-based search for his sister.

Coming more up-to-date, it seems like CSI is the perfect modern story — a team of heroes battle ignorance, using science and technology to fight injustice and apprehend the guilty.

On the other hand, there is a common underlying theme to Lost & Heroes that facinates me. Both have a number of relatively ordinary people thrust into bewildering circumstances. In both there is an interweaving of each person’s personal story — in both, paths are frequently crossing, apparently by accident(?). There is the feeling that this interweaving may have design to it, but we cannot be sure what or who controls this. Certainly those involved have no grasp of a larger story that they are part of, though they may suspect that there is one.

Perhaps Heroes and Lost reflect the feeling of our somewhere-on-the-edge-of-post-modern times. Having rejected the big stories, we now have the feeling that there is one, but we have no way to appropriate it

This feeling of some apparently unknowable overarching narrative makes me think of Paul in Athens. Remember that he looked around, saw the altar to an Unknown God and proceeded to associate this with the God incarnated in Jesus. Maybe it is time for us to say that we know the Unknown Author who is writing the big story? He is the one incarnated as the character of Jesus and he is not the tyrant you thought he was.

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Permalink | December 3rd, 2007

One Response to “A hermeneutic of heroes”

  1. jonnyjpg Says:
    jonnyjpg December 5th, 2007 at 10:11 am

    the Unknown Author – i like that.

    it’ll be interesting to see how JJ Abrams new project unfolds – the film ‘Cloverfield’ as it’s now called.

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