Curtis A. Bronzan

One of the better parts about roadtrips is the opportunity to listen to the full length of records, as opposed to a song here and there when driving around town. En route from Visalia to Los Alamitos we listened to the 18 track entirety of the CD companion to Daniel Lanois’ Here Is What Is DVD.

The fifth track, “Beauty,” features a conversation between Daniel and producer Brian Eno, which, despite it’s lackluster visual setting on the DVD (especially compared to other scenes), always plays in my mind’s eye, when listening to the audio release. I’ve had the pleasure of incorporating it as well as another scene into gatherings at church. It closely resembles one of Jesus’ parables, which I doubt is a coincidence, even considering Eno’s assertion “I’m an anti-romantic, which is part of being an atheist” (which, considering other statements he makes, may ultimately need be questioned, under rather obvious philosophical terms):

Daniel: I’m trying to make a film that’s beautiful in itself, about beauty, about the source of the art, rather than everything that surrounds the art and I was hoping you might say a couple of words about that subject matter, because you’ve always operated in a relatively quiet way, and yet, you’re like a world artist.

Brian: Well, I tell you, one thing I would say about your film is that what would be really interesting for people to see is how beautiful things grow out of [crap]. Because nobody ever believes that. You know everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head, that it somehow appeared there and formed in his head, and all he had to do was write them down, and they would kind of be manifest to the world. But I think what’s so interesting and what would really be a lesson that everybody should learn is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know? The tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest, and then, the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing. And I think this would be important for people to understand because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that’s how things work. If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted, that they have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of a “normal” person, that you could never do anything like that, then you live a different kind of life, you know? You could have another kind of life where you can say, “Well, I know that things come from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning and I could start something.”

Bazan may be on to some of the same ideas in “Weeds in the Wheat,” but that’s another post for another day.

A corollary to the importance of Incarnation includes Žižek’s discussion of “the one ‘real reality”, wherein he asserts, “[o]f course, there is no ‘pure mind,’ i.e. there always has to be some kind of embodiment.” (On Belief, 51) If viewed as a short-circuit to his views on the Incarnation – as I am suggesting here – this perspective seems to hold on to both ends of Žižek’s seeming contradiction: that God does not exist and the Divine is within us.

This perspective is not unlike Brian Eno’s thoughts on Here Is What Is:

So I am an anti-romantic, really. It’s part of being an atheist; it’s another version of being an atheist. It’s anti this idea that it’s outside of us rather than inside of us. I think it’s all inside of us. I don’t think there’s anything – I don’t think there’s anything else, actually. It’s all in us. And it’s all in everyone, too.

Žižek further notes that

Jews wait for the arrival of their Messiah, their attitude is one of suspended attention directed towards the future, while, for a Christian believer, the Messiah is already here, the Event has already taken place. (On Belief, 126

In one sense, of course, he has hit the nail on the head, and yet, from another perspective, orthodox Christians recognize that though Christ has come, though the Event has taken place, the Event has not been completed. Or, put differently, maybe it could be said that An Event has taken place, has been inaugurated, though this will not be The Event until it’s consummation in the future (at least metaphysically speaking). By ignoring this crucial point, Žižek sets himself up to sometimes unjustly criticize Christianity’s “break” from its predecessor.

Žižek’s view of the Incarnation could be further illustrated by Tony Myers, in his chapter regarding racism ‘Che Vuoi?’: What Do You Want from Me?’. This is due to our roles in the Symbolic Order, which “are not the direct consequence of our actual, real properties.” (Slavoj Žižek, 93) Instead, Myers continues

[f]or example, if I am a king there is nothing inherently ‘kingly’ about me; I do not have an intrinsic quality of ‘kingliness’ that I am born with. The qualities of ‘kingliness’ are conferred upon me by my position in the Symbolic Order when I am born into a royal family. (Slavoj Žižek, 93; see also The Fragile Absolute, 45)

This perspective, when applied to the Incarnation, I propose, is partially what allows Žižek to affirm both sides of the seeming paradox noted above. In other words, when the divinity of Christ is viewed in light of only the Symbolic Order, Žižek is able to recognize – and dispense with – the elements of the Christian story that do not conform to his atheistic presuppositions. Furthermore, it allows him to pronounce integral parts of Christ’s life, ministry and death as nothing more than a joke:

As for Christianity, we must not forget the moments of carnivalesque irony in Christ’s parables and riddles. Even the crucifixion contains its own mocking, blasphemous spectacle in the donkey-riding king who is Christ, his crown a matter of thorns. Christianity disrupts the pagan notion of the slapstick reversal of the proper relations of authority in which, for a limited time, a fool is celebrated as a king. In Christianity, the “true” king is revealed to be his own blasphemy, a Lord of Misrule, a fool. (Violence, 106)

On the other hand, since “there are only interpretations,” others are able to construct a Symbolic Order to their liking; “[i]t is only for the believer that an event is a miracle” (Violence, 200), as is brilliantly illustrated by the final scene of Quentin Tarentino’s Pulp Fiction. While we may we wont to dispense entirely with Žižek’s thoughts regarding the Symbolic Order and the Incarnation, what does it tell us about the Symbolic Order constructed by the church?

How could his perspective – albeit, heretical – reform our “temple” systems?