zombie02

From bloaty to sparkly: Tracing monster origins

Monsters, some say, are a means by which society can separate out the most abhorrent and depraved aspects within itself. If a man can walk into an elementary school and murder 20 children, it’s much easier for people to call him a monster — an “other” — than to admit he is a part of our own in-group.

There is much of the monster in us, and much of us in him. Perhaps this “othering” is a healthy process, enabling us to deal harshly with law breakers by removing our empathetic mercy and species-preservation instincts. White blood cells don’t attack cancer, after all, because they think the diseased cells are a part of the body.

Anyway, I suggest watching Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods for a more thorough (and bloody brilliant) examination of those themes. I’m here to talk to you about words and stuff. So let’s take a look at three of the most popular monsters in media lately — vampires, werewolves, and zombies — where they come from, and what makes them tick.

 

Vampires

Nobody really knows where the word “vampire” came from. Best guess is the Slovak vrepit’ sa, which means “to thrust into or stick to.” I guess, because vampires … ah … thrust … their teeth into your flesh? I dunno. Anyway, the term came from Eastern Europe in the early 17th century, but similar figures appear all over the world long beforehand, from the Mayan camazotz, which was a head-snatching bat god, to the Japanese kappa, who were river-dwelling blood drinkers (and rapists to boot).

A lot of corpses were exhumed during the 17th and 18th centuries all over Eastern Europe, from Romania to Austria, as rumors were circulating of unexplained killings of people and animals. (Mind you, this was happening at the same time the United States was being founded and rational philosophies were spreading through German intellectual circles.) The dug-up bodies looked purple and bloated, like ticks, with blood streaming from their mouths — almost as though they’d been drinking human blood! (Of course, many bodies swell with gas after death, causing fluids to seep out. Oops.) These bodies were then variously decapitated, dismembered, driven into the ground with spikes, staked through the heart, mouth, and stomach, and stuffed with garlic.

Belief in vampires never completely died out, but the periods of mass hysteria associated with the phenomenon were relatively short-lived. Our current conceptions about vampires largely come from Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel Dracula, in which the vampires’ various strengths and weaknesses are spelled out explicitly. Anne Rice popularized the idea of a sympathetic vampire in the late 20th century, and, most recently, Stephenie Meyer made them sparkle. If vampires do exist, these more recent portrayals must grate on their nerves terribly.

Werewolves

“Wer” means “man” in Old English. There, we’re done! Nah, just kidding.

The idea of transforming into animals is not any newer than of drinking blood to steal someone’s power. It happened all the time, from the Norse berserker (“bear shirt”) to the Grecian gods, who turned into all manner of things in order to see what having sex with different species was like. Zeus transformed a guy named Lycaon into a wolf for attempting to feed the Thunder God baby meat (for some reason). Typically, people turn into wolves either from a curse, a pact with a demon, lying out under a full moon, or even drinking a specific kind of beer (probably an Oktoberfest).

While werewolves became popular in Eastern Europe about a century before vampires, they share a lot of commonalities. In Serbia, a single term (vulkodlak) is used for both. Vampires are sometimes purported to be able to change form to that of a wolf or to use wolves as “familiars” (a sort of mentally controlled animal). The sign of pointed fangs from the werewolf condition indirectly led to the idea of vampire fangs. Both monsters are frequently considered cursed or possessed by evil spirits. Werewolves, however, are mostly not already dead and can even be cured! The best cure is to stab them in the head with a knife (though sometimes exorcism, or even just scolding, will do the trick). The silver bullet thing was totally tacked on later, in the 1941 film The Wolf Man.

Turning into a wolf doesn’t seem that impressive, next to coming back from the dead and enthralling people. But wolves are scary! Imagine videos you’ve seen of guard dogs taking down men in heavy padding, then picture that with an animal of twice the size and bulk, razor sharp claws and teeth, coming at you with six of his buddies. Obviously, knife to the head is the best option available here. Good luck.

Zombies

The word “zombie” doesn’t have a cut-and-dry meaning, though it may be partially related to the Congolese nzambi, which means “god.” I guess because zombies defy death and can’t be hurt? It’s also alike to the word “simbi,” which is a kind of Haitian water snake spirit. (More specifically, the simbi is a Loa, or Lwa, which is an intermediary between the creator and humanity that can possess human hosts and ride them around.)

The origins of these creatures come from West African vodou, where sorcerer-shamans called bokor trapped human soul-bits in their fetishes (magic objects) to enhance their power. In Haiti, bokor killed people (typically, bad news bears that the common folk didn’t much mind dying) and brought them back to life as slaves. One theory is that the bokor actually used pufferfish powder to send their victims into a state of near-death, as well as inflicting brain damage to make them more susceptible to mental control upon their waking up (those that survived the ordeal, anyway).

How did these undead Haitian man-servants turn into the apocalyptic plague-drones we now associate with the term? The 1932 Bela Lugosi film White Zombie introduced American culture to the word and the concept, still used at the time to describe a sorcerer’s voodoo slave. From there, George A. Romero mixed the general idea of zombies with Richard Matheson’s vampires (found in I Am Legend), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein before it, to create his weird, shambling hybrids in the vastly influential 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Romero didn’t call them zombies in the film (or explain them at all, really) but used the term exclusively in its sequels. From there, the idea and the word became inextricably linked, and people have since mostly associated zombies with some scientific cause rather than vodoun magicks.

 

Yep, popular culture has come a long way from the original mythology that surrounds our various monsters. It’s almost hard to recognize them anymore. And once we do recognize them, it has certainly become more difficult to stab them in the head with knives. After all, they sure do look a lot like us, don’t they?

alaska

Looking for Alaska, finding ourselves

I like to think I’m pretty cool. I like to think that, despite the Green Power Ranger keychain on my belt loop and the Pokémon poster on my apartment wall. However, there was a substantial portion of my life when I bore no such delusions. Reading John Green’s novels reminds me of a time when looking in the mirror only brought disgust and anger.

Between about third and eighth grades, I would constantly end up on the wrong side of jokes and putdowns. Unfortunately for my middle-school self, I was already a high school junior when Green’s Looking for Alaska was released. The novel tells a story both familiar and unique, reminding me of that time when I felt alone and of the journey that drove me to accept myself.

Looking for Alaska, Green’s first published novel, follows Miles Halter, a young man with quantifiable proof that he has no friends, as he enrolls at a boarding school to begin a new life. Halter, quickly dubbed “Pudge” by his roommate, tries to make new friends in a new school and searches for what he calls a “Great Perhaps.” Pudge’s friends are primarily his belligerent roommate, who is nicknamed “the Colonel,” and a seemingly free-spirited girl, who is actually named Alaska. Alaska, of course, quickly becomes the center of attention for Pudge as he tries to figure out this cute, mysterious girl.

Many readers will, like me, relate to Pudge. During those difficult tween years, jocks would call me chunky and laugh as I was one of the last to finish any run in phys ed. When my test would come back with an “A” marked on it, someone would inevitably call me a loser for having half a working brain in my head.

The people I considered my friends weren’t much better. Before the end of every school day, one of my best friends would steal books from my locker and toss them down three flights of stairs. Even my teachers were pretty disparaging. If I made a mistake, they would never give me the benefit of the doubt because they “expected better from me.” Perhaps something can be said for lower expectations.

Unfortunately, too many coming-of-age stories only offer struggling young readers unrealistic optimism. We expect Pudge will fall in love with the quirky Alaska. Of course she’s going to like him, too, despite that never being the way it happens in reality. Surprise, surprise. However, Green is not so predictable.

True to life, the story takes a series of wild turns, leading the reader to believe that a happy ending is on its way, only to stop us cold. Pudge and his friends have to face love, anger, and death, learn the difficulty of real relationships, and deal with the consequences of their decisions. It is a novel that reminds us that we don’t all face a single moment of clarity so much as several harsh moments that make us stronger.

Green’s novels are devoid of the melodrama so common at Degrassi High or on Dawson’s Creek (for you older folks). Instead, when a character trips into one of the genre’s inevitable pitfalls, someone always puts a firm stop to it. Oftentimes, these discussions about what is worth our tears and what is not are the best parts of the book, as we remember how we dealt with the difficult times we’ve faced in our own lives.

While it is certainly not an all around sad story, Looking for Alaska does make us consider a lot of things about what makes life as a teenager so difficult. All of the teen angst television shows and hopeless romance movies have stripped away any sense of reality when discussing teenage life. Green looks to portray those problems in a real and sympathetic way.

There is a certain tragedy and nihilism to a lot of Green’s work, and Looking for Alaska fits the category. Green does not move mountains to give a story a happy ending, nor does he take the independent cinema route of moving mountains to avoid a happy ending. Instead, Green lets his characters simply continue on with their lives, having been changed by the experience in a consequential way.

As Looking for Alaska draws to a close, the profound sense of sorrow in Pudge’s soul comes through the pages, but the reader will also feel that Pudge has become better for the journey. Pudge starts the book off looking to start anew in search of a “Great Perhaps.” Whether or not Pudge has truly found it, Miles Halter has undoubtedly learned that life is for living and enjoying, but that he also should be proud of who he is. Perhaps that is the most difficult thing for any of us to learn.

Looking for Alaska is the first of Green’s four solo novels. Before getting a copy of Alaska, I had read Green’s Paper Towns, which won the 2009 Edgar Award for best Young Adult novel, and The Fault in Our Stars. Both books were tremendous reads and hooked me on Green’s writing.

Sometimes it is easy to forget the difficult times I have had to struggle through and show no sympathy to those who are suffering through their own journeys. “Who cares if no one likes you? You just have to like yourself,” I’ll argue. Green’s novels are an antidote to that cynicism and exemplify the value of Young Adult fiction even to those outside their target demographic.

I hated going to school every single day until ninth grade. When I began high school, my life was changed considerably. New friends found me and old friends became tremendous people. I realized I didn’t need to be who the school bullies wanted me to be. I didn’t need to be who even my friends wanted me to be.

We all need to be ourselves and know that there are people out there who will like each of us for our quirks, whether they be that we like to speak in riddles or memorize the last words of historical figures. Looking for Alaska reminds us that we all need to love ourselves and let everyone important to us know we love them too.

august-theoc

Osage County defines dysfunctional family

“Life is very long.” These words from T.S. Eliot open August: Osage County, a film that looks at the impact one person’s decisions can have, like ripples in a pond, on several generations of a family in different stages of those long lives.

August: Osage County is the story the Weston family — a family that is the very definition of dysfunctional. The patriarch, Beverly, is an alcoholic and former award-winning poet; his wife, Violet, is dealing with cancer and has become addicted to pills that severely affect her mind; and their three daughters, Barbara, Ivy, and Karen, each lead complicated lives of their own. When tragedy strikes, the girls return home to face their mother’s addiction and madness.

The movie is based on the Tony Award-winning play of the same name by Tracy Letts, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Editing and adapting a play of that caliber must be a challenge, but Letts (whom you may recognize) did an excellent job trimming his three-hour script into a two-hour film while maintaining all the integrity and dark humor of the original text. Director John Wells closely follows Letts’ dialogue and even some of the original staging, though unlike the play, the entire film does not take place in the Weston home.

The success of both the play and the film depends entirely on the performances of the actresses playing the roles of Violet and Barbara Weston. In this case, the producers found two of Hollywood’s best, who are always up for any challenge.

Violet’s mood swings are unpredictable, an endless emotional roller coaster. Meryl Streep masterfully portrays the many highs and lows of the venomous Weston matriarch in a performance deserving of her latest Oscar nomination. Suffering from cancer in her mouth, Violet is dependent upon multiple pill prescriptions that have clearly addled her mind. In her drugged state, Violet often lashes out against her family in bitterness for the long and hard life she has endured.

Julia Roberts, nominated for an Oscar in the supporting actress category, proves she is more than able to hold her own opposite Streep with an equally emotional performance as Barbara. The oldest Weston daughter is dealing not just with her father’s disappearance and her mother’s addiction, but with a dissolving marriage and a rebellious daughter of her own. Barbara also has to come to terms with her fear that she will travel the same road to bitterness and addiction as her mother. That struggle is quiet and unspoken for much of the movie, but it bubbles to the surface and is illustrated well near the end of the film.

The rest of the cast is rounded out with many recognizable faces and names, and each actor plays his or her role extremely well. Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper are terrific as Violet’s sister and brother-in-law. Martindale had been underappreciated for years, until her fantastic performance in FX’s Justified, and Chris Cooper almost always quietly steals any scene in which he appears.

Ewan McGregor does a fine job as Barbara’s husband who, despite their separation, remains supportive. However, McGregor’s performance is often overshadowed by the strong performances of the females around him. The same is true for Dermot Mulroney: his character is textbook sleaze, but the performance itself is almost negligible in a film filled with so many heavy-hitters. Americans are most familiar with Benedict Cumberbatch as the overly confident Sherlock, or the manipulative Commander John Harrison / Khan, but he performs well here as the meek and downtrodden Little Charles, Violet’s nephew.

August: Osage County is almost entirely character-driven. However, those characters are so compelling, and the acting so strong, that it is easy to overlook how little action the film contains. The plot does have several twists and surprises along the way to move the story to its conclusion. The original play is clearly Violet’s story, but changes to the ending of the film version shift the focus onto Barbara and give the narrative a new light. While that ending may not provide as much closure as some would like, it is more hopeful than the original play.

August: Osage County is a well-acted, strongly written movie that certainly lived up to my expectations. If you’re a fan of Letts or of intense, sometimes grim, family dramas, this is definitely a must-see. Letts’ writing does a great job of balancing the serious moments with dark humor and levity. But keep in mind that, despite being billed as a comedy by some media outlets, August: Osage County turns the lens on the reality that “life is very long” indeed.

And, if nothing else, the film will leave you feeling a little better about your own family.

carrone

Unpacking the curious case of Cru Bourgeois

Wine can be one of the great pleasures of life. Unfortunately, the potential oenophile can be turned off early in the game by the baffling array of label designations. Some wines are promoted by the region in which they’re grown. Some are named according to the type of grape, or varietal, that comprises the wine. Still others have generic or proprietary names for blends of different wines.

The French, of course, make wine classifications even more confusing. The Cru Bourgeois label, for example, is a superb entry point into the Bordeaux style. However, “Cru Borgeois” has meant different things over the last 80 years or so.

First, some background on Bordeaux itself. The Bordeaux wine region of southwest France is situated along the Garonne River to the south and the Dordogne River to the north, near the city of Bordeaux. Both rivers flow from southeast to northwest, merging just north of the city to form the Gironde, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean at the Bay of Biscay. The region is divided into three areas: the Left Bank which encompasses wineries on the southwest side of the Garonne and Gironde; the Right Bank which includes wineries to the north and east of the Dordogne; and the area between the rivers, called “Entre-Deux-Mers” (French for “between two seas”). The Left Bank is further divided into Médoc (north of the city of Bordeaux) and Graves (south of the city).

Each region has further subdivisions — names you might recognize, like Haut-Médoc, Saint-Emillon, and Pomerol — which are called appellations (from “appellation d’origine contrôlée,” meaning “controlled designation of origin”). Each appellation (or AOC) has its own rules about what grapes are permitted to be planted and how wines can be blended. This is the case for all winegrowing areas in France, not just Bordeaux. For example, in Pomerol, on the Right Bank, only Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, and Cabernet Franc may be planted. Some AOCs require a minimum percentage of each wine be from a certain varietal, while others stipulate a minimum or maximum alcohol content.

Contrast this crazy system of regions and rules to New World winegrowing nations like Australia and the United States, where wine is usually labeled by grape varietal. Wines from Napa Valley aren’t just labeled Napa Valley wine, they’re also labeled Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. But in Bordeaux, where almost every bottle is a blend, it’s the region that counts. So instead of hearing about how a certain varietal wine tastes, you’ll hear how the wine of an appellation tastes.

Ready for more confusion? In the 1800s, Napoleon III requested a classification system not in terms of region, but quality. This resulted in the Official Classification of 1855, a list of wineries which is still used today. Think about that: the top wineries in 1855 are still considered the best, over 150 years later. The system for red wines is divided into 5 tiers of quality (called “growths,” or the French “crus“). The First Growths, or Premier Cru wine estates, are: Château Lafite, Château Latour, Château Margaux, Château Haut-Brion, and Château Mouton Rothschild. All are in the Médoc region, except Haut-Brion, in Graves. These are followed by 13 Second Growths, 14 Third Growths, 10 Fourth Growths, and 18 Fifth Growths. Together, these are sometimes referred to as “Grand Cru Classes.”

What does all this have to do with Cru Bourgeois? Well, not all of the estates made it into the 1855 classification. So, in 1932, 444 wineries not chosen for the 1855 classification were designated for “Cru Bourgeois” by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and Chamber of Agriculture. This was revised in 2000, reducing the number of wine estates to 247. But lawsuits and court battles brought the whole classification down, and the Cru Bourgeois label was banned from bottles in 2007.

And yet, this tale is still not over. In 2010, the modern, current Cru Bourgeois label was revived and established as “not a classification, but a mark of quality.” Every year, wine estates in the Médoc can apply for the label for any of the red wines they produce. Receiving the mark one year does not guarantee a wine will have that mark the next year (or, forever, as in the 1855 classification). Certain production rules also must be met if a winery desires the Cru Bourgeois label for its wine. An independent body, the slightly Orwellian-sounding Bureau Veritas, was formed to inspect winery facilities and provide for blind tastings by professionals who do not own or have connections to any of the Médoc châteaux (wine estates).

Phew.

So how should this impact your wine buying habits? First of all, Cru Bourgeois provides you a great way to get acquainted with Bordeaux style wines, perhaps the world’s premier wine region, at reasonable prices. And for the most part, you can be guaranteed good quality.

At the risk of seeming cynical, I’ll admit: the Cru Bourgeois label is somewhat of a marketing gimmick. Châteaux not in the 1855 classification certainly want a label to give the aura of prestige that goes along with the finest Bordeaux wines. But the fact that the winery facilities go through inspections and the wines are tasted blind for quality ensure that the offerings are at least good, with the potential for excellent bottles.

There is aging potential for those that prefer to wait for full maturity, but those qualities will vary by producer and vintage. Cru Bourgeois wines, for the most part, are food friendly and make great pairings with rich pork, beef, and lamb dishes.

The 2009 Château La Cardonne, a blend of 50 percent Merlot, 45 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5 percent Cabernet Franc, is a fantastic example. The wine is definitely fruit-forward, with fresh berries and a subtle floral component on the nose. The palate is all fruit at first sip, with lush blackberry, plum, and tart cranberry flavors that give way to hints of earthiness, dark chocolate, and a little leather on the finish. The tannins (which produce that cotton-mouth, puckering sensation when drinking dry wine) are smooth and well integrated.

Wine Spectator awarded this wine 92 points, and I’d probably agree. At $20, it’s a good value, especially considering 92 points is a higher score than some Grand Cru wines received. The wine paired very well with garlic and rosemary grilled lamb, even standing up to those powerful flavors.

Cru Bourgeois is a wine that is accessible to new drinkers of Bordeaux and will likely not disappoint more sophisticated palettes. Look for deals in the $15-to-$25 range.

candy-crush

Would a Saga by any other name taste as sweet?

Trademarks are obnoxious but necessary. If I slapped some set of ingredients together to make a dark cola drink, called it a Pepsi, and tried to sell it to passersby at a train station, PepsiCo Inc. could sue me for infringing their brand. I would be doing them wrong on two counts: profiting from their popular name, and duping people who tried my (presumably) inferior product into thinking that the “real” Pepsi soft drink tasted differently than it does.

Obviously, Pepsi isn’t a word you’re going to use in a different context. We don’t go “pepsi-ing” or vacation in the “Pepsis.” But let’s take a moment and think about some other brands that are used as everyday words: Crush and Sprite (to stick with sodas). Gap. Crest. Blockbuster. Ivory. Tide. Visa. Apple. Windows. Mars. Champion. Mustang. Not to mention brand names that have become the common words for their products: Kleenex. Lego. Xerox.

Brand identity is also important in the gaming industry. You almost certainly know at least three people who play or have played Candy Crush Saga, or you are one yourself. It’s one of the most popular mobile app games at present, and it rakes in about $1 million a day from in-app purchases. Candy Crush Saga is very closely based on the game Bejeweled, which was made over a decade prior. It’s about matching three similar objects in a row to clear them from the board. The player advances through levels until he or she run out of “lives,” at which point the player either has to wait around for more or buy them with real money.

King.com, Ltd., the game’s developer, has a number of other games in its roster that end in the word “Saga” — Pet Rescue Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, and Bubble Witch Saga, to name a few. However, if you put the word “Saga” into the search bar for Amazon app games, you’re going to get 613 results, including Jewels Crush Saga (advertising itself as the “#1 Puzzle game on the world”), Fruit Crush Saga, and Candy Rescue in Farm (by Candy Crush Game), none of which are made by King. I wouldn’t dream of accusing these games of trying to leech off of Candy Crush’s commercial success rather than succeeding on their own merits, but I won’t stop you from coming to your own conclusions about it.

Product confusion is a strategy hardly unique to video games. I’m sure you’ve all seen movies, either in video stores (what?) or on Netflix, which are either: a) cheap knock-offs of recent blockbusters and children’s movies with similar-sounding names, or b) documentaries of some sort for which you really have to squint to read the bit about it being a documentary. They come out when the popular film is still in theaters and are mostly purchased unwittingly as gifts for relatives.

So what’s the problem? Why shouldn’t King trademark its intellectual property and protect it from poachers? Well, maybe because of this.

Stoic, an independent game producer, recently released a game, called The Banner Saga, about leading a tribe of Vikings through the wastes to find a new homeland. It’s a tactical strategy and leadership simulation game, where the player makes hard choices about how to spend resources in order to keep the game people alive amid the dangers around them. I haven’t played it yet, but it looks awesome.

King is pushing the trademark office to prevent Stoic from registering the name “The Banner Saga” because they claim people might be confused about whether or not it’s a King game. Essentially, because it uses the word “Saga” in the title.

If Stoic can’t get a trademark on the name, then anybody else will be able to put out a game with the same title and pass it off as their own, causing actual confusion. And that will happen, because people will hear about the game, see the legitimate version costs 25 bucks, and then look in the app store and see what looks like the same game only costing a dollar or two.

Here’s the kicker. The word “Saga” means “a long story.” In Old Norse. You know, Viking language.

Aside from that, though, it’s a common word that should be accessible to any serious creator of content. This kind of focused effort to trademark the word comes off as a serious power grab of the worst sort. If a company can own the word “Saga” as it pertains to video games, why can’t I own the word “a,” as it pertains to … uh … writing, say? After all, the word “a” appears in the title of my article, which you’re reading right now! (Of course, if I did manage to pull off something like that, it would make cataloging easier. You would never again mistakenly look under “A” for A Separate Peace: just flip right to “S”!)

Permit me to take this idea to its logical conclusion and posit a dystopian future where every individual word in the English language can be trademarked because it is part of one brand or another. In this world, major corporations use all of the positive, upbeat, happy words they associate with their products, leaving only the depressing, the morose, and the morbid and grotesque for common usage.

All of art (not borne of commercial materials) becomes dark and forlorn, offspring of Poe and Sylvia Plath. Mankind pays out of pocket for positive thinking and emotional stability, directly from vending machines that spout little cards with the words “Hope” and “Laughter” on them. (Eventually, these vending machines are banned in schools due to high caloric content.)

Advertisers become new gods, able to wrap the masses around their fingers with inspiring words (wait a second…), while subversives make up a new, ever-evolving lexicon, like a password language, going obsolete every few months as the corporations trademark their leavings.

OK, maybe that’s not too likely, but who knows? What are your thoughts?

Better to get them all down now before somebody can sue you for copyright infringement.

2014-olympics

Sochi Olympic terror scare overblown, not new

The Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, are just over a week away, and I, for one, could not be more excited. Unfortunately, unrest and threats of terrorism in the area of the Games are distracting many from celebrating the core principles that have guided the Olympics for over a century.

The Olympics are one of my favorite events of all-time, and I love the Games for a lot of different reasons. I have a great respect for all the athletes involved in the competitions. The sheer dedication it takes to become an Olympic athlete is something I wish I could replicate in my everyday life.

In fact, in a meager attempt to emulate the athletes’ focus and commitment, I challenge myself during each Olympics to put many hours into completing a difficult knitting project. Two years ago, I completed an entire sweater in the first week of the Games, which should have earned me at least a bronze medal.

But most of all, I love the Olympics because the Games symbolize unity, peace, and multiculturalism. I understand that the threat of a terrorist attack at the Games is real, and that threat must be reported and investigated. However, I worry that misplaced media coverage is creating irrational fears and distorting our perspective on the risks and consequences of acts of terror.

First, some historical context: Targeting the Olympics to make a statement is certainly not a new idea. In 1936, Hitler used the Summer Games as a platform for his propaganda of racial supremacy. In 1972, Germany had hopes of erasing this image from the world’s mind when they hosted the Summer Games in Munich; unfortunately, the long-time unrest between Israel and the Palestinians spilled into the Olympic spotlight when the Palestinian group Black September kidnapped and ultimately killed 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.

Then, in 1996, Eric Robert Rudolph bombed the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta to protest the government’s stance on abortion. To this day, I fail to see the correlation between the Olympics and women’s reproductive rights, but I digress.

A terrorist attack at the 2014 Games would be a tragedy. But as history shows, it would not be the first such attack. And while the loss of a single human life, anywhere in the world, is to be avoided if possible and mourned if not, the scope of a potential attack must be viewed in proportion.

What we have, though, is a 24-hour news cycle generating a never-ending stream of worry. Instead of a single, front-page article reporting the threat on the Games, we are bombarded with media outlets showing coverage of burning buildings and giving us geography lessons on the location of the Caucasuses (they’re here). Most, if not all, of the American mainstream media have written headlines and stories that give off the vibe that a terrorist attack is imminent.

The sensationalist coverage is having tangible effects. Some Americans have even begun to cancel their travel plans in order to watch the Games from the security and safety of their own homes. After seeing the aforementioned coverage, who can blame them? Instead of reporting the facts, the majority of news outlets, in their unquenchable thirst for ratings and page clicks, are creating a narrative out of “what ifs” and “could bes” that is altering the course of the Games themselves.

Let’s be real. We live in a world where a terrorist attack could happen at any time, on any day. The Olympics are obviously a logical target, but the event has gone off without a hitch 47 other times. In fact, the most dangerous attacks are the everyday ones, the ones no one has planned for: the attacks of Sept. 11, the Boston Marathon bombings, the car explosions and suicide missions that are a part of the everyday life of people all over the world and receive nearly no coverage in our media.

I have to wonder if our visceral reaction to the safety measures in Sochi are remnants from the Cold War. What if, instead of Russia, the Olympics were being held in France or Spain and suddenly there was an uprising in the Basque region? Would we call in to question French President François Hollande’s ability to keep our athletes and citizens safe? Or is it just easier to question the motives of Russian President Vladimir Putin because he has been seen as the enemy other times in U.S. history?

Holding Russia to a higher standard is unfair. No American can forget that our country has not prevented every terrorist attack. The Boston Marathon, 9/11, and, yes, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics are just a few examples of when terrorism has struck on our own turf. On the other hand, the U.S. hosted the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City a mere five months after the 9/11 attacks. There were probably plenty of countries that were wary about sending their athletes and citizens to our seemingly “unsafe” nation. The 2002 Games were without incident and provided some much needed peace and unity.

Thankfully, the U.S. government is responding to the terrorist threat more responsibly than the media is. Instead of just finger-pointing, the U.S. is working with Russia to share our knowledge and expertise in counter-terrorism. This type of global dialogue is encouraging and, to me, what the Olympics are really about.

The beauty of the Olympics is that it doesn’t matter how many people use it as their political platform for acts of terrorism. It will remain a symbol of global unity. The Olympic spirit and ideals are not tangible things that are able to be destroyed. Long after we all have shuffled off this mortal coil, the Olympics will continue so that our grandchildren’s children can cheer on their favorite sports (I’m looking at you, curling) and chant the always inspiring “USA! USA!”

dojo-spirits

Spirit fills room, students in Japanese martial arts

Traditional Japanese martial arts training takes place in a space that is set apart from the work-a-day world in many ways. In the dojo, there is a strange time dilation, like an adrenaline dump, that stretches the smallest moments out into impossibly long events. There is an informational density that is hard to explain to the uninitiated. Body, mind, spirit, history, and technique layer endlessly, one atop the other, stratifications of tradition and knowledge and intense physical activity. It is a transformative process.

I am often asked how martial arts has shaped my life. I can’t answer that question. My life is ongoing, my training is ongoing. The man I am today and the man I have been along the timeline of my life are only part of a narrative if I force one onto it. Real life is not a story.

The room is quiet. The mat spreads out before me, glowing in the last light of day that comes through the single window. The high ceiling is lost to shadow, metal rafters just visible through the gloom. It is a spare, uncluttered space. The few things hanging on the walls accentuate the emptiness, the blank space. The wall on the far side of the mat is covered with racks. Bright, colorful bags protect the live steel swords, the katana, that are prominently placed above the rows of the wooden bokken, aligned in precise, identical fashion. There is the sense that everything is in its place, and that there is no other place it could be.

It is the same room it has been for my 17 years of training, though it is not in the same space it was in 1997, when I climbed to the second floor of an office building in Camp Hill, Pa., for my first lesson. The space has moved, but it has not changed.

High on the front wall, right below the shadow line, is the shrine: the kamidana. My eye is drawn to it, the same as it always is, and to the banner above: bold kanji spelling out the name of the dojo. My body snaps to attention, a subconscious reaction, as I turn to face the kamiza and bow, back straight, hands sliding down the seams of my trousers, an action that I seek to make as precise and correct as I can every time. Every time it falls short of the ideal.

The room is quiet, still, ready for the students to arrive, to fill it with the noise of practice, of bodies slapping onto the mat, the war-eagle shriek of kiai, the distinct shuffling-sliding noise of feet gliding across the mat. It is patient, existing in a space both physically and spiritually different from the outside world. It is a room with its own rules and demands, and it brooks no deviation.

It is still and quiet and ready. But it is not empty.

It is never empty.

There are spirits here.

“Remember,” Sensei said, “people died for this.”

We stood, sweat-soaked, in a circle on the mat. Our wooden swords hung at our sides, hilts stained with the sweat of hours and days and years of practice. We were studying a classical system of swordsmanship, with an unbroken history hundreds of years long. The swords were heavy, the techniques subtle and powerful. Sensei had decades of practice under his belt, and was skilled and fast and strong. Working with him and with his senior students was an intense experience. Knuckles got busted. Heads got smacked. In the heat of the clash, minute mistakes in technique would be exploited.

In short, it was a demanding practice session, as all sessions with this Sensei were.

“People died for this,” he said.

Formalized swordsmanship emerged from combat. The winners would return home, and share the tricks and techniques that they had discovered and with which they credited their survival. If those techniques and tricks continued to work, they would be further refined. Successful schools were founded by men whose hands were bloody with victories.

The techniques we have today, the arts we practice, are built on the foundations of the defeated. We show up at the dojo and put on our uniforms and have a blast training for a few hours, but the fact remains that what we do is based on the skills of war and grounded in the deaths of those long-forgotten vanquished foes, the ones whose techniques and tricks were not quite good enough.

The Japanese are a complex people, with a language that can be exactingly technical and beautifully poetic, often at the same time. They talk about the meaning and the “meaning behind the meaning.” Ura and omote. Front and back.

Four times a week, I walk into a room that exists because people took the time to study the arts I love and to pass them on. People spent the currency of life: money, time, moments with family, friends, and loved ones. They sacrificed for us. I can name two men without whom the dojo would have folded, both deceased within my lifetime. I can name several others who have passed through on the journey of their lives, enriching all of us in the process. Kami is alive, and it retains some of everyone who passes through the dojo.

I am a lapsed Christian at best, and a man who feels that spirituality outside of religion is a pretentious concept. I am not superstitious. And yet when I speak of spirits and kami, it is as real as air, as water, as food. And as vital. Paradox and dichotomy. The budo are full of these contradictions.

When I walk into the dojo, these are the spirits that are waiting for me. The honored dead. They demand that I be worthy of them.

Someday, if I am strong enough, if I stay the course, my name will be counted among those who died for this.

The road is hard.

I take the next step, onto the mat, and practice for another day.

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Broken Harbor pulls reader into murder case

Broken Harbor by Tana French is the fourth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. With this work, French once again displays she is a master of police procedurals. She has created another tale of complex characters that draws the reader into the compelling plot.

French established herself at the outset as a great writer of crime fiction. The first book in the series, In the Woods, won several awards, including the 2008 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. French, who now resides in Ireland and has also lived in Italy and Malawi, excels at writing about the “broken hero.” Her books feature an imperfect protagonist: a homicide detective with a checkered past — thought to be safely buried away, but brought to the surface by the case at hand.

In Broken Harbor, French has improved her game by introducing us to Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, a murder detective who always gets his man. Kennedy, along with his rookie partner, are assigned a high-profile triple murder that takes Kennedy to the estate of Briantstown, formerly known as “Broken Harbor.” The place holds powerful memories for Kennedy — memories that are disturbing enough on their own, let alone in light of the recent murder of Patrick Spain and his two children, and the attempted murder of Spain’s wife, Jenny.

The appeal of Broken Harbor, as with French’s other books, is the expert way in which she manages to weave the detective’s tortured past into the present horror he or she is facing. French not only takes the reader through the process of solving the murder, but also exposes how this particular case will tear the protagonist apart from the inside out. Kennedy’s search for the truth will force him to come to terms with both his past and his present, while also making him question his future.

As Kennedy and his partner work the case, they encounter more questions than answers. French’s stories sometimes have a touch of the supernatural to them, lending them a sense that things aren’t always what they appear to be. In Broken Harbor, the unreliability of the narrator draws the reader into the search for that missing piece of the case.

The stories French creates make her books difficult to put down. As the detectives dive into the lives of the victims in order to solve the case, it is easy to forget they are dead. French’s characterizations and plot construction propel the reader on a nonstop whirlwind to the last page of the book. Don’t expect that conclusion to be a happy one, where everything is wrapped up with a neat little bow as our hero rides off into the sunset, however. Much like real life, French’s books don’t end that way.

If you are looking for a crime novel that has amazing character development, will pull you in, make you question the protagonist’s point of view, and make you think about the ending long after you put it down, then Broken Harbor is the book for you.

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Choose your own biblical view of marriage

An article published in the Washington Post last week draws attention to the claim in Rep. Steve Pearce’s memoir that a wife is to “voluntarily submit” to her husband. While the fact that this statement issued from the mouth of a U.S. congressman attracted headlines, the idea itself is not news. There is already a best-selling book that posits this idea: the Bible.

Rather, there is an anthology of ancient literature, considered by many to be sacred, containing a couple of letters that posit this idea. It’s important to remember that the Bible as we have it today is not a book like Harry Potter. Instead, it is a compilation of 66 books, letters, collections of poetry, folktales, instructions, myths, and legal codes.

One of my least favorite sentence-starters is, “The Bible says…” because the Bible says a lot — much of it contradictory. After all, these works were written by countless authors and revised by innumerable editors over the course of several thousand years. It’s essential, then, to understand the context in which “the Bible says” something. For example:

The Bible says that polygamy was taking place from the very beginning of the faith, and the practice is never condemned. Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, had two wives and a slave, all of whom bore him children. His grandson, Jacob, married two sisters and had two concubines. Much later in the history of Israel, King David had at least seven wives, and his son Solomon is said to have had a harem including 700 princesses and 300 concubines. Each of these men was routinely criticized when he failed to do what God wanted of him, and yet polygamy was never something for which they were punished.

So let’s look at the context. At the beginning of a faith intended to spread to the whole world (Genesis 12:1-3), it’s critical for members of that faith to procreate and for their offspring to survive. Polygamy is a social structure that seems particularly suited to achieving these goals. We now live in a context in which very few places in the world — if any — are unaware of the Judeo-Christian faith; polygamy is no longer a necessity. This line of thinking is also pertinent to the conversation about same-sex relationships, which I will not address here.

The Bible says that, should a married man die with no male heir, his brother is to sleep with his widow until she gives birth to a son. This command — and it is a command — is known as levirate marriage, and it is the central conceit of the story of Judah and Tamar. In Genesis 38, Judah is punished for failing to provide one of his sons as a husband for Tamar. In the Book of Ruth, the character of Boaz is commended as a “man of valor” for taking Ruth as a wife after her husband dies.

The law of levirate marriage seems to have developed, in part, as a way for men to maintain control over the wealth within a family; however, it also arose in a context in which there was no social security, no unemployment pay, and no such thing as a homeless shelter. This practice was, in effect, a social safety net for widows and children who would otherwise have no way to care for themselves. In a culture that has systems in place (at least, in theory) to provide for the less fortunate, this practice is truly obsolete.

Before we return to Pearce’s perspective on marital relationships, let’s look at one more thing the Bible says: namely, that it’s better for single people never to marry at all. This idea comes to us most clearly from the Apostle Paul, the author of many of the letters that make up the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 7:8-9, Paul recommends to the unmarried and the widowed that they “remain unmarried as I am.” Indeed, Jesus himself was never married.

Marriage clearly wasn’t the highest priority for these two men. The context here is that Jesus and Paul lived their lives believing that the final culmination of history was just over the horizon. Jesus proclaimed that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (Matthew 24:34 and verses following), and Paul wrote that “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). In light of such apocalyptic thinking, dedicating oneself to marriage took a back seat to dedicating oneself to the faith. Jesus made this explicit when he said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Nearly 2,000 years later, we recognize that life on Earth is probably one of God’s long-term projects; perhaps marriage is back on the table.

The New Mexican congressman’s understanding of marriage, namely that “the wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice,” comes from the “household code” found in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. Paul’s mission was to continue the expansion of the Church. The “code” sections of the letters are a set of directions for maintaining the hierarchical order of society: women obey men, children obey parents, slaves obey masters.

At the time these letters were written, Christianity was a developing faith. Some thought it was primarily subversive — after all, these people were talking about a King up in heaven, which some of the Powers-That-Were took as a threat to their own authority. Christianity does demand radical change, and so these passages may have been an attempt to say, “Yes, we’re different, but we’re not clueless! We know how the world works.” The way the world worked in the first century was that men were in charge. Perhaps the household code was meant to reflect, rather than to legislate, that reality.

In America today, that reality is no longer uniformly the case. Women have more discretion (though not absolute freedom, especially in oppressive or abusive situations) in the forms their relationships will take. Reading the passages from Ephesians and Colossians, we might choose to focus less on the gender of the person in charge and more on the idea of mutual care and respect: that husbands and wives, parents and children, even, er, “bosses and employees,” are to show concern for one another.

In each of these examples, there is a practice and a principle: the practice of polygamy served the principle of spreading a faith; the practice of levirate marriage served the principle of concern for the powerless in society; the practice of eschewing marriage served the principle of wholehearted dedication to one’s faith; the practice of the household code served the principle of maintaining social order. Far too often, we get bogged down in the practice, without going a step further to discern the principle it serves.

So choose your own biblical view of marriage, but do so recognizing that context is crucial and that the Bible isn’t a book of answers; it can’t live our lives for us. What we need is a faith that engages such a book, a faith that is alive, adaptable, and not afraid of change, a faith that is born and reborn each day. That’s the kind of faith that can show us how to live.

The author is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and serves as a chaplain in the Virginia Commonwealth University health system.

For further reading on these topics, check out Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).