Marked Pages

I was telling my Feminist Literature class at tutorial today about literature’s influence on the public perception of male and female roles in Sylvia Plath’s day, particularly on the silver screen. But today, they, my women students, were not listening, because they had had it with Plath and her psychotic poetry. They refused to entertain Clark Gable, James Stewart, Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn or even Marilyn Monroe, in their thoughts of the literary, social or filmic impact on the always controversial issue of women’s roles. “Film”, to them, was a good movie, designed to numb the mind from the harder borders defining “real life” for an hour and a half. It was wholesome medication bought over the counter to chase away “the blues”, and was usually accompanied by a large coke and popcorn at TGV. What did the movies have to do with anything, especially Plath, their glazed eyes asked, imploring me by unspoken agreement to end the class soon.

Naturally, I ended the class, because I was as hungry and tired as they were, this being the last week of half-term. But thinking about the movies stayed with me beyond the class and well into lunch, simply because I used to enjoy watching “good shows” quite a bit in the past. What was their impact? What was the reach of films in shaping and changing perspectives, particularly for me as a Christian?

Interestingly, in recent years, there have been a number of good and controversial movies linked with books, such as The English Patient, Schindler’s List (from Schindler’s Ark), The End of the Affair, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Jane Eyre, The Piano, The Lord of the Rings, and even the Harry Potter series. Of course, Harry Potter caused such a furor among Christians that ticket sales shot up immediately. I put it down to curiosity. But I really have to admit to ignorance here. To date, I am unable to appreciate the devilish attraction and appeal of Rowling’s output. Harry Potter, I am sorry to say, puts me to sleep.

Other movies move me more and better, such as The Lord of the Rings. I stayed away from watching the trilogy for a long while because I thought that the beauty of the book would be compromised. I’d first read Tolkien when I was an undergraduate, and never quite forgot his meticulous and loving attention to the details of his tour de force. I thought too that son Christopher was too eager to part with his father’s literary legacy by allowing Hollywood in at the front door. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t Hollywood, but that’s all one to me! 

The attempt to put Tolkien on the big screen, however, was quite remarkable, even to a fussy movie fan like me. Some finer subtleties were lost, of course, and can only be resuscitated via the written word itself (read the books!), but much of Tolkien’s spiritual concerns and flair for the dramatic came across. There is great beauty in the books, not merely physical beauty but spiritual beauty as well, and there is that same beauty too coming from the films. It is a great pity that Christians have not drawn on Tolkien’s implicit (and embedded) Christianity in the Rings as an evangelistic conversation piece. We are too distracted by the presence of fearsome elves and goblins and wizards, forgetting that evangelical C.S. Lewis did much the same as his good friend in the Chronicles of Narnia, which we happily push as “Thoroughly Christian Literature.” We need to think outside of the box if we do not want to lose our voice in the world.

I have not yet dared any sane Christian to consider The End of the Affair (from Graham Greene’s novel) as part of evangelistic strategy. But Greene (a serious Catholic) intended his story to provoke thought about the nature of love. Bendrix, the protagonist, hates God, and says his story is about hate. But in truth, we see that Sarah (his lover) is the beloved pursued relentlessly by the Eternal Lover who demands all and gives all. The story and the film both examine the limitations of human love and passion, and place this love against the larger, uncompromising love of the invisible God. Frankly, for all Ralph Fiennes’ and Julianne Moore’s rolling in the hay, this is really a story about the love of God for man. It reminds me of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which portrays changeable human passion and love, again against the backdrop of a greater, inexorable Love. Bendrix and Henry, Sarah’s husband, learn about the self-sacrificing and big-hearted nature of love, as they both nurse Sarah till her death. In effect, Bendrix, who hates God (his arch enemy and rival for Sarah’s love), comes ironically and slowly to a realization and possession of the love he so desired only when he loses Sarah to fatal illness. Human life is made up of such contradictions and paradoxes. But what a great starting place for introducing the persistent Hound of Heaven and the Eternal Lover to a jaded world! Dare we even try?

Should Christians be afraid to use the resources of the world to reach the world? We had a wonderful instance a few months ago when movie-goers stopped to consider the passionate Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ. But do we have to wait for an overtly Christian theme phrased in Aramaic before we can say, “Here is Love”? Is it possible for us to cast our nets far and wide, using whatever crosses our path, to carefully and deliberately say to a watching world that Jesus is the Way? 

The media is often seen as being pervasive and intrusive. Indeed it often is. But culture is formed and moulded by such intrusions, for better or worse. In the end, it is up to us how we use it, and what we do with it. My women students missed the point; I think many Christians do too.

Entertainment, even Hollywood entertainment, is never just for fun.
 

(This was written when I taught English Literature at a local university)

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

When I was young, I had a nursery rhyme book which had marvellous watercolour illustrations. Every time I came to this rhyme, I was riveted to the startlingly provocative picture of a garden filled with rows and rows of silver bells and cockle shells, complete with pretty maids! Were they part flower, too? Unbeknownst to me, this rhyme was really about Mary, Queen of Scots. All I knew at the time was that gardens were marvellous things, landscaped in the prettiest of pastels and the most amazing of flowers! When I looked out my window, of course, I saw my parents’ garden in full view: succulent orchids that had little birds nesting in some pots, lilies, the ever-popular bougainvillea, ferns, jasmines,  and trees—jambu air, mangoes, bananas, custard apples, rambutans, even jackfruit at one time. Gardens are imprinted in my mind in these varieties of ways, and my early memories of Sweet Williams sit happily with the more exotic recollections of the fruit trees of my childhood. I remember my own gardening experiments when I was young. I grew some watermelons once when I was eleven, and they were rather sweet.

Green fingers are not unknown in my family. The genes have become rather diluted by now, but there’s always that distant horticultural call of the wild that cannot be suppressed so entirely. Every now and then, therefore, I tend towards gardening shops and nurseries, Sungai Buloh being somewhat prominent. I have had a variety of plants in my gardens, like bougainvilleas, pachystachys, brunfelsias, jasmines, spider plants, lobelias, busy lizzies, coleus, sansevieria, sunflowers, celosias, balsams, scindapsus, pileas, monsteras, petunias, roses, allamandas, dill, mint … You name it, I’ve tried to grow it!

What is it about gardens that preoccupies me, and a host of mad hatters like me? I think, having reflected long and hard while staring unblinkingly at my garden, it is that plants express something of the harmonious nature of beings engaged in the task of simply being alive.  They neither toil nor spin, says Jesus, and yet, they are adorned with a natural grace and beauty that just is.  When I look at my plants, even the greenest and plainest of them all, I sense a satisfaction in them that is derived from the unabashed, unafraid and unforced expression of their true selves. There are many things, too, that I have observed about plants, how each of them is individual and peculiarly themselves; how they must, nevertheless, grow in the ways that have been ordained for them, but how particularly contented they are to be what they have been made to be.

The erstwhile gardener who cares for her plants sees that these charges need basically three things: sun, soil and water. But woe betide the careless person who gives too much of sun to one and too little of water to the other! In their seeming simplicity and general desire to grow even in challenging conditions, plants need that understanding from their gardener that comes from a sense of respect.  I know, for instance, that my bottle palm needs water to ensure that its bulbous stem stays that way! But it needs quiet time to sit and dry out after a good drink. The monstera loves generous portions of everything, but spoil it with too much and it will tell you in its gentle giant-y way that the situation is unacceptable! The hardy scindapsus (what we call here the money plant) is unfussy most of the time, but dour weather and overcast sky will turn even it sad and yellow, in spite of its good intentions. Talking about fussy, my temperamental petunias are giving me trouble because they’ve been missing the sun, and showing it by threatening to rot away! The only one that seems happy about the wet weather is my shade-loving bird’s nest fern. It’s clear to me, therefore, that I have to pay attention to the individual needs of my plants. While they may exist with each other, they don’t necessarily require the same doses of everything as their friends next door. It’s difficult to remember these individualised requirements sometimes. But when they thrive and grow, that’s the only reward the gardener really desires.  It’s strange how that is the only thing a watchful gardener wants from plants—just for them to grow, to become most themselves, to be.

Plants are simple living things, without the complexity that characterises humans. Yet they suggest so much of what it means to be created human beings that it is hard to resist engaging in a play of analogy! It is easy to see ourselves and our spirituality in our plants. It’s obvious that the comparison is between the human gardener and God, whose garden is made up of people-plants like us. It’s clear, too, and fortunate, that God the kindly gardener never gets our individual needs mixed up. My response to God? Like my plants, who are quite helpless to resist where I may place them (for good or ill), I need to exhibit that same abandoned trust where I am placed, and who I’m next to. Not easy, if you consider that we are plants who can talk back and argue with the gardener.

The analogy fails at the point where I assume a mind and soul (and also feet to walk away from God!), unlike plants. But I think the general point is made: that plants were made to be simply alive, and simply themselves; that plants were made to glorify their Creator-Gardener; that plants are there to be enjoyed and appreciated. To draw and extend the comparison, that humans were made to be simply alive, and fully themselves; that humans were made to glorify their Maker; that humans are there to be enjoyed and loved, and to enjoy and love. 

(This was written when I actually had a little garden)