Three Little Pigs, The Guardian, and the way forward.

I'll be hosting a series about culture on Fridays through April and May at TheHighCalling.org. It's called "Everything Matters," which is a phrase I borrowed from the CCO's Jubilee Conference. The conversation started with me looking for some guidance, and it would be an understatement to say that I knew exactly how to proceed. There is simply too much to know.

Culture is so very complex and my insight, so limited. The following commercial for The Guardian reminds me of these facts in a brilliant choreography of images and words, based on the Three Little Pigs:

  
As soon as I--or The Guardian for that matter--believe I have the angle on something, new evidence is introduced. New factors come into play. So it isn't the first reporter who has the story right. She's just first. Additional voices add depth and uncover misreads and challenge running opinions. Sometimes the whole truth eventually makes it into the light, though usually it doesn't; it just gets more complex.

Culture is like this. Evasive, perplexing. Yet I don't always have the choice to stand by waiting for it to unshake into knowable pieces, which means that sometimes I have to step in when it's still unclear. Sometimes, not always. Wisdom comes from spending time in the thick of it, but wisdom also--maybe more so--comes from stepping back and seeking counsel. 

Read the kick-off article, Creating a High Calling Culture, and then tune in over the coming weeks as practitioners share how they see and interact with culture according to specific disciplines. They won't parse the latest headline happening; we're employing a less myopic view here. But in doing so, they'll teach us to see better. They'll give us a way of looking at the world that can help make sense of the complexity. And practically, they'll call us to create, manage, and consume culture in a way that reflects God's own creating, managing, and consuming. I hope you'll join us.

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The High Calling is a site about work, life, and God.

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Bug-eyed for Culture: Help Me See

Image by Thomas Shahan.

Dave fixes my car. Dave also coaches Little League. Both are work, and both are cultural acts, even though only fixing my car earns Dave a paycheck. We are, as Andy Crouch says, “culture makers.” Some make improvements to cars for pay, yes, but we also make toys, music, houses, apps, children, communities, stories, language, history, libraries, justice, noise, and play.

Culture is all day, every day. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Help me create a sharper vision for the culture content at TheHighCalling.org. To do that, read the rest of this post and my invitation here. Thanks!

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Oscar Night: A Call for the Good and the Popular

by Sam Van Eman  

Transcript of this recording:

I missed the Oscars Sunday night because I’m on a TV hiatus. But I didn’t really miss the Oscars. I watched a couple of the nominees via Netflix but wasn’t too impressed. Then I read a recap this morning in the New York Times about how the Oscars needs to deal with its antiquated formula: extensive advertising, long months of telling potential viewers about the show, countless blog posts and movie trailers and pre-vote casting opportunities. As the article goes, nearly five months of marketing are aimed at one hopefully spectacular, star-studded, entertaining, successful celebration.

Yet many think it fell flat this year.

Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply wrote the review that caught my attention. It’s entitled, Fears Grow That Oscars’ TV Allure May Be Resistible. They said, “With films that most of America hasn’t seen continuing to dominate the Oscars—“Hugo,” a winner of five trophies on Sunday, has been a box office dud—the Academy seems to have effectively eliminated one of the crucial measuring sticks of the past: the ability of a picture to move the masses to buy tickets.”

For me, this is the crux of the matter. Good vs popular. On one hand you may have good films which weren’t popular but win Best Picture. On the other hand, you may have popular films which weren’t exactly good but win Best Picture anyway. The former highlight the power to amaze us or shift our worldview; the latter, the power to fill seats.

But good vs popular creates an interesting dilemma. If all of the Oscar nominees are good but not popular, viewers have to force themselves to preview the line-up prior to Oscar night or else they won’t have a clue about who’s in the running, and therefore have no real buy-in to the show. If, however, all of the Oscar nominees are popular but not good, viewers will naturally tune in like sports fans to see if their pick will win. (But then people like me end up questioning the voting system and wonder why such-and-such an incredible no-name movie didn’t get noticed.)

I have to confess. My peculiar tastes aside, I don’t trust the masses. They are—and don’t take this personally; I share it as what I think of as basic sociology—ignorant, emotionally driven, and generally lacking in good taste. Crowds follow each other with a certain blind excitement that dampens objectivity when it comes to valuing cultural artifacts. What is popular is not always promising. What is mass is not always remarkable. But without, as the article said, “the ability of a picture to move the masses to buy tickets,” the Oscars—at least in its current format—will eventually die.

Preachers know this. Marketers know this. Authors know this. TV show producers know this. You can have a great message, but if you aren’t filling seats, it’s going to be an awfully poor and lonely road ahead, if there even is a road ahead.

I ask whether the Oscars’ TV allure was resistible this year because a handful of the nominees were neither good nor popular. Such a combination does not bode well for anyone.

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You go, library.

Promoting something I love, and could afford to love more...the public library. Courtesy of Amy Corr at MediaPost.

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Interview on Advertising and Why We Shouldn't GoDaddy

John and Kathy were kind hosts to me yesterday at WORD-FM. We covered GoDaddy, roofing, Triscuits, Jubilee, and more about advertising and the stuff I love. The clip is 18-1/2 min long. Open the "Tuesday, February 07, 2012" link and then start at 01:13:05 in your media player.

Find the link here, or simply get the iTunes podcast for Feb 7 here.

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Chevy Silverado 2012

No telling if Toyota owners will make it through the Mayan apocalypse in 2012, but I'll plan to be driving mine on December 21st just in case. This clever Super Bowl ad for Chevy shows a preview of the fallout and what will remain. Where are the cockroaches, I wonder?

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Pepperidge Farms and Fame-lust

by Sam Van Eman

Transcript for this recording:

Henri Nouwen once spent seven months in a Trappist monastery in an attempt to escape from his fame-lust; to find, as he put it, "a quiet stream underneath the fluctuating affirmations and rejections of my little world" (The Genesee Diary, 14). While in the monastery, Nouwen worked on their assembly line which produced 15,000 loaves of raisin bread (Monk's Bread) each week.

Consider this journal entry about an observation he made:

"Theodore found a little piece of metal between the thousands of raisins he pushed through the raisin washing machine. He showed it to me. It looked as sharp as a razor blade. Well, someone eating his raisin bread is saved from a bleeding stomach, thanks to Theodore, who will never hear a grateful word for it. That is the drawback of preventative medicine" (112). 

Drawback of preventative medicine? Yikes. This is exactly why someone with fame-lust like Nouwen's needs a time out.

But hold on a minute, Sam. You know precisely what he means. Mixed with even the few generous acts of your own—especially the unrecognized ones—is a hope for praise. You admire Spider-Man for his masked altruism, but you also love the moment when Mary Jane is about to find out who's behind all those good deeds. Don't be too quick to judge.

The Pepperidge Farms magazine advertisement here says, "We're bakers. But we're parents, too. That's why we bake our wholesome bread the way we do. With plump, juicy raisins, sweet swirls of cinnamon—and lots of love." I appreciate the heart at the center of this image. Maybe it's real. I hope, at least, that it's more than a clever graphic, because I'm sure that some of those who made this ad (and this bread) care less about the customer and more about fame.

There are many problems in popular advertising that call for Spider-men and women to address. And there are also many elements that require Theodores to execute selflessly, year after year. Theodores may need to extract the occasional metal shard, but their main focus is on "lots of love," and on the continual production of beneficial goods and services. Not fame.
 
Theodore found more value in making good bread than in heroically avoiding dangerous bread, or in people knowing he made bread at all. It feels impossible for me to be Theodore. Dreams of accolades and promotions too often over-shadow the importance of the work itself, and I find myself needing to remember why it's been given to me in the first place.

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Vocational Surfing: Will Someone Puhleeze Ride that Wave?

by Sam Van Eman

Transcript for this recording:

Hey, it's Friday and you're either glad the work week is over or you're bummed it's coming to an end. My friend and stump-preaching vocation specialist, Byron Borger, refuses to eat at TGI Friday’s for theological reasons. Work was given to us before the fall of humankind, not after. So for that reason, despite the callouses, work is a good thing. And, honestly, because it has service and cultivation at its roots, work brings goodness into the mess that surrounds us. Byron may be onto something.

This morning I came across a surfing video. It's amazing. I've surfed only once but even my three-foot waves made me appreciate water's power and the need I would have for excellence to both understand and work within the ways of that power. In the video scenes where you look into the empty curl, you'll wonder if a surfer will emerge. In the scenes where you watch the surfer under a closing wave, you'll wonder if he will make it.

I didn’t intend to share this in order to create a point, but I couldn't help thinking about the surfing montage and work. TGIF (not the restaurant) is the relief statement of someone who can't seem to emerge. They either lack the vision, or the know-how, or the willingness to ride out what seems like pending doom. And sometimes it is pending doom. Plenty of jobs will eventually reach right over our heads and take us under. But every time?

I would like to see more of us ride this thing beyond Friday.

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Enjoy the video below. If you don’t think about work while you watch it, that’s okay. The wave is still amazing.

 

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Super Bowl Commercials and My Spiritual Tipping Point

by Sam Van Eman

Transcript of this recording:

It's early January and the perennial conversation about the Super Bowl game versus Super Bowl commercials has reached the living room already. Last night, after an overtime loss took the Steelers out of the running, a friend surrendered: "Well, there will always be the commercials." Even my seven-year old reminded me this week why she likes watching football: "I love the commercials, Daddy."

Of course, behind-the-scenes talk began months ago. This year's 30-second spot line-up was sold out before Thanksgiving. At a record-high $3.5 million a piece (about $117,000 per second), NBC is more than happy to host both the game and the high-fare entertainment.

Seth Winter, senior vice president of sales and marketing at NBC’s sports group, said, “We have shattered any recent revenue stories in regards to the Super Bowl."

Super Bowl commercials aren't predictably Jack's beanstalk for companies who commission them, but companies certainly hope their millions will become that. At the very least, with Ash Wednesday only weeks behind America's favorite game, it's as if they hope this will be the Mardi Gras of consumption until Black Friday resurrects their sales again.

My Mardi Gras

The Super Bowl is also my Mardi Gras; a last hurrah of pleasure and shiny lights before the darkness sets in; a cultural feast followed by a religious fast. I give up television each year for Lent because I watch too much tube leading up the Super Bowl. Charlie Brown specials, mid-winter sit-com reruns, play-off games, more play-off games. By the time I wake up the morning after the big event, I can't watch another minute of anything.

(Well...except for Netflix.)

The cycle does my body good. Unplugged, I'm invited to have expectations beyond wanting to see which Doritos' submission got chosen out of the more than 6000 entries for its 30 seconds of fame. Unplugged, I'm invited to wait for provision - the Easter kind no ad or product can produce.

For now - and since my team is officially out - we'll be talking about the commercials around here. I'll call my kids into the room when age-appropriate gems air, I'll talk with peers about their favorites, I'll reflect on the influence of advertising on our 21st-century hearts and minds. I'll also hope for more neighbor-sensitive commercials, pray for those creative types behind the scenes who have more power than they realize, and reflect on my own role in the machine that is consumerism.

And then, on February 6th, a day after partying with food and friends, I'll come home from work and find something else to do besides watch TV.

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Streetwalking in 2012

by Sam Van Eman

Transcript of this recording:

Here's how it feels. I've come just around a city block corner onto 2012 Avenue and I'm thinking about both the last street and this one. The last one wasn't ugly or dark. It feels more like a friend's house with a decent dinner and pretty good company; the experience keeps me warm on the walk home.

More of my mind is on the next street. I've just popped out of the New York City subway and turned the corner. I've got a meeting address in my pocket. Haven't been there, haven't met the people. But the city scape is alive and the meeting promises. I see it as a brainstorming session of sorts on a topic I love to discuss. That's the feeling, anyway, rounding this corner.

As critical as I am, and as often as I complain about this issue or that discomfort, I get this feeling every year. I'm glad for a perennial optimism. I won't set New Year's resolutions (I wouldn't keep them). I'm not trying to clean last year's slate with a fabricated belief that this year will be my year. I won't even lie to myself about what potential I might or might not have. I know what I have to work with, and but for grace, those tools could sink me or save me in a few short steps.

So here I am, looking forward, eager to get to this meeting but not wanting to rush it either. The conversation I'll have there has significant implications on my work, family, and faith, all of which, as I get older, mean more to me. For everything that shapes these implications, I thank the Lord.

Here's to a walk with anticipated stops along the way and an unusual measure of grace to help 2012 surprise all of us.

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