Except applying our idea of "The Gaze" within a postmodern-apostolic context.
It's so like a math problem. I like math.
But I like story problems involving math better.
So we go to Halloween, the movie. The one with Michael Myers. (And don't worry, there is no violence in the making of this blog.... I could show this to little kids and they wouldn't even be scared)...
You know? The dude behind the window in this picture....
First things first.... for our purposes and what I think the director of the film was doing:
Michael Myers = The Gaze
So The Gaze is best experienced when we sit in a movie theater (except we as Apostolics don't do that right?) or a play or at church...
In other words, when we sit as a spectator (or viewer) we become the Gaze who watches a performance (whereas last week we talked about the Gaze as the feeling we get when we are the ones being watched).....
So Michael Myers looking at Jamie Lee Curtis in the picture above.... He is no different than you watching a movie or watching a sermon where the person performing doesn't know you exist (or at least in that moment, the performer's world is so much bigger than your own individual self watching)...
So, Video, which is the very opening scene of the Halloween Movie:
In this scene, the camera is acting as "The Gaze." The camera is unsteady. It gives the viewer the sense that he is walking. We don't know if we are supposed to be seeing a scene (as per a usual movie) or if we are supposed to be seeing a scene through someone elses eyes....
As the camera nears it's target (the house), we vaguely see two kids getting, ummm, friskey?
The kids leave the view of the camera into another room...
The camera follows and finds another view of the kids, getting a little ummm, friskier?
The scene continues with the kids running upstairs, once again out of the view of the camera, and the viewer (and the Gaze). (slightly edited)...
Notice when the music comes on? Just as the upstairs lights are turned out to add "privacy."
The camera (or viewer or the Gaze) is not happy. Next thing we know, the camera is inside the house, but we find out this camera has an arm and it's grabbing a knife....
We now see that the Gaze we, the viewer are embodying is that of someone (and not just a camera)..
So I skipped the next couple moments in light of there being a murder (I think you can understand)...
But The Gaze walks upstairs and kills the female subject who was just seen making out....
And the viewer is all like "What in the world is going on here?"
And I"m like, "I know, right?"
So we pick up the scene just after the killing...and the killer has a mask on and is descending downstairs ...
And we are all like NOOOOOO!?!?!?!
Because the killer was a boy (who happens to be Michael Myers) and his parents are all like WHHHAATTTT?....And the most intriguing thing to me about this scene is that the teenage couple was making out while the parents were gone and that the boy (michael Myers before he grows up) is The Gaze who is acting out in violence in the absence of the parents.....
The director of Halloween is brilliant. I maintain this...
Also, intermission...
Now, you're wonding what's the point? And i'm like...yeah what's the point?
But that's why we need to think, and reflect, and meditate upon the images that were laid before our eyes ....
But basically, the Gist is this about the Gaze: In a postmodern world that kills the importance of Law, rules, and Objective, Absolute truth, we basically lose the role of the parent (or the authority figure) in our lives.... At most parents or pastors can make suggestions of how we are to live but we don't have to obey it.
Any rules we follow are our choice.... This is the nihilistic (meaningless) side of postmodernism...
I'm not defending Authority or the Law or Apostolic Truth by any means...
I'm simply using Halloween and the use of "The Gaze" within Halloween to show what we postmoderns get in return for our freedom (like the girl gets killed for exhibiting her ummmm friskiness while the parents were away)....
When we live free, we don't get this magical candyland where everything is oh so pretty and lovely (I'm think Rob Bell here)....
And nor does this mean to go running to an authority figure or religion and make yourself unquestioning servants to their rule simply because they showed you a scripture or their logic "makes sense." (I have in mind the Mark Driscoll/Reform Camp)
No, in this world we get loneliness, anxiety, and neuroticism.... Instead of parents, we get The Gaze.... The Gaze is Never ever present, but it's always just around the corner haunting us.....
You know those days that you feel just absolutely miserable and you don't have any words to describe the feeling and you don't have any reason to feel like you do? That dread? That I think is one of the symptoms of our postmodern age..
Not only are we freee to do anything.... we are also feeling guilty for everything.... And we don't know what do about these feelings......
On a closing note (bow heads)....
We go back to Halloween...
Halloween was made in 1978.
Several years after the whole freedom movement and the hippie movement had died out... In other words postmodernism was very optimistic when it was initiated in living practice in the 1960's.
But in the 1970's we could begin to sense it's inability to live up to expectations (as the hippies went and got corporate jobs)....
But the one crowning feature of Halloween and what made me go research for this post was that the most haunting thing to me about Michael Myers (and the Gaze for that matter) is that he never, ever runs at his target or the vicitim.....But yet He (and the Gaze) will always catch up to his victim no matter how hard they run.....
In this clip, you can vaguely see Michael Myers in the background (between cuts of Jamie Lee Curtis knocking doors)...Michael is walking towards a horrified Jamie Lee Curtis.... Just walking and pacing... in no good hurry...IN fact, unreasonably slow...
In this postmodern age where our neighbor is "virtual" and we don't know the name of our neighbor next door, there is not sense of community to bring us together... We have no where to hide like jamie lee curtis doesn't in the above clip (notice that the neighbor's comedically just "turn on the light" hoping that is enough of an aid). In our hunger for privacy we lose our chance of reaching out for help and worse yet, our lose our ability to be in view for others to ask us for help....
We are free after all. So if we get into trouble it's our own fault and we know we can't ask anyone for help....Likewise if other people are free and we are free and we are able to "make it" if anyone is in trouble it must be "their own fault."
When I hear terrible men preach at big conferences (not all our terrible), I see them get all red faced and promise us that if we leave church we will be miserable and empty.......
Yes, I completely agree.
But what they don't question is why did we leave in the first place? Because we were still experiencing the Gaze the emptiness in church as well....
But when these preachers talk about the vengeance of God.... Their veins pop out and stuff.....And they seem to get some kind of sadomasochist pleasure about telling young people that things will be awful if they leave the religion and the truth......
And I don't think their wrong... but I don't think it's something that should be wished on anyone....
Because what these preachers are talking about is "The Gaze" (or a Michael Myers) that will haunt us when our own free choices have left us to a life of anxiety and dread....
But the secret is "The Gaze" doesn't work for the preachers.... and it's not a validation for the Truth of the UPC.....It's something far deeper than that that is not bound by one denomination....
The Gaze is what we are left with when we don't have to answer to anyone.....
There's another name for that, It's called the Fall.
And only when one realizes the Fall through the insecurity and fragility felt in the face of the Gaze, can we seek redemption. The Gaze is entirely a Godly matter. Not a religious one.
This is why I don't fear postmodernism. What I do fear are men who are still trying to defend the hierarchy of authority which is a remnant of a long dead age of modernity....
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