Blog Archive
[ Older
Newer ]
|
|
 |
|
September 26, 2006 • Tuesday
|
One Christian’s Stance on South Park
Category: Religion and Philosophy
Being a Christian, I am often surrounded by friends and family members who abhor South Park. They often expect me to hold the same sentiments they do, and yet I must admit that I like South Park. They think that South Park is a boldfaced attack on Christianity and morality. I don't, and I do not think that liking South Park is a contradiction of my faith or that enjoying it makes me less of a Christian.
I once got in an argument with some family members about South Park. I was told that South Park was evil and wrong because it is a cartoon aimed at children. But South Park is not aimed at children. It is aimed at adults and has a warning at the beginning of each episode saying that the film should not be viewed by anyone. I was then told that it doesn't matter whether South Park is aimed at children or not, that because it is an animated program that it therefore falls into the "children's programming" category, for all cartoons are aimed at children. Again, I had to disagree. After all, some of the earliest cartoons were made for adult audiences. The early Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons were played in theaters and targeted adults. As Wikipedia says, "…the early thirties cartoons never directly catered to a younger audience… By the late thirties, the series had become edgier, and was more obviously targeted to the adult moviegoers of the time." It wasn't until the 1970s that Looney Tunes "…began to be edited to remove scenes featuring innuendos, ethnic stereotypes and extreme violence." The history of the animated program being targeted towards adults is very clearly established, and one must not restrict a certain type of programming to a certain type of audience.
It is true, however, that many children are naturally drawn to South Park and other animated programs like it because they enjoy cartoons. Many children are raised watching cartoons and gravitate toward animated programs. What, then, should be done? Should South Park be banned, just because some children may watch it even though it isn't targeted towards them? I say no; if explicit documentaries about violent murders and rapes can be shown on cable television, so should South Park. South Park is already shown in the evenings, around ten o'clock my time, which is an appropriate time slot for an adult cartoon. The truth is that it is up to parents, in my humble opinion, to keep their children from watching shows that were not designed for them. It is their responsibility, not the network or the producers or creators, to regulate what their own children watch.
All of this said, South Park is a vulgar show, which I cannot deny. It is also an interesting and intelligent show (at times). While I do not speak for all Christians, it has become my conviction to not deny myself the good for the sake of avoiding the bad, and I believe that this stance is rooted in scripture. We, as Christians, are to be in the world but not of the world (John 17:14-15). Part of being in the world, I believe, is understanding that we cannot seclude ourselves from the rest of society and make nice little "safe places" for ourselves where we will not be bombarded by the evils of the world. This cuts us off from the people of the world with whom we, as ambassadors on this earth, must associate with. If we never watch the news, never listen to music, never watch movies or television, never read secular books or go to public places, we will become alien wraiths who do not fit into the puzzle of humanity, and this is the last thing we want to be. We are told not to be stumbling blocks (2nd Corinthians 6:3) and yet what do you think we become to non-Christians who see a bunch of stuck up and uptight Christians? If one doesn't want to watch South Park because he finds it offensive that is fine, but he must realize that there are a lot of offensive things in this world that can harbor a kernel of good, and it would be a shame to miss these things out of fear of being offended.
It is my conviction, therefore, to allow myself to enjoy the good of South Park and ignore the bad of South Park. I find the social commentaries and political allusions down right hilarious. I find some of the jokes and extreme vulgarity (like killing a Kenny look-alike by suffocating him in the "humidor" of the bus driver) unfunny and pointless. But I don't focus or dwell on that. I find South Park funny for different reasons than others might, and that is fine with me. Now, if a Christian can't get past the vulgarity and see the ingenuity and wit that are often there, that is fine with me too. And as a brother to them I would never talk about South Park or force them to sit down and watch it if it bothers them, for I should not exercise my freedom to watch it around them if it causes them to stumble (1 Corinthians 8:9). But the same courtesy should be extended to me, and I should not be vilified for finding partial enjoyment in something that happens to be partially vulgar.
What is often brought forth as the gleaming pointed argument against South Park are some of the directly anti-Christian episodes. First, I do not consider the show to be against Christianity. I think it is often against Christians, but so am I at times. One thing modern evangelicals (of whom I consider myself a member, though in a technical sense) is that they can't seem to separate the Christian from the faith. Just because a man claims to be a Christian doesn't mean that he is acting like one. Just because a man claims to be representing Christianity properly doesn't mean that he really is. Just because Christians have their own little cultural quirks doesn't mean that those cultural quirks should be representative of Christianity. I have no problem with making fun of Christians because some Christians just need to be made fun of. For instance, the Faith +1 episode was downright funny because it pointed out some blatant truths about the Christian music subculture. There is very little Christian music, from my point of view, that is any good at all, and instead of sitting here and getting mad at Matt and Trey for making fun of Christian music, maybe we should just get better. There was also an episode that had a statue of the Virgin Mary shoot blood out of its hindquarters, and when this episode aired there was a huge uproar amongst Catholics (but mind you, there were no riots, no church, mosque, airport or clinic was bombed, and no one was killed via a suicide bomber in response). And it is true; it was a disgusting and vulgar thing to see. But it also raises an interesting point; why is this vulgar and disgusting, but when people think they see blood pouring out of the eyes of a statue it is fine, dandy and even "holy"? In truth it is just ridiculous and gross, and there is absolutely no scriptural foundation for considering blood pouring out of any orifice, let alone that of a statue or painting, to be holy or spiritual in any way. We as Christians have just attached some sort of traditional and spiritual significance to such things when we don't need to.
And then we come to the direct "mocking" so-called of Jesus himself. South Park has depicted Jesus as a machine-gun wielding Rambo-wannabe, as a vulgar-tongued individual and even as a fool. I can't see why Christians would be upset by this because the Jesus depicted in South Park is, well, not Jesus. There is a reason why the Old Testament tells us not to depict God with an image, and one of the reasons is that if he has no recognizable form, there is no way he can be mocked with images. But because of the iconophiles we have this idea of what Jesus looks like—a long-haired hippie in a robe—and we attach some sort of significance to this image. In truth, no one knows what he looks like, and the likelihood that a Jewish rabbi from Israel had white skin, blue eyes and long brown hair is not very good.
People have gotten upset with Matt and Trey recently because they said in an interview that it was "open-season on Jesus". This did not offend me, however, because if you understood the context of the statement you would see that this was actually a criticism of the disparity between how Christianity and Islam are regarded by the secular world. Why is it just fine and dandy to make fun of Christianity and Jesus, but if we make fun of Muslims and Mohammad we are sure to get beheaded or otherwise assassinated? Does it say something about our culture when it is acceptable to make fun of anything Christian, but if we make fun of anything Islamic it is "insensitive", "intolerant" or not politically correct? This is an injustice and this is not equality. Radical Muslims have a knife to the throat of the entire western world by telling us what we can and cannot do or say, on pain of death. When the Pope said some very innocent remarks the other day in a speech, he was ridiculed by the Muslim world and people were killed. The irony is that the Pope quoted an ancient source who was criticizing Islam's propensity towards violence. This statement offended Muslims and so they reacted… with violence. It took South Park to show us how blatant this hypocrisy is with their Cartoon Wars episodes, for no one else had the guts (or the will) to highlight this disparity.
Lastly, Matt and Trey are not Christians, so we who are should not expect them to act like ones. How can we get offended and upset at them for making fun of that which they don't understand? "The story of Jesus makes no sense to me," said Trey in a recent interview. "God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act." This very clearly demonstrates to me that neither Matt nor Trey understand Christianity, and they can hardly be expected to hold in reverence a faith which makes no sense to them. This was most clearly seen in their episode The Passion of the Jew, which is really one of the only episodes that bothered me, because it made irresponsible conclusions based on ignorance of Christianity.
Father Mackey, the only recurring religious figure aside from Jesus, said that the crucifixion was really a rather small part of the New Testament when in reality it holds an incredibly significant place and was important enough to be repeated in all four gospels. Everything in the gospels leads up to Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Indeed, the entire Old Testament leads up to these moments, for the prophets all predicted the arrival of the messiah who would die and rise again. To Matt and Trey, the Bible is just a good book filled with fantastic stories that should be taken with a grain of salt and not actually believed. How then can we expect them to understand the significance and reason behind the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ if they don't believe that the Bible is true? Trey said that he didn't understand why Jesus had to die; well, I will tell you why. If all men sin (Romans 3:23) and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) then those who sin must pay the price of death. This is why the Israelites sacrificed animals in the Old Testament. They were transferring their sin onto the beasts and killing them to pay that price. The problem with this is that men continued to sin, even after sacrificing the animal, and so they would have to sacrifice another, and another, and what if you died before sacrificing an animal to pay for your sin? What then? This is why Jesus had to die. He came to earth and while he was on that cross he took on the penalty for the sins of all of humankind, past, present and future (1 Co 15:1-3, John 1:29, 1st Peter 3:18, 1st Peter 1:18-19). The only being who could have paid the price for all of man's sins was God; no man could have done it. And because Jesus rose again, he defeated death, Satan and the grave and bridged the gap between man and God so that all who might seek God would find God. That is why Jesus had to die, that is why God had only one son, and that is why it gets "really terrible" around the second act—because sin and death are terrible things.
The Passion of the Christ was just a movie, but it was a good movie and a fair representation of the crucifixion, though it must be stated that the Bible has far more to it than just the crucifixion. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we are to condemn the Jews for the death of Christ. Jesus and all of his disciples were Jews. The members of the first churches were filled with Jews. The point is that it was man—all of man, not just the Jews—who are responsible for the crucifixion, for it was for all of man that Jesus died. Kyle was incorrect to feel guilty for the death of Christ, because the Bible does not condemn the Jews and neither does Gibson's movie. This is really my biggest complaint with any of the episodes, because it misrepresents the movie and the Bible.
But how can I expect two men who do not understand Christianity to depict it properly? Matt and Trey said in the interview that Christianity was "superfunny" and a "ridiculous religion" story. We can't be surprised at such talk, for this very mentality is predicted in scripture. "…but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…" (1st Corinthians 1:27). Christianity will always sound like silliness to non-Christians, though it might make perfect sense to those who are Christians. That is the way of the world and that is the way it will always be. We need not be surprised.
I like South Park because it picks at those open sores within our culture that the politically correct refuse to acknowledge. Yes, it is often a vulgar show, but I refuse to let this spoil for me that which is funny, witty and intelligent about the show. This is my decision and others need not necessarily take up the same position as me, but I encourage Christians to not "rabble, rabble" against the show when it says something they don't like, and instead either fix those things within our subculture that are ripe for parody—or ignore it.
10:26 PM
-
9 Comments - 10 Kudos
- Add Comment
|
|
|
|
September 16, 2006 • Saturday
|
Cry-baby Muslims
Months after the whole Muslim cartoon incident that left many dead, Muslims are again throwing a tantrum, this time over something that Pope Benedict XVI said in a recent lecture. The pope was talking about faith and reason, and during his lecture he made an argument against using violence as a tool of faith, and in doing so he quoted from some ancient sources. The pope quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos as saying, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". He did not agree with this statement and he did not endorse it. He simply quoted the emperor in a scholastic sense to make a point and then explained the quote by saying, "The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God', he says, 'is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death.'"
In addition to Islam, the pope made reference to Protestantism, Judaism, the Greeks and modern atheism, and yet there was no outcry from any of the latter. And yet Muslims around the world have had their sensibilities offended and have demanded for a public apology. As can clearly be seen, the pope's lecture was a scholastic one and he used history in order to further his argument. He did not attack Muslims and he did not attack Islam; he simply quoted an ancient source who had commented on Islam and even reflected on that source negatively by saying, "He addresses his interlocutor in an astoundingly harsh — to us surprisingly harsh — way".
Muslim leaders from a round the world have reacted with incredulity. The Organization of the Islamic Conference referred to the pope's speech as a "campaign" and called it "character assassination of the Prophet Mohammed" and a "smear campaign." The Turkish Prime Minister demanded a retraction from the pope and the deputy leader of the Turkish Justice and Development Party compared the pope's remarks to those of Hitler and Mussolini. Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican, Pakistan's parliament criticized him, Iraq called the pope's remarks misunderstood and Iran said that the pope was part of "a series of Western conspiracy against Islam".
Pope Benedict has come forward and expressed his dismay that his remarks were interpreted in such a negative way insisting that they were taken out of context and were in no way meant to be derogatory. But Muslim leaders have rejected his statements as either lies or insufficient and are still demanding an apology. The pope's speech was against violence and he quoted an ancient source that made mention of historic Muslim violence, and the irony that the very Muslims who are so outraged by the very notion that Muslims act violently are themselves becoming violent over this situation. As of today (September 16th, 2006), Indian Muslims have burned an effigy of the pope, a Muslim cleric of the Islamic Council of Somalia has called for the pope's assassination, a Greek orthodox and an Anglican church were firebombed in Nablus, five churches in the West Bank and Gaza have been bombed by Palestinians, and an Iraqi militia has claimed that it will destroy the cross in the heart of Rome and hit the Vatican.
When will we learn that there is no appeasing Islam? When will we learn that there is nothing we can ever say or do that will divert their hatred? The pope has been careful ever since he was elected not to step on the toes of Muslims, and yet after all of this, one misunderstood speech has outraged the Muslim community. Muslims do not afford Christianity or Judaism the same courtesy as the west affords Islam. They do not speak of western religions as glowingly as we force ourselves to speak of Islam. They do not look for the positive and completely ignore the great good Christianity in particular has done to fight disease and poverty throughout the world, but instead bring up the crusades time and time again as if the crusades were some evil that was solely the work of Christianity and was waged against Muslims unprovoked, apparently forgetting that it was due to Muslim instigation that the crusades ever were waged (for indeed, how could medieval Christians ever launch a crusade to free the holy land from Muslim occupiers if the holy land was not already occupied by Muslim invaders?)
It is from this that we see that Muslims are childish and stuck in a 15th century frame of mind. Even if the pope's comments were evil and full of hatred—and they weren't—Muslims would still have no right to react the way they have. Who are they that they have the right to exist in this world without taking criticism? Are they so childish that they have to wage jihad on the infidel every time they get made fun of? We saw this plainly during the Muslim cartoon controversy. I saw the cartoons as most of us did and they were silly. At the worst they mocked Islam, but Christianity has been mocked far more often and in much more hateful ways for years, such as "artists" dipping a crucifix in a jar of urine and "artists" drawing a painting of the virgin Mary and spearing it with feces, and yet no mosque, nation, church, market, airport or art gallery has ever been bombed by Christians in response. This is why Islam must be reformed if it is to exist in our modern world. Reasonable people just can't respond this way every time they feel like they have been made fun of. We westerners must not tiptoe around these immature and rage-filled Muslims in fear of offending their sensibilities for no man, nation or religion has the right to exist without criticism. Muslims want to hold the world hostage by threatening violence upon those who mock, criticize or ridicule them which is why they have already bombed churches and called for the pope's assassination over such an innocent lecture. We must refuse to allow Islam to hold a gun to our heads and censure us for fear of violent retaliation. Such behavior is immature, undemocratic and flat out wrong, and it must be condemned—with gusto.
9:54 PM
-
8 Comments - 3 Kudos
- Add Comment
|
|
|
|
August 21, 2006 • Monday
|
The Discovery of the Third Gender
Category: Writing and Poetry
The Discovery of the Third Gender
by General Happenstance
Published in the Journal of Anthropology and Antiquity,
April 2023
came upon a startling discovery during the time I spent last winter in the cradle of civilization. I now present this discovery to you all, my fellow scientists and historians, and I hope it meets with your approval. In order to make the startling claims that I do, the reader must be sure that he understands my credentials so that he does not believe that I am a novice or otherwise find an excuse to dismiss my research. But lest I lose your attention, I will come directly to the purpose of this report.
I have just recently concluded many months of study overseas, in what was once known as ancient Mesopotamia. While there, it was my hope to find out more about the races of man that preceded we Homo sapiens sapiens, and if I had not made these discoveries myself and seen the evidence with my own two eyes, I would have a hard time believing them. As Arlington Tourney, our famed priest and anthropologist once said, "If we delve into the earth, the very blood and clay that man has trod upon for so many years, we will find the ancient links that form the chain of our ancestry", and thus I have striven these many years to complete this chain, starting where man began--in the cradle of civilization. All that can be found in this report I experienced first hand, and my own crew and confidants can attest to its authenticity.
One of the most exciting things I discovered was the real name of our ancestorswhat they called themselves--the race of men we now call merely Homo Sapiens (the race immediately preceding our own). In a deep cave smack-dab between the Tigris and the Euphrates, I found scribbled markings on the wall in a language previously unknown to us, written by the hands of our ancestors. (I will get into the translation of this language in a moment.) They called themselves the Adragunden, or literally, The Fallen and Taken. Yes, that is correct; these Adragunden had a form of writing long before cuneiform ever appeared in our world, and not only that, but it was an advanced form of writing, far more advanced than any language up until the time of the Persian War. How did I translate it? Amazingly, I found within the cave a tablet of laws (called the Stone of Justice) written in this ancient language and on this tablet was written the exact same text, over and over; first in the ancient language, then in some other language I did not recognize, but then in cuneiform and a series of other languages ending in, of all things, Greek. Reminiscent of the Rosetta Stone for sure, but I kid you not. How could such knowledge of our ancestry be known by the Greeks and not recorded by any of them for our own modern eyes to read?
Regardless, because of my knowledge of Greek, I was able to translate the stone. This gave me a working knowledge of the Adragunden's language and I set out to translate everything I could find. In order to spare you the details of my painstaking archeology and translation, I will relay here the most startling discoveries I have made.
Man was first three sexes. Male and Female have carried on into this modern age and are our means of reproducing but, according to my research, there was a third sex called, upon a modern rendering of the name, Omale.
After studying the artwork found in the massive cave system between the Tigris and the Euphrates, I have come up with what I believe to be a fairly accurate depiction of what these Omales looked like. They were human in every sense of the word. They ate and slept, were bipeds and could work. They had two eyes, a nose and a mouth and functioned very much like we do. However, from every image I have seen, I have yet to see an Omale depicted with any hair. Other than that, the only main difference between an Omale and either a Female or Male is, of course, its reproductive organs. It had neither of the genitals that are found on modern humans; rather, it had a series of hard knobs between its legs that would blink and flicker when it was aroused.
Omales could not reproduce with Females or Males. They simply married each other--Omales marrying Omales. Each Omale had the same sexual organs, and as I have concluded, an Omale would stand in front of another Omale, blink its little flickering knobs and in this way they would attempt to impregnate each other. It was a mere matter of chance--or perhaps it had to do with genetics--which of the Omales became pregnant.
The child of such a union was thought of much the same way as we think of our own children. The Omale that happened to get impregnated was considered the mother and was responsible for raising the child, while the other Omale was considered the father and was responsible for providing for the family. Often, however, Omales would have more than one child, and since it was mere chance which partner became pregnant, most married Omale couples were considered both father and mother by their children. It was a complex system, as we would think of it today, yet worked out incredibly simply in their world. In the end, Omales were both mother and father, the primary caretakers and the primary nurturers. If I may be so bold as to state my own personal opinion, I would say that this system of parentage would be preferable to our own; but perhaps I am overlooking something. Perhaps we have two sexes so that the work of parentage can be divided between parents rather than both parents having to do both jobs. Is it far-fetched to conclude that male and female are supposed to be different, each gender with its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and that in a marriage they each depend upon the other in order to wholly function? Otherwise, why would it not be preferable to merely be born an Omale?
Alas, the Omales died off, as we all know since none now exist. As my research indicates, this started about 1,500 years after the appearance of the first written Omale records that I have found. The cause of their decline was due, according to their legends, to a man falling from the sky. He crashed to the earth and left a crater in his wake. When the humans of earth came upon the crater they saw within what appeared to be a winged man, although the feathers had all been stripped from his wings. Pictures on cave walls and even crude paintings on a form of strange canvas depict him as a frail man with dark hair, a crooked back and a long, bony nose. Fear of the man went through the hearts of the humans the moment he turned his glance upon them, and they set him up as a god. They created a temple deep within the earth where he could reside and rule over them, but despite my best efforts I have not been able to uncover this temple.
Evidentially this being was immortal and ruled over humanity for many centuries with a cruel hand. Eventually, the Males and Females united in a rebellion against this sky-faller and cut themselves off from his rule. The Omales, however, remained loyal to the newcomer out of fear and became his priests. The newcomer instructed them in new ways to live, ways which appear to be the first written records of human vice and immorality. He also showed them how to make mirrors, and this became a nuisance to the Omales.
I have mentioned previously the Omales' particular way of reproducing. The Omales, upon receiving the mirrors from the sky-faller, looked into them and became aroused at their reflection. This caused the knobs between their legs to blink, and they would immediately impregnate themselves. The result of self-impregnation was a decline in the nuclear family within the Omale communities. Omales no longer needed each other to reproduce and raise families, and so Omales would impregnate themselves and make little self-clones. The drawback, however, was that the intelligence, physical strength and vitality of these clone-children diminished with each new generation of clone-children. An Omale would impregnate itself, its child would impregnate itself, and its child would impregnate itself with each resulting child becoming a little less capable to perceive, understand and, in the end, live.
When the Omales perceived what the sky-faller had caused them to do to themselves, they also rebelled, but far too late. The Omales sought out the Males and Females and asked for their protection, and the humans were once again--and for the last time--united.
Self-impregnation was outlawed. However, the poison in the words of the sky-faller dissuaded many of the Omales from living harmoniously with the rest of humanity. Some Omales were loath to leave and rejoin the other humans, and when they did were very ill-content. When self-impregnation was outlawed for practicality's sake, many Omales became self-righteous and indignant, saying they had a right to do whatever they wanted with their own bodies and no one could tell them otherwise. This group of Omales, however, succumbed to natural selection and eventually died out as their children became, more and more, less human. These Omales left the human communities after losing their ability to speak and perceive human thought, and it is presumed that they simply died off. Some of my colleagues have theorized that these Omales devolved into what we now know as the primates (after evolving male and female sexes, of course). I do not know if I agree with this assessment.
Peace did not return to the human communities once the fear of self-impregnation had disappeared, however. The venomous words of the sky-faller had seeped well into the Omale conscious, and rebellion stirred within their hearts. Many of the Omales developed unhealthy sexual desires for the Males and Females, whom they had no capacity to mate with. There was a cult to the sky-faller that regularly had a habit of kidnapping Males and Females and molesting them. This enraged the Males and Females, naturally, and they demanded that the Omales leave and return to the sky-faller. The Omales as a whole, however, even those who did not practice cross-gender-manipulation, had become a prideful and indignant sex, and refused to be told what to do by the Males and Females.
And so this leads us to what I have discerned to be the first war. The men and women clashed with the Omales and a war was fought that raged for many decades. In the end the Omales' own pride was their downfall, for they failed to consider the Males and Females a serious threat and did not place guards around their communities. Most were slain in their sleep.
The Omales that survived were rounded up. The ones that had taken Males and Females against their will to satisfy their own sexual desires were executed on the spot. The remaining were sent as exiles into the wilderness. This small band of Omales made their way to the cave that I found, deposited their historical texts and relics and wrote down their story, hiding away their scrolls, artwork and belongings in the depths of the tunnels. I do not know if this is the same tunnel that led to the sky-fallers temple, though I searched for it and did not find it.
Amazingly, the remaining Omales decided upon self-extermination. They made a pact and refused to mate with each other until one by one they died out. The last of these Omales, however, broke his pact and, upon finding a mirror, mated with himself. I found within the caves a series of thirteen graves with the remains of these Omales inside. The skeletons of these Omales look progressively degenerate until the final one looks very much like a primate. My colleagues point to this as evidence of their previous claim, but I find it very hard to believe. After all, such a find would shed doubt upon our theory that man evolved from the orangutan, and of course as scientists we must never fit our theory to the evidence, but the evidence must fit our theory.
This is the end of my report. I attest to the truthfulness of everything I have written here, and am now compiling an organized library of the various Omale texts I found within the caves so that the scientific community can study them and see how I came to my conclusions. Upon reflection, I think I may understand why the ancient Greeks, if they truly did know about the Omales during their day, preferred to let knowledge of them slip away from human memory. After all, the Greeks were not models of morality in their day any more than we are in ours, and to find the history of the decline and fall of another gender of man based primarily on its sexual exploits must have been very unnerving, as no doubt this account will be to many.
2:11 PM
-
3 Comments - 5 Kudos
- Add Comment
|
|
|
|
June 23, 2006 • Friday
|
Love: Another Aspect of Roman Marriage
Category: Religion and Philosophy
hen I think about the ancient Roman husband, the word love is not the first one to come to mind. The concept of a harsh, tyrannical paterfamilias is deeply ingrained in our concept of a Roman family man. One can easily recall the horrific tales of husbands beating their wives to death for drinking or committing adultery, while husbands were free to have concubines. Taken alone, these stories give a one-dimensional image of the paterfamilias which helps form a stereotype of Roman husbands that still clings with us today. In an environment where the paterfamilias is depicted as a heavy-handed tyrant, it is hard to imagine that the common Roman husband, regardless of class or social stature, could possibly show kindness or fondness towards his wife, let alone harbor genuine, romantic love (or have it returned for that matter). Moreover, the majority of upper class Roman marriages were arranged by parents and it is hard for our culture to imagine love blooming from forced matrimony. It also does not help that many historical accounts concerning marriage are in the form of legal agreements that deal with divorce and the technicalities of dowry ownership, property, power and money. Nevertheless, I believe that there is ample evidence to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Romans had an idyllic expectation of marriage where both parties not only were committed to each other but desired to be with each other and were genuinely in love. Whether or not this was an actual widespread reality is open to debate, but just because the Romans lived in another time, spoke a different language, worshipped different gods and had different customs is no reason to conclude that spouses did not love each other.
Some argue that feelings and expressions of love between Roman spouses were not the norm and that marriage had other, more important purposes than simply romance and affection. Even when we do find examples of a Roman longing for his wife or using flowery adjectives to describe his love for her, argue some, such sentiments take a back seat to more important aspects of the marriage, such as money and political alliances, and indeed, some of the more important players in the marriage who received just as much attention, if not more, were brothers and the father of the wife, not the wife herself. Keith Bradley uses the case of Cicero and his exile to argue that yes, one could use instances like Ciceros longing for his wife Terentia as evidence of a characteristic Roman preoccupation with the nuclear family, but goes on to say that Ciceros sense of familial obligations was not narrowly circumscribed but spanned a wide range of familial connections and involved the whole household, stressing children and fortune. Bradley also notes that the personal letters of the Roman elites, like Cicero, often simply exclude any mention of wives. Because of this, Bradley concludes that the Romans emphasized the arranged nature of most marriages, especially those controlled by the world of politics, and the relative unimportance of sentiment in compacting marital unions. He notes the imminence of the belief that marriage and procreation were culturally induced social obligations, not the result of individual choices.
Brothers and fathers were indeed very important to a Roman husband, but I wouldnt go so far as to say that they were always more important than his wife. Sometimes they were, but I do not think that we can shrug off the numerous records we have of husbands praising their wives, bewailing their loneliness and longing for their wives and expressing romantic, emotional sentiment towards their wives. The cases of Cicero and other Roman elites are problematic in that they give us a glimpse into the ideals held by the Roman elites and not Roman slaves, merchants, soldiers and the lower to middle classes. While certainly important and revealing, I think they are inadequate to paint a picture of how Romans felt about marriage, and that we must first turn elsewhere to see what other Romans say.
Funeral epitaphs show us how a good wife was supposed to act. Husbands or sons go on and on about the same good virtues; beauty, excellence at wool-working, devotion, chastity, modesty, thriftiness, happiness at home, being a mother to many sons, being pleasant to talk to, and so on. The formulaic format of many of these epitaphs and the recurrence of the same good virtues shed doubt onto the truthfulness of their claims and causes me to wonder whether these are examples of how the commemorated actually lived or if they are examples of how the father or son wanted her to live. Indeed, Hanne Sigismund Nielson says that this does not imply that the epitaphs inform us what real life had been for the dedicators and the commemorated persons mentioned in the epitaphs. Nielson gives us a breakdown of the eight most common words used in epitaphs from CIL6, recording every fifth readable epitaph. Of these eight, eighty-four percent of the time bene merens (deserving good), dulcissima (very sweet), carissima (very dear), pientissima or pissima (very discrete) are used to describe the commemorated. This does not mean that the writers of these epitaphs did not mean what they said. As Nielson puts it, they [the epitaphs] express societys expectations, but therefore also the individuals expectations. Just as modern grave stones or plaques are generally small and epitaphs are short, so then might a Roman husband write the obligatory commemoration in what little space was allowed. This is no evidence that the sentiments were not heart-felt.
However, we do find some Roman epitaphs that break from the stilted norm. For example, Paternus, who erected an epitaph to his deceased wife Urbana, calls her sweet and exceptional, adding, I am sure that nothing has been more wonderful than her. He goes on to say that they lived together with married affection in addition to hard work. He concludes: I have added these words so that those who read them may understand how deeply we loved one another. From the tomb of the Statilli we find these words written by a husband for his deceased wife: When I was alive I pleased my husband as his first and dearest wife and I left my soul in his cold mouth. Weeping, he closed my eyes. A butcher described his wife on her tombstone calling her his one and onlya lovely woman who possessed my heart[living] with affection equal to my own These unique phrases reveal husbands who were not simply pleased that their wives worked hard, bore them children and did not quarrel with them. Rather, these men loved their wives most dearly and wanted everyone to know exactly how much.
The Roman jurist Modestinus tells us that Marriage is the association of a man and a woman, and the sharing of every aspect of life; a point where human and divine laws meet. His comment on the divine aspect of marriage suggest that marriage was not simply a legal means of distributing, maintaining and acquiring property; neither did it exist to force women into sexual servitude. I believe this demonstrates that the Romans realized that marriage was not a human invention, but something greater. Indeed, Pomponius tells us that the right of marriage has a moral, not a legal, basis. I believe the Romans perceived this moral basis to be a marriage of mutual affection and love, based on consent from both the husband and the wife, which served legal, political and financial purposes which were (ideally) incidental to the marriage relationship. As Susan Treggiari puts it, [i]mportant as the approval and knowledge of family and friends were in practice, in theory a marriage depended on the will of the husband and wife alone (unless either was in patria potestas).
Despite the ideal of mutual love and affection, we learn that divorce was common and a significant amount of ink was spilled in order to designate who got what in the event of a divorce. Bradley argues that due to the frequency of divorce, death of the wife through childbirth or disease, death of the husband through war and disease and natural death of one partner due to the sometimes extreme age difference between husbands and wives, married couples had no expectation of a life-long partnership. He says that upper-class families at Rome were not composed predominantly of married couples who as individuals expected only one-spousal partner in their lives and continues by saying that, on the contrary, many, perhaps most, men and women would anticipate at least two marriages in the course of their adulthood, the birth of children in each marriage and step-parental association with other children Indeed, we find remorse on the part of Romans that divorce was a sad reality. Not many marriages last so long to be ended by death rather than broken up by divorce, wrote a husband in the eulogy of his wife, Turia. We were privileged that ours lasted for forty-one years, without argument. I only wish that the final end of the marriage had come about through my own death instead The prevalence of divorce and the reorganization of family ties is a certain reality, but I do not think this necessitates that Roman couples predominantly expected their marriages to end with anything other than death by old age, due to their remorse over violent and untimely deaths, and the feeling of loss even from a spouse who was much older and died of natural causes.
Children were an important part of marriage, for men wanted sons in order that they themselves might become immortal in some way. One could therefore argue that one of the greatest purposes of a wife was to bear children. This is indeed true, but I do not think that ceding this point excludes love being a naturally expected aspect of marriage. Some husbands viewed their desire for children secondary to their desire for their wife. I will again refer to the Eulogy of Turia, where her husband recounts this very issue for us. We wanted children. Doubting your own fertility [and] distressed at my being without children, you spoke of [divorce], so that I should not, by remaining [married] to you, forfeit hope of children. I must admit that I was so furious that I was beside myself, so [horrified] at your proposal that I could scarcely recover my composure. To think that divorce between us could be discussedor that [you] could contemplate anything that [made you cease] to be my wife, you who steadfastly remained loyal when I was almost an exile from life. He continues: What desire, what need to have children could I have had that was so great that I should have broken faith for that reason and changed certainty for uncertainty? But no more about this! You remained with me as my wife, for I could not have given in to you without disgrace for me and unhappiness for both of us. But on your part, what could have been more worthy of commemoration and praise than your efforts in devotion to my interests: when I could not have children from yourself, you wanted me to have them through your good offices, and since you despaired of bearing children, to provide me with offspring by marriage to another woman.
This man does not have money and immortality foremost on his mind. A man that did would surely have discarded his barren wife, eager to father children and eager to fool around with a new woman. Instead we find a man who loved his wife so much that he could not bear to be without her. It is not the loss of her money, her family, her status or her sex appeal that upsets him. Rather, she was his friend and loyal companion, a partner whose disappearance has broken him because he loved her as a person. I think this is clearly demonstrated in the length and detail of his eulogy. He goes on and on about her, saying [w]ould that the life-span of each of us had allowed our marriage to continue until I, as the older partner, had been borne to the gravethat would have been more justand you had performed for me the last rites, and that I had died leaving you still alive and that I had you as a daughter for myself in place of my childlessness. along with you I have lost the tranquility of my existence. Natural sorrow wrests away my power of self-control and I am overwhelmed by sorrow. I am tormented by two emotions: grief and fearand I do not stand firm against either. When I go back in thought to my previous misfortunes and when I envisage what the future may have in store for me, fixing my eyes on your glory does not give me strength to bear my sorrow with patience. Rather, I seem destined to long mourning. I do not get the impression that he writes all of this because he feels obliged to or because he thinks it is what his peers would like to hear, but because he is devastated and needs to express his loss.
Sadly, epitaphs and anecdotes are really all we have from Romans too poor to write books. The rich and powerful had enough free time to write and we have a plethora of material left from them. There are two major similarities between the well-to-do Romans and the not-so-well-to-do Romans; they are both Roman and they are both human. As humans they expressed their love and sorrow similarly, and I do not believe that we should disregard the words of the elite when considering Roman marriage as a whole.
Pliny the Younger spoke endearingly of his third wife. She also loves me, a sign of her virtue, he wrote. Because of her love for me, she has even gone so far as to take an interest in literature; she possesses copies of my writings, reads them repeatedly and even memorizes them. She has even set some of my poems to music, and chants them to the accompaniment of a lyre, untaught by any music-teacher, but rather by the best of teachers, love. His wife did not have to do all of this. She did so because she apparently admired him and was proud of his accomplishments. She worried about him when he went to the Senate and eagerly desired his success and well-being.
When Antistius Rusticus died in Cappadocia, his wife Nigrina was inconsolable. Nigrina brought back her husbands bones in her arms and complained that the trip was too short; and as she gave the sacred urn to the tomb, which she was jealous of, she saw herself twice bereft of her stolen spouse.
Some spouses went to great lengths in order to remain together. When Acilius fled Rome after Julius Caesars assassination, he told his wife to remain because he did not want her to be harmed. He fled to Sicily, but she disobeyed him because she did not want to be parted from him and traveled to Sicily to find him. Upon finding him living not as a praetor should, but on a pallet and with disheveled hair and wretched food because he was longing for his wife, she threatened to inform on him if he escaped without her forcing him to take her along.
I never complained more about my duties than when they kept me from accompanying you wrote Pliny to his wife Calpurnia after she left him to go to Campania in order to improve her health. Indeed, I would still worry about you when you were away even if you were not ill; there is an anxious suspense in not knowing about someone you love dearly. Please, then, ease my anxiety and write to me once a day, or even twice. Ill feel more securebut then will start worrying again as soon as Ive finished the letters.
Our evidence, however, represents only one point of view. Men erected monuments and wrote epitaphs for their wives, men wrote the eulogies and men described the emotions of their wives. This leaves us knowing only what men expected from their wives, what they thought marriage was, and their own view of how their wives felt towards them. Sadly, there is not much we can do about this, since we have so little that was actually penned by a Roman woman. Sulpicia is the only Roman woman whose poetry we have in more than fragmented form. The addressee of much of her poetry is a man named Cerinthus, and her poetry primarily concerns her relationship with him. Light of my life, may I no longer be your loves fireif I ever again do such a stupid girlish thing that would make me sorrier than leaving you alone last night, in my desire to keep from you my desire. Here we see a woman expressing her love verbally and lamenting that she did not express that love physically the previous night. What we can deduce from this is that love between Roman couples was not always one-sided, that husbands were not so deluded as to be convinced that their wives loved them when they did not, and that sex was not always forced upon a wife but that it was consensual; indeed, as in Sulpicias case, the wife had power over her lover and could deny him sex if she so chose. Now, we cannot take this one example and assume that this was the way it was with every marriage relationship, but the existence of this womans own writing clarifies for us how at least one woman felt about her relationship with a man, and we have no reason to suspect that her feelings were peculiar or abnormal.
Though marriage served many purposes, such as producing children and legitimate heirs and tying families together for political gain, we must not neglect the existence and prevalence of love between spouses that appears to be just as important to many husbands and wives if not more so. From Roman epitaphs and letters by husbands to wives, to expressions of longing from men and women alike, we clearly find evidence that love was an important aspect of Roman marriage.
Bibliography
1) Bradley, Keith R. Discovering the Roman Family. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991.
2) Gardner, Jane F. and Wiedemann, Thomas. The Roman Household A Sourcebook. New York, | | |
