The Presiding Bishop Slate, 2015

So, we have a slate of four nominees for the next presiding bishop, all men, all from eastern dioceses, one black. There is some predictable creeching about this, particularly in the lack of a female candidate. It appears that there is only one woman who could have been nominated, and that she declined to be considered. I note that of late women have tended to be elected as suffragans rather coadjutors or diocesans, and you can argue back and forth as to the degree this represents some sort of lingering sexism.

At any rate, it's a decent slate, in spite of grexxing from someone at the E-Cafe about one candidate's "lack of prophetic voice on marriage equality in the church." OK, any place where people are hearing "prophetic voices" is a place to flee from, lest a real prophet make an appearance. I'm somewhat more concerned about tales that another candidate has been hard on traditionalist parishes in his diocese.

So, what do we need? Well, Scott Gunn has his list of qualities, and I have mine, which is shorter but largely consonant with his, to whit:

• Orthodox. No finger-crossing on the creed, no hedging on the resurrection. A bishop must represent the church's teaching, and all the more so for the church's chief clerical spokesman.
• Articulate. We need someone who can face the press and not sound confused or obscure.
• Inspiring. I am not necessarily convinced that we need a visionary leader; vision is too often connected with wild deviancy. But we need someone who leads others to say, "I want to be part of their church."
• Conciliatory. The battle against the marriage traditionalists has been destructive and has been literally costly, to no good end that I see. The combat must end.
• Prayerful. Above all else, we need a presiding bishop who is engaged in their religion.

OK, so it sounds like a letter for hiring the Rt. Rev. Mary Poppins. But I think there is the potential for this in our slate.

Maleficent Redemption

Over at Stand Firm, Timothy Fountain has an excellent analysis of how the recent Disney film deals with themes of love and redemption in ways that step way outside the classic romantic paradigm. His conclusion:

These three big themes - fallen people in a fallen world, repenting of the evil that looks for excuses to take us over, and expressing highest love in sacrificial care for others - are messages of the Word of God. I found Maleficent thought provoking, surprisingly fresh, and, God willing, an opportunity to articulate the Christian message where it might not otherwise be heard.

I can only add that some of the same ideas show up, albeit less well-executed, in Frozen. True love, in these stories, is agape, not eros, not even philia. It will be interesting to see if this striking turn continues as the new Disney message, and whether it also appears in the output of the Pixar side of the house.

Scroogely

We in the Wingate household finished off Christmas evening, as the goose roasted, watching the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol. Of course, everyone should sit down and read the Dickens original at least once. It is quite short, and displays Dickens's distinctive prose and his knack for quickly sketching characters to best advantage. But it is a story which cried out for stage and movie treatment, and received it early. IMDB records upward of twenty film versions; Wikipedia claims twice that many.

Naturally there is dissent over the the "best" version. The more eccentric versions I have never seen, or seen but once. And really, the thing should be seen purely before one sees the take-offs, so I'm not going to address Mr. Magoo or the muppets, or any of the several musical versions. And especially I will not speak of Jim Carrey.

This leaves us with four principal versions which tell the story straight and (mostly) entire, and of them, I must confess to never having seen the Reginald Owen version from the late 1930s, so I cannot offer an opinion on it. The next version is the purist's favorite, the Alistair Sim version of 1951. It has much to commend it, starting with Sims's bitter and defining performance. But it has one drawback which for me puts it out of the running, and it is a technical issue: it looks absolutely dreadful. Every copy of it I've ever seen has looked to have been printed on old cigarette wrappers found in the ditches and gutters of postwar London. It is terribly murky and the night scenes (which are many) are often all but indecipherable. And I must also say that acting has come a long way: Sims may be truest to Dickens's rather flat characterizations, but the relentlessly nasty Scrooge of this version comes across these days as something of a caricature.

Skipping to the last of the four, there is the 1999 Patrick Stewart version, expanded from his one-man show stage version. Now, this has a lot going for it in places. Joel Grey is cast to perfection as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Ian McNeice's Fezziwig is delightful, and the brilliantly telescoped scene wherein Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a whirlwind tour of celebrators is not marred by the knowledge that the singing of "Silent Night" in English is an anachronism (Young's translation was fifteen years in the future). But there are some terrible flaws, and unfortunately one of of them is Stewart himself. He is not even slightly convincing as a Victorian; the least he could have done was put on a period wig for a hirsute age. Worse, though, is the dreadful Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who looks like a Star Wars Jawa with severe Marfan's Syndrome. This is the emotional crux of the story, and it is, for me, fatally marred by bad effects and lighting. So much of the rest is good that it is a shame when this scene comes along and spoils it.

Which brings me to the 1984 Scott version. This may not be the best version at every single point, but it is never bad. And when it is good, it is wonderful. Scott makes no attempt at a fake British accent and is utterly convincing nonetheless; he looks and feels the part from end to end. He is Scrooge as the consummate and ruthless businessman, worshipping the "golden idol" so thoroughly that he isn't in the slightest aware of his adoration. And yet one sees from early on that there is a human soul locked away inside. What really makes this version shine, however, is the superb supporting cast, not neglecting Shrewsbury, which puts on a very convincing simulacrum of 19th century London. David Warner, cast wildly against his later type of overbearing villainy, is a delightful Bob Cratchit. George Woodward's Christmas Present is by turns jovial and bitterly pointed. Roger Rees as the nephew Fred is perfectly cast in the sort of role he was born to play. One sees considerable care in costuming and makeup, so that one can date each scene from the changes in hats and hair (with some slight anachronisms in a brace of musical instruments). The effects, are, I must admit, a bit dated, but effective. And finally, of course, there is Christmas Yet to Come, a huge, howling, menacing man/puppet, never fully seen and moving like no human. It is easy to see why Scott's Scrooge is terrified of it.

Dickens's Carol is rather the yang to Charlie Brown's yin when it comes to talking about Christmas outside the nativity narrative itself. Linus puts the narrative in front of all else; Dickens's tale fails to mention Jesus by name at all, nor is anyone seen in church in all the celebrations. The only real reference to the gospel narrative is an odd remark of Tiny Tim's, about Jesus' healing miracles. In this modernist age one must take care to recall that Christmas isn't just about the Spirit of Giving, but is first and foremost (as Linus says) a recollection, an anamnesis of the incarnation as real, earthly, historical fact. But A Christmas Carol's realization of the parable of the sheep and goats has its place in the season too; and if you care to see it told, it seems to me that you would do well to seek out Scott's embodiment of the storied miser.

Seeing the Grail

Back last year when I was seeing the new Met Ring cycle, it was announced that they would be doing Parsifal this spring with Jonas Kaufmann in the title role. Given his electric performance as Siegmund, it was the decision of a millisecond to decide to keep it on the calendar.As it turned out, Kaufmann was, if anything, perhaps the low end of a dream cast: Peter Mattei as Amfortas and René Pape as Gurnemanz were beyond outstanding, and the orchestra played its heart out.

Not that there weren't weaknesses. Parsifal, like the Ring operas, invites productions which step outside the original setting, and it is increasingly hard to get anyone to take seriously a production which respects Wagner's High-Victorian/Prince-Valiant middle ages directions. And indeed it is easy to see how the story can be abstracted.

But it defies deconstruction. You can find quite a few clips on YouTube, including a few from the 1980s-'90s in the days before irony and cynicism totally corrupted the art world, which range from the arch-traditional to symbolist productions like the current Met version, which largely respect the text, and there a few that try to go way beyond anything Wagner wrote and treat the opera as a vehicle for anything but the mystery play which it is. Last year's Bayreuth production, for example, set the story in political context something like Weimar Germany. To make this work, they had to do such violence to the story that the action on stage is as often as not completely at odds with the text.

That text, if you pay any attention to it at all, is relentlessly Christian. Jesus's name is never mentioned, but his passion and sacrifice are mentioned nearly every time Gurnemanz opens his mouth. François Girard's staging has some decided quirks (such as the pool of blood which the entire second act is sung in) but by and large his blocking of the action works extremely well and to the service of the story, especially the two great religious rites which end the first and third acts. But for whatever reason he feels it necessary to comment on the Buddhism in the work. This is complete and utter bullocks. The only traces of Buddhism in Wagner's stage action and text come out of the fact that sometimes Jesus and the Buddha drove in neighboring lanes on the theological highway, as it were. The first scene in Act III in particular is Christian from beginning to end, remembering that the end is Kundry's baptism, for crying out loud.

Wagner's story of redemption is in fact one of the most thoroughly Christian works in the repertoire, and it is striking how the various productions attempt to subvert that message. For example, the aforementioned Bayreuth travesty replaced the grail itself, in the final scene, with a boy of about ten, who was presented to the audience by Gurnemanz and Kendry as Parsifal disappeared below stage. Kendry herself I give even odds of surviving these days, and one looks in vain for dove at the end, descending or even shot from a cannon. Somehow Girand, for all his fashionable babble about other religions, managed in the end (or despite himself) to present the salvific message intact; indeed, during the first grail rite the fourth wall broke the other direction for me, as Pape and Mattei spoke the truths which are Most True, and the grail was revealed in full reverence, perhaps more so than anyone intended.

You have another chance to see this production, if you are hardy enough and live close enough to one of those theaters showing it, for it will be rebroadcast on Wednesday, March 20th. In the meantime, I leave you with this classic clip of the final scene, featuring Siegfried Jerusalem, Bernd Weikl, and Waltraud Meier.

Watch the Midwife

On Tobias Hallers's recommendation I caught the Christmas special of Call the Midwife, and I'm quite glad I did. The series, set in the 1950s in the London east end, follows a house of Anglican nuns who calling is in nursing, along with the secular nurses (who are the central focus of the stories) who work with them. The nuns are of course a little too perfected of their various types, but every episode seems destined to show now visions of grace and mercy, and the girls (for they are quite young women) are absolutely winning as they go out into this very rough world. I commend it to all who may read this.

The Queen of Great Britain's Christmas Message