What "Beasts of the Southern Wild" Really Says...or Asks

Since the release of Benh Zeitlin's heady survival film Beasts of the Southern Wild, countless commentators have been trying to untangle the underlying "message" of the film. Is it a glorification or condemnation of poverty? Is it about environmentalism? Is it taking a political stance on local communities in conflict with government authority?

After having a few days to digest the film and reading an illuminating interview with the director, I came to the conclusion that Beasts is an important film - but not for the socio-economic, environmental, or political debates it touches on.

The Harlem River Dispatch: A Cinematic Tour of the Problem of Guilt

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

- Lord Byron

The heart of man bears many burdens. But one of the most common as well as the most painful is a heavy and seemingly inescapable sense of guilt. It is a condition which no man desires to contend with and yet, through the moral attributes inherent in our very being, most of us throughout our lives will face, and sometimes to a devastating degree.

Previously on this site, we featured cinematic tours on The Problem of Evil and The Problem of Free Will, two philosophical questions which often are addressed and explored in dialogue and dramatic action.

Guilt however - though it can be discussed philosophically - is so deeply entrenched in the experience of being human, and has such a profound effect on the psyche and souls of those fraught with it, that it makes for a fascinating thing to observe in an actor's performance.

Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Luce" - A Cautionary Tale

Hatred is sterile; it breeds nothing but the image of its own empty fury, its own nothingness. Love cannot come of emptiness. It is full of reality. Hatred destroys the real being of man in fighting the fiction which it calls "the enemy."

- Thomas Merton

After releasing mysterious teasers to the media and to his fans, the enigmatic Tom Waits finally revealed what he had up his sleeve: not tour dates (as many expected), but a new music video for the song "Hell Broke Luce" from his latest album Bad As Me. 

The disturbing video immediately signals that war is the subject of the song, waters not unfamiliar to Waits. He's spent time wondering about the horrors and heartbreaks of war in songs like "Day After Tomorrow," "Hoist That Rag," and "Road to Peace."

What immediately sets it apart from these other songs, though, is the overpowering sense of chaos raging in the song, amped up by Flea on the bass and Keith Richards on guitar. It's full of clamor, clapping, and alarms, but sounds somehow hollow and meaningless; "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

So I found myself daring to ask that perennial and perplexing question: what is Tom Waits up to?

Hope Springsteens Eternal: The Boss' Message

Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

- GK Chesterton

Since the release of Bruce Springsteen's latest album Wrecking Ball, a few journalists have tried to capture the essence of that blue-collar rocker known to thousands as simply "The Boss." In the New York Times, David Brooks writes that the universal appeal of Springsteen's music is about "the power of the particular," or the small-town, "highly localized" settings of his songs. At NPR, Ann Powers sees Springsteen's "central obsession" to be "the American dream." Indeed, some would reduce Springsteen's music - especially his latest album - to screeds about the government and the economy.

I won't for a minute doubt that these things play a prevalent role in Springsteen's oeuvre. But let's not forget that some critics in the 1990's said that the man was concerned with little else than "cars and girls." Any true-blue Springsteen fan knows that's not the case. As he himself rightly countered: "I don't write songs about cars. My songs are about people in those cars."

Likewise, I think this kind of emphasis on a social or political theme - whether it be small towns or large economies - is mistaking the trees for the forest in the case of The Boss. The landscape of his music is definitely filled with hard times in blue-collar neighborhoods, just as it's lined with cars and girls - but what it's really about is the characters navigating this landscape, and their cultivation of hope in the midst of struggle.