Radical Womanhood

A Walk to Beautiful

What a wonderful convergence. I've been reading a book that was lent to me titled, The Hospital by the River, by Dr. Catherine Hamlin, while I've been in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Tonight, May 13, PBS is airing an award-winning documentary on NOVA called, A Walk to Beautiful, which is about the work done by the doctor in this book. I've set my DVR and look forward to watching it when I get back. The story is set in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, which is why I'm eager to see it. Here are some details about the film from a press release:

The film tells the personal stories of rural women who make their way to Addis Ababa, seeking treatment for obstetric fistula, a life-shattering complication of childbirth that was once common in the pre-industrial United States but that is now relegated to the poorest regions of the world. In Ethiopia alone, there are an estimated 100,000 women suffering from untreated fistulas. Shot in a starkly beautiful landscape, the film juxtaposes the isolated lives of village women who are outcasts because of their medical condition, with the faraway hospital that offers a miracle after a long and arduous trek--a "walk to beautiful."

Women with small pelvises, whether due to malnutrition, overwork, or because they married too young, are most at risk, since there is often not room for the baby to emerge during birth. The result can be an obstructed labor that may last up to 10 days, a stillborn baby, and a trauma-induced hole, or fistula, in the vaginal wall that produces chronic incontinence. The women profiled in A Walk to Beautiful are treated as virtual lepers in their villages, where they are shunned by family and made to live alone. One woman admits to contemplating suicide.

Through chance they learn that there are other women who share their affliction, and that the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital exists to help them, if they can manage to walk for hours to the nearest road, find public transport to the capital, and then search out the hospital in a strange and forbidding city. Once there, they enter a haven that they never imagined, surrounded by women like themselves and a medical staff of Western and African doctors who treat them like human beings, not outcasts.

Dr. Hamlin is a Christian from Australia who came here with her husband. He died in 1993, but she remains in Addis to serve these women.

"My husband and I came to Ethiopia in 1959," she says. "The previous gynecologist that we replaced said to my husband, 'The fistula patients will break your hearts.'"

I hope I will be able to visit this hospital during my trip. But if not, I am eager to finish the book and watch the documentary when I get home. I pray that it is a good witness and an encouragement to those who watch it. You can read more about this documentary and see images from the area on the NOVA website.

Run--Do Not Walk--to See 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'

I've been waiting quite awhile for the release of Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It opened nationwide today and I was at the first matinee performance in my area. (It's good when you can combine book research with a reason to watch a movie!) I was eager to see this film both for its subject matter--the academic opposition to the theory of intelligent design--and because I wanted to support its theatrical release. Expelled will have the largest U.S. opening of any documentary film ever, according to WorldNetDaily:  

Scheduled for release in 1,000 theatres, "Expelled" will be hotter than "Farenheit 9/11," which debuted on 868 screens, and much more convenient to see than "An Inconvenient Truth," which I was surprised to find opened on only four screens nationwide despite all the hype, peaking at 587 before its appeal melted.

If you're not familiar with this documentary, it is fundamentally about a loss of freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech in scientific, academic and legal circles. It focuses on how those who have even minimally questioned neo-Darwinism in favor of intelligent design have lost jobs, grants, and credibility. But it broadens this focus to look at what it costs our society to have unquestioned support for evolution and staunch opposition to intelligent design. As Ben Stein pointed out in an interview with Bill O'Reilly, Darwinism was "a brilliant theory in the middle of the 19th century. It's the 21st-century, there are a lot of questions being raised about it. Nobody had any idea the cell was so complex. We would just like to ask some questions." (This is in reference to the evolutionist idea that all life arose from a single cell--and how biologists now see how complicated a single cell is, but aren't allowed to question this very basis of evolutionary theory.)

I was glad to see that Expelled showed how neo-Darwinism gave rise to eugenics (which both Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler embraced). I was also surprised that intelligent design opponents such as Richard Dawkins were willing to grant interviews. Now, working in video, I know how easy it is to edit someone in such a way as to distort their original point in the interview. But I was honestly floored to hear celebrity atheist and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins say he thinks we were "seeded" from alien life forms who designed us. This is my summary from memory so I may be a bit off, but you'd have to do a lot of creative editing to manipulate this idea if he didn't actually say something so outrageous. And this is less of a fantasy than the existence of God?!

As documentaries go, this one was produced well. It made complicated ideas easily understood, added large doses of humor with intercut movie references, and yet still kept track of the bigger picture without getting lost among all the details. My only quibbles were the bobbing scenes when the cameramen would walk with the subjects (bouncing footage on the large screen is nauseating) and the parsimonious use of titles. With so many interview subjects, it was hard to keep track of the players. I would have preferred to see the subjects identified several times. (For those of you who have seen the documentary, The Privileged Planet, you will recognize some of the scientists from that film in Expelled.)

I have several video clips to recommend to you. Each is worth watching, in my opinion. Here are several trailers for the movie (embedded in the player below) but I think the "super trailer" is the best representation of the content and approach of the film:

Here is a round-up of interviews from the film in a clip called "Darwinists and Religion." You don't see Dawkin's famous alien statement here, but some of his other provocative thoughts are featured:

Finally, here is an extended interview that R.C. Sproul did with Ben Stein earlier this year.

I suggest that you watch these videos and then see Expelled in your local theater, if at all possible. I'm normally not a fan of watching theatrical releases because I prefer watching films at home, on my own schedule, in superior comfort, and for much less money. But sometimes a vote with the wallet at the box office can be quite meaningful. In the case of Expelled, it is not only a vote for a diversity of film topics, it is also a vote for the preservation of free speech and scientific inquiry.

Maxed Out

(Technical glitch--this should have appeared on Monday, but it didn't for some reason. So here it is a day late...)

It's been awhile since we've touched on the Practical Issues for Godly Women series, but there was one more area I wanted to explore before we closed out the series--and that is financial savvy. If we take the Proverbs 31 woman only as our reference, we would find that she is not only a shrewd consumer, she is also a solid investor. That's the part of the puzzle I think is often missing for younger women. It's often taken for granted that women can shop, but what about how we save?

There are many reasons why women as a group don't earn as much as men. One (very good!) reason is that we often have different timetables and priorities for our lives. We juggle career options to accommodate bearing and rearing children, caring for elderly parents, helping a husband study for a new career or launch a business, or even going abroad and serving as a missionary or on a church-planting team. For another reason, we often choose careers that aren't as technically demanding or physically grueling (I'm speaking in the aggregate here) and thus aren't as well paid. But still we tend to spend more than men in terms of health care, personal grooming, clothing, and so on. And we tend to live longer, needing retirement income for many more years than men do on average.

That's why we need to mentor young women in their finances and help them to establish patterns of saving as soon as they have money passing through their hands. Time can be on their side if they start saving early.

What undermines saving is the siren call of the credit card--it lures us all. That's why I recommend parents or mentors sit down with young adults to watch and discuss the award-winning documentary, Maxed Out. It's a disturbing exposé of the credit industry, told in an engaging and well-crafted manner. Having said that, though, I will tell you to be prepared with the remote control to zip through two scenes. The first is the comedian in front of the red curtain. He says some funny things early on but then gets very vulgar. He doesn't add anything to the storyline, so you can just zip through him every time you see him. The second scene is in a pawn shop, where the owner heads to a DVD collection. Zip right there for a few seconds. Those people aren't pawning their Disney movies, I can tell you that much.

The reason why I want every young adult (especially young women) to see this documentary is because they need to be savvy about how they are the hottest target for credit card companies. College students in particular are the most in-demand -- and mounting debt has been the reason for some very sad endings among a few college students. (Please note that suicide is also mentioned on this documentary.) That said, it's not as melodramatic as you might think. In the end, it's both sad and highly informative to see how greed corrupts on both sides.

Finally, here's a cost-saving tip: If you have Netflix, you can actually watch it online for no additional cost. It is one of the films that's available on-demand for Netflix subscribers. Big chunks of it are also on YouTube.

The Conclusion of the Jane Austen Festival

Fortified by a hot cup of tea and cheered by sticky toffee pudding (in honor of the event), the Janeites all scrunched together to watch the conclusion of Sense and Sensibility on PBS last night. For myself, these are a precious few hours of relaxation while on book deadline, and any foolishness with Miss Austen's novels is judged most severely.

That said, the Janeites gave Sense and Sensibility a passing nod of approval. There were some odd moments (the dueling dream sequence--??), some bizarre photography (Marianne's fever sequence was rather disturbing), and poor editing (Elinor is called into the drawing room to see Col. Brandon and is instead is seen giving a disconnected bit of news to Edward Ferrars). We also failed to feel much sympathy for Col. Brandon, despite his outstanding chivalry and character. His restrained passion was reined back so far as to be faintly noticed. And Miss Steele just seems disconnected and silly, rather than deliciously conniving as she was portrayed in the 1995 version. Nevertheless, there was no teacup-rattling mad dash for the remote in this installment, which the Janeites roundly applauded.

If you haven't had your fill, you can check out the Sense and Sensibility: Behind the Scenes video on the PBS website to watch more about this film.

The Silent Scream

In 1984, the man who two decades earlier had co-founded the leading pro-abortion group (NARAL), released the startling documentary, The Silent Scream. In this video, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who once ran the nation's largest abortion clinic and claims he was personally responsible for 75,000 abortions, provides a clinical and dispassionate abortion presentation. The reason he did this was to show, for the first time, what abortion looks like through ultrasound technology. For it was through this technological development that Dr. Nathanson came to understand the evils of abortion and to repudiate his former support for it.

Until yesterday, I had never seen this video. In 1984, when it was released, I was a feminist, ardently pro-choice, and graduating with a degree in journalism and a certificate in women's studies. Obviously, I was deaf to anything from the pro-life camp. I first heard about this video when I became a Christian nearly ten years later. But even when I was training a few years after that to be a mentor in my local crisis pregnancy center, I still didn't see it.

Last night, as I was researching this topic for my book, I found The Silent Scream on YouTube and decided to watch it. It's quite disturbing--made more so, possibly, because the low production values of 1980s video offer no visual hype. It's just relentless fact after relentless fact as Dr. Nathanson calmly shows an abortion through ultrasound technology. Very grim viewing.

Even so, as I am researching this topic, I can see God's sovereign hand working in the course of human history. I had assumed that widespread abortion was something that arose in my lifetime. But in my book research, I've found that it's been a problem since the beginning of time. And as a percentage of the population, the abortion rates of the mid-19th century match the recent abortion rates of our times. (This fact courtesy of Marvin Olasky's sobering book, Abortion Rites.) But God (two of the kindest words in the Bible!) -- but God keeps intervening. I am astounded that abortion proponents like Norma McCorvey (the "Roe" in Roe v. Wade) and Dr. Nathanson were suddenly arrested by the truth, did an about-face, and became pro-life activists. And even as abortion became legal in 1973, scientists were working on ultrasound technology; the first ultrasound machine became commercially available just three years later. 

There are a lot of problems with YouTube--from content population to copyright issues--but I am grateful for the way it provides an open-access platform for videos such as The Silent Scream to live on in cyberspace. I've embedded a link to the low-res, slightly out-of-sync full video below. It's not for the squeamish, but this is a critical piece of film-making. You'll never find a topic like it on the growing number of health or plastic surgery television shows, but it is important viewing. 

(UPDATE: Please pray for new legislation in Florida this week concerning abortion. Details are in the comment below that I cleared for the purpose of soliciting your intercession.)

Sense and Sensibility

The Janeites gathered once again for tea last night, hoping that PBS would salvage the Jane Austen Masterpiece series with the latest adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.

The first thirty seconds rattled our tea cups as we frantically scrambled for the remote, our delicate sensibilities in utter shock. Whither our beloved Jane Austen?! Whither our smelling salts?! Such shocking conduct. Such complete impertinence. We simply must protest the gratuitous backstory!

Truly, it is deplorable, this modern age that treads so clumsily upon the delicate foreshadowings and unfurlings of Miss Austen's character development. We have been given so many heavy-handed hints about the nefarious Willoughby as to wonder how anyone at Barton Cottage could miss them as well. Whither the beauty and charm of the former Willoughby? However, we applaud the more forthright Edward Ferrars, who--unlike the toadying Hugh Grant version--is capable of looking women in the eye and forming complete sentences. Quite right, that one. The jury is still out on Col. Brandon, however. Perhaps he will be less sullen by the second half of this production.

This Janeite held her breath, ready for the debut of the character she is most likely to become--the charmingly nosy Mrs. Jennings, she who can "winkle out" any juice morsel of gossip. "I think I've unearthed a secret. I'll winkle it out of you! Winkle, winkle, winkle!" Alas, no winkling. For shame. While Mrs. Jennings is not nearly as charming, Mrs. Dashwood is a far more complex character in this version than the 1995 edition.

The Janeites will render their final judgment at the conclusion of next week's program. We sincerely hope that our tea cups will withstand the final installment.

(Photo: Marianne and Willoughby in the 2008 edition of Sense and Sensibility.)

Strike Two . . .

Huh?

That's been the collective reaction of the Janeites who have joined me to watch this newest series on PBS. It does not sit well to see Jane Austen's novels so tarted up.

Last night's adaptation of Northanger Abbey on PBS was written by Andrew Davies. Oddly, he's also written some of my favorite filmed novels, including Middlemarch, The Way We Live Now, and the best Pride and Prejudice (the 1995 version starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth). It puzzled me as to why these current adaptations aren't in the vein of his other, outstanding work.

Perhaps it is because PBS needs a suitor. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer provides this insight:

[T]hese days, "Masterpiece Theatre" has much in common with several of Austen's favorite heroines. . .

This dash through Austen's oeuvre kicks off aggressive rebranding of "Masterpiece Theatre" as well. . . Member stations are hosting campaigns to feed Austenmania, and the service is even reaching out to youngsters via Facebook and iTunes.

At 37, the franchise is single and in search of a suitable match -- in the form of a corporate sponsor. Longtime partner ExxonMobil abandoned it in 2004, and no deep-pocketed suitors have stepped in to keep it in the style to which viewers have become accustomed. (The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service are shouldering the load for now.)

I take comfort that other Gentle Readers are also offended by these new productions. One of the funniest reviews I read came from the AustenBlog, The Complete Jane Austen News Roundup: Are They All Horrid? Edition.

Too Rushed to be Persuaded

The verdict is in. We are persuaded that the original version is better.

The 1995 version of Jane Austen's Persuasion (with Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds) had more time (107 minutes) to develop the characters, their romances, and the tension between the classes. The 2007 version (93 minutes, with Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones) got off to a strong start, especially when we all first spied the dashing new Captain Wentworth. But his model good looks didn't really say weathered sea captain. Not that we minded entirely. But after awhile, it strained the credibility of this version.

Want to know more about this new production?  Here is a Boston Globe interview with screenwriter Andrew Davies and review of the new production.

And for a bit of fun procrastination, check out "The Men of Austen."

(Photos: The new Anne Elliot, above, strains to see Captain Wentworth, right).

Cinematic Theology: Modern Parables

Last fall, I saw the review on Tim Challies' site for a product designed to be "cinematic theology," a set of 12 film-driven studies about the parables of Jesus. The producers describe Modern Parables as an original Bible study curriculum designed for people who like movies. The set features six parables with six application videos, each shot on the set with a pastor explaining the biblical meaning of these parables. The videos are packaged with a full Bible study curriculum.

The producers say these films are not meant to replace the biblical text, but are intended to re-create in the viewer similar emotional, intellectual, and spiritual responses as that of Jesus' first-century listeners. I thought that was an interesting concept, especially to reach those in what has been called the "screen generation." But one comment in particular stood out to me in Tim's review:

"The films are entirely suitable for family viewing and, in fact, once we watched the first, my children pretty well demanded that we watch the rest. So we watched all six of them in an evening and spent right up until bed time discussing what the parables mean and asking why Jesus would share those stories. As the films began to play my children would suddenly grasp the story, remembering it from the Bible, and would find themselves absorbed in them."

I ordered the set to view from the perspective of Christian film-making (my day job, in essence). But I also showed the set to my nieces in Texas over Christmas and found my family reacted the same way as Tim's children. We read the Scripture verses first and then watched the parable and the application video for each one. They were riveted, and even had a few good questions and comments afterward.

My sister, Alice, and I were most affected by "The Widow and Judge," which is based on the parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18:2-5. Seeing this woman's persistence in the face of neglect and abuse was a provocative reminder not to lose heart in praying to God. It was my favorite of the six video parables. You can see the trailer for it below.

My second favorite was "The Shrewd Manager," based on Luke 16:1-8, because I've always had a hard time understanding Jesus' point in this parable. This engaging video made the point clear, but it was the application video where the pastor's teaching finally made the connection for us all. Here's the trailer:

The only one we didn't find appealing was "The Sower." In preparing this blog post, I finally read that it is meant to be different from the other films. It is shot in a documentary style. It was the only one that didn't keep our attention because we weren't that interested in seeing the mechanics of farming after watching the other cinematic films.

In short, I like the variety of uses these videos offer--they are ideal for starting fruitful discussions with young children, initiating spiritual discussions with non-Christians, and giving your own Bible study a fresh take. And it's good that you can get so many uses out of this set because it is rather pricey, starting at $129. However, you don't have to spend that money blindly. Modern Parables has generously posted the entire Hidden Treasure parable and its application video (with Dr. Daniel Doriani), as well as the teacher's guide and the student's lesson, to try for free. I recommend Modern Parables, but for the sake of full disclosure, I need to note that I did not review the accompanying curriculum. Hmmm...I think I might be able to understand the "screen generation" after all.

God Grew Tired of Us

"This is the kind of movie every American should see, and also the kind of movie that makes you feel richer for seeing it." That's how Christianity Today describes God Grew Tired of Us, a documentary that follows the lives of three Sudanese young men who were among the "Lost Boys," a refugee tribe created by the chaos of the Sudanese civil war in the late '80s. The title is based on a comment one of the young men makes in thinking back to the atrocities he endured. It's not offered in a God-mocking way, though--there are hints throughout this documentary that this man, John Bul Dau, is a Bible-believing Christian.

This documentary captures the experiences of John and his friends, Daniel and Panther, starting at a UN refugee camp in Kenya in 2001. They were among the estimated 22,000 to 27,000 boys who were abandoned or orphaned in a tumultuous civil war in the Sudan and traveled barefoot across the sub-Saharan desert. The "Lost Boys" fled their homeland, formed surrogate families and sought refuge from famine, disease, wild animals and attacks from rebel soldiers. They traveled together for five years and against all odds crossed into the UN's refugee camp in Kenya, where ten years later, they were selected to re-settle in the United States. Director Christopher Quinn's quiet respect for his subjects comes out in his summary of the documentary:

The boys were told by their parents to run because otherwise they would be killed. They fled. Most of them had little idea that they would never see their families again. The most amazing part of their story, one that I can never get over, is that they held together, opting for civility during even the most horrific periods. At that time, there were an estimated 22,000 boys, ranging in age from three to fifteen. They didn’t know William Golding’s pessimistic view of the world, as illustrated in Lord of the Flies. They didn’t regress into savagery. Rather, they took care of each other. A ten-year-old boy looked after a three and a five-year-old boy. They formed families in order to survive, and set a course through Sub-Saharan Africa in search of safety.

For the film, I found footage from an archive in London in which a cameraman had captured the end of the boys’ dreadful journey out of Sudan. They had finally crossed into Ethiopia. Thousands of them had died. The footage shows skeletal figures standing silent, most with their eyes closed, too tired to open them. An older boy, still honoring his new family bond, clutched an emaciated younger boy.

They had passed through a world without food or water. They were the ones who hadn’t been attacked or eaten by wild animals. They had survived the bombing raids of the Northern Arab government who wanted to see them finished off.

They are in America now, the 4,000 remaining boys from that first journey. Early on it was odd to see them make their way through our modern world. New things. A flight attendant’s message over the speaker heading out of Nairobi alarmed one of the guys so much that he asked me, “What place is the man speaking from?” Even more odd, having to explain to them that, yes, in America we have an entire supermarket aisle dedicated to food for dogs and that the freezer isn’t necessarily the place to store oven mitts or towels.

One thing that struck me during this documentary was an observation one of the men made about how no one has time for relationships and how lonely it feels here. Their initial attempts to speak to strangers or befriend others were typically rebuffed. As they described their grueling pre-dawn schedule of work and school, I was sympathetic to their isolation and loneliness.

The documentary won a number of awards in 2006, including the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. It was released in movie theaters this year, concurrently with a book by John Bul Dau by the same name. The well-produced trailer can be viewed online.

The documentary and book have helped John Dau create a foundation to create six medical and education centers in Sudan. For more information about the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan and the current crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, the International Crisis Group has several good overview articles.