Tuesday, September 30, 2008

sanitized religion

I hope to write at greater length on this subject, but I want to address a topic brought up by Mom, who has tried to get some of her Korean friends (think: upper-class ladies married to diplomats, high-ranking officers, prominent businessmen, etc.) to read this blog. One of her friends apparently found her way to my CafePress site (Mom keeps confusing that site with my blog), saw some of the less savory greeting cards, and had a coniption.

Folks, if you think religion is the antithesis of earthy humor, or that people with religious points of view have some special duty to avoid irreverence and/or the word "fuck" in their everyday discourse, you need help.

More on this later. It's an annoying-- but rich-- topic, one on which I could rant frequently and diarrhetically.

Meanwhile, enjoy the Google search results for "Hauerwas fuck." Stanley Hauerwas is a prominent Christian theologian known for his direct manner and liberal use of the no-no words. I'm in complete disagreement with his theology but can't help liking his style.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kevin,

I think the aversion to profanity, etc., has less to do with religion per se than with general cultural factors.

There is, or was within living memory, a large segment of U.S. culture within which profanity of any sort was verboten. I can recall as a college student at home the summer after my freshman year in the mid-70s, being severely severely reprimanded by my father for using the expression "a hell of a lot." The h-word was forbidden in our home, as was the d-word; the f- and s- words were simply off the radar. This was their culture; and they weren't particularly conservative in a theological sense. (Think of the Jimmy Carter/Bill Moyers school of puritanical Southern liberalism, and that's pretty much where I come from.)

This may sound archaic to a lot of people, but by the same token, as I'm sure you know, there are features of East Asian culture that seem archaic to most Americans who haven't lived in that part of the world. Same deal exactly.

As someone who professes to be sympathetic to cultural diversity of all sorts, you should be aware of this aspect of diversity in your own country. To draw an analogy: it probably wouldn't be prudent to try to start an interreligious dialogue with a group of conservative Christians by showing them a picture of a crucifix submerged in a vat of urine. There are people who perceive obscene language as that sort of direct affront. To be frank, this has been one of my reservations about including links to the blog in my mailings to religious institutions.

With all respect to Stanley Hauerwas, you can't take someone like him as in any way representative of conservative/evangelical Protestant culture.

Kevin Kim said...

Points well taken, Alan; I'll write more later, but for the moment, I'll note my agreement that cultural factors do indeed play a huge role-- but whether they should play such a role is another matter. People make all sorts of excuses to justify their own prudishness, and if there's any human endeavor that requires a large shot of humor, it's religion.

At the same time, I completely agree that being obnoxious simply to be obnoxious-- e.g., by using vulgar language for no deeper reason than to shock or offend people-- boots little, especially when it comes to dialogue.

Lastly: I should (and do) make an effort to appreciate the diversity around me. Do others appreciate what I bring to the table? This is the eternal question, especially for those liberals who profess to love diversity, but can't stand the Other when the Other doesn't come packaged in some neat, well-behaved little box. I've seen this sort of thing play out in Korea far too often. Many bitter expats who find themselves unable to stand the more in-your-face aspects of Korean culture vote liberal/Democrat when they're home, and talk about how much we should respect cultures and diversity.

As for how representative Hauerwas is... let me get back to you on that, because my own hobnobbing with people of the cloth leads me to think differently.


Kevin

PS: Along with culture, we'll have to note age/generational issues, too, though I suppose one could argue that these factors are a subset of the cultural factors.

PPS: By the way, I was raised to think that "shut up" was a vulgarism. Lot of good that did me.

Anonymous said...

I completely agree about the value and necessity of religious humor. People who can't laugh at themselves have a problem. I have more of a problem with , i.e., gratuitous scatology and crude sexuality, which doesn't seem to me to be particularly directed at religion, and frequently not all that funny either.

Anonymous said...

And let's not forget that humor is in the mind of the beholder. An example from my own experience: when I was in Ghana, in the Peace Corps, way back in the 70's, I was confronted with a culture that was sexist in a whole new (to me) way. I was able to roll with it because it mostly didn't encumber me--for whatever reasons, the expectations and stereotypes the men applied to Ghanaian women, us obruñi (foreign) women were mostly excused from--they often treated us rather like honorary men. Thus I was exposed to jokes they (the men--male teachers, specifically) mostly told each other. Sort of like being let in on locker-room humor over here.

Anyway, after some time I fgured out that most of these jokes-- the humor of which pretty much escaped me, but which my male Ghanaian colleagues found side-splitting--pretty much were an excuse to talk about penises. Simply utterning the work "penis" could send them into paroxyms. Me--not so much. All in the mind of the beholder.

I personally have no problem endorsing your right to be as scatological as you please, especially in your own blog. However, I don't feel obligated to read your more scatological material, and I don't. Whether the reasons are religious or cultural or instinctual (which some would say), a lot of people do find bodily excretions icky, shall we say, and don't care to spend a lot of time thinking or reading about them. So what I'm querying here is not your right to be as scatological as you please--it's the "should" in your comment. You said

"I'll note my agreement that cultural factors do indeed play a huge role-- but whether they should play such a role is another matter."

Seems to me it's a matter of fact that they do, and you can either adjust your material to attract more readers who find such material offensive, or not adjust your material and forego having such people read your blog. No one is obligated to read what they find offensive.

Having said that, it's obvious that you in fact have adjusted your material--in comparison with your previous blog--well, there is no comparison. You've cleaned your material up enormously--which is why I read it pretty much every day (I had stopped reading your other blog because the proportion of "good stuff" --in my eyes, in my eyes, I hasten to add--to scatological stuff had dipped below a critical threshold for me). So you're apparently willing to adjust for other people's sensibilities, those cultural conventions, at least somewhat. In the end it comes down to the adjustments and accommodations people are willing--or not willing--to make in order to maintain relationships and keep the lines of communication open. And we all get make our own choices about that--even us liberals and your mother's friends :-).

Anonymous said...

The same mentality applies to folks who knit or crochet; some folks have this notion that everyone who crochets or knits are prim and proper, don't say the EFF word, and are dried up old prunes. I belong to an online community and everything you described as it pertained to preconceived notions re: the religious, can totally apply towards those in the fiber arts.

To that end, I'll share with you I crocheted a "Beanis," a crocheted penis, with removable foreskin (depending on the holder's preference or religion).

PS: Without a doubt my favorite card in your bunch was the "Santa's Judgment is Swift and Sure." CLASSIC!!!