Into to Wild, Outside the Camp

"People are softened by the forced reflection of loss." Into the Wild

I camped out Friday night. In my living room, in front of my TV fire. that hearth of flickering images and sound.

I had one of those sleeping bag inflatable mats to cushion the carpeted terrain of the floor. Roughing it. I have been wanting to go on a riff and rant about television recently but then have had some new experiences that I wish to add to my thoughts. Since I am only blogging once a week, I need to merge a whole seven days of mulling my thoughts into a coherent diatribe of madness.

I even made a skillet of bacon in the morning. If I die of a heart attack, no autopsy needed. Probably was the half of a package of bacon I eat every Saturday. Perfectly cooked. No more dumping the grease with soap down the kitchen drain. The last plumbing bill of $ 250 has compelled me to take the grease out back and pour it into the grass. No qualms about pouring the grease into me though.  

 



Earlier Friday evening, I had attended a provocative and thought-provoking talk about the implications of the film Into the Wild directed by Sean Penn. A true story of a young man named Chris who follows his wanderlust into the Alaska wilderness only to die a slow tragic death from hunger and starvation in an abandoned bus.

Sean Penn has become quite a serious filmmaker, far from his work in Fast Times at Ridgemont High...

 



....where he played a California Stoner name Spicoli. Mr. Hand would be proud of the serious man Penn has become. The lecture and discussion in Lancaster city was sponsored by The Rowhouse, a Christian forum where culture is taken seriously. Us Christians and our lawless and riotous living...Friday night lectures about serious topics. Fast Times indeed.   

 

The presenter, a young lady, did a wonderful work with exploring the story of the main character Chris without devolving into sentimentality or dismissiveness of his naiveté.  I even got re-introduced to the book, film, and soundtrack. Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam made an album for the movie that captures the spirit of the story in quite an amazing fashion.

 

 





The author of the book Jon Krakauer, a writer/mountaineer of immense talent, tells the tale with ferocity and grace. It was just the kick in the ass that I needed to work on my book yesterday. Chris is emblematic of youth knowing that something is wrong in the world but who are not sure where the answers reside. For nature is capricious and cruel, and to try and find answers in mountains, streams, and trees--known as transcendentalism--proffered by Thoreau and Emerson, becomes chasing a phantom.

 

God whispers, speaks, and even screams in nature, but the creation runs hot and cold with no calibration of our cares. As a man commented in a book I read about Glacier National Park in researching my book, "The mountain don't give a damn about anybody."  Billions of years and stars have a way of diminishing our sense of meaning. Shout if you want, for the universe is wide. I call it Terrifying Anonymity.

 

I was struck by the irony of watching the story of a young man into the wild in the security and warmth of my living room. I found that Netflix had the film available as an instant download while Amazon Prime did not. It makes me wonder how long Amazon is going to wait before coming Grizzy-like for its Netflix meal. Netflix runs its service off of Amazon's servers, so it just has to be a matter time of Jeff B. opens Amazon's jaws. Maybe Netflix can fend off the attack. I have my doubts. I think that perhaps Amazon wants to sell movies and not rent them, so it is hesitant to niche in on Netflix's model. Who knows.

 

Here is the rant and riff part of this blog about television. It has turned us into mindless consumers, being entertained to death. We might as well put images of the TV on our gravestones, considering how much we wind down our time in front of the television. Yet, television can be redemptive, such as watching Into the Wild. Most of the time I would counsel going on an adventure than watching it on the tube. I have been fending off the temptation, like shooing flies off a just shot Elk, the offer from Comcast to up my channel package for less money, while keeping the internet at the same speed. The only thing that stopped me from getting caught in the trap was the telephone rep from Comcast being incompetent and not knowing that online the package is available despite his lack of awareness of it.

 

I was going to call this blog post Death By Cable which was inspired by my former wife's unhealthy fascination with the show Dexter. I came into the great room one time to witness Dexter killing a murderer with a cable wire. Thought it was a metaphor for what Comcast wants to do to its audience. Kill them into complacency, zombies who keep upping their channels searching for more and more mess while being drained of cash and getting strangled by mendacious entertainment. Deluge of Dysfunction, sewage pouring off the screen.    

 

There were many beautiful moments in the film....here are a couple:

 



 

The old man, who is staying in the same semi-permanent RV lot tells Chris that "God really loves us, a lot." Or something to that effect. I was happy to be reminded that this film, although having some issues with the institutional church, presented faith as a positive. Not in a Pollyannaish or good-goody way which is endemic in Christian media productions. I don't know where Sean Penn lands faith-wise but it was refreshing to see religious people not presented as superficial brain-dead morons or mean hypocrites. Instead, this character, and the man, below had their share of suffering and found God in the mess.

 





 

Chris had befriended an elderly and isolated man who had lost his wife and son in a car accident back in the 1960's and had retreated to life in his leather shop. Not venturing out into risk. For he had enough of that being carved into his soul. Chris challenges him to climb this mountain, goads him actually, and the older gentleman come alive through the exertion. He takes a grandfatherly posture to Chris and offers to adopt him. But, Chris defers and asks him to wait until he gets back from Alaska. Chris already has a family back East, who he has turned his back on because of the sin and societal lock-step synchronicity of his parents to the commercial jingle jungle of the American Dream in all of its searing implications. The old man encourages Chris to seek God's face.     

 

I am all for reality and looking at life squarely without illusion. Christ came to die for a lost world, to throw Himself into the maw of depravity and overcoming it with His infiniteness goodness. Evil is finite although much too much for humanity to resolve. We can't be the answer when we are the problem. Beware of those who make too much of humanity's saintliness or sinfulness. Both must be kept in view. Jesus went into the Wild... 

 

"We have an altar of which those serving the tabernacle have no authority to eat. For of the animals [whose] blood is brought by the high priest into the [Holy of] Holies concerning sins, of these the bodies are burned outside the camp. Indeed, because of this, in order that He might sanctify the people by His own blood, Jesus suffered outside the gate. So let us go forth to Him outside the camp bearing His reproach." (Hebrews 13:10-13)