An Interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh
PRAXIS: Even so, one might argue, St. Basil was writing about Homer, and Homer wasn’t hip-hop. St. Paul appealed to poets, not comic books. They were appealing to the high culture of their day, to the classical literature, not television comedies.
METROPOLITAN SAVAS: You’re right. But one of the distinctive features of our day, as opposed to theirs, is that the dominant culture doesn’t distinguish as sharply between high and low. Hip-hop is a legitimate academic pursuit these days. It’s a cultural given that the Beatles are as important as Bach, that the films of Quentin Tarantino are as worthy of attention as those of Andrei Tarkovsky.
PRAXIS: I understand you taught a course on Christianity and pop culture at St. Vladimir’s Seminary.
METROPOLITAN SAVAS: In fact, I led a seminar once with Peter Bouteneff, Professor of Systematic Theology, a few years ago, called “Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture.” (I borrowed from the title from the principal text for the course by William Romanowski.) I guess you could call us both afficianados of the arts. Peter studied at the Boston
Conservatory of Music before coming to Pembroke College, Oxford University, to pursue doctoral studies under Metropolitan (then Bishop) Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. That’s where we met; I’d begun my studies under Bishop Kallistos a year earlier. Peter’s a very discerning consumer of pop media, a great lover of film, a student of Warner Brothers cartoon shorts and an exceptional jazz bassist.
The seed for the seminar was planted many years before either of us were in a position to teach at a seminary, by our first viewing together, in Oxford, of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.” We were both, to use the vernacular, blown away by the realization that the director and screenwriter Tarantino had almost miraculously managed to communicate a salvific message by means of his very violent and very vulgar film. We were to experience over time so many such “aha” moments, little epiphanies in unlikely places, predominantly in cinema but also in pop music, that we felt justified in presenting the material for consideration.
Our admittedly ambitious syllabus of required and recommended viewing included some films that might be considered art films, like Carl Theodor Dryer’s classic 7he Passion of Joan of Arc, Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal, and the exquisite Danish film Babette’s Feast; examples from sci-fi and fantasy epics, like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter; even comedies like Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, arguably the most spiritual film of the last quarter-century. We listened to Johnny Cash and U2, reflected on the surprisingly Christ-conscious “The Simpsons,” considered the perennial fascination with superheroes like Superman, Spider-Man and the X-Men. The television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” were the forerunners of a fascination with vampires among teens that has only gotten deeper since we taught the course. If we ever did it again, we’d devote a lot more time to Twilight.
PRAXIS: You called your friend a “discerning consumer of media.” Could you explain what you mean by that?
METROPOLITAN SAVAS: Clearly not everything out there is of equal value. Since the appearance in 1965 of Presbyterian pastor Robert Short’s little book, The Gospel according to “Peanuts” (the cartoon strip by Charles Schultz featuring Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy), there have been an avalanche of imitators. Google “gospel according to” and see for yourself: The Simpsons, Disney, Dr. Seuss, South Park, Star Wars, Tolkien, Narnia, Sherlock Holmes, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Twilight, the Coen Brothers (“The Dude Abides”), Superman or Spider-Man or Batman, The Sopranos, Mad Men, the Beatles or Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen or U2 or Johnny Cash, even Lady Gaga! Thank God, we’ve been spared (so far) the Gospel according to Snooki!
Some, like Short’s book on “Peanuts” and Robert Pinsky’s on “The Simpsons,” are actually serious attempts at theology; most are little more than attempts to cash in on what may already be a waning trend. John Granger’s recent work on the Harry Potter series has been an especially successful effort to discern Gospel truths in an unlikely place. Best yet, Granger is a committed, even conservative, Orthodox Christian!
PRAXIS, Spring 2011, Vol. 10 “Truth and the Times: The Culture Conundrum. An Interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh.”
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