ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Texas

Afghanistan & Abortion & Ivermectin, Oh My!

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The war in Afghanistan comes to a controversial end. Abortion is again in the news due to an unusual Texas law. Ivermectin hits center stage in Covid politics thanks to Joe Rogan.

How should Christians think through such varied yet pressing news items, events and issues? How is the nature of God a guide when it comes to having a “Christian take” on things? Find out in this new episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast!

Also, a quick pop culture minute generates a metric ton of mentions, including Smallville, The Golden Girls, The White Lotus, Hades, Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars, David Lynch, Twin Peaks, The Green Knight, The Thin Red Line, The Fountain, and Ted Lasso.

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Changing the Game – Knowing Who You Are

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Part of my self-identity is as a jock. That isn’t to say I’m particularly athletic, but I always wanted to be. I took part in sports, but never excelled. But that desire helps define me as a person. Changing the Game, a documentary by Michael Barnett, is a look at the struggles of three high school athletes as they strive to claim their identities. All three are transgender. [Note: throughout the review I will refer to them as the gender they know themselves to be.]

Mack Beggs is a Texas state wrestling champion, trying to gain his second title. In Texas, boys are not allowed to wrestle against girls, and gender is determined by one’s birth certificate. That means that Mack must wrestle against girls. Because he is taking testosterone as part of his transitional therapy, he has a definite advantage against his opponents.

Sarah Rose Huckman is a skier in New Hampshire. That state’s rules, when she began competing, was that gender reassignment surgery must be completed to compete as that gender. (Which is a fairly inane idea given high school students ages.) She becomes an advocate for transgender rights in her state.

Andraya Yearwood runs track in Connecticut. In that state, students can compete in whichever gender they self-identify as. Like Mack, as Andraya competes in women’s races, her body (and its masculine hormones, create an advantage.

All three of these young people are skilled at their sports. But they risk controversy to take part. Is it fair to the other athletes? Is it fair to these three if they are banned from competition? The film has voices on both sides of these questions, but there are deeper questions that arise as well, such as the nature of transgender identity and the role of sports in schools.

As we meet the three athletes, their parents, friends, and coaches, we certainly see them as the gender that they identify with. Although, Mack’s grandfather still struggles with the proper pronoun to use, all of these people are supportive of them not just as athletes, but as young people. These athletes are very clear what gender they are—even if people in the stands or state athletic systems are not.

 It is also shown how difficult it is not just to be a trans athlete, but a trans teen as well. It is noted in the film that 40% of trans teens attempt suicide. The pressures of being transgender can become overwhelming. These three athletes must deal with those pressures, and have them amplified by the controversy when they compete.

The film also looks into the value of sports for students. Andraya’s coach is the most open about his view of sports. It is not primarily about winning, but about teaching life lessons to the young people he coaches. An administrator in Connecticut makes the case for their very open policy by saying that you cannot have them live as one gender all the rest of the day, then when it comes to sports tell them they aren’t that gender.

The film is a fair treatment of the issue of the participation in sports by such athletes. There are problems with all the systems to be sure. But as a jock, I value the ways that sport (even when I failed) has influenced my life. I would not want to prevent young athletes from such experiences because their bodies do not match their gender. The three athletes we meet know themselves as more than as jocks. So do we.

Changing the Game is streaming on Hulu.

Photos courtesy of Hulu.

News of the World – No Home to Go To

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“To move forward, you must first remember.”

 What does it mean to journey home when you have no home? What would The Odyssey have been about if Odysseus had no Penelope waiting for him in Ithaca? Paul Greengrass’s News of the World, based on the best selling novel by Paulette Jiles, is just that kind of story.

Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a former Confederate soldier, travels from town to town in Texas as a news reader. Most people are too busy to bother reading newspapers (if they can read). Kidd comes to town with a collection of newspapers from around the world and serves as a non-fiction storyteller. He tells of things in Asia and Africa. He may relate sad news of a meningitis outbreak in a nearby town. He brings news of other Texas towns, or of survivors of a mine disaster in Pennsylvania. He is entertaining, but can also be serious, addressing life under the Reconstruction military occupation.

On the road one day, he comes across a wrecked wagon and finds a lynched black man hanging nearby. He also finds a young, blond, blue-eyed girl dressed in buckskins like a Native American. He finds papers that says she is Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel). Her parents had been killed by Kiowas. She was taken in and raised by them. She knows no English (although she may remember a little German). Johanna (who doesn’t know that name—her name is Cicada) is wary of Kidd, but more in fear of the soldiers who come along. She reluctantly goes with Kidd. The first thing she says to him (which he cannot understand) is “Home. I just want to go home.” But she has no home. Her Kiowa parents are dead. She is being sent back by the government to live with an aunt and uncle.

Kidd takes her to the next town, where he learns that the Indian agent will be back in three months. He can wait or take her to her aunt and uncle hundreds of miles away.  So these two reluctant travelers set off on a journey in which, like Odysseus, they will find those who befriend them, but many who would do them harm. But even if they overcome the obstacles of the journey, what will await them at the end of their journey?

Although the story is set in 1870, it reflects many themes that are all too familiar to today’s world. There is great bitterness among many over the loss of the Civil War and the Union occupation. At one reading, there is great anger as Kidd reads about President Grant requiring Texas to accept the new amendments to the Constitution (13, 14, and 15) before it can be readmitted. This is a world of polarization, racism (towards Native Americans and blacks), and lawlessness.

In one town they travel through, the town boss is interested in Kidd’s news reading, but only wants things from his paper read. (Hello, Fox News) That is the extreme of the sense of isolation and insularity that all the towns reflect. As a news reader, Kidd is bringing the outside world to these communities, and with it a different way of looking at things.

That different way of understanding the world plays out in the relationship between Kidd and Johanna. Raised in the Kiowa traditions, Johanna sees the world as a whole—the circle of earth and sky. Kidd explains to her that for white people, it is always a line, heading forward. But for Kidd, that line really isn’t moving forward. His itinerant life is really a way of avoiding a loss he cannot bear to confront.

The idea of home comes up frequently throughout the film, beginning with Johanna’s first words. We wonder what home she wants to go to. She has been orphaned twice. She barely remembers her birth parents (but she does find her way to the cabin they lived in). She does not know the aunt and uncle she is being sent to. When she sees a band of Kiowa across the river she calls out for them to wait for her, but they are too far away to hear her cry. So there are three homes that have or might make up her life.

Kidd on the other hand is homeless. He travels from town to town, but never back to San Antonio where his life was before the war. While Odysseus wished he could make a straight line home to Ithaca, Kidd seems to be doing all he can to avoid returning home. When he does it is filled with sorrow. But it also frees him to find a new life, a new reality.

This film asks us to see the brokenness that is so prevalent in the world around us. How will we respond to such a world? Will we focus only on ourselves and our immediate surroundings? Do we only care about what is happening to us, to our neighbors, our community? Will we hear the stories of different people near and far? Will we find our freedom in being open to those we do not know, but who will bring their world to ours?

News of the World is available digitally and on Blu-ray and DVD.

Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures.