A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...
About Michael Nicholson
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2001: A Space Odyssey as Cultural Icon, Cinematic Masterpiece, and Modern Myth, Part 2
This second installment picks up where Part 1 left off. A Re-enchantment of Modernity In his essay “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber famously wrote, The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from […]
2001: A Space Odyssey as Cultural Icon, Cinematic Masterpiece, and Modern Myth, Pt 1
2001: A Space Odyssey, now celebrating the 50th anniversary of its release, came late to the little one-screen theater in the small Maryland town where I grew up. It wasn’t until the summer of 1969 that I went to see it with my best friend from high school. By then the movie’s tag line had […]
“The Beauty of the Dream Vanished”: Frankenstein, the Fall, and the Failures of Romanticism
Mary Shelley’s cautionary tale Frankenstein turned two hundred years old this year, accompanied by essays, conferences, and celebrations of its enduring influence. Many of these have focused on what is most often taken as the book’s main theme: a warning against pursuing scientific progress and invention heedless of social cost or ethical responsibility. While ambition channeled through […]
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and the Problems of Postmodern Narrative
From May 27th to June 4th, 1940, the French port city of Dunkirk witnessed one of the most significant and history-altering military operations ever undertaken, the evacuation across the English Channel of nearly 400,000 British and French soldiers, right from under the teeth of the German army. You would know nearly nothing about it from […]
A Leaf on the Wind
First Reading: “The average person, seeing that we can predict tides pretty well a few months ahead would say, why can’t we do the same thing with the atmosphere, it’s just a different fluid system, the laws are about as complicated. But I realized that any physical system that behaved aperiodically would be unpredictable.” ~ Edward […]
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. — Ecclesiastes 11:8 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. — John 1:5 I wake up mornings in […]
What Has Hollywood to Do with Jerusalem?: Production Values and Proclaiming the Gospel in the “Ark Encounter” and Ben Hur
If size matters, the new theme park in northern Kentucky, the Ark Encounter, is a massive success. The center-piece of the park, which opened in mid-July, is a full-size replica of Noah’s ark, over 500 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high. It is, according to the Ark Encounter website, the “largest timber-frame […]
The Culture of Narcissism, Pt 4: Good News for Narcissists
Here is the conclusion to the series inspired by Christopher Lasch’s book, The Culture of Narcissism. Find the rest of the series here. “Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities…play a conspicuous part in contemporary life…these celebrities set the tone for public life and of private life as well…The beautiful people…live […]
The Culture of Narcissism, Part 3: The Religion of "Me"
Here is the penultimate post in a series inspired by Christopher Lasch’s book, The Culture of Narcissism. Back in 1987, when the New Age movement had not yet become just another part of the spiritual background noise of postmodern America, ABC television mainstreamed one branch of the movement in the miniseries “Out on a Limb,” […]
The Culture of Narcissism, Part 2: Sex and the Self
This is the second part in a series inspired by Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism. Narcissism is the self in love with itself; it’s believing the world revolves around one’s ego. While narcissists lack regard for the needs of others, they crave attention, admiration, and even envy to bolster their own self-esteem. […]
The Culture of Narcissism, Part 1: Politics and Personhood
This is the first in a four-part series inspired by Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism. In the present presidential contest, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal was the first person to say it out loud, to use the “N” word for Donald Trump. That’s right, he called Trump a narcissist. Specifically, in his news […]
An Artful Hell: Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa
Hope for forgiveness and the Kingdom of Heaven beyond our human moral bankruptcy has been replaced by progressive Utopian visions where well-adjusted inhabitants are provided for in an earthly paradise. But the knowledge of who we really are and the true state of our predicament surfaces regularly in our cultural history, if we are paying […]
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