I’m intrigued, if not entirely convinced, by some of the arguments Erik Kain explores here about whether fantasy is an inherently Christian genre. He quotes D.G. Meyers on C.S. Lewis, who writes that:

Lewis said in a 1947 essay that “To construct plausible and moving ‘other worlds’ you must draw upon the only real ‘other world’ we know, that of the spirit.” No statement about the genre has ever been more definitive. The bedrock premise of fantasy, which cannot be waived without voiding the genre, is the existence of a spirit realm. Lewis’s Narnia, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Rowling’s “wizarding world,” parallel universes of all kind are imaginative reconstructions of Christianity’s first principle: namely, that the “kingdom of heaven” is the only true world.

I’m not sure I agree with the premise that fantasy depends on the idea of another world. Certainly there’s some fantasy that depends on escaping entirely to a parallel universe, whether it’s accessible at the back of a wardrobe or through a competitive, Ivy League-style entrance exams process. But another world is hardly a Christian concept: Islam has highly developed and debated visions of limbo, judgment, hell, and heaven.

And there’s also fantasy based on the idea that we simply don’t know everything about the world that we live in, that there is power that we can access here and now if we know where to look for it and are determined enough to exercise it, all of which give us plenty of hooks in Jewish and Islamic tradition. In the former, take the legend of the golem, the idea that by very hard work and access to esoteric knowledge, rabbis were able to summon protectors for the Jewish people from the earth. There’s also a strong tradition of Jewish mysticism and Messianism, which suggests a permeable boundary between realms and regimes. Judaism has a demonic tradition that includes creatures like Dubbyks and Mazikeen, just as Islam has Jinns, Ifrits, and angels. Christians aren’t the only ones to have fairy realms or ghosts. And in Judaism, the Reconstructionist drive toward human transcendence and elimination of oppression is a framework for an epic quest that can take place in the here and now.

I think the point is more that, as a modification of how Erik puts it, that the fantasy that we see on the American market is “not founded in Christian themes so much as it is rooted in distinctly Anglo-Saxon mythology. And not just the mythology of the Medieval, feudalistic period, but the pre-Christian myths of the faerie-folk as well.” That we see certain things on the market doesn’t mean that fantasy is limited to those things, or inherently grows out to those things. It just means that we’re reliant on old patterns. I don’t think Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is perfect, but it is a rich illustration of the possibilities of Egyptian gods of death, of pre-Christian totem spirits, of Ifrits on the streets of New York for fantasy even if it doesn’t fulfill all of that promise itself.

By Kate Linnea Welsh

Lockhart/Gardner goes up against the U.S. government this week in “Executive Order 13224″ as they represent Danny Marwat, an American of Afghan descent who was arrested while working as a translator for a defense contractor in Afghanistan and is now suing the government for torturing him. The various government witnesses keep claiming that they can’t answer questions because of the Classified Information Procedures Act, and Diane repeatedly uses this to her advantage by getting the judge to agree that if the government says information about something is classified, they can’t also claim that it never happened in the first place. Diane is enthusiastic about the case because it’s “the right thing to do,” even if it means, as she says, “poking the bear,” but Will isn’t convinced that it’s right at all. His pragmatic worry that going after the government could make life hard for the firm is combined with his belief that Diane is “fighting an old war.” “Rumsfeld and Cheney are gone. They’re writing books,” he tells her, but she’s firm in her conviction that the government should be held liable for torture anyway. When they discover that Marwat has been lying to them about his connection to a suspected terrorist, though, Will and Diane agree to drop the case. But the Justice Department uses evidence uncovered in that trial to bring criminal conspiracy charges against Marwat, and Lockhart/Gardner is back in, this time to defend Marwat. Diane uses a similar tactic: A military officer refuses to answer questions about an interrogation because the information is classified, so the judge agrees that evidence from that interrogation is inadmissible, and throws out the case. Much of Lockhart/Gardner’s work on this case involves reading through redacted transcripts from secret military trials, and the show made very effective use of bleeping techniques during imagined reenactments of these trials to illustrate the extent of the redaction.

When the case begins, Glenn Childs invokes the titular executive order. Diane says it is designed to help investigate charities who are funding terrorists, but Childs says it also applies to terrorists who hire lawyers. The judge agrees with Diane that it’s a violation of attorney/client privilege, but concedes that it’s the law, so a representative from Lockhart/Gardner must meet periodically with Gordon Higgs, a monitor from the Treasury Department. Diane assigns this task to Alicia, and though Higgs assures her that there’s a Chinese wall between Treasury and Justice, Alicia immediately feels as though Higgs is trying to make her investigate on his behalf, especially when he asks her to report back if Marwat ever mentions the Badula Qulp region of Afghanistan. Marwat later mentions Badula Qulp, so in her second meeting with Higgs, Alicia tries not to answer the question, and Higgs threatens her with a large fine and jail time. He also advises her against getting a lawyer – not something a government representative is supposed to do. Alicia decides to fight back, “poking the bear” – the government – from yet another side. Will offers her a high-powered lawyer who is experienced in cases like this, but Alicia wants some distance from the firm and instead goes to Elsbeth Tascioni, one of the lawyers who worked on Peter’s case. Tascioni first comes across as scattered, a little ditzy, and almost amateurish, but she then uses these behaviors that are generally coded as “feminine” and ineffective to run circles around Higgs. Even Alicia doesn’t realize what Tascioni is up to as she gets Alicia to agree to help her with a case involving an insurance company – and then reveals that this insurance company covered Marwat’s company, so Alicia can’t answer questions about Marwat without it breaking the insurance company’s attorney/client privilege. She even throws in a hilarious bit about how the Supreme Court is very into corporate personhood recently and wouldn’t “take kindly” to Higgs infringing on the insurance company’s rights.
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This post contains spoilers through the October 16 episode of The Walking Dead.

Well, The Walking Dead is back, and grimmer than ever: Andrea’s suicidal, Sophia’s lost in the woods, Lori and Shane can’t quit each other, and God appears to hate Rick Grimes.

In an interview with Colson Whitehead about his new zombie novel, Zone One, that I’ve got going up a little after 4 p.m. today, we spoke a bit about what happens to social norms when society collapses: do people try to build societies based on radically new rules? Or do they preserve their traditions. A milder version of that tension is present in tonight’s episode. Lori expresses some discomfort when the characters come upon a huge number of cars full of the dead — and of valuable supplies. “This is a graveyard,” she says. “I don’t know how I feel about this.” But where Lori sees desecration, Carol sees a small potential for liberation. “Ed never let me wear nice things like this,” she remarks, holding up a pretty red blouse. And Lori’s moment of nerves doesn’t mean she’s consistently committed to upholding old norms, or that it’s easy for her. She’s struggling with her attraction to Shane, who she doesn’t want to sleep with, but she can’t quite walk away from either. “Just trying to be the good guy, Lori,” Shane tells her, informing of his intention to leave the main group. “Even if you don’t see it.”

Andrea’s similarly struggling with her relationship with Dale, and her larger need to find a reason to keep living after the loss of her sister. Dale confiscates her gun after she fails to put it back together in time to protect herself from the walkers, but also because he believes she’ll use it. “You chose suicide,” Dale protests when she demands her gun back. “What’s that to you? You barely know me,” Andrea spits back to the man who’s come to think of himself as related to her. “I didn’t want your blood on my hands…What did you expect? That I had an epiphany? Some life-affirming catharsis…I wanted to die on my terms, not torn apart by some drooling freaks. You took that away from me…You took my choice away from me. And you expect gratitude?”
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This post contains spoilers for the two episodes of Louie that aired on Aug. 11.

I should note that I tend to hold jokes made by liberals about evangelical Christians to a higher standard. If you’re going to venture into an arena of humor where it’s easy to take low roads and cheap shots and still be rewarded fairly handsomely for it by your audience. So it’s evidence of Louis C.K.’s genius that he took a scenario where he could have relentlessly mocked a character who enters the episode declaring that masturbation’s as terrible as Hurricane Katrina or Rwanda because “those events, while certainly serious, affected people in only one region or area,” and made the entire episode an extended joke on himself.

“You don’t know the darkness that you live in,” the anti-masturbation advocate tells Louis. “Oh, I know the darkness,” he says, and it goes from there. What follows is possibly the most hilarious and depressing masturbation fantasy ever put to film, and that definitely includes anything in the first American Pie movie, which for all that it’s become kind of ridiculous is actually great that first time out. In trying to get himself off to a memory of a hot girl in an elevator, only to find himself imagining an absurd scenario involving a shopping bag full of penises, and another occupant in the elevator who ends up telling him that “American women are very complicated.”
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