At 33, I find that I am especially prone to life reflection. There is a natural bend towards confessional writing as years of pretense and childish behavior finally give way to the inevitable decay of their charm.

I believe Augustine was 33 as well when he had his conversion experience and put to ink his monumental self diagnosis and theological treatise in the Confessions.

It is liberating to simply read and agree with this classic work. There are better than 16 centuries between our times, but in many ways the struggles, failures, revelations, and confessions are continuously one in the same.

I, wretch, was even as a child abandoned to Society, left at the edge of the arena where I was to contend, where I was more afraid of committing a solecism than concerned, if I did so, with my envy at any who did not commit it. I tell you this, and testify, my God, that this kind of praise was what I sought from those whose approval was my goal in life. I did not realize in what a maelstrom of ugliness ‘I was being swept off from your gaze.’ What could be fouler than the way I earned disapproval even from the worldly with my endless lies told to pedagogue, to teachers, to parents, so I could indulge my love of games, my passion for trivial plays, for re-enacting them with ludicrous clumsiness?

~St. Augustine, Confessions

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  Confessions (Penguin Classics)
  Author: Augustine

Over the last decade of hobby and profession I have entered into the “arena” of modern media communications and independent film. Youtube now offers the allure of viral fame and an endless collection of “trivial plays”, remember when people used to mock the hundreds of useless cable channels? I know there is a good handful of authentically valuable and inspiring original clips on Youtube (nothing immediately comes to mind), mixed in with the ever widening catalog of the entirety of modern media chunked out into 10 minute clips… but I would have to put most of it into the classification of “trivial plays”.

My heart sinks a little bit every time someone looks at me with eager excitement and says… “Have you seen such and such!” or “I have got to show you this, it is so funny…” And then they scurry to Youtube while entreating me to come around and look over their shoulder at the next spectacle.

I usually do enjoy whatever it is (most recently the double rainbow guy), I will ask to see it again even… and then enjoy the shared reference as a comical overtone later in conversation. This is my cultural moment, and I do share in it…

Augustine’s “arena” was not exactly Youtube, remember this was a real place where real people were torn limb from limb by real lions for sport and spectacle. The comparisons between modern western culture and that of late Rome (Augustine’s time) is one that I am so familiar with that it has already grown thinly trite before I even knew the true context.

Even now, it is difficult for me to make the connection from the Roman Colosseum to what is now referred to as “War Porn”, all those leaked videos from military moments of obliterating violence. There is no context, just a first person view of a fluid stream of liquid metal killing people that I do not know… followed by a large explosion of a place that I do not recognize. It feels very different than even watching a movie, say something like Apocalypse Now or Saving Private Ryan, these are stories with people that I begin to know and the violence is part of their environment and personal narrative. No, “War Porn”… that is much closer to a video game… being behind a meaningless trigger that can be pulled as often as I like, with no relevance… just the juvenile glee of watching death and destruction in progress.

As reprehensible as this may be… it is the last of Augustine’s confessions on this quote that really grabbed me…

What could be fouler than the way I earned disapproval even from the worldly with my endless lies told to pedagogue, to teachers, to parents, so I could indulge my love of games, my passion for trivial plays, for re-enacting them with ludicrous clumsiness?

It is one thing to shirk responsibility and dodge wisdom for the enjoyment of something trivial… but to do so for the…

re-enacting of them with ludicrous clumsiness

…now that is a direct indictment that lands on the door step of every would be filmmaker. That desire to arrive at viral approval through the recreation of something enthusiastically base (an insult, a slander, a murder)… and a recreation that is even shoddy in comparison to the original…

…what a supreme waste of time, a Sin even.

A Youtube video (perhaps unjustly ripped from its film context) does now come to mind, one that I believe is much in the spirit of an Augustinian introspective confession.

Categories: Culture, Media, Film, Creativity, Confessions, Books, Film Making, Movies
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