Critical reflections on art and culture.
On each episode of Refugia, Rienstra interviews various experts of science, religion, music, worship, activism, and more about what refugia means for them and how we as humans—and even more specifically, as Christians—can actively be a part of creating spaces of refugia.
By now in February 2020, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite is one of the most lauded films of the 21st century. It won the coveted Palme D’Or prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. It’s also one of the rare foreign-language films (it’s Korean) to receive an Academy Award Best Picture. With all of that acclaim, you’d think that Parasite would be a stunning masterpiece.
The most striking aspect of Sam Mendes’ new World War I movie, 1917, is the backgrounds. Rare as it is for the backgrounds to shine brighter than the actors and foregrounds in movies, Mendes has achieved it; I believe that was his goal.
If there’s a TV theme song that immediately brings me back to being an adolescent in the early 90s, it has to be the theme song from Saved by the Bell(SBTB). Every week, if I could, I tuned in (no streaming or binge-watching back then) to see what Zack, Kelly, Slater, Screech, Jessie, and Lisa were doing.
In the previous post, I shared a series of questions for understanding the popular culture that shapes us. I wrote of how many of the students in my Theology and Popular Culture class are hesitant to share the pieces of pop culture that shape them. One of the ways I try to get students to lower their defenses is by sharing one of my own favorite pieces of pop culture.
I teach a class called Theology and Popular Culture in which I encourage students to think theologically about the media in which they are immersed. Many students are not prepared to think so seriously about their entertainment. Others express their conclusions cautiously, expecting to be judged for their entertainment choices.
