Learning to pay attention to popular culture, part III

In this case, symphonic metal got something right. How can religious leaders respond to cultural "signals" anyway?

Do you like heavy metal music?

Do you like symphonic music?

Well, how about symphonic heavy metal music? As it turns out, in our niche-entertainment world, symphonic metal is a real thing and there are congregations of people out there — young and not-so-young — who are totally into this form of music (often with good cause).

If you don’t believe me, type the words “Nightwish,” “Ghost Love Score” and “reaction” into a search engine and briefly enter that rabbit hole. For a single dose, watch this “Charismatic Voice” reaction from an opera teacher — a video with 3.3 million views on YouTube and nearly 9,000 comments.

Opera? Yes, the lead singer in Nightwish — Floor Jansen — has extensive experience in musical theater and opera. If you have any questions about her voice control, note the ending of this live version of the song “Ad Astra.”

In this post, it also helps to know that Jansen has two young daughters, the second born several months ago after the singer’s battle with cancer. Also, keyboardist-composer Tuomas Holopainen is the kind of person whose worldview is rather sobering and it reflects his evolution (a word carefully chosen) on theological matters.

This brings us to the video embedded at the top of this post (with the lyrics in subtitles) — for the song “Noise.” Honestly, you could play this disturbing piece at the start of lectures by Jonathan Haidt, as he tours promoting (with good cause) his new book “The Anxious Generation.” Hold that thought.

I would like to use this video to demonstrate another piece of the media-apologetics work that I did long ago at Denver Seminary with my mentor, the late Haddon Robinson (click here for my chapter in a book published in his honor). The key: Once religious leaders spot a mass-media “signal” worthy of serious response, how are they supposed to work through that process?

While working with Dr. Robinson, I developed a four-step process to help apologists and cultural missionaries move from the “signal” to a worthy response. This is long, but essential. I will be using this process, from time to time, in future Rational Sheep posts:

Step one, obviously, is to find a specific media signal, as previously defined.

Step two requires honest, open-minded analysis. We want to find what I call the signal's “secular subject," as the artist would define it. Interviews often contain clues.

Remember that artists must attract and hold an audience. In one way or another they have to deal with real issues or with what we could even call “big ideas" — life, death, love, hate, money, marriage, sex, fear, children, anger, pride, hatred, war and so forth. We must ask: what was the subject that the artist wanted to address?

At this point, we pivot into the lives of parents, pastors, teachers and others in the world of families, faith and “screens culture.”

Step three mirrors step two. Once you have found this "secular subject,'' it will almost always have moral or theological overtones. It will be a "sacred subject'' that we share in common with saints and sinners down the ages. Stories change. Images change. Questions often sound new and strange. But the "big ideas'' are remarkably constant, because the stuff of human experience is the same.

Once you have matched a “secular subject” to the appropriate “sacred subject,” you are ready to address the lives of millions of people in the real world.

Step four is the hardest part, because it requires church leaders to think of ways to respond. This does not require a television network or digital equipment. I believe the church must respond by using its strengths — preaching, Christian education, prayer groups, retreats and other traditional forms of ministry.

However, I remain convinced that it is crucial to actually quote media signals as part of a response. In other words, we must confess that the myths and messages we consume on our couches and at our malls matter. We must talk to our people about their real lives and, like it or not, this means talking about popular culture. We must admit that we are listening. We must try to understand. By doing so, we are not letting the world hijack the church's agenda. We will merely be taking part in a debate in which the church cannot afford to remain silent.

In other words, we are trying to avoid what I have long called the “separation of church and life.”

Now, back to “Noise.” The video, I admit, contains strong images, but nothing that is more sobering than network television and many advertisements. Jansen, Holopainen and other members of Nightwish are, of course, in the video — with the lead singer pictured as the mother who leads her toddler to smartphone culture.

What do we know about the worldview of Tuomas Holopainen? If you want to know more about his move from Christianity to a “freethinker” stance (maybe), dig into this Google search. But here is a response from one interview:

"My question is for Tuomas: The early Nightwish songs feature a lot of Christian imagery and lyrics, and later the new album Endless Forms Most Beautiful is more of an atheist album dedicated to science. What lead to you becoming an atheist, and do you at all still relate to some of the Christian imagery in Nightwish?"

Tuomas: … The term "atheist album" is a bit silly, what does that even mean? But the album's thematics are heavily influenced by science, and beauty of the natural world and our rare existence, yes.

Religions are fascinating, though, and their history and imagery are inspiring tools for creating art.

I became a freethinker (secularist, atheist, agnostic ... whatever, it's all semantics) after realizing I have a (loose) belief in something I know nothing about. I suppose the biggest realization came from the fact that out of the 3500 existing religions in the world today, I happened to lucky enough be born to the single correct one...???! I felt a deeply uncomfortable twitch of arrogance.

That, and also, actually reading some of that "Good Book" made quite the difference.

I'm happy to stand before the big questions and say "I don't know", until we know better. And to know better, science, backed up by reason & evidence is the only way.

It isn’t surprising that the band has a large following among “spiritual but not religious” people, young and old. Thus, the band’s work includes quite a bit of material worthy of, from a Christian point of view, this response: “Good question, but we cannot affirm that answer.” Can anyone in ministry today ignore the world of “nones” and “none of the above” believers?

Meanwhile, in “Noise,” the Holopainen take on smartphone culture is, from my point of view, right on target. This is, for example, a music video that is clearly taking shots at the world of pop-culture images. More than anything else, this video is pro-child. Read the lyrics (on their own):

Crave the machine
Revere the screen
Zoom in for flak and misery
Bleed some pixels

Shoot yourself
Pose for the dead
Have a near-life experience
In a hot air matrix

Now you're a star
Vain avatar
Feeding the beast
In your loud Egoland

You have become
Tool of a tool
Digital ghouls
Telling you to
Shut up and dance

Color a yarn and the crowds will gather

Noise
From the sunless world
Your mirror is black, only a copy stares back
At a slave of brave new world
Noise
To decoy the human voice
Brain insomniac, paranoiac
Endless noise

Please love me
See how I bleed
Please endure
I have such empathy in me

Hum, noise, hum
Beautifully numb
Tapping the quiet air
To have a meaning

By a carrion
Sad hologram
Lost in the maze
The real and human feel

Sunset is free
From this deity
The Earth has a real voice
Go out and get in

Color a yarn and the crowds will gather

Noise
From the sunless world
Your mirror is black, only a copy stares back
At a slave of brave new world
Noise
To decoy the human voice
Brain insomniac, paranoiac
Endless noise

Feast your eyes on the black mirror
Feed the beast, join the gathering, tell a tale
Feast of fears is drawing nearer

Feast your eyes on the black mirror
Feed the beast, join the gathering, tell a tale
Feast of fears is drawing nearer

Beyond the human horizon
Something terrifying sleeps

Noise
From the sunless world
Your mirror is black, only a copy stares back
At a slave of brave new world
Noise
To decoy the human voice
Brain insomniac, paranoiac
Endless noise

Endless noise

Endless noise

What is the secular subject in this song? Yes, that would be smartphone culture. But what about the pointed reference to “Brave New World”?

Now, what is the “sacred subject”? As an Orthodox Christian, I would suggest digging into the vows contained in the Baptism Rite. What about Holy Scripture? Any suggestions?

Now, what about a proper response? Is the video too strong for use in a Christian education event linked to smartphones, parenting and, well, life as Rational Sheep? If so, focus on the words themselves.

Yes, I believe any response would have to wrestle with the worldview of Holopainen, but that is work that Christian apologists should be doing when wrestling with the creators of important “signals” in news and popular culture — period.

#Discuss.