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Wilson McMillan

Professor Bacote

Theology & the Arts

26 April 2021

Popcorn Pleasures

“Poison pleasures,” a term coined by Blaise Pascal in his famous wager, are the pleasures

of life possessing the lethal pairing of both the highest seductive allure and the lowest value

proposition. Pascal describes them as “glory and luxury,” the self-aggrandizing and

self-indulgent practices of licentiousness, greed, gluttony, and so on. These sort of life practices

are often seen, by the culture at large, as easy, cheap, and exhilarating, but Pascal argues that

their ultimate worth is vapid, “nothingness.” For Pascal, the choice is not whether you subscribe

to Christian doctrine or not, it’s whether you lead a soul-fulfilling life or not. Because all worldly

“poison pleasures'' prove to be, in the long run, a categorically bad investment for the human

soul. With or without a belief in an other-worldly Heaven or Hell, the worldly indulgences of

lust, greed, and glutton, lead to the worldly fallout of divorce, poverty, and obesity. Eliminating

religious disparity, all people can choose what pleasures and what life practices they indulge in,

invest their time in, center their life around, and in some form or fashion, worship. As David

Foster Wallace says in his This Is Water speech, “in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is

actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody

worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe

choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else

you worship will eat you alive.” There are many other “gods'' that humanity is capable of
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worshiping, but there is only one that can bring restoration both to the individual and to the

world. And as a Christian, it’s important to be ever-mindful of the leagues of poison pleasures

competing for one’s worship at any given moment. This mindfulness is essential, but—as is

evidenced by our current digital culture’s obsession with swiftly canceling anything found to be

remotely disagreeable—there is often a tendency to over-correct, to, in seeking justice, eliminate

both individuality and healthy discord. This disposition has frequently plagued the Christian

community as they delineate between “poison pleasures” and mere secular content. A common

tactic in avoiding worldly vices is to “shelter” one’s self from a large majority of secular culture

and content. A position that Steve Turner critiques in his book, Popcultured, saying “Just as we

don’t use the example of glutton to deter us from eating, we shouldn’t use the example of the

secularized reprobate to deter us from culture” The popcorn pleasures of cinema and music are

valuable mediums that, as is argued by Turner in Popcultured, Begbie in Reel Spirituality, Larsen

in Movies Are Prayers, as well as many others, film and music have an ability to not only

entertain but edify spiritual life, regardless of whether or not the creator behind the work was

secular or Christian. While there is certainly harm in consuming all sorts of film and music

without any filter, discernment, or critical thought, it is just as bad to dismiss the totality of the

art forms based on the disagreeable nature of a few works within them. That art form cannot be

perceived as totally corrupted due to the presence of corruption, or in spiritual terms, “devil

work”, in some pieces of art belonging to that medium. Turner follows his earlier quote later in

the same chapter saying, “Disapproving as a work of the devil anything we disapprove of is an

extreme to avoid… But the opposite extreme—there is no Devil, or the devil is inactive in

popular culture—is equally bad.” The Devil is apt to manipulate humanity’s disposition towards
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film and music to push his own agenda, but with the proper theological lens, trappings of sin

within media can be avoided. In short, broad dismissal is deadly, but discretion is vital. When

discretion, critical thinking, and a theological lens have been established as prerequisites to

secular media consumption, there is an abundant fount of theologically enriching challenges,

lessons, and queries to enjoy. A specific example of the intersection between theology, film, and

music that serves to enrich and flesh out all parties involved is seen in the film Logan, written

and directed by James Mangold, the album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West,

and the theological theme of reconciliation.

The narrative structures found within both MBDTF and Logan begin with characters who

have already undergone their respective hero’s journeys long ago. Kanye’s days of soul-sampling

his way into position as hip-hop’s golden child, and Logan’s days of unrelenting slashing down

of his enemies as the Wolverine, have come to a close. They are at a crossroads, where they can

either pursue one last shot at redemption, reconciling with what they’ve become, or accept a

forced retirement. Before we delve any further into the reconciliation narratives found within

each of these works we must first establish the context and background of these two characters at

the beginning of their tales. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was released in 2010 and was

the first album Kanye West had released since his public disgrace at the 2009 MTV VMA’s

where he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to say that Beyonce was the true creator

of the best music video of that year. This resulted in extreme fallout, as Kanye had fans and

celebrities alike expressing disdain for his actions, with even the current president at the time,

Barack Obama, calling him, “a jackass” in a 2009 CNBC interview. Music Journalist and host of

the Dissect podcast, Cole Cuchna, says of the fallout, “Kanye was deemed America’s villain
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overnight. The success and fame and celebrity he had accrued, was instantly put in jeopardy.”

Kanye’s public perception had hit rock bottom and many doubted if he’d be able to recover. The

character of Logan, as different as he may seem, was in much the same place. He had lived his

glory days as an X-men, fighting for justice and saving innocents, but he has now grown old. The

film Logan takes place in a future where the X-men have long been disbanded, Professor X

suffers from debilitating dementia, and Logan’s healing ability is slowing, causing the

adamantium in his body to, just as it took the lives of countless of his enemies, begin to take his

own. Logan’s days under the public gaze are long gone, and as such he suffered no public

disgrace as Kanye did, but Mangold begins his film showing the broken life of a former hero, a

hero forced to reconcile with both the adamantium poisoning him slowly and the fallout of

leading a life fraught with violence. Both Kanye West and Logan begin their journeys within

their respective album and film at a fork in the road, where they can either come to terms with

their present and have faith in their future or stubbornly cling to their past.

At the opening of both MDBTF and Logan, our protagonists are broken and beaten down

versions of themselves. This is clear to the audience, but the question is whether or not they will

themselves recognize that brokenness and seek reconciliation. Both of these pieces of film and

music are dense with narrative intricacy, subtext, and theological influence throughout the

entirety of their respective runtimes, but in the interest of maintaining the page length for this

paper, their journeys from spiritually broken to rejuvenated will be pared down. Specifically,

examining the beginning and the end of each character’s respective reconciliation journey.

Before these beginnings and endings are examined for their relationship with the theological

theme of reconciliation, however, the definition and Christian understanding of reconciliation

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must be clarified. Reconciliation, first and foremost within Christian doctrine, is a changing of

the relationship between God and man or between man and man. This type of relationship

reconciliation is seen in Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, where he writes, “All this is

from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of

reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s

sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians

5:18-19). This scripture references the re-establishing of the relationship between God and man

that was broken by the Fall. A relationship once again made possible, or in other words,

reconciled, via Christ’s interceding for the world’s sins through his death on the cross. The

exorbitant amount of sacrificial love on display in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection cues us

into another significant aspect of reconciliation, its cost. Reconciliation is not a close or even

distant relative to the new-age frugal attempts at healing broken relationships that propagate so

much of our modern culture. The brokenness within our community is evident and thus all sorts

of non-christian pseudo-spiritual remedies have arisen, from the writings of Depok Chopra to

Eckhart Tolle, but these a-religious spiritual practices often forgo a key component of the healing

process, be it of the relational or physical variety. The concept that true healing first requires

pain, that it mandates a willingness to sacrifice. Just as the cleansing pain of hydrogen peroxide

is required to bring healing to a wound, an individual cost is necessary to bring about the healing

of a relationship. But this self-denying model of healing is commonly disregarded in favor of a

form of healing that emphasizes a general radiating of “positive energy” and love, with no need

for personal costs such as forgiveness or self-denial. In the midst of a culture full of contradictory

ideas about what true reconciliation should look like, a clear outlining of its nature from a source
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with some ethos is highly valuable. Former Archbishop of Capetown and theologian, Desmond

Tutu, provides this, describing the healing process of reconciliation by saying, “True

reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness, in turn,

depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgement of what was done wrong,

and therefore on disclosure of truth.”

Now that an accurate model for Christian reconciliation has been clarified, we can begin

to examine MBDTF and Logan through a theological lens, specifically looking for where the

theme of reconciliation appears within their respective texts. First, we’ll take a look at MBDTF.

As observed earlier, both the real-life persona and character of Kanye West begin the album in a

place of brokenness, consumed by ego and surrounded by public scorn. The crux of Kanye’s

dilemma, however, is his lack of self-awareness. He is so deep in his self-indulgent lifestyle that

he is unable to see the “monster” he has become. Kanye at the beginning of MBDTF is ignorant

to the fact that he has become the monster. He is aware that something wrong but doesn’t know

what. Kid Cudi voices Kanye’s inner monologue, singing the chorus on the second track of the

album, Gorgeous, “Aint no question if I want it, I need it, I can feel it slowly drifting away from

me.” The “it” Kanye is referring to here is his power. In his crazed, broken state of mind, he

knows that he “needs it” but after his real-life events prior to the album Kanye is left scrambling

as he watches it drift away from him. This mindstate reveals two major spiritual flaws currently

at work in Kanye’s soul. Firstly, his ignorance of the depravity of his monstrous lifestyle, and

secondly, his uncontrollable lust for power (a flaw further exemplified in the third track, fittingly

named, Power). South African writer and Pastor Andrew Murray speaks specifically to sin’s

ability to be committed while the committer is ignorant to its presence, saying “One great power
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of sin is that it blinds men so that they do not recognize its true character.” This is a truth rooted

in biblical scripture, as the Bible draws a clear line delineating both the ignorance of sin and

coveting of power as spiritual folly. Matthew 7:3, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in

your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” This is an accurate

description of Kanye’s current plight, as he is unaware of the magnitude of his own depravity,

while at the same time rapping lines critiquing other rappers for, “writing bulls**t like they gotta

work.” And lust for power and wealth is commonly named as one of the chief vices of man

throughout scripture, specifically, this is seen in 1 Timothy 6:9, which says “Those who want to

get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge

people into ruin and destruction.” In the opening few tracks of MDBTF Kanye is lost in a maze

of his own spiritual brokenness, but being disillusioned into believing he is still a king of culture,

he is unaware of his being in the maze, and thus, he blindly plunges deeper, led by his desperate

hunger to maintain his perceived power.

Having the beginning of Kanye’s arc examined, we will now observe the parallel broken

protagonist of Logan from the film of the same name. The opening scene of the film finds Logan

asleep in the back seat of a limousine parked in a dirt lot off the highway. This is not the

character we’ve come to know from the glitzy blockbuster X-Men films. Logan is older, slower,

and likely drunk. This is his limousine. He drives people around in it to make enough scratch to

eat and pay for Professor X’s medicine. As the scene continues Logan awakes to the noise of

some thugs trying to jack his tires. Slowly Logan gets out of the car and approaches the men, the

Logan we once knew would probably immediately run away from due to either the thugs

recognizing him as an American superhero or simply being intimidated by his physical

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appearance and claws. However, the iconic visage of Wolverine has long since faded, and thus

these thugs take one look at Logan and his partially emerged claws and swing a crowbar at him.

Logan is not the hero he once was, and in fact, he’s of the mind that he isn’t a hero at all. Later

on in the film, a Hispanic woman approaches him asking for help, saying “Please. I need a hero.

You’re the only one who can help.” To which Logan replies, “Don’t we all.” Logan is in the

same broken place as Kanye, with his power slipping from him (and even poisoning him in the

case of his adamantium claws) and the public’s back turned on him. Only Logan differentiates

himself from Kanye, in that, he isn’t desperate to hold on to the power he once had, he’s just

lethargically resigned to the world. While Logan’s response to his broken spirit is not as volatile

as Kanye’s, it is still just as spiritually bankrupt. As seen in 1 John 3:17, “If anyone has the

world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love

abide in him?” The visual of one closing their heart to another is seen directly in the scene

mentioned earlier with the Hispanic woman. Later Logan shares a scene with Professor X where

he tells the professor, “You always thought we were part of God’s plan. Maybe we were just

God’s mistake.” The “we” Logan is referring to here is mutants. Logan is a shell of his former

self, driving around bachelorette parties and prom kids to make ends meet, refusing to aid those

in need, and existentially questioning if it was all a mistake. Logan is broken.

Now that we’ve gotten a glimpse of the spiritual state of mind that both Logan and Kanye

were in towards the beginning of their reconciliation arcs, we will now see both characters’

moments of reconciliation. A reconciliation with themselves as well as with their fellow man.

For Kanye, this moment of reconciliation comes in the ninth track on MBDTF, Runaway.

Runaway is the point that all of Kanye’s anger and desperation on the previous eight tracks
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comes to a head. In Gorgeous, the track we looked at earlier, Kanye writes “Aint no question if I

want it, I need it, I can feel it slowly drifting away from me.” Now, in Runaway, Kanye has come

to terms with the monster he has become, and rather than clutching desperately to the power and

love he holds dear, he sings “Runaway from me baby.” The “baby” Kanye is referring to can be

interpreted as a broad representation of everything he loves. Kanye overcomes his ignorance and

lack of self-awareness that we saw on display earlier. He acknowledges the “plank” in his own

eye and recognizes that he too is one of the scumbags that he mocked in earlier tracks. As

Desmond Tutu outlined earlier, reconciliation comes at a cost. Sacrifice is necessary and grace

must be offered to the one who caused the brokenness in the first place. For Kanye, the person

who wrecked his life was himself, and thus he needs to forgive himself in order to achieve

self-reconciliation. Kanye recognizes the flaws that he made, singing “I know I did damage” and

then he offers himself forgiveness, but in reconciling with himself for the damage he has caused

to the things he loves most, he realizes that he has to let those things go. The last lyric in the song

is a repetition of the line, “Run away fast as you can.” Here Kanye can be viewed as the young

rich man from Luke 18. He has to turn his back on his way of life and sacrifice what he loves, or

“sell all his possessions,” to follow God and achieve reconciliation; a sacrifice of the material for

a healing of the spiritual.

Logan’s journey is at the same time very different and very similar to Kanye’s. Both

began their stories believing that their salvation was found in material possession—for Logan, a

Sunsetter boat, and for Kanye the general prospect of wealth—but their responses to the

callousness of the world are very different, as Kanye responded in anger and Logan got callous

right back. Logan’s journey is that of self-reconciliation as well, but that is less to do with the
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damage he has caused ala Kanye and more to do with his utter detachment from the outside

world. Throughout Logan the character of Logan is, despite his initial refusal, helping a mutant

girl named Laura get across the country to escape from men who want to experiment on her. His

character mirrors that of the old mercenary from the film True Grit, Rooster Cogburn, as both

Cogburn and Logan are more motivated by the cash offered to them for their services than any

moral obligation or pursuit of justice. Following this same journey as Cogburn, Logan begins to

slowly care less about the money and more about the girl. By the end of the film, Logan is sick.

His body is still torn up from his earlier fight with his mutant clone, X-24, and the adamantium is

poisoning him even further. He has medicine that, in small doses, is helping him to heal, but with

too much, as Logan says himself, “It’ll kill you.” Before Laura leaves from the rendezvous point

with her mutant friends they give Logan the envelope of cash, but he refuses, saying “Keep it.”

The mutants go on without him and Logan is left alone in their encampment reckoning with his

decision to not join them. Suddenly, he sees a military convoy tear in the direction that the

mutants went and without hesitation runs after them. He quickly exerts himself, however, and as

he’s about to lose consciousness he grabs the bottle of medicine and injects the rest of it. This

scene evokes the scripture of Revelations 3:2, where God says to his the Church in Sardis,

“Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works

complete in the sight of my God.”

This is the Runaway of this film, where Logan must become aware of the flaws in his

apathetic and faithless life and commit himself to someone outside of himself. To, even in his old

age, as he fights off his own sickness, sacrifice himself for this girl, for Laura. Logan had to

reconcile with the callous person he had become, as well as reconcile with the world he turned
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his back on, specifically represented in the film as Laura. In this scene Logan doesn’t “close his

heart against” his brother, but rather, opens it, giving all he has left to his fellow mutants. In the

final moments of this scene, Logan has to face off once again with X-24, and in this moment he

parallels Kanye’s “Runaway from me baby,” saying, “Listen to me, Laura. Run.” Logan pleads

to be abandoned, sacrificing both the only meaningful relationship he has left, and his life, to

help Laura escape. It may strike some as strange initially to examine a moment of bloodshed as a

meditation on reconciliation, but of course, the ultimate reconciliation between God and man

was brought about by Christ’s death on the cross. And so, in following the model of Christ,

Logan dons a position of humility, sacrificing his life, and in doing so, heals his own broken

relationship both with himself and with Laura.

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Sources

Larsen, Josh. Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings. IVP Books, an

Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2017.

Pascal, Blaise. Penées. Translated by W. F. Trotter, CreateSpace Independent Publishing

Platform, 2011.

Turner, Steve. Popcultured: Thinking Christianly about Style, Media and Entertainment. IVP

Books, an Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2013.

Tutu, Desmond. “Statement by Desmond Tutu On His Appointment to The Truth and

Reconciliation Commission.” Desmond Tutu On His Appointment to The Truth and

Reconciliation Commission, 30 Nov. 1995,

www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/pr/1995/p951130a.htm.

Wallace, David Foster. “This Is Water by David Foster Wallace.” Farnam Street, 14 Jan. 2021,

fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/.