Here are a few thoughts on how university is going. Initially, this was going to be in an email, but I thought it’s the kind of general interest thing suitable for my blog, and putting it here saves me saying basically the same thing several times, and also gives me an excuse to point people to my blog in my emails!
I’m enjoying university at the moment. I think this term’s English modules are more interesting than last term’s. As far as the novels I’m studying go, Dracula was quite fun, and I’m now partway through reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It seems well-written but I’m somewhat dubious. It’s set in 1867, and the writer seems quite keen on evolution as an idea/theme, and uses the protagonist Charles’s acceptance of it as a shorthand way of setting him up as more intelligent and insightful than the other characters. That kind of thing has become a bit of a cliché through overuse. In Titanic, for example, Rose is shown to like Picasso and Freud’s ideas while her fianceé thinks they’re silly. As a shortcut to her having good taste and insight and him being a bit of an idiot I found it rather clumsy. The “Christian” characters in FLW also all seem to be hypocrites or monsters, which is also annoying.
This term’s Journalism module isn’t quite as interesting, however, but it was excellent last term. At the moment, we’re learning about semiotics and how to apply it to analysing “texts” (i.e. things that “produce meaning”, be they adverts, television programmes, films or whatever). The books and theory about it are all quite postmodern in their rejection of the idea of absolute truth. One of them, “Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide”, by Alan McKee starts by outlining the poststructuralist position (“all cultures make sense of the world differently: and it is impossible to say that one is right and the others are wrong”). He basically says that he used to be a Christian, but now he’s seen the light and so is now suspicious of anyone who claims their way of seeing the world is the only correct one!
The thing that annoys me in particular about Alan McKee’s book is that he charictures anyone who believes in absolute truth as a bigot who thinks their view is absolutely right and everyone else is absolutely wrong. We as Christians don’t (or shouldn’t) claim to understand the truth fully, but we believe that there is a truth out there to be understood. I’ve had fun heavily annotating the book with notes, observations and counterarguments in the margin. I wonder what the next person to borrow that copy from the library will make of it! I like borrowing copies with notes in the margin – it’s interesting to see what other readers have made of a book.
Christians are generally pretty hostile to postmodernism. But in one way it’s a more honest way of looking at things than modernism. The old way of thinking was that man can discover truth for himself by his own efforts and reasoning. Postmodernism has rightly recognised that we can’t do this. Unfortunately, it chooses to give up the search altogether rather than turn to God for truth.
I suppose I ought to begin on my essays soon. I did think about starting my English essay on poetry yesterday, but was busy was various bits and pieces and I got to the end of the day and found I hadn’t started it after all. I’m also trying to decide what to analyse for my Journalism essay. It needs to be a film or episode of a television programme. I think I’d rather choose a tv episode because it will be a bit easier to work from a smaller amount of material than an entire film. I might choose one of the Stargate SG-1 episodes from the DVD I bought a bit ago. It was the first issue of a DVD magazine partwork thingy, but the early episodes seem a bit hackneyed. But because it’s so obvious, it makes it fairly easy to analyse.
I enjoy Stargate, but I don’t think even the show as it is now is brilliant television for the most part – rather, it’s just good fun. I think some Doctor Who fans are going to be disappointed because in their minds they’re hyping the new show to be some epic masterpiece that will transform the face of British television. The pity is, those kind of expectations will probably stop them from enjoying it for what it hopefully will actually be – good fun teatime adventure for all the family.
Oh dear… I ought to have known I’d end up talking about Doctor Who sooner or later! Since I’ve wandered off my original subject and started rambling, I’ll put this already overlong post out of its misery- right now, in fact!