FORKNI-L
Digest - 21 May 2007 to 22 May 2007 (#2007-55)
Tue, 22 May 2007
There are 3 messages totalling 217 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Nick and Sacramentality
2. Episode Discussion: Cherry Blossoms
3. Scheduling Episode Discussion: I Will Repay
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Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 23:05:22 -0700
From: "Amy R." <akr@l.......>
Subject: Nick and Sacramentality
In the digest that arrived 5/21/2007, Nancy Kaminski wrote:
><<This might be surprising to non-Catholic Christians>>
At first, I presumed that this post had meant to use the past
tense throughout that paragraph, referring to Nick's past. Then I
reached this note, explaining the assertion is meant to apply to the
present-day Church in the real world.
I'm Catholic, and I've personally never been discouraged from
reading the Bible, nor from interpreting it to the best of my ability
with tradition and scholarship as guides. I'm very sorry that was
your experience. I am grateful to live at this end of history, but
this is clearly an experience that can differ between people in the
present day. I also differ with some of the post's specific
present-tense assertions, but I don't want to jump to conclusions,
and I do want to stay on topic with FK.
The post brushes up against sacramentality and analogical
imagination, a reference poised for analyzing Nick! However, can we
go there without further stirring the religion pot, which is always
awkward and sometimes painful in public forums? I'd love to, but
it's a challenge. I'm going to try . . .
It's long been a custom that showing respect to a symbol also
shows respect to that which is symbolized. In Nick's mortal life,
that was so ordinary, deep and wide that it never needed to be
explained (was it even possible to explain it, before a certain point
in the cumulative progress of human thought?). Anyway, I believe
that is Nick's *style of knowing.* Before religion is doctrine, it
is experience, symbol and story -- not holy writings alone, but
holidays, games, food, art, community: an experiential bundle -- and
that's how mortal Nick grew up, boy and man, in a mostly illiterate
world, to absorb knowledge and reproduce it in his actions. I think
this is the way his imagination works; that is, I think that Nick's
pre-conscious mind still uses the templates of popular (not
necessarily scholarly) medieval Christianity, which, like modern
Catholicism and some other denominations and religions, was above all
*sacramental* -- by which I mean, it found the divine self-disclosed
in the creation.
Nick has had hundreds of years to learn alternative styles of
knowing, but from the episodes, I personally think he has
not adopted many on that deep level, not even when he arguably should have.
For me, the most potent example is Nick's determination to see
humanity as a state of grace (cf. "Near Death"). Muster the metaphor
either way, it still comes back that Nick seems to see his God in
humankind. Humanity is not lost, not doomed, not dispensable, but
the beloved image of God! That's so magnificently sacramental, it
delights me no end (even when I'm rabidly critiquing how Nick
completely misunderstood the Guide's point in ND, that he should have
tried to accept grace unearned, the brick, but that's another post <g>).
I think community (not just the vampire one, but all healthy
relationship networks) is another example of how Nick's imagination
analogizes the divine. This is distinct from humanity in being not
just a state but an interaction. Not only does Nick defend the
community as a law enforcement officer, he sustains its balance with
actions like bringing food to the homeless trio in "Dark Knight," and
his rampant denial (I don't think it was hunch alone, only him in all
the world; I think it was refusal to surrender the community for the
individual) in "A More Permanent Hell" -- those two seemingly
disparate choices by Nick come together in both exemplifying him
standing with society, not against it, because community as an
interaction between beings also seems to reflect God to him. He
repeatedly longs for acceptance not only by individuals, but into
communities (perhaps the "Dying to Know You" flashbacks, surely all
his professions doctor and lawman and teacher and artist) which
brings us back gloriously to "False Witness," where he acts one way
and is accepted, and acts another way and is outcast, but in both
consecutive choices he is trying to uphold the rules that sustain the
community. Nick is not often a destructive rebel -- am I forgetting
any flashbacks? I interpret that he stands with the oppressed (cf.
Ilsa in "Dead Issue," the LR character in second season, etc.) in
constructive solidarity instead, making changes for the better inside
the lines. Nick goes out of his way to elaborately correct Schanke's
"Eskimo" to "Inuit Aborigine" in "Partners of the Month," surely
mostly just to annoy Schanke and fight back against the annoyance
Schanke is being, but I like to think that line also supports a Nick
who passionately interprets the whole human community as one out of
its many parts.
And then there are those to whom he repeatedly turns for help:
doctors (Natalie, LNMTA past, "The Fix" past), lovers (Erica, Alyssa,
Janette), friends (Marise in CO past, Helen and Thomas-the-villain in
FaFo past, Catherine in FitP, Schanke, Feliks). That he feels
intervention and assistance are appropriate and possible, that no
number of betrayals or set-backs has made this impossible for him,
suggests that his imagination still assumes common cause is the
normal order of things, which would suggest he believes the universe
has been ordered for common good even if he thinks he has slipped
outside that order (cf. OtLo past).
I could go on and on suggesting that Nick's good qualities
support this hypothesis. But if it's to have any chance at credit,
I'd better dust off his bad qualities, too. He has no lack in that
area, poor flawed hero. <g> Nick is almost absurdly slow to
change. Three hundred years between his first epiphany and his
second (cf. "Love You to Death") is my favorite example. Committed
to sustaining the existing order because he sees the beauty and good
and possibility in it (cf. community, above), he frequently moves
much more slowly than he should. And then there is his loyalty to
Lacroix. It's not just ("just") filial affection or duty or even
love; it fits the paradigm in which obedience and loyalty are prime
virtues, and where the ordering of the creation is seen to reflect
the divine, then that loyalty is owed to the designated
representative in creation (as through the symbol to the signified,
cf. the ring in DK2&IWR past). And then there are the times Nick
expects that of others in turn, toward himself. If Nick's
pre-conscious worked differently, perhaps he could have staked
Lacroix centuries before DK. Would not many another character have
hit the Enlightenment and pushed Lacroix into the noonday sun? Funny
how little we know of Nick during the revolutions of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; third season brought us
him at the eve of the Russian Revolution ("Strings") of course, but . . .
Well, that's surely enough for now. Thank you for your
patience. I hope I have not offended anyone, or bored too
many! This is the first time in many years that I've gotten home
from work, opened the forkni-l digest, and compulsively typed and
typed instead of eating dinner or . . . good thing I set my VCR for
the _Heroes_ finale, or I'd have missed that, too! Goodness, how did
we manage a decade ago, when we all did this all the time?
(By the way, influence all over this post, yep, I'm a fan of
sociologist/novelist/journalist/priest Andrew Greeley, and yep, he
got the term "analogical imagination" from theologian David Tracy, of
whom he's a fan. All credit to them, any blame to me.)
Amy R.
Knightie
akr@l.......
Bright Knight: http://users.LMI.net/akr/fk/
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Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 08:39:29 -0400
From: "Phillips, Tim" <Tim.Phillips@s.......>
Subject: Episode Discussion: Cherry Blossoms
1) I like the little "real life" snippet that Natalie is dealing with
budget cuts and faced with laying off people - and is very concerned
about them once they do not have a job.
2) "I'll stonetree them" (Stonetree's response to being told they need
to keep the investigation away from the press). Funny little quip.
3) an amusing idea for a piece of fanfiction would be a short story
centered on the afterwork beer-musings of a group of Tornoto locksmiths
who keep repairing doorlocks that have been forced open by Nick or
another vampire simply twisting them so hard they break. That sort of
abuse has got to be unusual enough to be noticed.
4) Nick delivers a nice bit of blarney when he gets Schanke put in
charge of the task-force for the case so he can work alone.
5) Natalie: "most of my patients the last few years have been dead."
Nick: "well, then this will be a nice change"
6) I like Nick's solution to the guy with nun-chucks. Just kicking him
through the door is a move worth of Indiana Jones.
7) so is the paralysis trick with the needle know as the "Old Chinese
Man Needle Pinch" or what?
8) "these are old eyes"...to a Bladerunner fan there is a nice echo here
with this line delivered by this actor.
9) I absolutely love Janette's entrance to rescue Nick. Literally
steaming angry, clearly frightened for Nick as she arrives. Tearing the
door clean off the building and throwing it away like a discarded cereal
box. "10 seconds, he's dead!". Immediately leaping to Nick's defense.
And no one should ever accuse Janette of not thinking quickly on her
feet. She immediately catches on to what Nick wants and throws herself
into persuade someone she could probably kill before he could move that
Nick is not the cause of his pain.
10) Nice scene with Nick and Janette at the loft.
Her look after drinking the cow blood Nick has around is priceless
(as is her voice and shiver of distaste).
11) Natalie interruptus...you'd think either Nick or janette would have
heard the elevator cycling up. Guess they were too focused....
12) Nick looks REALLY concerned at the idea of Natalie and Janette
getting together to talk
Tim
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Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 08:41:25 -0400
From: "Phillips, Tim" <Tim.Phillips@s.......>
Subject: Scheduling Episode Discussion: I Will Repay
Hello,
I Will Repay is next.
May 29th is the day.
Tim
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End of FORKNI-L Digest - 21 May 2007 to 22 May 2007 (#2007-55)
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