{"id":7810,"date":"2004-03-02T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-02T09:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/getting_real.html"},"modified":"2004-03-02T09:02:00","modified_gmt":"2004-03-02T09:02:00","slug":"getting_real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/getting_real.html","title":{"rendered":"Getting Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>One point that the conversations about this film has exposed, once again, as if it needed even more exposure, is the brazen hypocrisy of cultural pundits. In short: every artist\u2019s right to produce what he or she wants to produce is sacrosanct \u2013 except, this week, Mel Gibson\u2019s. We needn\u2019t worry our silly little heads about the impact of culture \u2013 unless, this week, it\u2019s Mel Gibson\u2019s movie under consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Pop culture is suffused with truly damaging content \u2013 content that demeans, that exploits our basest instincts, that simply makes us stupid sheep, critical senses anesthetized, addicted to stimulation, that seeks to shock rather than enlighten  \u2013 and we\u2019re told not to worry about it, not to violate artistic integrity, to just be grown ups and get a grip. Everyone\u2019s free, you know \u2013 free to create and free to turn it off \u2013 so we\u2019re all supposed to agree that anything goes for the artist.<\/p>\n<p>As well it should, I believe. I just wish the standards were the same \u2013 that if one artist is to be held accountable for the motivation, authenticity, truth and consequences of his work \u2013 then all artists will be. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One point that the conversations about this film has exposed, once again, as if it needed even more exposure, is the brazen hypocrisy of cultural pundits. In short: every artist\u2019s right to produce what he or she wants to produce is sacrosanct \u2013 except, this week, Mel Gibson\u2019s. We needn\u2019t worry our silly little heads&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Getting Real - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/getting_real.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Getting Real - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One point that the conversations about this film has exposed, once again, as if it needed even more exposure, is the brazen hypocrisy of cultural pundits. In short: every artist\u2019s right to produce what he or she wants to produce is sacrosanct \u2013 except, this week, Mel Gibson\u2019s. We needn\u2019t worry our silly little heads&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/getting_real.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-03-02T09:02:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Getting Real - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/getting_real.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Getting Real - Via Media","og_description":"One point that the conversations about this film has exposed, once again, as if it needed even more exposure, is the brazen hypocrisy of cultural pundits. In short: every artist\u2019s right to produce what he or she wants to produce is sacrosanct \u2013 except, this week, Mel Gibson\u2019s. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}