Letters to Laodicea

Continuing in the cult of celebrity, I read some quotes from Chris Hedges' book that I skipped last episode. And I discuss certain viewers' reactions to seeing Avatar, who came away depressed and sometimes suicidal, wanting to escape to the world of Pandora. I reiterate the importance of making Christ your mirror, rather than the movie screen.

This is an episode which starts a series exploring the cult of celebrity from my perspective as someone who works in Hollywood. I also read the entire book of Colossians, which is a letter that Paul instructed those at Colosse to share with the church of the nearby Laodicea. Because our current culture of celebrity is steeped in a background ideology borne of the new age, I thought this would be appropriate as I begin the look at celebrity--to remind us that Christ is the only one who deserves preeminence in our lives. Celebrities are just as human as we are, feel just as lost as we sometimes feel, and all too typically destructively so. Keeping Christ the center of your attention is the beginning of the destruction of the temple of idolatry that has found a home here in neo-Laodicea: the celebrity culture.

Stay tuned for part two in the series, where I discuss a book I recently read, called Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, by Chris Hedges. He challenges some of our comfortable notions about movies and television, as well as asking whether seemingly "non-fiction" events in the public discourse (such as politics) are just as contrived and constructed as those we watch on our fictional screens. This is not a book for the proud nationalist, as Hedges doesn't stay in the realm of the "normal" right wing Christian ideology. Nor is it a book for the faint of heart, as it also explores, very bluntly, the issue of pornography--the logical conclusion to the cult of celebrity.