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Christians, the U.S. Military, and the Sex Trade

Thanks very much to Richard Pierard for his review of the two books on American Christians and the U.S. military ["For God and County, Ambivalently," May/June]. One related issue that re mains to be taken up by conservative Christians is the U.S. military's longstanding and ongoing involvement in supporting and sustaining the sex industry in East Asia. Every year, thousands of American sailors take sexual advantage of impoverished Asian girls and young women in ports of call such as Pattaya Beach, Thailand. Tragically, so far as I can tell, most chaplains have little to say about the matter, and conservative Christians who know what's going on in such places say nothing, for fear of seeming disloyal to the military.

I myself served in the U.S. Navy for four years, and I feel a great sense of gratitude toward the service, which rescued me from the wretched neighborhood I grew up in. Yet evil must be called what it is, and the U.S. military's longstanding role in fostering the sex industry in Asia is undeniable. This is not a case of boys being boys; it's a case of drunken abuse and pillage perpetrated upon the destitute.

It is a singular disgrace that conservative Christians have left this issue to the anti-military Left. In August I'll be speaking to some 30 Presbyterian chaplains about this matter. Let us hope that change is in the offing.

Preston Jones
Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, Calif.

Bauer Unfair to Morissette

I am elated that B&C has hit upon the idea of offering Christian commentary on popular music. That Susan Wise Bauer ["Corporate-sponsored Spontaneity," May/June] couldn't pull it off should not discourage you from continuing to try. The thinly veiled disdain she displays in her review of Alanis Morissette's concert video is much less generous—and helpful—than a thought fully critical engagement with the artist's work would have been.

The way Bauer mocks Morissette's performance, as well as her fans, and derides her admittedly privileged way of life, would almost lead the reader to believe that the religious value of music is reducible to its creator's autobiography. But Bauer also refuses to attempt any sympathy with the singer's fans, whom she casts as basically deluded—while Bauer interprets the music with the same flat-footed preproduced predictability she finds in Morissette's own work. Bauer's conclusions—that a rock concert is heavily scripted, that Morissette and her handlers have attempted to manipulate a nation of malleable youngsters, and that her religious references are hokey and vague—are all stock topoi in "religious" writing about popular music.

Somewhere between mere Alanis worship and Bauer's implicit charges of false consciousness (on the part of Morissette and her fans) there is a substantial Christian commentary on this (and all) popular music waiting to happen. I hope B&C will try again.

Tom Beaudoin
Somerville, Mass.

John Wilson replies:

Tom Beaudoin is a sharp-eyed observer of contemporary culture whose book Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X has been re viewed in these pages ["In Brief," November/December 1998] and whose name, we may hope, will be seen here again, perhaps among our contributors. His letter, however, exhibits a confusion that seems worth pointing out, because it is so widespread.

Susan Wise Bauer clearly does suggest that Morissette's fans are deluded and complicit in their delusion. There's nothing covert about that judgment, nor is it insubstantial. Of course it could be wrong—Beaudoin clearly believes that it is—but if so it needs to be treated, and refuted, on its own merits. Beaudoin doesn't give us any reasons for rejecting Bauer's judgment; he merely surrounds it with emotive gestures, referring, for example, to the way Bauer "mocks Morissette's performance." Well, some may find Beaudoin's own tone a tad mocking—but who cares, finally? Are we back in the First Church of the Sensitive, where robust disagreement is "unspiritual," verboten? Is this the same man who led readers on a tour of "the irreverent spiritual quest of Generation X"?

As for "stock topoi" (topos, plural topoi, is "a traditional theme or motif"), topoi are so topoish for a good reason. Consider, for example, Ann Powers's review of a show by Courtney Love and Hole (New York Times, May 24, 1999). "Courtney Love was in control," Powers writes:

Ms. Love hoisted admirers up herself when not riding the shoulders of a bouncer to shake their hands or orchestrating the dishevelment of her slippery evening dress. She showed the blend of raucous spontaneity and intense calculation that makes her a remarkable rock star.

Powers writes like an angel—"orchestrating the dishevelment": that is marvelous!—and she and Bauer seem to be working the same topos, perhaps because the reality they are observing forces it on them. As the review proceeds, Powers drives the point unmistakably home:

What remains fascinating about Hole, though, is the wrestling match between Ms. Love's brain and her gut desire. She dragged all those people on stage because she believes in rock's power to touch everyone with a little stardust. Then she posed like the madly narcissistic Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard" and spat out lyrics about selling out. She knows that popular culture is a big lie, but she lives by it. As long as she walks that tightrope, she will merit the platform she's built.

In that remarkable assessment—"She knows that popular culture is a big lie, but she lives by it"—I see much the same moral terrain Bauer described in her review of Morissette. Powers and Bauer differ in their judgments be cause their world-views are radically different, but they are working from the same observations. Neither judgment, it seems to me, is insubstantial, but of course both cannot be right.

Oh, the Ovenbird Is a Pretty Bird …

In Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin, Robert Faggen makes a mistake that was repeated but not identified in Mark Walhout's review of Faggen's book ["A Poet Reads Darwin," January/February]. The mistake is to equate two bird species that are both known by the common name "ovenbird" but are in fact two entirely different taxa. The ovenbird Darwin describes in chapter 5 of The Voyage of the Beagle is a South American bird of the genus Furnarius, family Furnariidae (note the correct generic spelling; the spelling on p. 55 of Faggen's book is incorrect). The bird that Burroughs described in the passage quoted by Faggen and mentioned by Walhout, and the bird that Frost was almost certainly referring to in his poem, "The Oven Bird," is a wood warbler, Seiurus aurocapillus, family Fringillidae. Both ovenbirds build somewhat dome-shaped enclosures for their nests, hence the common name, but they are only distantly related (both are members of the order Passeriformes but are in different suborders).

Frost no doubt knew the warbler; it is a common resident of the New England woods in summer but is migratory and not found there in the winter. In his poem Frost describes the bird as "Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird" but anticipates "fall," when "the highway dust is over all." This makes no sense if applied to the South American ovenbird, which is nonmigratory.

Of course, Frost may have intended deeper meanings for "the fall" and the "dust" (of Gen. 3:19?). Faggen claims that Darwin was Frost's inspiration for the poem and disagrees with previous interpreters who trace Frost's interest in the ovenbird to other writers such as Thoreau. Walhout is right to question Faggen's overwrought effort to find Darwin's influence where it isn't in Frost's work, but neither Faggen nor Walhout explains why Frost's own experiences with this common species could not have provided sufficient background for his poem.

C. Michael Stinson
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney, Va.

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