Thursday, August 04, 2011

everythingisaremix is a rehash

A friend of mine pointed me recently to http://www.everythingisaremix.info/. I watched parts one and two, and I thought they were interesting but underwhelming relative to the thesis.

For example, doesn't every movie buff know that Lucas lifted this shot from Triumph of the Will?
It's quite well-known that Lucas was intentionally hearkening back to the serials of yesteryear, so the Flash Gordon tie-ins, while not something I already knew directly, were hardly surprising.

The "Language of Christianity" piece was even less impressive, because (for me) there wasn't any new trivia to discover. It was also disappointing to discover that a primary achievement of this video is simply to rehash some old confusion again. Take this screenshot, for example:

Well, as Kirby has already said in this video, "salvation" is a word with many meanings. The authors of the scriptures knew that, the Hebrews knew that, the Jews in Jesus' time knew that, Jesus knew that, Paul knew that, Augustine knew that... Now we skip a couple millennia and realize that Kirby's just figuring it out.

Furthermore, since this screenshot shows his attempt to clarify 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, it's obvious that he still doesn't understand the different meanings very well. Those verses are clearly about death and resurrection. (See verse 13 if you're not sure.) Kirby's argument seems to be: (1) The Bible refers to "salvation" in some places in the sense of making things better in this life. (2) 1 Thessalonians 4 seems to be referring to "salvation" somehow (even though the word isn't mentioned at all in , e.g., the NIV, which I happened to check first at biblegateway.com). Therefore, the concept of the "rapture" as it is drawn from 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is merely based on confusion about what "salvation" means. There are some problems with that argument as Kirby makes it.

Kirby is one more in a long line of folks who are confused about the Gospel of Christ. It includes both justification (by which Christians are made right with God) and sanctification, the process in which Christians strive to do good as the Holy Spirit refines them in the image of Christ. Justification and sanctification are not the same thing. Kirby's right: words can be tricky. I wish he had done a bit more research on the ones he attempted to expound.

I don't mean to knock what Kirby Ferguson is doing too much -- it's interesting storytelling with some surprising trivia for those of us who aren't experts in each of the areas he covers. It looks like Parts 3 and 4 get into the nature of creativity -- and that sounds more interesting, and more promising.

Lastly, I want to mention that Kirby doesn't really seem to be claiming that everything is a "remix". You "remix" recorded stuff: footage, sounds, etc. He talks about that once in a while, but he's really focused on ideas. I think his real thesis is that everything is a "rehash" of old ideas -- and both Solomon and I agree with Kirby about that:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9

Perhaps ironically, the fact that everythingisaremix is itself a rehash of a very old observation only goes to prove its point.