the unsayable as transformation

today i found something that i think is pretty funny. there really really is, truly, a blogring called:

"all my favorite christian bands say fuck"

(now, mom, if you're reading, i want to make it clear that *I* did not just say that word. I would *never* say that word. Daniel, on the other hand...well, i'm just saying that maybe you should reconsider who should be your favorite son.)

(and in case you're reading and you're *not* my mom, my mom insists that she has no favorites, but my little brother convinces her to make sandwiches for him all the time. and plus, she calls me sometimes just to tell me what a hard life he has. It's kind of crazy, because he actually has this really posh job where he just sleeps until ten in the morning and then wakes up and tells a bunch of people what to do.)


so what i think is great about this is that B. Romanowski, in his good book, Eyes Wide Open, labels a group of christians as:

"Christians who drink beer."

and back when I was in college and John Fisher got banned from ever coming back to Cedarville, he had just written his book:

"real christians don't dance" (only with the don't cross out)

so my question is:

when will the madness end?!?! first christians dance, then they drink beer, then they (!) say fuck?

(no i didn't say that. I was just quoting. for goodness sakes, i'm a christian! )

My dad used to explain to me that one of the reasons that we didn't allow singers of "special music" (and if you don't know what that is -- ask me sometime for another interesting cultural analysis) to hold their microphones was because there was still some residual connotative baggage for those who had seen rock and roll become a cultural phenomenon and knew that the microphone had actually been used (!) to simulate sex acts.

Don't EVEN get me started on the ways those rockers used their guitars.

So anyway, my point is, that the name of this blogring is pretty fascinating. There's a very intentional interpenetration in these terms that introduces a new rhetorical possibility:

that people who have "favorite christian bands"

can also appreciate the value and power of saying:

"fuck"

(i'm telling you, I absolutely have impunity on that one. that actually even has the quotes around it. I would *never* say that word...)

John Cawelti writes that the successful popular fiction writer is able to manage:

"the delicate balance between convention and invention"

and I always tell my classes that this is *the* trick. If you can dwell for long enough in a given semiotic domain until you have the "chops" to use their conventions well -- then you will both earn the right (with them) to *invent* / introduce new ideas to them and the ability to say these things in ways that are hear-able.

but obviously finding that place is quite a precarious business.