Lately, however, I’m starting to wonder if there are games and forms of competition that not only aren’t good, but are fundamentally antithetical to a Christian vision and existence. Like some cultural activities, there are games that perhaps the Christian should refrain from playing. With such games, abstinence might be the greater exercise in Christian obedience and formation. Catan, I think, is such a game. Playing Pictionary and basketball can be profitable; the same cannot be said of Catan.

Catan brings out the worst in people. And not just people in general, but good people — fluffy, kind, gentle people. It’s an insidious masquerade of a game that causes the most placid and civilized to degenerate into the most tempestuous and belligerent. It is a spacious vessel that transports masses into the dark abyss of nothingness. It causes you to have the fierce urge to backhand someone you would never raise your voice to — like your mother. I kid you not, I have spoken to couples who have split up because of Catan. Indeed, “irreconcilable differences” has taken on a whole new meaning. I no longer play with my wife.

I’m not calling into question the factual (perhaps a bit overstated for effect?) claims Bennet makes about how Catan often results in arguments and strife. I myself have seen the game give rise to arguments among friends and family. There’s no question that the competitive nature of Catan can get to some people. The question at hand, though, is whether Catan is responsible.

The answer to this is kind of obvious, right?

Most of us know the feeling of getting just a little too angry during any game. Those who play sports are particularly familiar with this. The nature of any game is that we allow the stakes to be artificially higher for a period of time, during which we all pretend to our utmost that the outcome of the game itself somehow matters. But deep down, we all know the truth: it really doesn’t. Unless we’re playing college or professional sports and have a career on the line, there is little reason to experience any true emotional trauma because of the game. But then, sometimes, we do.

Some games really do reward that unchecked aggression. Football players are often encouraged to “save it for the field” and instead, channel all of their personal grudges towards some guy wearing the opposing team’s jersey. But that is not Catan. Bennet has it all wrong. While he claims that Catan is “designed with the most conniving and destructive intentions and methods ever conceived,” and that it “forces you to seek the misfortune of your opponents,” he’s talking about the fact that in order for you to win at Catan, the other players must obtain less resources and have less opportunity to score points. He’s right about that — but this is the case with almost any game. Astoundingly, he claims that “[p]laying Pictionary and basketball can be profitable; the same cannot be said of Catan.” I don’t understand the difference, and he never shares any secret knowledge in the article that clarifies what makes Catan so unprofitable.

The truth is that, yes, some games are more profitable than others. Some push our ethical limits. Balderdash asks us to “bluff”. Games like Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica often force one player to be the “traitor”, sowing mistrust in the group. Many videogames ask us to “kill” other players for points. None of these games are inherently “antithetical to a Christian vision and existence” because as long as they remain games, they take place in a separate context than the rest of life. Like a digital avatar on a videogame screen, the actions we take in a board game are mere representations of real-life actions: they are not the actions themselves. If we are able to keep that perspective, not only are we able to play them with a clear conscience, but we will be able to learn from them.

This is far more than a mere compartmentalization of life or an easy excuse. It’s an acknowledgement that games are practice for reality, rather than reality itself. Games provide us with an opportunity to experiment with the cause and effect of our various choices. In the context of games, because the stakes are actually false, so are the virtues. Because the virtues are false, so are the vices. Otherwise, we would find ourselves unable to play chess (a game with the ultimate goal of assassination) in any way that is remotely justified.

Games are only as profitable as we allow them to be, and in order for them to serve their purpose, we must first approach them rightly. Perhaps the #1 rule of approaching a game rightly is as follows: take it seriously, but keep your perspective. The stakes may seem high at times, but they are not high in the context of our real lives. It seems almost certain from this article that Bennet struggles with this rule:

A lot of playing happens, but I can’t say the same about fellowship. About fifteen minutes into the game, the fellowship often ends. Abruptly. Discussing struggles and praising physical, mental, or spiritual triumphs of the previous week is usurped by droves of expletives. And I mean droves. I’ll be honest, after Monday nights, I have to repent.

To be honest, the whole article is kind of heartbreaking for me. You won’t see me arguing that Bennet should suck it up and keep playing: it’s clear that playing Catan is resulting in a string of bad experiences for him, and that’s just unpleasant and not worth the trouble. But perhaps he should consider addressing the root of the issue: that he takes a game, on a board, with little wood houses and roads and in supposedly friendly competition with friends, as seriously as he might take an election or a church meeting or a war. They are not the same. Take a breath, consider the outcome, and just have some fun.

Bennet says he loses a lot. So do I. I love games, but I am awful at pretty much all of them. But I appreciate them nonetheless, because of the way they break the ice with friends and strangers, because of the way they illuminate our personalities, and because they provide a low-stakes playground in which we can experiment with and evaluate our values system without fear of actual transgression or relational hurt.

Settlers of Catan is about more than the ruthless destruction and usurping of our friends’ stuff. It’s about demonstrating patience long enough for that eventual windfall. It’s about exercising stewardship over limited resources. It’s about sucking it up and adapting when your plans don’t pan out as you’d hoped. It’s about learning to be kind when you are able so that your rival won’t be preoccupied with sticking you with the robber. It’s about managing pride, because no one likes a threat. Like any game, Catan is about winning. But it’s also about patience, discipline, humility, and kindness.

My friends and I have gotten frustrated, even angry at one another during a game of Catan. I’ve seen yelling matches, game-long pouting sessions, and even game pieces fly across the room. But in each of these games, we learn something about one another. We take those lessons and move on. We don’t dream of carrying the burden of the game into the rest of the week. We know, ultimately, that our rivals in Catan are not our real rivals. We take our frustrations and leave them on the wheat field.

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne.

10. Repent, for the Stupocalypse is Nigh!
By Carissa Smith, March 24th, 2011

In this article, Carissa looks at a peculiar genre of film and fiction that invisions humanity’s future as doomed by stupidity. She focuses on M. T. Anderson’s YA novel Feed (2002), Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy (2006), and Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story (2010), but also explores the larger question of how technology is effecting our lives and whether we should resist:

“At their best, the prophets of the stupocalypse remind us that what is at stake is not really intellect but rather the malformation of the soul. . . .What concerns me about the future is less the diminishing of intellectual capability . . . but rather the ways in which we are complacently allowing ourselves to be formed by technology use, without reflecting on its influence.”

9. “Nostalgia For the Absolute” in Terrance Malick’s Tree of Life
By Nick Olson, July 25th, 2011

Tree of Life, our #1 film of the year,  may well be the most visually stunning film of the year, or the decade, if some viewers are to be trusted. In this feature, Nick helps us to investigate the web of meaning and significance within this beauty by tracing some of the philosophical influences upon Malick and highlighting the role of the Gift and Grace at the center of his film.

“Many critics — myself included — have used the word ‘impressionistic’ to describe Malick’s aural, visual, and intellectual feast. The most lasting impression that the film inspired in me was a sense of awe at both the beauty of creation and the inherent contingency of my own existence upon that creation. I’m quite certain that this film will leave a wide variety of impressions amongst its viewers. It is certainly a film that inspires intensely personal memories, reactions, and emotions. Malick invites us to bring our own unique experience of family life, and we’re left to wonder to what extent nature and grace has been cultivated in our own lives. Have we failed to “notice the glory” like Mr. O’Brien? Or has the symphony of grace all around us de-centered our tendency to live a self-focused existence?”

8. Dear Driscoll, MMA is Not a Measure of Manhood — Jesus Is
By Brad Williams, November 17th, 2011

Mark Driscoll loves MMA, a lot (and videogames, not a bit). In fact, he appears to be under the impression that most men should love fighting and competition and domination, which seem to be biblical qualities of manliness to Driscoll. In any event, Driscoll wrote a post defending UFC “biblically,” and our own Brad Williams pinned him to the mat (metaphorically) and forced Driscoll to tap out (that’s a thing, right?) with his response, which looks at what biblical “manhood” is and why he “could never” knee a brother in Christ to the face (so he says, but don’t press your luck):

“Think of it, Christian. It’s easy to understand an all-powerful God laying waste to His foes. You don’t even have to be all-powerful to do it: Zeus did that to the Titans. What is unworldly, unnatural, and man-changing is the idea of an all-powerful God-man allowing weak, pitiful, wicked creatures to spit on him, beat him, and nail him to a tree. His glory is found in his groaning, not only in his roar. I don’t love Jesus because he can pin me to the mat: I love him because he didn’t. I love him because he never will. He is strong and mighty, but it’s his compassion for the weak that captivates.”

7. The Beautifully Dark Side of Videogames
By Richard Clark, March 23, 2011

Could video games teach us something meaningful about our desires and our inclination towards sin? Unlike other artforms, which occasionally try to hide the reality of sin and come off sentimental, Richard argues that video games reveal our sin nature:

“When I am given a blatant moral choice, I may make the outwardly righteous choice, but my inward tendency still remains. I do what it takes to progress, not because it’s right, but because it alleviates my boredom and allows me to feel good about myself. While playing Pitfall, I used crocodile heads as stepping stones. In the city of Rapture, I killed untold numbers of people, simply because they are insane. It wasn’t enough to win a match of Mortal Kombat against my friend; once he was unconscious, I had to turn into a dragon, and bite him in half.”

6. Illegal Immigrants: People, Not Political Capital
By Brad Williams, September 20th, 2011

Alabama passed a law last year which made it a lot easier to arrest and deport illegal aliens, and in so doing put a lot of pressure on illegals in ‘bama to leave the state. To many people, including many Christians, this law was a great idea: it punished law breakers and lifted a burden from the state. But Brad has some objections. It turns out, those “illegals” are actually humans, and deporting them is a bit messier than many politicians would have us think. This is one of several CaPC articles that we will probably be reposting on Facebook throughout the election year as a healthy reminder to my friends and family:

“This political season, please try to remember that illegal immigrants are not money sponges who are looking to exploit our welfare system. They are men and women with families and dreams, and most of them are here to work and better themselves. They are image-bearers of God, and sojourners in our land: our response should be mercy, not wrath.”

5. Scientific Advance, Art, and Horsing Around With Humanity
By Jason Morehead, September 26th, 2011

Today, for my art, I will be injecting myself with horse blood and prancing around a room with pseudo-horse-legs. For art. And science. Weird? Shocking? Silly? Jason reminds us that the future of scientific advancement will be very strange, and that there are already movements like “transhumanism” which seek to drastically challenge our understanding of humanity. We may not want to think about the idea that the concept of “human” will be increasingly challenged in the coming years, but as Christians, we need to be aware of the world around us:

“The traditional Christian belief that human beings are somehow unique and set apart from the rest of Creation (because we’ve been created in image of God) and have been set in a position of governance and stewardship over Creation has been called into question by these numerous advances. If we’re able to develop robots and computers that are increasingly capable of artifical intelligence, what does that do to notions of our own reasoning capabilities? As we become increasingly capable of improving and enhancing the body via cybernetics, genetic engineering, and other such “upgrades”, how does that shape our view of the human body, which we believe to be a temple meant to honor God?”

4. The Magician King: Enduring the Loss of Eden
By Carissa Smith, September 13th, 2011

Continuing her work reviewing Lev Grossman’s Magicians series, Carissa writes a thoughtful and thorough review of The Magician King, paying particular attention to how Grossman’s work intersects with C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and what it means to a modern reader to lose Eden:

“Despite all their hyper-referential snark, Grossman’s novels strike me as genuinely longing for a lost Eden. They reflect a zeitgeist in which we know we can’t build the perfect society. We know that heaven can’t be earned, only granted—but, entitlement-prone generation that we are, we feel that it ought to be granted to all of us, as our rightful inheritance. To those with this mindset, what the gods choose to give and take away seems purely random.”

3. Is Tim Tebow Christianity’s MVP?
By Drew Dixon, December, 8th, 2011

Tim Tebow plays football, allegedly, in Denver, which is a city in “Colorado” USA. You might have heard his name mentioned or have witness the hot-new-trend that is his namesake: Tebowing! Christians have had very mixed responses to Mr. Tebow this year. They love his football playing skills, or they hate them. They love his proud and open faith, or they find it obnoxious and offensive. What’s a Tebow supposed to do (to quote Billy Corgan, sort of)? Drew dives into the debate with a healthy reminder of what we can and cannot say about Tebow’s heart, and how we ought to respond to his public displays of affection for God:

“Biblically speaking, public piety tells us very little about someone’s faith. Prayer is a religious act and John 3:16 is a verse—neither actually tells us all that much about Tebow’s character and whether it’s worthy of applause. While I appreciate Tebow’s public piety, I find myself wanting to gently warn the millions of Christians following his story that his public displays of faith are not necessarily indicative of what it means to follow Jesus.”

2. ‘Go the **** to Sleep’ and the Backlash against ‘Perfect’ Parenting
By Erin Newcomb, June 30th, 2011

So, this guy writes a “kids” book that expresses what just about every parent has felt at one point or another: “Please go the @#$@#% to sleep so I can rest!,” and it explodes on the Internet. The book was extremely popular when it came out, although, naturally, some Christians found it to be in bad taste. The gimmick is that the book has cute, kiddy illustrations juxtaposed with the F-bomb. In one of the best CaPC articles I think we’ve ever published, Erin explores the book, its popularity, and the controversy, in a way that is engaging, poignant, and downright wise. If you missed it earlier this year, read it:

“The lingering conversations for me and my husband centered not around the crude language but around the necessity of grace. Of all the prayers I can say on behalf of my daughter, I keep returning to the supplication for grace—to cover the parenting mistakes I see and the ones I don’t even realize I make, to appeal to the one Perfect Parent who understands the frustration of watching His children struggle for rest and peace. Parenting my daughter takes me to new heights of joy and unplumbed depths of anxiety, but it hasn’t brought me any mystical wisdom—just the echo every evening that I can’t control everything, even bedtime. Mansbach’s book iterates that frustration, the fragility of parenthood, in cathartic sentiment if uncouth execution.”

1. Happy Valley: The Delusion of Penn State’s Paradise, Lost
By Nick Olson, November 13th, 2011

The story of Penn St.’s sexual abuse scandal and the fall and death of Joe Paterno might be the biggest college sports story of the school year. We learned that the beloved coach had done little to stop what he had good reason to believe was the sexual abuse of minors by one of his coaches: America’s favorite sport was soiled by America’s most despised crimes. In his moving and personal article, Nick brings the Gospel to bear on the Penn St. scandal without trivializing the abuse that boys suffered or treating Paterno as a sermon illustration. Nick’s article is about Penn St., “Happy Valley,” our culture, and our hearts. It is an excellent feature, whether you are a Penn St. or Paterno or football or sports fan or not. Read it:

“People have been quick to dump burning coals on everyone involved in the scandal, and rightly so. I would hope that child molestation would still be a sharply foul odor to our moral senses. But we should also question the cultural conditions that might lead a man into a downward spiral to the point where he, a 60 year old, could sexually exploit and damage adolescent boys. Make no mistake, if Sandusky is a monster, then our culture is a horror story: 1 in 6 boys are molested by age 16, and 1 in 4 girls are molested by 18. If, at root, the problem includes pride, selfishness, and the propensity to view other people as objects for our own personal pleasure, then perhaps we need to consider not just the monstrosity that Jerry Sandusky devolved into, but the foundational conditions for this monstrosity that are also at root in all of us—even in Happy Valley.”

10. Hugo 3D
While it might help to be a cinephile of Scorsese’s caliber to appreciate Hugo, loving his first “family” film has less to do with having an appreciation of film history, and more to do with having a childlike sense of wonder and imagination. Set in 1930’s Paris, Scorsese’s Dickensian 3D adventure is about an orphan boy named Hugo Cabret who is trying to find his place and purpose in the world after losing both his mother and father in separate incidents. Hugo’s father was a master clockmaker who passed along a love for automation and mystery to his son. After his alcoholic watchmaker Uncle disappears, Hugo is left to himself to survive between the walls of a railway station. Hugo is working on his father’s uncompleted last project, hoping to find a key that might unlock a message from his father—perhaps a message that will make sense of the narrative of his life.

I confess that it is difficult for a film to “capture my imagination” or draw me in completely, but Scorsese’s adventure drama achieved this from the very beginning with its opening shot of drifting snow—and perhaps first awakened my sense of belief by making me believe 3D can be more than a add-on gimmick or marketing tool. Ultimately, though, Hugo captivated me because it captured so well why I love going to the movies. The film powerfully depicts how stories, and the hope of redemption they offer, help us reconcile our emotional scars. Along with Hugo, we recognize how the contours of personal identity are constituted by narrative arc, a sense of purpose, and the pursuit of mystery. In Hugo’s quest, we see that the essential self calls us to a childlike faith. -Nick Olson

9. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog delivers what might be his most compelling documentary to date. He invites us to follow him as our tour guide through the Chauvet Cave in southern France, which contains what is believed to be 30,000 year old paintings—essentially the world’s oldest known art display. In observing handprints and countless drawings that display a level of artistic creativity and expression, we learn something that is quite an affirmation, if not a revelation: our Paleolithic ancestors weren’t doltishly inept—they were creators like us, developing a sense of artistic cultivation in the land before time.

While the tour itself is the most interesting part of the documentary, some of the interviews are a close second. In one interview, a professional researcher of the cave asserts that perhaps we should not be called “homo sapiens”—“the man who knows”—but, instead, “homo spiritualis.” Over the course of history, we human beings don’t know much in the grand scheme of things, but we all, as sentient beings, have a perceiving self-awareness that has been most commonly impressed with a sense of awe, or worship. And by expressing this sense of awe through creative artifacts, the sense of communion we feel reveals something to us about the divine tie that binds us as human creatures. -Nick Olson

8. Moneyball
How does a quirky film about sports statistics make it to a top ten list?  The plot of Moneyball is a bit slow and a bit technical, two things that don’t typically make a movie a blockbuster, or even very watchable, for that matter.  But in this film, the parts that makethe whole consistently “get on base” – which of course, is how you win games.  Moneyball is part underdog story, part character study, and part heart-warmer, and each part is executed wonderfully.

The bulk of the acting is shouldered (quite well) by Brad Pitt as down-and-out Oakland As general manager Billy Beane, a man who has just lost his best players to teams with more money, and his marriage to baseball in general.  You just can’t help but step into his shoes and pull for the guy.  Throughout the entire cast the acting is subtle and sincere, and the characters are complex and interesting, so much so that you almost forget for a sec that you’re watching a “sports movie”.

Granted, Moneyball ends on a somewhat unresolved note – the team doesn’t end up winning big on the field, and Beane doesn’t end up winning big in his personal life.  But I can relate to the Oakland As and Pitt’s Beane in a way I can’t relate to overly-dramatic characters in psuedo-historic epics.  All in all, at the end, Beane and his team make an irreparable dent in “the system” – which, for most of us in this age, would be victory enough and more. -Kirk Bozeman

7. The Muppets
The Muppets is among my top three 2011 films, which, for me, means that it was one of the three total movies I would consider above mediocre. It’s been the sort of cinematic year in which, more than ever, I fear that I am slouching toward cranky senescence. Statler and Waldorf—or perhaps Sam the Eagle, minus his nationalism—have become my spiritual kin. This recognition leads me to the hard-hitting existential question at The Muppets’ emotional core: “Am I a man or am I a Muppet?” For those of us who have always suspected that we are, in fact, made of felt—writer/star Jason Segel undoubtedly numbers among this company, and I have my suspicions about songwriter Bret McKenzie—The Muppets comes as a welcome reassurance that we are not alone.

The movie-as-community aspect may veer uncomfortably into fan-fiction territory, as Drew McWeeny points out. But that community also has serious regulations, as McKenzie reveals in his description of his immersion in the do’s and don’ts of Muppethood: “Most of the animals can talk, but chickens can’t talk. Chickens can only cluck. Sometimes I’d write lyrics and the chickens would sing; then I’d find out in the studio that they could only cluck. And for penguins, it’s a subject of much controversy as to whether the penguins can talk or not. . . . And sometimes I’d be in the studio and one of the Muppets would refuse to sing a line because they didn’t think it was appropriate for the character.” In other words, it’s pretty much like Anglican/Episcopalian church: highly arbitrary and arcane rules, leading to an immensely joyful experience. And this is why I love The Muppets. -Carissa Smith

6. Super 8
When Super 8 was announced, it was done so under a veil of secrecy. The first teaser was startling and explosive, but still fairly enigmatic. But such is the case with J.J. Abrams, who certainly loves to misdirect audiences and keep them in the dark until its time for the reveal. That approach may have backfired a bit with Super 8, because when you get right down to it, it is, in many ways, a fairly straightforward summer popcorn flick.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because it’s a rather good one. Packed with lots of humor and heart, thanks to its wonderful primary cast of youngsters, as well as aliens, explosions, and military conspiracies Super 8 certainly evokes such classic sci-fi films as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. It stumbles a bit in the end with an emotional coda that rings hollow, and the big alien reveal underwhelms, but when Abrams is piling on the tension and action, and his young characters are rushing around trying to save their town and complete a zombie movie, it sure is a lot of good, heartfelt fun. -Jason Morehead

5. Like Crazy
In the last few years, there have been a host of films that call into question the traditional romantic comedy formula. Often, though, those films can seem like just another formula offerred up to replace the old one: Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl encounter obstacles, boy and girl realize they are not meant to be together. Rather than asking us to reconsider the nature of romantic relationships, they simply shift the focus to the other side of the story: the relationships that don’t work, and were never meant to be.

Like Crazy, on the other hand, suggests that sometimes relationships that seem perfect, even on a cosmic, fated level, may not work out in the end. It has the bravery to diverge from the formula by making a movie that is narratively messy, because that is how the end of this sort of relationship works: neither of them wants it to end, and so they fight tooth and nail to save the relationship. The only problem is that they’re never fighting at the same time, in the same way. They are ships passing in the night, after crashing against one another several times over. Another risk the film takes is to present us with protagonists we grow to love, primarily so that we can grow increasingly frustrated with their mistakes. Their failure to take the sacrifices necessary to live up to their combined potential is so clearly unveiled that we find ourselves feeling frustrated with them as we do a friend who keeps making bad choices. The final outcome can be seen many different ways, depending on who you ask, but the nature of their struggle and the motives behind it are so clear, asking those questions after this film could result in some incredibly insightful and uncomfortable discussion. -Richard Clark

4. Certified Copy
Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy was my second favorite film released in the US in 2011, but I suspect that this thoughtful, yet playful film will be the one that I return to most in the years to come. Some might be turned off by this European art house film; it follows a day-long walk and conversation through a local Italian village between a British author, James Miller (William Shimell), and an admiring French woman named Elle (Juliette Binoche). James is in town to discuss a book he’s written on the value of a copy versus the original work of art. At his presentation, Elle gives him her address and they spend the following day together discussing the nature of art, marriage, and life as they wander through the beautiful village.

The film becomes an alluring mystery when the nature of the couple’s relationship becomes a question. At a definite point in the film, the couple begins pretending (or are they?) that they have been in an intimate, perhaps declining, relationship for many years. Are they really married, or just pretending to be? The whole film plays on the themes of truth and authenticity as they relate to art, marriage, and faith. It’s the type of film that reveals something new with each viewing, and yet, while it may sound like nothing more than a mind game, Certified Copy has an endearingly light touch (perhaps because Binoche’s character shines through). While the film’s central mystery may remain open ended, this does not at all hinder an essential theme: there are ethics involved in authenticity. They’re what we might call the demands of love. -Nick Olson

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
I’ve followed Harry Potter (books and films) since his inception, and the series remains one of the few that I regularly take the time to reread and re-watch, becoming more entangled in the magic with each return visit. So I went to the theatre to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II expecting to enjoy the show; what I didn’t anticipate was a game-changer, but that’s what the final installment turned out to be for me. As I read the books (and read and listen to them again), I understand Rowling’s intention with Severus Snape, yet somehow, the words on the pages just couldn’t make his sacrifice come alive for me the way actor Alan Rickman does. I am still haunted by his memories, just as his character was, and the painful realizations of love unrequited and love lost.

I never enjoyed (in the book or the film) the epilogue where Harry Potter and his friends stand around on the platform enjoying their immense good fortune with their prodigious and poorly-named offspring; that scene seemed too obvious, too contrived, with too much pandering to a fan base desperate for a happily-ever-after that never seemed in peril to me. But I wept with Snape, and for Snape. I felt the weight of sixteen years of sacrifice, the burden of his unbearable mission as he cradled Lily’s dead body and moaned. It wasn’t the joy of Harry’s future that this final film brought to life for me, it was the tragedy of Snape’s past. Harry gets his pseudo-resurrection, his heroic recognition, his beloved wife and children; Snape gives and gives and gives, leaving behind only a breathless emptiness in the wake of his cry.

That emptiness, for me, made the story complete—bigger than the happiness of a single boy whom we loved from scene one. Months later, I recall enjoying the film as a fitting conclusion to an epic series, but it’s not Harry’s story for me anymore. It’s Snape’s. -Erin Newcomb

2. Of Gods and Men
In the midst of a cultural moment when boisterous arguing and power-posturing are the means by which we seek cultural and human change, Xavier Beauvois’ film, Of Gods and Men, is a quiet meditation that is also one of the most moving portraits of Christlikeness that I’ve ever seen on film. Based on the true story of a group of Trappist monks who sacrificed their former lives to live modest, meditative lives in the Tibhirine monastery in Algeria, Beauvois’ film depicts the sacrifice they would have to face to remain in a war-torn region under increasing threat from Islamic terrorists. Yet, the monks’ desire to stay in Algeria amidst rising tensions is largely inspired by their peaceful inhabitance, interaction, and solidarity with Muslims (the film offers a clear contrast between “Islam” and “Islamism”). What will it say of their ministry—their identities and witness as Christians—if they abandon the region?

The film’s drama, then, centers on the monks’ decision of whether to stay in Algeria in the face of almost-certain persecution. What could possibly motivate them to sacrifice themselves—even unto death? On the eve of Christmas, it’s the Incarnation of God in Christ—and its embodied imperative to love one another—that is a source of strength to the monks. In short, Of Gods and Men is powerful in its depiction of a Gethsemane-like situation—where, in the face of violent persecution, we are called to put our swords down, and in fear and trembling, focus in prayerful worship on the love of God. In so doing, we come to experience our new birth in Christ more and more vividly. -Nick Olson

1. Tree of Life
When discussing The Tree of Life, there’s much to talk about. For example, the film’s creation sequence (which condenses billions of years of cosmic, geological, and biological evolution into a mind-blowing 20 minutes), its dreamlike rendition of childhood and small-town life circa the 1950s, and its exploration of topics ranging from the mercurial nature of memory to theodicy. But whenever I reflect on Terrence Malick’s stunning film, I invariably come back to one thing: it’s exploration of fatherhood.

The film exists solidly within the shadow of the main character’s father, a man we know only as Mr. O’Brien (wonderfully played by Brad Pitt). And I was completely unprepared for the extent to which I, myself, became overshadowed by this character, and by the way the film explores his relationship, both good and bad, with his sons. But perhaps this will tell you something: My first impulse upon leaving the theatre was to rush home and hug my children.

Heading into The Tree of Life, I was prepared for gorgeous visuals, for heady (even pretentious) dialog stuffed with grandiose philosophical and theological musings, for a meandering, non-linear storyline. I was not, however, prepared for how the film would destroy me as a father, and how it would reveal to me the ways in which I so often fail as a father. I was left wondering about how I am shaping my children, and will continue to shape them; about the values and ideals that I’m planting in their little souls even now; and about the earliest memories they will have of me. In a word, The Tree of Life left me… shaken. -Jason Morehead

1. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

There’s something so thrilling to me about an artist willing to toss out previous expectations for him or herself and dream up something as ambitious as Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. The double-album is surreal and exciting In an interview with Pitchfork from earlier this year, frontman Anthony Gonzalez talks about the kinds of movies he played in the studio while working on the album. “A lot of Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Gus Van Sant. A lot of like experimental stuff like Maya Deren. I’m not gonna watch, like, Toy Story.” I found the quote pretty entertaining, as I had previously written about how Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming required the kind of childlike faith and acceptance that a Pixar film did. In many ways, I still stand by that comment. These kinds of films have a way of tapping into that spark within us that has become dulled down by years of disappointment and doubt. They have a way of speaking to us as humans — beyond any generational gaps or cultural enigmas that divide us into groups. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming did that for me.

A lot of people I know really liked a couple of the hits off the album such as “Midnight City” or “Claudia Lewis”, but we’re often bogged down by the numerous instrumentals and extraneous length of the album — and I can totally get that. However, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is the kind of album that will only let you in once you let your guard down. So I would encourage you to grab some headphones and dive into the 72-minute-long ride that M83 has constructed with an open mind and open heart — you won’t be disappointed. -Luke Larsen

2. Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact

I’ve listened to Gang Gang Dance for quite awhile now, but it wasn’t until Eye Contact that their music finally and truly clicked for me. It’s not that their music suddenly became more accessible: it’s still as crazy and chaotic and manic as ever. Listening to Eye Contact is akin to sending the radio dial scudding through the stations and catching snippets of this or that: some acid house here, some early 80’s goth/post-punk there, a wee bit of some obscure Bollywood soundtrack over there.Indeed, the album seems so full of sounds, ideas, and genres that it threatens to unravel at any moment, especially on songs like “Glass Jar” and “MindKilla”. That it never does, but instead, gets bigger and crazier without ever becoming less catchy or listenable, is a testament to Gang Gang Dance’s peculiar brand of genius. -Jason Morehead

3. tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L

I love hearing an artist make the leap.

Follow-up albums are a tricky business. “Jinx” has the adjective “sophomore” knitted to it for a reason. An artist’s album #2 can earn the “highly anticipated” tag by doing one of the following: displaying a rough-hewn sound that hints at future greatness (e.g. Sufjan Stevens’s A Sun Came) or melting minds with an out-of-left-field collection that’s so original it makes you wonder if the artist is up to besting it (e.g. Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender). While the 2009 debut from tUnE-yArDs, BiRd-BrAiNs, was more of the former (singles “Sunlight” and “Fiya” were standouts), it had the stylistic downsides of the latter. Here was the album’s press release catch: Merril Garbus, tUnEyArDs’ lead tunesmith, made the entire album using a handheld digital recorder and Audacity software. Sure, the collection demonstrated Garbus’s dexterous voice and askew ukulele-shredding, but how much further could she stretch that aesthetic? I was nervous.

When I heard WHOKILL’s lead single “Bizness,” I found my fears were unjustified. Garbus betters her debut in two ways. First, she ups her production values without sacrificing her music’s edge. The music retains its difficult, cacophonous moments, while trading up for the type of killer rhythm section only a studio can capture. WHOKILL swings, rocks, and flat-out grooves. Second, Garbus ups her lyrical game, not by dropping her confessional lyrics, but by projecting herself into more situations than simply relationships-gone-bad. National identity and gentrification get thrown in the pot along tales of body image and romantic love. She even tosses in a surrealistic lullaby. Her voice was always strong. Now that she’s got something substantial to say, it’s even stronger. I won’t doubt her again.  -Jonathan Sircy

4. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

Trevor Powers isn’t doing anything that most independent song writers his age aren’t–melding hushed vocals, intimate melodies, and nostalgic lyrics. The difference between Powers and his contemporaries is that Powers is making such music imminently believable. Power masters to naturally build his particular brand of lo-fi into something vibrant and heartfelt. Consequently, The Year of Hibernation was the 2011 album that most fascinated me. I couldn’t stop listening to it and annoying my friends until they listened to it too.

Powers’ songs are not only refreshing in their tightly woven arrangements but also in their hopeful idealism. In “Cannons”, Powers sings, “I have more dreams than you have posters of your favorite teams / You’ll never talk me out of this.” While the end of such dreams is never quite revealed, the sentiment is welcome. There are brief moments of darkness throughout the album but whatever demons Powers is fighting all seem manageable. The Year of Hibernation is a delightful album about growing up–it’s naive at times and unabashedly nostalgic, but as I seek to live productively in an ever more complicated world, such nostalgic ventures become more and more necessary. -Drew Dixon

5. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

The time gap between Bon Iver’s 2008 debut For Emma, Forever Ago and this year’s self-titled Bon Iver was way, way too long.  I’m still a bit annoyed about all that.  But Mr. Vernon laid a sophomore album on us in 2011 that made the wait almost forgivable (almost).

Trading up from his signature haunting stripped-down acoustic ballads to a haunting full-on indie orchestra, Vernon’s soulful stylings led us weeping through ten magnificent songs that rang with wondrous ache, culminating in the glory of “Calgary” before slowly closing the door and leaving us alone once again.  Bon Iver was heart-wrenchingly beautiful and brief, easily and surely one of the most well-crafted and moving albums of 2011.

And now that it’s all over, we get to wait yet again.  *sigh* -Kirk Bozeman

6. Josh Pearson – Last of the Country Gentlemen

Ten years ago, Josh T. Pearson was a wild-eyed prophet, a man on a mission from God to tell the world of an impending apocalypse and lead the faithful into the Promised Land of Texas. He was the frontman for Lift To Experience, a psychedelic rock band for the ages, and their concept album The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads was garnering acclaim left and right. Ten years later, and Pearson is a broken man singing wry songs of heartache. Divorce and break-ups will do that to you. Last of the Country Gentlemen is hard album to listen to, from Pearson’s brutally honest lyrics to his sloppy acoustic guitar-work to the album’s threadbare production. That, and most of the songs cross the ten-minute mark, often leaving Pearson gasping as he sings of betrayal, infidelity, guilt, and hatred. But sad songs are universal songs, and even if you’ve never experienced the pain of divorce, Pearson’s honest, no-holds-barred account makes for a compelling and captivating listen. -Jason Morehead

7. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Musically, Fleet Foxes’ sophomore album felt like a gradual evolution from indie-folk band’s popular debut. There was some added instrumentation, more spontaneity, and tighter production, but it still very much sounded like the same band doing what they do best. Lyrically, however, Helplessness Blues turned the table on the idealist and fanciful themes of their self-titled album to find a As Occupy protests come to an end and another election cycle awaits, Helplessness Blues was almost prophetic in its depiction of a generation coming to terms with it itself. Frontman Robin Pecknold writes about debt and borrowing in “Bedouin Dress”, finding your place in the world in “Helplessness Blues”, and spiritual desperation on “The Shrine / An Argument”; it’s the kind of album that a generation can find itself in — like Highway 61 Revisited or Nevermind. I know those are big names to live up to, but to me, Helplessness Blues feels grand enough to fit all my hopes, insecurities, disillusions, and passions into it — and I don’t think I’m alone. -Luke Larsen

8. Jay Tholen – Mud Pies or Bread and Wine

I discovered Jay Tholen at a time when I was frustrated with the majority of Christian music. Often times Christian music seems bent on making us feel better about ourselves by singing about how spiritual we are. Such sentiments are refreshingly absent from Tholen’s dense and deeply spiritual album Mud Pies or Bread and Wine. This is Christian music with which I can identify–it’s honest, self aware, and unabashedly truthful. There is an honest beauty to many of the songs that lend credibility to simple lyrics like “Jesus is real, He’ll never fail” and “You have reached into my heart and made it beat again for you.”

Tholen is a chip tune artist and if you are curious about what that means, you should listen to our end of the year music podcast in which we interviewed Jay. However, Mud Pies or Bread and Wine exhibits a fascination with more than 8 bit sounds as Tholen is sampling from a wide variety of sources–from old Christian music to newer sounds alongside classic videogame melodies. For various reasons, I have recently found the world of Christian contemporary music rather depressing lately. Consequently  I will always remember Mud Pies or Bread and Wine as the album that made me excited about the possibilities of Christian music again. Also it’s 100% free to download! -Drew Dixon

9. Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow

10. Neon Indian – Era Extrana

I was blown away by M83′s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming just like everyone else, but if I am honest, it wasn’t long before I was back to listening to Era Extrana which is often deeply reminiscent of Saturdays = Youth. Perhaps, its not fair to compare Neon Indian with M83 as they represent different genres but I just couldn’t get past how richly arranged Alan Palomo’s latest work is. So while “Midnight City” was the song I was often singing in my head, “Hex Girlfriend,” “Halogen,” and “Fallout” were the songs I found most enriched my commute.

Era Extrana represents Palomo’s most accessible work to date and at times almost feels reminiscent of more popular acts like Passion Pit or MGMT and yet it manages to refrain from relying to heavily on pop sensibilities. From start to finish Era Extrana is an album that demands close attention while still providing glorious escapes. -Drew Dixon

Honorable Mentions: These albums sadly couldn’t make the top 1o but some of our writers felt strongly enough to write about them anyway:

David Bazan – Strange Negotiations 

David Bazan broke up with God on his last album, 2009’s “Curse Your Branches.” Trading the role of storyteller for confessional poet, Bazan married raw lyrics to the most complex music production of his career. The results were mixed. It was as if Bazan’s theological doubt had been sublimated into his musical decisions. Good songs were hidden behind extraneous layers of studio gloss. Was it Dostoyevsky who wrote that in a world without God, every overdub is permitted?

In contrast, this year’s “Strange Negotiations” shows Bazan recapturing a vibrant, stripped-down sound while retaining his lyrical edge. The result is his best full-length since 2002’s “Control” when he was still recording under the Pedro the Lion moniker. Bazan continues to harbor antipathy towards Jehovah (the word “God” first appears on album opener “Wolves at the Door” as half of a profane adjective), but this album shows him doing more negotiating than railing. Every song features the word “you,” as Bazan’s turns his keen eye from the heavens to the people around him. The best songs trade “you” and “I” verses as Bazan exposes himself to the same alternating disdain and compassion as the people he’s addressing.

It’s all held together by tight, laser-focused music that features four-on-the-floor drums, supple bass lines, and Bazan’s increasingly ragged voice. Everything peaks in the bridge of album standout “Eating Paper.” “While this may be the rare occasion where high tides lift all boats,” Bazan wails, stretching his voice to the breaking point, “I’m keeping my head down under the water, ‘cause man, I’ve got to get there on my own.” Immediately, the drums cut out, replaced by handclaps. A piano joins the guitar riff. It sounds like a man physically trying to get there, and for at least one album, it works. -Jonathan Sircy

Imaginary Flying Machines – Princess Ghibli

Both bills share a common goal: They are attempts to fight online piracy. If passed, they would give the U.S. government incredible power when it comes to dealing with Web sites that are suspected of hosting, trafficking, and otherwise dealing in illegally copied movies, music, books, software, etc. Proponents say that SOPA/PIPA represent necessary steps to combat piracy and protect content creators, such as movie studios and publishers, from losing vast amounts of revenue. One of SOPA’s primary sponsors, Representative Lamar Smith (R., Texas), wrote a National Review Online piece defending SOPA:

The Stop Online Piracy Act is a constitutional bill that protects free speech and America’s intellectual property. The First Amendment is not an excuse for illegal activity. Simply because the illegal activity occurs online does not mean that it is protected speech. Like online piracy, child pornography is a billion-dollar business operated online. It is also illegal. That’s why law enforcement officials are authorized to block access to child-porn sites.

Similarly, this bill authorizes the attorney general to seek an injunction against a foreign website that is dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. The attorney general must go to a federal judge and lay out the case against the site. If the judge agrees, a court order will be issued that authorizes the Justice Department to request that the site be blocked.

Standing alongside Smith are a host of companies that include everything from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and Time Warner to L’Oreal, True Religion Brand Jeans, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

However, critics of SOPA/PIPA say that the bills will do little to stop online piracy. Rather, SOPA/PIPA may weaken the Internet and make it less secure and present significant hurdles to free speech. The White House has discussed the bills in terms best described as “measured” and certainly far from enthusiastic. But perhaps the biggest knock against SOPA/PIPA is the many technology and Internet-related firms of note who have spoken out against the bills, including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Twitter. Google’s Sergey Brin and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, along with a host of other tech luminaries, spoke out against SOPA/PIPA, saying the bills would “[g]ive the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran,” among other things.

But criticism of SOPA/PIPA hasn’t been limited to only their potential ramifications. Criticism has also been leveled at the method with which the bills have made their way through Congress. For example, during the House Judiciary Committee meeting on November 16 concerning SOPA, committee members were criticized for largely lacking the technical expertise to adequately discuss even basic Internet concepts. Critics also argued that the meeting was little more than a sounding board for lobbyists supporting SOPA, with only one dissenting opinion — that of Google lawyer Katherine Oyama — allowed to make their case.

But criticism of SOPA/PIPA hasn’t been limited to editorials and blogs: It’s taken on an almost grassroots approach. When it was revealed that domain name registrar Go Daddy supported SOPA, a backlash started brewing on sites like Reddit. A boycott was subsequently announced and individuals were encouraged to move their domains away from Go Daddy on December 29. Stung by the outpouring of criticism, Go Daddy dropped their support for SOPA. And Reddit users launched “Operation Pull Ryan,” in which they targeted Rep. Paul Ryan for his support of SOPA and promised to support one of his rivals unless he promised to vote against the bill. On January 9, Ryan said he would not support SOPA, saying that “it creates the precedent and possibility for undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse.”

Which brings us to today’s black-out, the most visible criticism of SOPA/PIPA to date. And so far, such criticism seems to be working, and even seems to be picking up steam. Following the White House’s lukewarm statements regarding SOPA/PIPA, House majority leader Eric Cantor announced that he was shelving SOPA for the time being, thus leaving PIPA as the primary focus for protest efforts.

So what does all of this mean for Christians? On the one hand, you have online piracy and content theft that robs legitimate content creators of compensation that is rightfully theirs (though some have argued that the financial impact of online piracy has been overstated). Clearly, we should want justice for those Internet-based charlatans who see undue profits from the work of others. On the other hand, we have efforts to implement justice that are, to say the least, questionable both in terms of their efficacy and their legality. Justice should always be our goal, but as the SOPA/PIPA controversy has revealed, justice is often far more complicated than we think — especially in as complicated a setting as the online sphere — and simplistic approaches are never the solution. Indeed, such solutions may turn out to be far worse than the problems.

This is not a Top 10 list of 2011. I feel daunted by the sheer number of worthwhile books that came out last year (both those I’ve heard of and those I haven’t). Time, money, and availability are the enemies of every reader who seeks to do his due diligence to the medium. Instead of a list of the best books of the year, I offer up 10 Good Books — something I can much more easily recommend in good conscience. These each are books worth the time and attention of discerning readers. These books may be highly entertaining or entirely discussion-worthy or deeply thoughtful or intriguingly complex or wonderfully simple. They may be any of these things or a collage of these perfections, but at the end of the day: these are Good Books.

by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
published by DC/Vertigo
256 pages
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Far and away my favourite release of 2011, Daytripper actually competes with Duncan the Wonder Dog (my favourite book from 2010) for the honour of being my favourite graphic novel of all time. Gorgeously illustrated in a manner that unveils the world through deep attention to detail, colour, and tone, the book explores not just the particular life of its protagonist but the nature of life generally. Daytripper is the story of Brás, a writer of obituaries who, at the end of each chapter, narrates his own demise — because at the end of each chapter, Brás dies. It’s an interesting method of exploring life, its purpose, and its possibilities. By evaluating Brás’ life in each moment it could end, Daytripper‘s creators prompt readers to investigate the value in their own lives. Powerful, worthwhile stuff.

by Craig Thompson
published by Pantheon
672 pages
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Craig Thompson’s epic-length follow-up to his roundly lauded semi-memoir Blankets is in many ways a more difficult work than what was previously considered his magnum opus. Habibi has been plagued by charges of sexualization, objectification, and Orientalism by those who, I would argue, don’t quite understand the work. Still, this large book provides an all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet for thought and will give the more courageous book clubs piles to talk about. While exploring themes of Islamic tradition vs. Judeo-Christian tradition and playing with Miyazaki-level ecological concerns, the main purpose of the book seems to be an exploration of love vs. sex and the interaction of the two when sex is rendered impossible. As such, Habibi deals frankly and visually with the human body and sexual interaction and can only be recommended to mature believers whose consciences won’t be damaged in the reading.

Christians especially will find Thompson’s exploration of religious themes compelling as he continues to grow away from his fundamentalist roots and deeper into a confirmed atheism with an interest in spiritual traditions.

by Anders Nilsen
published by Drawn & Quarterly
658 pages
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Maybe some books are there less for what they say and more for what they ask. Anders Nilsen, the man who wrote the worst graphic novel I’ve ever read (Monologues for the Coming Plague) also wrote one of the best. Big Questions, a 658-page doorstop of a book, tells the story of some finches, some crows, an idiot, a narcoleptic pilot, some donut crumbs, a snake, some squirrels, and a bomb. And it poses questions about life and purpose and meaning and faith.

Nilsen’s book, in production for over a decade, is fascinatingly spare. Panels often float around the page with neither border nor background. The characters, primarily birds, often have nothing at all to say — or when they do, speak in staccato punctuations of ideas and questions. There’s a lot going on in the book and it can be difficult to trace the author’s thread in any unbroken sense throughout, but in the end the experience is worth the time invested. At a $45 cover, the price is a bit steep, but Amazon discounts or the judicious use of a library card can knock the wind out of that particular bugbear.

by Nate Powell
published by Top Shelf
304 pages
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Nate Powell’s exploration of the war-culture of the ’80s (reflecting today’s own of the same) skirts the bounds of surrealism and charts the lives of three children as they grow up and into a broken world whose demands are more violent than the fragile human spirit can bear. Powell is one of the brightest of the newer crop of comics creators who use the form to narrate complex ideas. His prior work, Swallow Me Whole, was a wonder of abstraction, focusing on mental disabilities and Any Empire continues his trend of creating compelling stories through superior visual technique.

by GB Tran
published by Villard
192 pages
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Vietnamerica explores author GB Tran’s family history through the primary obstacle of Tran’s own history of disinterest. The reader charts along with Tran the incredible journey that his family had taken through the tumult of America’s relations with Vietnam during the ’60s and beyond. Tran allows readers to eavesdrop while he himself as an adult learns about his family’s life in Vietnam before he was born and leading up to Saigon’s fall. He sprinkles in anecdotes from his parents’ attempts to integrate into the American landscape. Tran’s artwork is beautiful and his easy linework and painted colour help turn Vietnamerica into something much more than Maus in Vietnam.

by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Guy Davis
published by Dark Horse
1462+ pages
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When Mike Mignola spun off from Hellboy a series featuring the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, I wasn’t excited. The first two volumes of the series ran about as well as I had expected. Neither were bad but neither were particularly good. Then, out of the blue it seemed, with the release of volume 3, BPRD turned some kind of corner, becoming the most exciting adventure/horror series on the market. That was in 2004 and the train just keeps barreling along. The first arc of the BPRD’s story, now known as Plague of Frogs, wrapped up cataclysmically in December 2010 and paved the way for the next year’s developments. The new arc, Hell on Earth, explores a world out of Lovecraftian-style terror, where the walls between our world and another begin to collapse and creatures alien to our experience begin the creep, crawl, and burst through. Watching as the BPRD’s agents work hard to control damage in a war that the world is (at for the moment) clearly losing is exciting and I await each new volume with an excitement I feel for few books.

by jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick
published by First Second
272 pages
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Richard Feynman may be the funniest physicist to ever live. He is, at least, the funniest I’ve ever encountered. Jim Ottaviani’s biographical comic goes a long way toward capturing the whimsy with which Feynman approached the universe. The chief goal of Feynman, perhaps, is to bring readers to understand the physicist’s own chief goal: that we should recognize the inexplicable and wondrous in our universe and acknowledge when such a thing is beyond us.

One of the abiding motifs that Feynman’s character hopes to impress upon the reader is the infinite complexity of physical things. Scientists have names and formulae to describe any number of processes that govern our world, but do they truly understand these things or are they just ridiculously dedicated to the art of taxonomy? Feynman, in a number of ways, cynically suggests the latter. After all, there’s only so much headway the finite can make when rushing toward the infinite.

by Kate Beaton
published by Drawn & Quarterly
168 pages
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I almost stopped believing that joie de vivre in comic strips could exist in the post-Calvin & Hobbes world. Generally speaking, newspaper strips just aren’t funny. Kate Beaton, however, proves that they absolutely can be — that comic strips can be smart and witty and urbane and culturally acute (even if the culture she appropriates is generally more than a century passé — fans of CAPC column “Eat Your Vegetables” should get more out of the book than the average reader). Hark A Vagrant! is a rare work in that it shows what the newspaper comics page ideally could have become if it hadn’t been overrun with uninspired and unfunny legacy comics for years and years and years.

by Vera Brosgol
published by First Second
224 pages
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Generally speaking, YA lit just doesn’t ring true at all. The tropes of high school melodrama are well established and we recognize them from cultural artifacts like books and movies but not from reality itself. Still, there are always a few works of the genre that don’t play to cliché and, thankfully, Anya’s Ghost avoids most of the usual traps of the form. There are even moments when I found myself gleefully surprised at a direction in which Vera Brosgol would choose to take her story. Anya’s Ghost is about three things: a girl named Anya, high school shenanigans, and, of course, a ghost. The joy of the book is in the details of how the story all works out rather than in the genius of any of the three parts on their own.

Brosgol works hard to make Anya a character who very easily could be weird or strange or unwelcome but isn’t. She’s an immigrant teen and by her word we learn that she’s worked very hard to compensate for her inauspicious country of origin. She’s overcome her accent, acclimated to the cultural diversity of young American life, and doesn’t dress like someone who’s just discovered clothes. She’s embarrassed by her native culture and goes to lengths to distance herself from that which will mark her as Foreign. Sometimes that means shortening an obnoxiously difficult-to-pronounce last name and sometimes it means forsaking the other kid from your country who hasn’t quite overcome his eager-foreigner tendencies yet. It’s an interesting take on the concept of being The Other and Brosgol does a good job of always keeping the story accessible.

One of the greatest boons to American experience of the medium in the last ten years is the explosive import of Japanese comics (colloquially known as manga). Currently, there are numerous series of thoughtful, intelligent work being published (many of these through Viz’s Signature line). Each of these is worth readers’ time and attention. I’ll give a brief overview of several titles that I’m personally invested in and look forward to regularly.

20th Century Boys
by Naoki Urusawa
published by VIZ
Naoki Urasawa (creator of Monster and Pluto) is putting forth a strange, exciting thriller in which a group of childhood friends reunite in their adulthood to stop a dangerous, possibly world-ending cult that they may have accidentally created from their imaginations back in elementary school. Like a lot of manga, it does a good job sublimating the idea of a status quo and shakes things up enough that the reader never gets too comfortable.

Children of the Sea
by Daisuke Igarashi
published by Viz
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While the series seems to be on indefinite hiatus (no news of a vol. 5 yet), the four available volumes to the story present a completely unique comics experience. Children of the Sea tells the story of two young teens: Ruka and Umi. Ruka is the not-atypical daughter of a broken family. She lives with her mother but hides out at her father’s aquarium. Umi is a boy who, along with his brother Sora, was found as a toddler being raised by dugongs (a.k.a. manatees, a.k.a. sea cows). Both Umi and Sora are more at home in the water than on land and their bodies have specially adapted to deep-sea free diving and swimming incredibly long distances with an ease unheard of by normal humans. Ruka shares with them a special kind of vision, a way of seeing the ocean and its inhabitants. There is a sense of reverence and oneness between these three and the creatures of the deep. Fascinating series.

Cross Game
by Mitsuru Adachi
published by Viz
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Explores the power of romantic and familial love to fuel childhood promises across intervening years. Ko is a high school baseball star and is driven by a dream that Wakaba had for him in their childhood, that he and rival Akaishi would play together in the Koshien (Japan’s high-school–level World Series equivalent). Touching, exciting, humourous, and compulsively readable. Note: don’t let the baseball theme dissuade you from giving this a try; neither my wife nor I care anything for baseball, yet both of us adore the series. (Series releases one oversize volume every three months and should wrap in Summer 2012.)

Ooku: The Inner Chamber
by Fumi Yoshinaga
published by Viz
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A reimagination of Japanese history that takes a kind of note from Brian K. Vaughan’s Y the Last Man. Taking place during the 17th century, Ooku posits a female Tokugawa shogunate in the wake of the red-face pox, a plague that mysteriously wipes out three quarters of the nation’s men. The book (through more feminist eyes) retells engagingly the alt-history of Japan in a smart, thrilling, and surprisingly romantic manner. (Series releases one volume per year and should wrap in 2015 at a total of ten volumes.)

Saturn Apartments
by Hisae Iwaoka
published by Viz
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Window washers in space! Saturn Apartments is a fake sci-fi book. It takes place on a ring satellite in low orbit above the earth and there are space suits and all, but the book is really just an opportunity for superflat artist Hisae Iwaoka to explore the lives and dreams of the characters she’s created. It’s an exciting book to take part in as its release gradually unfolds. Generally, I prefer to take in a series once its publication is complete (thereby eliminating the story-hindering two-to-ten-month wait between volumes), but Saturn Apartments is such a quiet pleasure for me that I’m happy to take it in whatever chunks are available.

Twin Spica
by Kou Yaginuma
published by Vertical
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A sweet, heart-twisting tale of a girl, a ghost, and a dream to reach the stars. Ayumi is a small (under 5 ft) teenage girl who’s enrolled in astronaut school and hopes to be among the first astronauts in Japan’s space program since a horrific rocket disaster over a decade earlier. The books explore the pasts and presents of Ayumi and her friends as they seek to overcome the various challenges their unique life-circumstances have dictated. Best not read in public if misting up embarrasses you. (Twin Spica is released bi-monthly and will be 16 volumes long, completing its series in October 2012.)

Wandering Son
by Shimura Takako
published by Fantagraphics
Nitori is a fifth grader who wishes he was a girl and gradually finds himself dressing like one. Takatsuki is a fifth grader who wishes she were a boy and is happy to dress as one. The book explores issues of gender identiation and transexuality across the landscape of the onset of puperty. It’s a fascinating work that hypothesizes the difficulties that journeying through such circumstnces might accrue.

Yotsuba&!
by Kiyohiko Azuma
published by Yen Press/ADV
Click for FULL REVIEW
Perhaps the most charming book in the entire world, Yotsuba&! cannot really be described apart from the experience of the book itself. A lovely little series.

10. White Collar
“White Collar” is the sort of guilty pleasure that I feel no guilt whatsoever for enjoying. “White Collar” follows the exploits of skilled con-man Neal Caffrey, who enters into an unlikely partnership with straight-laced FBI agent Peter Burke and uses his talents to bring down white collar criminals. It’s fluff in many ways, but it’s incredibly enjoyable and well-made fluff, with plenty of charisma, panache, humor, heists, and conspiracies to keep me tuning in. And as a child of the 80′s, I get an extra kick out of the presence of Tiffani Thiessen, aka “Saved by the Bell”‘s Kelly Kapowski, who turns out to be one of the show’s highlights as Burke’s wife. -Jason Morehead 

9. The Walking Dead
In Season 1, The Walking Dead was just a zombie-romp — a thoughtful zombie-romp, mind you — but not much more than a fun distraction between seasons of more “serious” dramas like Mad Men and Breaking bad. After internal troubles over showrunners, producers, and writers, the quality of Season 2 seemed up-in-the-air at best. But somehow, the creators and writers have managed to turn the show into something that can truly stand on its own and maintain the great story arcs established in Season 1. Most importantly though, The Walking Dead continues to challenge our survivors and boil down the essence of what it means to be human in the absence of civilization, most specifically in the conflicting leadership between Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh. Everything from ethics to moral code to faith are on the line and The Walking Dead creators have handled the themes with a delicacy that we haven’t seen in a show of this type since Battlestar Galactica. -Luke Larson

8. Game of Thrones
To be honest, the fact that this show actually works is still something of a miracle to me. With upwards of 20 primary characters whose names you can’t pronounce, comparatively small amounts of action and battle, and seemingly little thematic relevance to modern culture, Game of Thrones doesn’t add up as a show that could achieve any kind of mainstream success. However, thanks to some of the best writing, pacing, and acting of the year, I never felt overwhelmed by the massive cast or the twisting and turning plot. Even still, it wasn’t until I had been sucked deep into the thickening plot that I realized what had truly kept me coming back to the show: This medieval struggle for power isn’t as far-fetched and barbaric as we’d like to think. Although thousands of figurative years might separate us from it’s setting, the bitterness and greed of the human heart depicted in Game of Thrones might as well have been read out of the International Politics section of the Sunday newspaper.  -Luke Larson

7. The New Girl
It’s been written off as being a superficially quirky sitcom featuring a lead character who was focus-grouped and created solely to be loved for her cuteness and unique qualities. They’re not all wrong: The New Girl can be relentlessly cheery and bright at times.

Still, there’s a subtle darkness hidden under the surface that drives the show forward. Jess is a relentlessly self-concious, insecure person. It’s a struggle that doesn’t seem to resolve itself easily or simply. While the show’s focus rests with Jess, it’s her friends that play the most important role, impacting one another and Jess herself in ways that seem small in the moment but compile themselves throughout the season. You may love it, you may hate it. But The New Girl isn’t so concerned about that, because it’s trading in the same self-surety as Jess is ever-so-slowly learning from her friends. -Richard Clark

6. The Office
It’s no secret that The Office doesn’t enjoy the unique place it once did among television shows. Great creations tend to spawn imitators and innovators, and so shows like Parks and Recreation or Community have built on the foundations laid by The Office, rendering it somewhat less unique and groundbreaking. Further, Steve Carrell is now gone, removing both the most creative comedian and the emotional heart of the show in one fell swoop.

Despite all that, The Office remains one of the most consistently amusing shows on the market. Nearly every episode highlights exaggerated versions of situations we face in the workplace; awkward dinner parties, borderline racist comments, embarrassing weight loss challenges, arguments, insubordination, and inappropriate ideas from foolish managers. By seeing the humor in these things, The Office teaches us patience and acceptance. Its characters, despite their considerable flaws, keep growing as people.

That’s really what makes The Office great. The writers understand that at the heart of our love for a show lies our desire to connect with human truths. We fall in love with characters because we sympathize with their lives, needs and challenges. The Office, somehow, manages to keep touching this chord; celebrating the challenges and joys of a small community, highlighting the inconsistencies that lie in all of us, and displaying the slow and sometimes unwilling walk toward maturity that we all take. That it does so in a way that keeps us laughing at the foolishness of corporate America is just icing on the cake. -Ben Bartlett

5. Parenthood
There is nothing particularly sensational about Parenthood. It’s a drama about four sets of parents who love their children. Parenthood has long been my favorite television show, but as my wife and I recently welcomed our first child into the world, the show became even more moving.

At the heart of our sin nature is the desire to live for ourselves at the expense of others. If there is anything that naturally challenges us to fight that tendency, it’s having a child. I love Parenthood because it highlights how having children challenges us to live selflessly and presents us with parents who are sincerely trying to do so. They don’t always succeed, nor should they. If I have learned one thing in my short tenure as a parent, it is that I will not always succeed in putting my family first. Parenthood presents us with parents who are deeply flawed and yet deeply love their children and are committed to one another. It’s perhaps the most hope-filled show on Television. -Drew Dixon

4. Parks and Recreation
Despite the show’s rocky start and the early accusations of being a simple clone of The Office, Parks and Recreation has evolved into one of the funniest on television. The cast of the show is extremely diverse but they always manage to work together thanks to their relationships to Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler. The show has a habit of highlighting the eccentric nature of its’ characters for comedic effect, but it does so in a way that manages to show us each character’s potential for good. The show’s protagnist, Leslie Knope has a talent for bringing these diverse personalities under one banner and getting them to work together for admirable causes.

We all know that our city governments don’t always have our best interests at heart. That’s why we love Leslie Knope. Knope is the kind of leader we all wish for. She is dedicated, driven, and compassionate, the latter of which makes for a show that is as warm as it is hilarious. -Drew Dixon

3. Community
When NBC announced that “Community” was going on hiatus, fans reacted with both online and real-life protests, including a flash mob at NBC’s headquarters. It’s not difficult to understand why. The show, with its ultra-meta pop culture commentary, quirky characters, and clever visual style (its influences include Sergio Leone and Rankin/Bass), is the sort of cult hit that attracts passionate fans. And it felt especially frustrating that “Community” was making way for “30 Rock”. Whereas “30 Rock”‘s last season or so had been pretty underwhelming, “Community” was only getting better with each passing episode. Here’s hoping that NBC stays true to their word and airs the remaining the episodes after the hiatus ends. -Jason Morehead

2. Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is about the .111958%.

In season one we see a flashback of high school chemistry teacher Walter White at a chalk board with his former love interest discussing the chemical makeup of the human body. They are able to account for 99.888042% of the elements that constitute a human being. Wondering aloud about the remaining .111958%, Walt responds that there has “got to be more to a human being than that.” Later in the same episode—after Walt has had to kill a man—we return to the same flashback where they, still trying to account for the missing .111958%, finally wonder, “what about the soul?” From the very beginning, we’ve recognized Breaking Bad as a show primarily concerned with very difficult moral questions, and how the devolution of evil works itself out in the individual.

And, in 2011’s season four, we see the hardening effects of Walt’s morally-compromising decision to cook meth for the supposed betterment of his family in the wake of discovering that he has cancer. By the end of the season, we look expectantly to next year’s final season, wondering if his descent into the sinister is complete.

This superbly-crafted show retains its excellent sense of pacing even while taking its drama to a more explosive level. It’s not necessarily the high-pressure sequences that most grab my attention with Breaking Bad; it’s the gut-wrenching silences and close-ups—the way the show is able to make me empathize with Walt and Jesse’s guilt-ridden anxieties. Their slow descent into badness is so recognizably human that it’s suffocating at times in the empathy it conjures. -Nick Olson

1. Friday Night Lights
Most television shows offer up three or four things for us to complain about. They are too serious or not serious enough, their characters are not believable or the production quality is low. We calculate whether individual shows are worth our time depending on our mood, the strength of the story, how believable the characters are, and a dozen other components.

Consider the most recent season. We see that not all good intentions end well when Connie Taylor is unable to help a troubled girl. We see the incredible inconsistencies between truth and perception when the Lions present themselves as a unified team, but are fighting and divided behind the scenes. We see the long, painful process of Eric letting go of a town that has defined his career as a coach so he can honor and support his wife. We see kids learning to get over their childhood fantasies, fathers learning to take responsibility with their families, and other fathers failing time and time again. We see the ugliness that results when a young girl makes a huge mistake and doesn’t know how to face it. Oh, yeah, and there’s some football in there too.

This is a show that does not back away from difficult topics, that does not let characters off the hook with trite solutions, and that does not wrap key storylines up within the space of an hour. It simply portrays life in the way that life usually is: full of mistakes, rife with challenges, and shot through with ugliness – yet worthy of being enjoyed and celebrated.

And so I just asked myself, “What were my top 5 favorite memes of 2011?” and I was able to come up with my own list pretty quickly. Then I thought, “What do all these memes have in common?” And frankly, what they all had in common was that I remembered them.

This list (which is pretty close to my original) represents the memes of 2011 that we all most likely remember, which is kind of the whole point. Memes are not necessarily memes because of some particular quality or set of qualities; memes are memes because whatever qualities they may or may not have, they enter public consciousness in a pervasive, culture-affecting way. Some Internet fads pass into meme because they’re funny, some because they’re moving, some because they’re fun to take part in, some because they’re particularly meaningful. But all of them affected our lives in a way that we remember.

So here you go. The top 5 memes of 2011.

***

#5 The many phrases of Charlie Sheen.

It was hard to decide on #5. This was the point where things start to get fuzzy, where things like Steve Buscemi, Pop-Tart cats, and “first world problems” start to feel about the same. But when I searched my heart, the answer came to me in perfect clarity: It’s all that weird stuff Charlie Sheen said.

Sheen had a phenomenal year of being a jerk. Phrases like “tiger blood,” “Adonis DNA,” and “winning!” (the most popular) from his ludicrous interviews quickly became priceless bits of sleazy nonsense, all too good to not be things we procured for our own ends. Through Twitter hashtags, autotuned YouTube vids, and just plain personal over-quoting, we made sure our lives were tinged with the words of Charlie Sheen for quite a while. We will always remember “winning!” every time we see a rerun of Two and a Half Men.

#4 Tebowing

Tim Tebow is our famous Christian of the moment. I like the guy a lot; he’s turning out to be a great example of integrity and sincerity in the midst of the usual cesspool of professional athletes. But in late 2011, his celebratory touchdown position of taking one knee in thankful payer was something fans and detractors began lampooning to no end. In this act of “Tebowing,” people took pics of themselves in the pose all over the place, submitting them to sites for public perusal.

Though Tebowing is basically a spin-off of the year’s earlier internet hit “planking” and a latecomer to the 2011 list, it has quickly made itself worthy of the Top 5, mainly because of Tebow himself. He’s everywhere these days, the current centerpiece for public dialogue on religion and personal sincerity. And whenever we think of Tebow, we will always think of “Tebowing.”

#3 Occupy Wall Street’s Pepper Spraying Policeman

I wanted to avoid this one, but it just kept popping up for me. This is probably the only one that I’ve included mostly due to its poignancy.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was one of the major newsmakers of 2011, bringing conversation and contention to light between all sorts of people. One of the more controversial moments of the movement involved a police force dressed in riot gear sent to disperse a group of students on the UC Davis campus. The event ended with a policeman nonchalantly spraying a can of pepper spray on a seated line of college students, with the action invoking outrage from a variety of commentators and media outlets.

In response, images of the pepper spraying policeman began to be superimposed on countless photos in silly and serious ways, highlighting what many considered to be the senselessness of the event. Here was a meme that was funny in effect, but funny with a serious point. We will always remember the images the pepper spraying policeman when we think about Occupy Wall Street.

#2 Planking

Planking was the most egalitarian of this year’s memes. Any man, woman, or child can lie face down on something and have someone take their picture. There is no learning curve or set of higher aptitudes needed to take part in planking (and also no potential issues of conscience to sort through like in Tebowing).

The competition of planking was in creativity of location and setup. People planked at weddings, in the middle of rush hour, at the Grand Canyon, on top of telephone poles, alone, and in groups. They submitted their pics to sites across the Web, hoping a shot of their horizontalizations would rise to the top of the list and be seen by someone somewhere. Needless to say, things tended toward further and further extremes in people’s hopes of garnering attention, sometimes with sad results when things went awry.

We will always remember planking, mostly because it’s way too ridiculous to forget.

#1 Rebecca Black “Friday”

No contest here. Rebecca Black’s terrible music video for a terrible song was this year’s top meme. It was awkward, catchy, viral, quotable, and malleable enough to be lampoon-able again and again. And since it was tied to a day of the week, it kept coming up over and over and over and over in offices and schools around the world. We sang it, got tired of singing it, and then sang it again. A meme that can’t die is a true meme indeed.

“Friday” is now an archetype — the rare kind of meme we compare other memes to (i.e., “it’s not as funny as Rebecca Black”). “Friday” is the 2011 meme that we can now add to the class of high memes like “Double Rainbow,” “Charlie bit my finger,” and “LOLcats.” It’s a modern meme classic, and the meme of 2011. We will never forget Rebecca Black because she’s, well, Rebecca Black. 

***

The meme stream of 2011 contained a number of strange, fascinating bits of pop culture. These bits tell us a number of things: We still don’t like putting up with jerks (at least not the really big ones), we’re looking for sincerity and not quite sure what to do when we find it, and we all want to be part of something meaningful and world changing. We also want to be part of a community and feel included even if it’s because of something silly, and, as always, we can’t live without the things we all “love to hate.”

Memes always bring out interesting facets of our culture, and it definitely was an interesting year. It leaves me curious to see what the ‘net holds for us in 2012. And maybe next year will be graph-able.

10. Forget-Me-Not (iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC)
How many times have you pulled your favorite childhood game out of storage, only to find that it pales in comparison to the game that was lodged in your memory? Games have come a long way, making what we consider to be classic games often seem surprisingly dull or frustrating as a result. But what if that game you pulled out of your closet was everything you remembered and more? That’s Forget-Me-Not.

Originally an iPhone standout, Forget-Me-Not is something like a cross between Pac-Man and Rogue, a score-based maze game that finds all of its punch in its enemies. The extremely varied characters you’ll run across say nothing, mean nothing, have no motives – but they do some extremely crazy stuff, throwing you out of whack at every turn. Forget-Me-Not becomes a minimalist adventure, charging the player with split-second adaptation, to do everything they can to get the highest score possible and advance to the next level. It’s one of the few games that seems refreshingly simple at first, only to open up and expand with each play-through. -Richard Clark

9. Battlefield 3 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
We’ve been talking for a long time about wanting a war game experience that will probably never come. We hoped for a game that would treat war with nuance. One that would refuse to categorically glorify war and at least nod to its devastating consequences. We didn’t get it with any of the previous Call of Duty or Battlefield games and we were disappointed to find out that we weren’t going to get it with Battlefield 3. And with the recent release of a slew of similar war games, I really did not want to like Battlefield 3.

And in many ways I didn’t. The campaign is largely predictable and there are aspects of the game that I am pretty sure I will never be good at (is it just me or are the helicopters ridiculously hard to control?). But to be honest, Battlefield 3 is great for one reason–it offers a compelling and robust team-based multiplayer experience. B3 goes out of its way to reward survival, foresight, and teamwork in rather unconventional ways. The best players in a given game are often not the players with the highest kill/death ratio, but the players doing most to actually aid their team as a whole–the players who are actually committed to teamwork and survival. Success in multiplayer requires that players trust each other.

I am still tired of war games and I think Battlefield 3 could have done more to honestly deal with the sobering aspects of war, but none of that changes the simple fact that Battlefield 3 is the most satisfying multiplayer experience of the year. -Drew Dixon

8. Portal 2 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
Unlike other attempts to incorporate heavy cinematic influences into games this year like Uncharted 3, Portal 2 managed to do it through excellent voice acting and dialogue writing. Throughout much of your journey through the Aperture Science Enrichment Center you are guided by the eccentric robot Wheatley, whose voice work is performed by British comedian Stephen Merchant. Without ruining any surprises, just know that the writers at Valve prove once again to be masters at character development. Wheatley, in many ways, was even more frightening to me than GLaDOS from the original Portal — featuring fumbling monologues and dark humor that could come right out of a Woody Allen film. It was such a refined single-player experience, that I couldn’t help but automatically add it to my favorite games of the year. – Luke Larson

7. Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360, Playstation 3)
In terms of modern game design, Batman: Arkham City is the perfect game. It’s great to look at, fun to play, tells a surprisingly memorable story, and adequately pays tribute to Batman and his iconic enemies.

What makes the game special, however, is how it constantly makes the player have to think critically. While much of the action appears as nothing more than traditional brawling, the combat in Arkham City is deep, complex, and dynamic. To successfully take on 50 guys at once you must constantly adjust your tactics, utilize gadgets, and take advantage of the environment. Batman has a ton of gadgets to use against his enemies—these gadgets are intuitive and can be combined with one another. Coming up with the right combination of gadgets to accomplish an objective is deeply satisfying. In a year that offered some of the most catastrophically bad boss battles, Arkham City manages to offer boss battles that feel natural and utilize gadgets and tactics that the game has been teaching players as they progress.

Batman might not be the most meaningful or spiritual game of 2011 but from a pure gameplay standpoint, it’s definitely the best. – Drew Dixon

6. The Binding of Isaac (PC, Mac)
It’s not exactly a story-based game: The Binding of Isaac is primarily a dual-stick shooter rogue-like, all about finding powerups and dodging enemies so you can make it to the end of the game before dying. Still, what makes the game such a stand-out experience is the subtle, and minimal story elements that are all the more affecting precisely because of their understated nature. It’s hard to express just how disturbed you might be once you realize what it means for a coat-hanger to cause Isaac’s projectile tears to fire faster. Why would a wooden spoon cause him to run faster? Why does he seem to be haunted by an unborn little sister?

These are questions tied to the misguided faith of his mother – introduced at the beginning of the game to be overly obsessed with televangelists and mistakenly submissive to voices in her head. It’s easy for Christians to withdraw from this game, assuming it’s not for them. After all, we can probably make the assumption that the creator of this game isn’t a fan of the faith. Still, there are valid criticisms here, and a story that simply must be told. These things, unfortunately enough, do happen. Playing this disturbing, humorous, truthful game reminds us that as kids and adults, sometimes we have to laugh and play so that we don’t cry. – Richard Clark

5. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (iPhone, iPad)
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my taste in gaming this year, it’s that I will always gravitate toward games that aren’t afraid to throw out everything we’ve ever known about gaming to pursue the creation of ambitious, new gameplay experiences.. Plenty of games on this list exhibit this quality, but none more than the iOS indie game Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP. Judging by the name and description itself, when I came across Sword & Sworcery it was easy for me to attach the same old predictable terms to it: pretentious, contrived. After all, the developers refused to call it a game, but a “psycho-social audiovisual experiment” instead.

At its heart, though, it’s an point-and-”touch” adventure game, of which there are many standouts in the iOS App Store. But in Sword & Sworcery, instead of finding and managing items or trying to escape from rooms, I found myself checking NPC’s twitter-like thought feeds, battling a Deathless Spectre, and solving environmental puzzles based in music and sound. At first, I was a little turned off by its incredibly self-aware tone, feeling like it might take me out of the experience a bit. But within the first few hours of gameplay, I was completely submerged in the world and impressed by the risks the developers took.   Visionary isn’t a word I often use to describe games, but my time with Sword & Sworcery felt like a breathe of fresh air in an industry so attached to fulfilling expectations and genre cliches. - Luke Larson

4. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (Xbox 360, Playstation 3) 
No character has dominated my thoughts this year like El Shaddai‘s protagonist, Enoch. A classic Christ-figure, Enoch is sent from Heaven to rid the world of sin – yet unlike most officially dubbed “Christian” games, the right thing doesn’t always feel right here. Often playing the role of Enoch ridding the world of evil feels more like setting the world back thousands of years, destroying progress and those who made that progress possible.

Answers are provided, but so are frustrating counters to those answers – your mind goes back and forth between faith and doubt until the very end. Sound familiar?

In a year filled with frustrations and fears, I latched onto Enoch as someone who found faith difficult but plausible nonetheless. His key ability was to find the “power of the Lord” wherever he looked. He showed mercy to his fallen friends, but understood the inherent need for justice. He persevered, in the face of physical and psychological warfare. Because of all of these traits, Enoch is my favorite hero of 2011 – it was an honor and a joy to play as him. – Richard Clark

3. Bastion (Xbox 360, PC)
Right from the beginning, I always felt that Bastion’s dynamic voice-over was more than just a novelty. It felt deeper, like a disembodied conversation between the game’s creators and I — or like a movie that was being made completely on-the-fly. At any rate, the narration in Bastion had me completely sucked into its story and it’s world, which is what kept the game on my mind long after I finished it.

You play as The Kid, whose job it is to help put the broken world you wake up in back together. The world is beautiful and filled with color, but has been ravaged by a catastrophic event called The Calamity; an apocalyptic event that left the world in shambles. I couldn’t help seeing parallels between Bastion’s story and the story of our own world. Its a simple, but beautiful story of redemption, but its one where we’re presented with choices that certainly do matter. Do I care about the world I live in or do I simply exist, waiting to move on to the next one? More than the beautiful art style or the voice-over narration, this question was what made Bastion such a memorable experience to me. - Luke Larson

2. Skyrim (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
Let’s be clear: I’m not a fan of the excessive exposition that you are regaled with when first entering a city. I find the broken seams of Skyrim to be an unfortunate scar on some moments that are meant to be full of meaning and wonder. Townsfolk often regale you with dry exposition, companions follow you around making stupid mistakes and saying idiotic things, and people wander back and forth illogically, often getting stuck on a rock. But somehow, Skyrim overcomes those things with the sheer force and will of the studio that produced it. It’s clear that Bethesda set their sights incredibly high with this one, planning for a game so full of lore, life and opportunities for unique experiences that someone could play the game for years without feeling bored.

1. Minecraft (PC, Mac)
At times I couldn’t sleep, I skipped meals, and I stayed up much later than is healthy for a working man of my age. I don’t think I have ever truly been addicted to a videogame—as a games writer, I make a special effort to make sure my wife, family, and friends always come before games. Minecraft, however, gripped me more tightly than any other game ever has.

It is a rather simplistic game of survival, exploration, and creation. A lack of stated goals allows players to set their own course, create their own structures, mythology and even culture. Playing on a server with friends is where Minecraft shines brightest. Multiplayer Minecraft is a unique communal experience where instead of competing against each other, players share, rule, and build the world together.

I am not proud to say that I was obsessed with Minecraft for a time, but I am also very aware that that inability to handle Minecraft was my fault. My problem with Minecraft arose because the beauty, wonder, and community of Minecraft were too much for me to handle. My excessive emotional attachment to the game is a testimony to its brilliance. I have recently returned to Minecraft, equipped with a bit more self discipline. I am glad I did because when I visit Minecraft, I find a world I want to help build and friends I want to share it with. - Drew Dixon

The Left-Overs
Not all great games can make a yearly top-ten list. By our count, only ten or so can. But we felt the need to sneak one “runner-up” into the video game wrap-up. So, here are the Games We Wish Made It onto The List, But Sadly, Didn’t:

Rat On A Snowboard (iPad, iPhone)
Possibly one of the most criminally unrecognized games of the year, Rat on a Snowboard is no joke. It may seem simple at first (control amounts to a simple tap, causing the mouse to jump), but prolonged time spent diligently improving your mouse-jumping skills will lead to an obsession that seems, miraculously, justified. Outsiders may view this game as a pointless distraction on the level of Farmville – they’re both wrong and right. The sequel to the much-loved-by-me Rat on a Skateboard, Rat on a Snowboard takes a proven formula (something like rat + vehicle = fun) and iterates on it ever so slightly, creating an experience that amounts to darn near perfect for what it’s trying to do. And yes, what it’s trying to do is distract you. But unlike some of the more insidious games with this as its’ sole purpose, Rat on a Snowboard manages to pack an immense amount of depth and exhilaration into a tiny, affordable and momentary package. Play it once or twice and you’ll have enough fun. But keep playing and you’ll find the game providing opportunities for various strategies, opportunities and events within a little, high-score focused game. All it takes is one tap, one snowboard, and one daring rat. – Richard Clark

Dance Central 2 (Xbox 360 Kinect)
Every other Thursday night when I come home from coaching soccer, I find a group of girls dancing in my living room. My wife hosts a girl’s fellowship at our house. She cooks them dinner, they have a devotional, and afterward they play Dance Central 2. Though I am a terrible dancer, I usually join them. As a pastor, I have to be careful about how I interact with the girls in my church and consequently my relationships with them suffer. I have found one of the most natural ways to build camaraderie with these girls is to make a fool of myself dancing in front of my Xbox.

Dance Central 2 is the best game to date for Xbox 360′s Kinect–it feels great to dance free from the burden of the controller. Additionally Dance Central is one of the few games for Kinect that consistently feels fair–it nails feedback. I hope that Kinect provides us with some more creative experiences than dance games but if it doesn’t at least we can still enjoy making fools of ourselves trying to dance to Bad Romance with our friends. -Drew Dixon

Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach’s debut novel, The Art of Fielding, records the rise of college shortstop Henry Skrimshander, along with his near-derailment by performance anxiety. Henry’s struggle stands in as a metaphor for both “What am I supposed to do after college?” panic and, well, the Human Condition. For an example, take the following passage in which Henry reflects on the promise of the structured, purpose-filled world of athletic training:  “Henry knew better than to want freedom. The only life worth living was the unfree life, the life Schwartzy had taught him, the life in which you were chained to your one true wish, the wish to be simple and perfect. Then the days were sky-blue spaces you moved through with ease. You made sacrifices and the sacrifices made sense.” Henry doesn’t have to bear the burden of metaphorical meaning-making alone: the supporting cast of characters, including the Westish College president, all wrestle with vocation and calling. Melville, chronicler of obsessive quests for perfection and meaning, as well the despair of those lacking such a quest, haunts the pages of The Art of Fielding, but knowledge of Moby-Dick isn’t any more essential than knowledge of baseball (I certainly have very little of the latter) for appreciating the novel. Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot has received a little more attention as THE college/post-college novel of 2011, and I enjoyed the portions of it relating to semiotics, but for my money, The Art of Fielding has more interesting characters and themes.

Lev Grossman, The Magician King
Lev Grossman’s The Magician King, sequel to 2009’s The Magicians, may be somewhat uneven—not to mention troubling—but it still ranks as one of my top five novels of the year, in part because it’s one about which I’ve had the most fruitful and interesting conversations with fellow readers. Grossman’s Harry-Potter-meets-Narnia world could easily be dismissed as derivative, as dressed-up fan-fiction, but I’m more inclined to read the novels as realistic college/post-college novels that just happen to be partially set in other people’s fictional universes. Like The Art of Fielding and The Marriage Plot, The Magician King plumbs the depths of post-college angst, exploring the failure of both formal schooling and the school of hard knocks to prepare one for life in the real (Real?) world. The difference is that, in this case, the real world involves satyrs and talking sloths.  (If you’re interested in a book on the failure of higher education in a world in which sloths remain speechless, check out Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.)

Colson Whitehead, Zone One
I’ve been a fan of Colson Whitehead’s fiction (especially his 1999 novel The Intuitionist) for a few years, and I was particularly interested to see his newest novel, Zone One, billed as a new exemplar of the marriage between literary and genre fiction (the genre, in this case, being the zombie novel). As Glen Duncan’s controversial NYT review indicated, the novel is unlikely to find a following among those looking for a limb-chomping lark through postapocalyptic terrain. There’s limb-chomping aplenty, but the novel is primarily a portrait of the consciousness of protagonist Mark Spitz (almost everyone goes by nicknames in the New World Non-Order). Through Mark Spitz’s eyes, we see how post-zombie life really isn’t all that different from pre-zombie late modernity. Barricades to keep the right people in and the wrong people out? Check. Zone One itself isn’t so dissimilar from the New York City it once was. Setting the novel several years after the initial zombie outbreak allows Whitehead to skewer inane political rhetoric of optimism: the provisional government, centered in Buffalo, has an official theme song entitled “Stop! Can You Hear the Eagle Roar? (Theme from Reconstruction).” Because Zone One occurs primarily in Mark Spitz’s mind, with flashbacks to both recent and more distant events, the novel is admittedly sometimes difficult to follow. But if you find that The Walking Dead features too little reflection on the hermeneutics of the everyday, then Zone One is likely to be your cup of tea. (Though I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, Kenneth Warren’s What Was African American Literature?, which argues that African American literature, as defined by the Jim Crow era, has come to an end, would be my companion pick for Zone One: both Whitehead and Mark Spitz are black, and though race receives very little explicit mention in the novel, race and the hotly debated discourse of post-blackness loom large as a subtext.)

Meg Wolitzer, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman
In the category of children’s and YA fiction, my pick this year is Meg Wolitzer’s The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, a light read targeted at the 8-12 age range. The novel plunges us into the world of competitive youth Scrabble, and the result is something like a cross between Ellen Raskin (The Westing Game) and the documentary Spellbound. Like Spellbound, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman focuses on several protagonists to give us an idea of the range of reasons why kids would be drawn to a competition involving lettered tiles on a board. The titular Duncan Dorfman had never played Scrabble until a cafeteria incident revealed his special power of reading with his fingers, but now he sees the chance to be known at school for something other than having lunch meat stuck to his back. Nate Saviano is the more stereotypical kid who competes only because of parental pressure. April Blunt, my personal favorite, simply loves Scrabble, but she also wants to do well at the national tournament to prove to her sports-loving family that Scrabble is an endeavor as worthy as soccer. We meet several other teams along the way, including the Evangelical Scrabblers, who are portrayed as well-adjusted competitors with quirks no less charming than anyone else’s. The novel introduces a rather unnecessary antagonist, but most of the seemingly extraneous details turn out to play a pivotal role in the book’s plot, and that attention to structure is appealing. (Runner-up in this category: Rachel Neumeier’s The Floating Islands, which breathes some new life into coming-of-age fantasy clichés.)

Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture
Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers’s Age of Fracture has already received laudatory reviews from many publications, including Books & Culture, but I’ve selected it as my best nonfiction book of the year for Christ and Pop Culture because the book surveys American intellectual and cultural history of the 1970s through the 1990s (with a brief epilogue addressing the post-9/11 era). Rodgers selects “The Age of Fracture” as his moniker for late-twentieth-century America because of the disintegration of communal identities and the rise of a “self” (quote marks mandatory to indicate its constructed nature) characterized by “choice, provisionality, and impermanence; a sense of the diffuse and penetrating yet unstable powers of culture; an impatience with the backward pull of history.” Age of Fracture draws startling connections between political punditry (both right and left) and the rise of theory in academia as it devotes chapters to presidential rhetoric, economics, class, race, gender, and concepts of the public good. Such a totalizing portrait of an era surely goes against the key tenets of the Age of Fracture, but it makes for head-nodding, highlighter-wielding reading. I have to admit that my head nodded more in restlessness than in affirmation during the economics chapter, but, since Rodgers’s thesis is that free-market economic language both reflected and contributed to “visions of society as a spontaneous, naturally acting array of choices and affinities,” it’s worth slogging through. (And if “slogging” describes your approach to any book these days, you might pick up Alan Jacobs’s The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, an engaging—and brief!—ramble through reading-and-technology-related topics.)

“Emphasizing Jesus Without Demonizing Santa” by Erin Newcomb, writer:
My daughter thinks of Santa Claus the same way she thinks about Winnie the Pooh: as a fun character in a storybook. She typically refers to him as Sinterklaas, because the only time she’s ever seen him was at an Old Dutch festival; based on that experience, she also thinks he rides in a red boat and parades around with giant birds on stilts. Since she’s only two, she has no memory of receiving presents on Christmas Day and no one has told her to expect gifts from Santa.

Our approach is not to demonize Santa (which, in my view, makes him a lot more important than he actually is), but to emphasize Jesus. So we do an advent calendar together every night, counting the days until Christ’s birthday. We’re planning a party where my daughter has requested blue cupcakes and corn. I might make some executive changes to the menu there, but I’m thrilled about her excitement every time she says “Mama, what are we waiting for?” and then answers her own question “Jesus’ birthday!” Sure, she’ll get gifts, a few stocking stuffers of little animals, but the main gift will come from her parents—books that focus on Jesus and his incredible, imminent birthday.

“When Your Children Believe Anyway” by Brad Williams, writer:
My wife and I very much want Christmas to be about the Christ Jesus that we love and not about the imaginary Santa. In general, we tend to be against tricking our children unless it is short-term and for the sake of humor. And, in a way, telling your children that there is a jolly old fat-man dressed in a red suit flitting about the world in a sleigh full of gifts pulled by flying reindeer sounds like a pretty grandiose joke to pull on them. It must be great fun to chortle whilst one’s children fall for that gag.

But since we didn’t want to be curmudgeons and ruin the prank for everyone, our compromise was to frame Santa around St. Nicholas of Myra. We told our children that Saint Nicholas was a real person who loved Jesus and gave away his wealth to those in need.  So Santa was real, but the present incarnations are just people playing pretend.

Yet, our son stubbornly believes in Santa, and his sister has followed suit. We have decided not to out-right crush their misplaced faith in Santa, but rather to logically persuade them of the impossibility. So far, they are resilient in their belief and are as cute as cherubs in their defense of the jolly old elf. One day, they’ll realize the truth, and that we were always honest with them.

“The Disinterested Approach” by Seth Hahne, illustrator:
While I’m certain my wife will have her own say in matters (though I doubt it will differ from my own in anything but trivialities), my current guess as to how we will deal with, speak of, or explain Santa Claus will be wholesale neglect. I’m imagining that it just won’t come up in any real way. When my daughter first encounters Santa, it will doubtlessly be through the lens of Who is this new imaginary character? My easy, disinterested response will sit squarely along the lines of Oh, he’s like Totoro. But he’s a Christmas Totoro. Only, not as cool as Big Totoro.

It’s pretty simple in my imagination and I doubt it will be any more difficult than that. She’s already well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality. She considers Totoro and Howl and Sophie and Ponyo to be her friends, but she knows they only exist in the panel in our living room (i.e., in stories). I don’t imagine her involvement with Santa will be any more robust; especially as our own disinterest in the red, white, and black Xmas superhero becomes apparent. I have never held any particular fondness for the tradition myself and haven’t ever felt any loss associated with never having believed in or cared about the mythical figure. Wondering how to deal with Santa is, for us, as much a non-issue as planning how to explain to our children the political platform of William Henry Harrison.

“The Importance of Gratitude” by Ben Bartlett, writer and associate editor:
Santa is pretty straightforward in my mind. He’s pretend. He encourages being good simply to get stuff.  And he steals credit from generous family members.

Perhaps someday I’ll tell the story of St. Nicholas, and why there are good connections between his generosity, the giving of gifts, and the greatest gift of all. But thanks to the confusion created by a secular world in love with possessions, the distinction is too difficult for my three-year-old to parse.

So, my son and I had this conversation when Isaiah saw some Santa toys.

Isaiah: Daddy, who is that?

Me: That’s Santa Clause.

Isaiah: Oh. What does he do?

Me: Well, he’s pretend. People like to say he comes down their chimneys and leaves them presents.

Isaiah: Why?

Ben: I have no idea.

There’s one other reason Santa is ignored at our house. Parenting is full of uncertainty and constant worry about missed opportunities, making clear chances to teach gratitude valuable. So when my kids receive presents this year, they will be expected to say, “Thank you,” to the giver in each and every circumstance. To put it bluntly, there’s just no room for untrue stories about Santa.

“Admit it! Santa is Kinda Creepy” by Drew Dixon, editor
My wife and I took our 5.5 month old daughter to the lodge at the local State Park to have pictures made with Santa. To be honest, it wasn’t our idea–we were invited by another couple in our church who recently had their first child as well. We love these friends dearly and jumped at the opportunity to spend time with them. Evelyn stared at Santa, grabbed his beard, and stuck her fingers in his mouth. It was adorable.

My wife and I had already discussed how we would approach Santa and we thought that we would simply tell Evelyn that he was a man from Turkey who loved Jesus and graciously gave away his wealth to help others in need. However, as “Santa” awkwardly nibbled at my daughter’s fingers, I couldn’t help but wonder if it’s possible to avoid having to deal with the more troubling aspects of Santa lore. We don’t want to be the family that ruins everyone else’s fun by telling the truth about Santa and yet there are certain aspects about him that I feel will necessitate correction if my daughter were to professes faith in them.

Admit it–the idea that Santa sees children when they are sleeping and knows whether they have been bad or good is creepy. These are things that only God knows and sees–I cannot see how attributing such qualities to Santa would aid my daughter in understanding God. Further, the gospel tells us that God gives us good gifts because he loves us not because our works merit them. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to teach that to my daughter. I will give her gifts but it will be clear that they are from her earthly father in hopes that doing so will point her to her heavenly one.

This week, we continue our year in review podcast series with a look at the year in music, with special guest Jay Tholen. Jay Tholen is one of the most unique and exciting musicians to emerge from the indie “Christian” music scene. Mostly considered a chiptune artist, he often transgresses those boundaries to produce consistently surprising and polarizing music — all of it charmingly blatant in its Christian foundation. He, Drew Dixon (editor), and Jason Morehead (associate editor) discuss the year in music, recent trends in the contemporary Christian scene, and more.

Check out Jay Tholen’s music — his latest album is free!

Every week, various Christ and Pop Culture writers delve deeper into recent articles and address some of the bigger issues in popular culture.

We love feedback. If you’d like to respond, you can comment on the Web site or send an e-mail to christandpopculture@gmail.com. We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now!

Subscribe to us in iTunes by clicking here. While you’re at it, review us in iTunes. We’ll love you forever!

Each year the Liberty Counsel publishes a “Naughty and Nice list.” The list reports on retailers that acknowledge Christmas and those that do not. “Naughty” companies include, American Eagle, Old Navy and Staples while Walmart, Target, and JC Penny are made the Christmas-loving “nice” list. The Liberty Counsel, however, is not just letting us know what companies celebrate Christmas but also calling upon Christians to boycott those that do not.  For instance, the LC describes The Gap like this:

Naughty for six years over flagrant disregard for “Christmas.” Web site: “the GIVE JOY Shopping Event,” “GIFT me” and “Shop Perfect Holiday Presents” on home page. Search revealed only two secular items listed under “Christmas.” Printed ads in popular magazines “I Want Candy.” Company purged “Christmas” in stores or other advertisements. Contact Gap to politely explain why your Christmas dollars are spent at competitors who embrace “Christmas.”

The persistence of things like the LC’s “Naughty and Nice List” tells us something about the state of evangelicalism in America. If we really think that pressuring businesses into using proper terminology in their advertisements is going to accomplish anything for the kingdom of Christ we are being terribly naive.

In America, we are blessed with religious liberty—a freedom that many people across the globe do not enjoy. Yet it seems we are constantly looking for ways that our religious liberty is being denied. Perhaps the lack of persecution in America causes us to feel as if something is lacking in our religious practice. As a result, many Christians manufacture persecution and spread rumors that the white house was going to ban Christmas trees and rename them “Holiday Trees”. Many claim our religious freedoms are being denied when private companies exercise their free speech by refusing to promote Christian products.

If we really believe in the principle of religious liberty, we must believe that it applies to all people, including those who do not celebrate Christmas. Deliberately replacing “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” may be motivated by a refusal to celebrate the Christian aspects of Christmas, but should we be offended by non-christians refusing to acknowledge our savior or businesses attempting to sell products in neutral, inoffensive ways? One of the great blessings of being an American is our constitutional right to refrain from celebrating all kinds of things. Our non-christian neighbors have the right to “take Christ out of Christmas” if they so choose.

Most Americans don’t care how you greet them at the mall and very few businesses are deliberately removing “Christmas” from their holiday marketing. Most businesses understand that Jesus sells. Evangelical groups like the Liberty Counsel and the American Family Foundation have been surprisingly successful in getting businesses to “put Christ back” in their holiday advertisements. This is troubling for two reasons.

First, when we express personal offense over the refusals of others to celebrate Christmas we misunderstand Christ’s kingdom and how He calls us to advance it. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36) and his baptism is not with water but with the “Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matt. 3:11). To participate in His kingdom, you “must be born again” (John 3:5). Jesus’ most direct command on our part in advancing this kingdom is to “make disciples of all nations … teaching them everything that [Jesus] has commanded.” (Matt. 28:19-20). These spiritual realities of Christ’s kingdom illustrate the folly of trying to shame anyone into it. Jesus came to “seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10) not to chide them for refusing to celebrate his holidays.

Secondly, I fear that evangelical groups like the AFA and the LC don’t realize what they are asking for when they demand that businesses include religious terminology in their advertisements. If we want Christmas to retain its spiritual significance in our hearts, surely we want to avoid conflating its commercial aspects with its religious ones. If there is any force that has succeeded in “taking Christ out of Christmas,” it’s American consumerism. The fact that some evangelicals want companies to recognize our holiday when they sell us their products is at best naive and at worst hypocritical.

We need to admit that in fighting to “keep Christ in Christmas” we have embraced consumerism and neglected to love our neighbor. If we have any hope of infusing the holidays with spiritual significance, we must stop shaming those who don’t celebrate Christmas and start serving them instead.

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne.

If there’s one thing that humans have been proven to be good at, it’s survival. Our history is made up of stories of people enduring even the most adverse conditions. However, that gift bears with it an unfortunate side effect. We are also very good at settling for less. There is something in every person that yearns for more, something that dreams of “life and life more abundantly.” But when we don’t see those dreams become reality, the temptation is often to simply keep dreaming or fantasizing, and stop hoping and believing. Somewhere along the way, many people become disillusioned with reality as we know it and so descend into a sort of sub-reality, full of entertainment and escapism. As a Christian, I’ve felt that pull myself, away from community and into isolation. Away from the vigor of a life worth living and into mere passive existence. So why do we do this to ourselves? And is there a way out?

A couple of years ago I saw Avatar for the first time. If you recall, the film is about a crippled Marine who is given another chance at heroism as he mentally inhabits the body of an alien by means of advanced technology. Of course he ends up saving the day, but something didn’t feel right to me. I had too many questions about how such technology would affect our world if it really existed. What if through technology you really could live out your life in another body? I realized that I was not alone in my musings, but rather had stumbled onto a major theme in contemporary thought. Namely, the nagging fear of what we might become if we settle for living a fantasy. You find it in other films too, such as Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, Inception, which asks: “What would happen if we got so confused by our created worlds that we forgot which one is real?”

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Best Family Movie of the Year: The Muppets — Erin Newcomb

When Erin Straza approached me about nominating the best family film, I knew my criteria right away: The movie had to be intelligent for adults, musical to engage children of all ages, and void of too many intense plot points that might read as scary for younger viewers. Of course, the acting, storyline, and musical numbers also need to be high quality. The Muppets, starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, and the whole lovable cast of original Muppets (plus newcomer Walter) makes a strong showing for the finest family film of the year. My two caveats center on the rating and the plot. The film is rated PG, with a lot of physical, comedic violence that small children might find scary (I’d recommend this movie for 7+ depending on the child). As for the plot, my feeling is that children will find it more entertaining and engaging if they’ve been introduced to the Muppets first at home, since much of the story relies on already knowing and loving the characters. Those qualifiers aside, I found the film delightfully refreshing.

The premise focuses on the Muppets’ comeback to save their studio — and the lingering question of their current cultural relevance. By the film’s conclusion, both the studio and the Muppets’ popularity are restored. Along the way, Segel treats viewers to an endearingly goofy performance, complete with all his Freaks and Geeks charm sans the pot. His song “Man or Muppet” encapsulates the film’s magical silliness. Parents will appreciate the nostalgia trip to the Muppets’ heyday through pop culture references (like the celebrities Kermit unsuccessfully tries to enlist — Jimmy Carter and Molly Ringwald) and the movie’s meta-awareness. Children will adore the slapstick and the whole range of nutty Muppet personalities. Add these characteristics to the slew of self-aware song-and-dance numbers that keep all the audience members smiling and tapping their toes, and this film seems like a frontrunner for family film of the year.

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Best Most Ridiculous Meme — Kirk Bozeman

In 2011, “Planking” was a pretty strange meme in itself. But Planking’s attempted (and, thankfully, less dangerous) spinoffs were even weirder: including Batmanning, Tebowing, and… Horsemanning?

Unlike most other photo-posing fads, horsemanning is a team sport. Take a picture of yourself and a buddy posed so that it appears one of you is headless and the other is the missing head. (You know, like the Headless Horseman in The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Get it?)

It never really caught on, probably because it’s just plain creepy. But the strangest thing about horsemanning is that it isn’t something new. All related sites are quick to point out that it was a photo fad in the 1920s. Yep — the 20s. Check the family photo album pic, you may have missed the pic of the great-grandparents attempting to horseman.

Horsemanning is the most ridiculous meme of 2011 because it was both way too creepy to catch on and also an attempted revival of a genuine historical artifact that was too creepy to stick around. How many memes can claim all that?

Between Rick Perry, conservative pastors, your impressionable great aunt, and Fox News (or as Jason says in this podcast, an “unnamed news network”), you’d think Christmas was literally being attacked by atheist soldiers, cowering in a foxhole waiting for good Christians warriors to fight for its freedom. But is this accurate? Uhm, of course not. But what is the truth about the war on Christmas, and what does it mean for those of us that view the incarnation as something true and deeply profound? In this episode, Richard Clark (editor-in-chief), Drew Dixon (editor), Alan Noble (co-founder and editor), and Jason Morehead (associate editor) discuss their approach to Christmas, commercialism, and those darned atheist Christmas terrorists.

Every week, various Christ and Pop Culture writers delve deeper into recent articles and address some of the bigger issues in popular culture.

We love feedback. If you’d like to respond, you can comment on the Web site or send an e-mail to christandpopculture@gmail.com. We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now!

Subscribe to us in iTunes by clicking here. While you’re at it, review us in iTunes. We’ll love you forever!

[C]assette devotees say that tapes are underappreciated. They see cassettes following in the shadows of their analog brethren, vinyl records, which are currently enjoying a renaissance.

[...]

Most music lovers don’t miss the hiss, the background noise caused when the tape passes over the playback head. “Listening to a cassette for quality is like driving a Smart Car in the Indy 500,” says Bob Lefsetz, author of a music newsletter and blog, who says the cassette is a poor music medium.

The hiss is part of the magic for cassette lovers. “Tape hiss has the same amount of charm as a little crackle when listening to a record has,” says Mr. Thordarson. “It makes it seem more real.”

Then there’s the smell. “I want them fresh, sealed in the package,” says André Sirois, 31, who hunts for unopened tapes to add to his collection. “I know one day I’ll rip them open and smell that sweet plasticy smell, and I’m going to enjoy how I used to enjoy music, as an old dude.”

I was recently cleaning out the basement when I came across a box of old cassettes, most of them mixtapes that I’d either made for playing in the car or received from various Internet acquaintances as part of the many mixtape swaps I once participated in. There were also several old Christian alternative titles in there — e.g., The Prayer Chain’s Whirlpool EP, Under Midnight’s self-titled debut, My Little Dog China’s The Velvis Carnival — that I listened to religiously (npi) in high school.

And finally, there was the battered old black cassette of Cure songs that my friend Leah gave me as a birthday gift, a formative event in my development as both a music fan and an angst-ridden teenager. Leah was one of the coolest kids I knew in high school — and in our senior year, she was in a car accident and died just a few weeks before her 18th birthday, an event that haunted me long after I graduated. I’d forgotten about that cassette, but upon seeing it again, I realized just how important it had been over the years as a reminder of a very good friend. I haven’t listened to it in almost two decades now, and it’s in such bad shape that I’ll probably never listen to it again for fear of ruining it, but I can never throw it away: too many memories are wrapped around its spools.

Discovering that cache of cassettes was an instant nostalgia rush, but it had nothing to do with their smell. Cassettes, like vinyl, do indeed have a sensorily affecting aspect to them. Like most folks these days, I don’t really miss cassettes themselves — CDs sound better and don’t wear out so easily, and digital formats like MP3s are much more convenient — but I do miss both the physicality and the intentionality that cassettes lent to music. And there was no better example of these aspects than the mixtape process.

Creating a mixtape was an editorial process: You were forced to consider the limitations of the cassette’s sides when compiling your playlist so that you could fit in all of the songs you wanted to share with someone and in the right order. (For the record, I always used high-quality 90-minute Maxell tapes: nothing but the best if you were getting one of my mixes!) You had to carefully consider the recipient: you had no room for filler so you had to think about their tastes and requests. If the recipient was someone you had a crush on, this became even more important: every song on that mixtape had to leave them swooning over your taste, coolness, and thoughtfulness.

You then spent hours hunkered down in front of your stereo, focused on pressing the “Record” and “Pause” buttons at just the right times while, if necessary, fading the volume between songs to create perfect transitions. If you made a mistake, you had to rewind without going too far back lest you overwrote any of the previous song, and then try again — or you just threw away the cassette and started over from scratch. You had to listen to every minute of this process as you were creating your mix (high-speed dubbing was, let’s be honest, a cheat). And finally, you had to write down the song titles on those flimsy little sleeves that blank cassettes came with. (Disclosure: I made most of my tape covers on my dad’s Macintosh LC. They represented some of my first forays into graphic design… and they really sucked.) All in all, it was a task that, in all of its frustrating and painstaking glory, just can’t be duplicated in this day and age of iTunes playlists.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I realized, as I was cracking open those plastic cases for the first time in at least a decade, how much I missed those things. I was reminded of how disembodied, disconnected, and disposable music can seem in this era of iTunes, MP3s, and “the cloud.” There are, of course, many benefits to these modern technologies, such as near-instant access to massive music libraries. However, I’m kidding myself if I think that I’m not giving up something valuable in its own right, something that can add another layer of meaning and context to my music. That old black cassette, with Leah’s ornate handwriting all over the cover, is a powerful anchor for the relationships and memories borne out of a shared love for music, an anchor that stands in spite of loss. The same holds true, to a lesser degree, for all of the mixtapes that I’ve recently uncovered.

Now, such an anchor is not necessarily essential to enjoying music and finding it rewarding: I certainly not suggesting that people who have never used cassettes have some sort of hurdle to appreciating music. But I do know that the tens of thousands of MP3s in my iTunes library have little that’s comparable to the intentionality, thoughtfulness, and time contained within old cassettes from friends now long gone.

Alan

Are we at war with Islam? No, and according to the Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Defense, to spread that idea is “to aid and abet that effort to advance [al-Qaida’s] propaganda goal.”

What’s a symbol? Why do authors use them? What do they mean? A sixteen-year-old kid asks Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer these questions in 1963. Check out their answers.

What has the most significant effect on how soldiers transition into civilian life? Their faith.

Luke

We’re finally getting a new Jesus movie (should we be happy about this?). Based on the book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, the movie is about Jesus’ life from ages 7-8.

The mysterious software, Carrier IQ, that was allegedly tracking information like text messages, who you called, and other vital information on a large amount of smart phones has finally been brought to light. Sort of.

Although very little of it was talked about, apparently Russia almost fell into civil war this week during their recent election.

A new Earth-like planet was found and although its too far away to plausibly ever get to, its still a pretty interesting thing to think about!

Drew

In a last ditch effort to garner votes from the Religious right, Rick Perry vows to “end Obama’s war on religion.” He also laments that kids “can’t celebrate Christmas” in our country anymore … huh?

Our very own Rich Clark has wrote an interesting review for Epoch. for Kill Screen:

Is there a danger of forgetting basic human assumptions in the face of cold, hard logic and technology? Sure. But Epoch suggests that when faced with the marvel of machines and their destruction of mankind, it’s the little things that matter: love notes, cries of protest, and human creativity.

Shameless plug time–I wrote a critical response to Sony’s “Long Live Play” ad campaign for Paste Magazine’s mPlayer. I think the article might be helpful for helping mature Christians appreciate videogames.

Also, Paste posted their top 20 games of 2011 this week which includes contributions from Luke Larsen, Rich Clark, and myself.

“Cussing Christians” Kurt Willems explains why he agrees with Mark Driscoll on his use of language.

Jason

Russell D. Moore wants women to stop submitting to men, especially women in the Church.

Did you know that The Muppets film is trying to teach your kids to hate the rich and embrace a leftist, pro-environmentalist agenda?

Is it really “artistic rape” when they make a Watchmen tie-in or when George Lucas releases yet another version of Star Wars? Catecinem doesn’t think so:

Fans do not own a particular comic property. They may be responsible for whether or not it is a commercial success, but what Moore promotes is the idea that the perception of what the artistic object — in this case, Watchmen — is trumps its actual place in reality.  Those suggesting that the original Watchmen would be “raped” by prequels, sequels, or what-have-you are provably false; what they mean to say is that their feelings of what the work means to them would be exposed as a mere, fallible construction.

The Vatican is going to start cracking down on ugly church architecture.

Tebow has been so firmly planted in the lime light that he has inspired a new trend: “Tebowing,” a practice similar to “planking” that pokes fun at Tebow’s iconic pregame prayers. Other Christian athletes have weighed in on Tebow’s public displays of faith as well. Former Super Bowl Champion Kurt Warner recently encouraged Tebow to tone down his religious rhetoric. While Tebow certainly carries himself with a wide-eyed sincerity and an infectious work ethic, Warner’s comments bring up important questions about Christian witness. I appreciate Tebow’s outward expressions of faith, but I think Warner may have a point. Public displays of religious acts don’t actually tell anyone anything about our faith. Is it possible that many Christians are admiring Tebow for the wrong reasons?

The prophet Isaiah pronounced God’s judgment on Israel for public displays of religion devoid of spiritual substance: “this people draw near with their mouth and honor with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men” (Isa. 29:13). Jesus further warned us of the dangers of public acts of supplication, “beware of practicing your righteousness before men in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven” (Matt. 6:1).

These passages do not illuminate the motives of Tim Tebow. We cannot possibly know his heart. It could be that Tebow selfishly prays each week for God to smite his evil opponents. It is far more likely, however, that he asks God to help him play honorably and thanks Him for the opportunity to play the game he loves. Christian charity requires that we assume the latter.

I once heard Tebow give his testimony at a pastor’s conference in Jacksonville, Florida. Tebow had just won a national championship and finished his freshman year at the University of Florida. He wasn’t the best public speaker but his testimony came across as sincere and he clearly relished the opportunity to praise God for all of his success. I am not a Gator fan, nor do I follow the NFL, but I walked away from that experience interested in how his career would unfold. I prayed that he would be faithful to Christ with the platform God had given him. Some five years have passed since I prayed that prayer and I am happy to say that I think Tebow has carried himself admirably.

Tebow refused to attend the yearly Heisman party at the Playboy mansion both times he was nominated for the award, his teammates consistently praise his work ethic, and when he is criticized, Tebow never retaliates. In response to criticism from Jake Plummer (former Broncos Quarterback) about his constant references to Jesus, Tebow said:

“If you’re married and you have a wife and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife ‘I love her’ the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and every opportunity? That’s how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ.”

While I think Warner may have a point about the dangers of public piety, Tebow’s response to criticism has a way of dismantling such arguments. We should all pray for the kind of affection for Christ that Tebow purports to have. These things are worthy of our admiration.

The Bible never condemns public prayer but it often warns us of its inherent dangers—-namely a religion motivated by the praise of men. This has me wondering what Tebow’s bold religious gestures are actually accomplishing. Certainly he has won the praise of many church going football fans but what about the unbeliever watching at home? What about Tebow’s teammates?

While I cannot possibly know the answers to those questions, I appreciate Warner’s challenge to Tebow: “The greatest impact you can have on people is never what you say, but how you live…. You set the standard with your actions. The words can come later.” From what I can see of Tebow, I would like to say he is living a life fitting of his many shout-outs to Jesus. The real truth, however, is that I don’t know Tim Tebow.

Biblically speaking, public piety tells us very little about someone’s faith. Prayer is a religious act and John 3:16 is a verse—neither actually tells us all that much about Tebow’s character and whether it’s worthy of applause. While I appreciate Tebow’s public piety, I find myself wanting to gently warn the millions of Christians following his story that his public displays of faith are not necessarily indicative of what it means to follow Jesus.

We are commanded to be Christ’s witnesses (Acts 1:8) and to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17)–but the particulars of living out those commands must be worked out in context of our daily lives. Assuming that public expressions of faith–in Tebow’s case, pre-game prayers and writing Bible verses on one’s eye black–serve as an essential part of our witness is naive and potentially misleading. It’s highly unlikely that any of us will gain the kind of platform Tebow has, but our witness is equally valuable.  Tim Tebow is worthy of my admiration, but not because of his public piety.

I am impressed with Tebow, not because he prays before football games and thanks Jesus in every interview, but because he plays hard and has earned the respect of his teammates and coaches (1 Tim. 3:7). It’s strange to me that Christians so often neglect to applaud these types of achievements and instead gravitate to patting people on the back for “bolder” acts like praying in public and thanking God in interviews.  The praise Tebow receives for being a hard worker, a dedicated player, and a team leader says more about his faith than his pregame prayers. If we fail to recognize that, we undervalue our own witness and the importance of our individual lives as platforms from which to preach the gospel.

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Best Rawk Show: The Bazan Band, New Brookland Tavern, West Columbia, SC — Jonathan Sircy

David Bazan runs a tight ship, something that’s probably even more true now that he has ditched the Pedro the Lion moniker. The last four times I’ve seen him with a band (twice as PTL), he has had his mates precise and locked in: a quick run of songs (frequently with tour updated arrangements), a respite to answer questions from the crowd, and repeat. Touring behind 2011 release Strange Negotiations, this Bazan Band was leaner than last year’s incarnation which featured a second guitarist/vocalist, Blake Wescott. But they didn’t sacrifice a whit in sound. Bazan attacked his guitar with a ferocity I haven’t seen before, and when the volume peaked, the band hit like the atom bomb, filling up every nook and cranny of West Columbia’s premier rock club dive. Bazan’s voice has gotten more gravelly with age, but he hit every note he need to (aided by harmonies from bassist Andy Fitts) and more than adequately brought the emotive goods.

I tend to gauge a rock show by the drummer. Is he silently mouthing the words along with the lead singer? Is he making periodic eye contact with the bassist that says, “I LOVE this part of the song”? Does he know how to properly mix precision and fluidity depending on what the song requires? Drummer Casey Westcoat’s mouth wasn’t moving, but his eyes were feverishly intense the entire night. He was by turns pounding on set opener “Second Best,” propulsive on “Magazine,” polyrhythmic on a new arrangement of “Gas and Matches,” and backbeat-tastic on Strange Negotiations standout “Eating Paper.” The set-list was a treat for Pedro the Lion fans: two songs from 1998’s It’s Hard to Find a Friend (“Of Up and Coming Monarchs” and “Big Trucks”), EP deep-cut Criticism as Inspiration, and the two aforementioned songs from Control. He even threw in an obscure Tom Petty cover (“Climb that Hill”) for good measure. His between-song digressions included thoughts about the news media (not to be trusted), the Occupy movement (the first bit of hope he’s seen in years), and bands he loves (Beatles and Fugazi). The show was positively heavy, and Bazan’s ability to go from satirically scorching (“Second Best”) to loving (“Won’t Let Go”) and then to existential questioning (“Strange Negotiations”) showed him at the top of his game. He’s become a must-see performer.

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Best Moment in a Videogame: “The kid just rages for a while.” (Bastion: XBLA, PC) — Richard Clark

You’re controlling a character with a sword or staff in a videogame. There are boxes and other breakable objects around you. What do you do? Of course, you attempt to break those objects. It’s a gaming tradition that’s turned into an unthinking impulse, rooted more in mechanics than any thematic conceit. From the earliest RPGs, breaking boxes, vases, and chests has resulted in found life, coins, or objects. In other words, games reward our wanton destruction of an environment without any actual reflection. When we do pause to reflect on what we’re actually doing, we seem like utter psychopaths, gleefully destroying everything in sight with little concern for those around us.

That’s why, for the long-time gamer, the moment in Bastion when you first start breaking things is so startling. Shortly after Kid wakes up to find everyone and everything he knows destroyed — and just as you cause him to go to town on various boxes and fragile objects — the narrator clarifies what’s going on in that moment with one concise and profound sentence: “The kid just rages for a while.” We don’t hear that sentence again, and we don’t need to. Kid’s situation is unfathomably sad, but we can all relate to that moment when profound sadness and an inescapable sense of injustice collide, and the only logical response is to break things.

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Best New Way to Listen to Music: Bandcamp — Jason Morehead

In the past year, online streaming services such as Spotify and Rdio have become all the rage, and understandably so — they’re cheap. A measly $9.99/month will get you access to Spotify Premium, which lets you stream as much music as you want sans advertising to your various devices (iPad support coming in 2012).

However, when it comes to streaming music, my favorite remains Bandcamp. Artists upload their music (full/partial albums or single tracks) to their own details pages and charge however much they want (or they can let users decide how much to pay), cutting out the middle-man. It’s not a perfect system — its tag-based navigation is a bit of a mess — but you can easily spend hours trawling through their site and stumbling across previously unknown artists that blow your mind.

Or, to put it another way, Bandcamp is everything Myspace (remember them?) should have been.