Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 08
April 16, 2007


Arts&Culture

Confessions of a reluctant Mennonite

Waterloo, Ont.

Author Sandra Birdsell, seated, chats with Imgard Penner at a book-signing session following her Bechtel Lecture at Conrad Grebel University College last month.

Mennonite—ethnicity or Christian denomination? The old question came to many minds as Sandra Birdsell gave the 2007 Bechtel Lectures at Conrad Grebel University College entitled “The confession of a reluctant Mennonite.”

Over two evenings last month Birdsell, the award-winning novelist of The Russländer, time-travelled from the Prairie location to which her Schroeder relatives moved in the 1920s from Chortitza in what was then Russia, forward to the time when she herself stood in the village of her grandparents in what is now Ukraine.

Although she had many fond memories of family times growing up, as a young adult she eschewed her Mennonite heritage. Being Mennonite in Canada seemed to mean standing outside of society and watching it go by. She sensed an exotic existence sometime in her relatives’ past, but here in Canada, Mennonite life seemed to be “grim, sad and pious.”

Stories she overheard told her that everything—including children—had been better in Russia. “Why then,” she asked, “had they come to Canada?” The only answer she received was that “there were bad people” in Russia.

Birdsell grew up attending the local General Conference Mennonite Church, where she learned to “turn the other cheek” and that being Mennonite was to not have fun. If her father’s French/native ancestry was flashy and demonstrative, being Mennonite was “having acne.”

Birdsell’s decision to “not be Mennonite” was put to the test when she was grouped with others, including Rudy Wiebe, on a 1982 CBC radio panel to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a Mennonite writer?” Feeling like an interloper, she wanted to explain her Métis background instead.

Following the panel discussion, she was invited by Hildi Froese Tiessen to speak at Conrad Grebel. On one of her visits with Tiessen, she discovered Forever Summer, Forever Sunday, Peter Gerhard Rempel’s book of photos of the 19th century Russian Mennonite colonies. To her surprise, she discovered photos of her relatives actually enjoying themselves. She realized that she really knew nothing of who they had been before they came to Canada.

This led her on an odyssey of reading Mennonite history and eventually two trips to Ukraine. On her first trip she found her grandparents’ home was gone. Her disenchantment was somewhat allayed on her last day when a Ukrainian woman, in the shadow of the famous Chortitza Oak, sang “Gott ist die Liebe,” her grandfather’s song, to her.

A few years later she accompanied a group of Mennonites on the Dnepr River Mennonite heritage cruise. She discovered that they came to not only sightsee but also to help fund a clinic for poor Ukrainians. “They came with suitcases filled with antibiotics, Aspirin and forgiveness.”

The most difficult part of writing The Russländer was finding the author’s voice. When on the news she saw a truckload of raped Muslim Bosnian women being whisked away, she understood her aunts’ silence and wrote the book from the point of view of Katya, a Mennonite servant girl on a Mennonite estate in Chortitza.

After the book was published, Rudy Wiebe said to her, “So you’ve become a Mennonite,” and she did not object.

Yet in her pocket she carries a Métis identification card. “If Mennonites handed out heritage identification cards, I’d carry one too,” she admitted.

—Dave Rogalsky

‘Beautiful’ violence offers dangerous messages

 

300. Warner Bros. Pictures. Directed by Zack Snyder. Written by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon. R rating.

Make no mistake, 300 is a work of art. It is surely one of the most visually stunning films ever made. This is a gorgeous film. But the seductive beauty of 300 only serves to make the film more dangerous—a hook to draw in and entertain the masses with a tale of redemptive ultra-violence. And this is a very dangerous film indeed.

To start with, we have 300 Spartan soldiers—all perfect specimens of humanity—facing a vast horde of monsters, magicians and mystics who are fighting for the Persian king Xerxes. That one fact alone makes the film dangerous; 300 is an ode to dehumanization and there is not much worse I could ever say about a film.

The fact that the beautiful heroic Spartans are westerners facing Persian “monsters” is also dangerous in a time when the country that fabricated an excuse to justify the invasion of Iraq is now trying to fabricate excuses to invade Iran. Of course, today it is the U.S. that represents the invading empire of its time, so perhaps the film is a work of irony. Do the Spartans then represent terrorists?

But the real danger lies in the hugely excessive display of virtually non-stop graphic violence. Sure, the violence is stylized, with countless slow-motion scenes of spear and sword thrusts and heads being sliced off. But don’t try to tell me this makes the bloodfest okay. On the contrary, it just makes people think it’s okay to watch hundreds of people mercilessly butchered.

In fact, I have heard from young male Mennonites in North America (aged 18 to 28) that 300 is extremely popular—even in Mennonite academic settings—for this particular demographic. The two young men who told me this said they “loved” 300 because of its beautiful computer-generated images, because of the passion of the characters, because of the non-stop action, because it was “history,” and because of the nobility of these 300 men being willing to sacrifice themselves—fight against hugely overwhelming odds—to make the world a better place.

But it’s not okay. I was numbed and horrified by the cold and grisly deaths of the Persians, all the more so because they were so “beautiful.”

In a world at war, what kind of message does a film like 300 send to the millions who are apparently flocking to the cinemas? The glory of war, of fighting for freedom, of not showing weakness, of not negotiating, of showing no mercy—this is Sparta. If the writers and filmmakers were trying for some irony in their heroic and beautiful depiction of the Spartans, I fear it will be lost on the masses, especially the young men toward whom the film is clearly aimed.

But there is yet another danger. The religious symbolism looked like it was trying to make the Spartan king Leonidus into a Christ-figure. Besides the crucifixion scene at the end of the film, there is also the scene in which Leonidus is tempted by Xerxes, who sees himself as a god: “Bow down before me and I will give you the world.”

I fear that some Christians will think Leonidus indeed stands for Jesus, leading his beautiful perfect followers into a battle against Satan and his hideous deformed minions, a small army of Christians who will stand firm against the horde of Muslims and atheists who are trying to attack the only true faith. That Leonidus is the exact opposite of Jesus—who was a man of compassion and mercy, who saw it as his mission to humanize those who were seen as less than human, and who loved his enemies instead of brutally slaying them—will not be noticed by many.

—Vic Thiessen

The reviewer is director of the London (England) Mennonite Centre.

 

Heritage Centre Gallery curator Ray Dirks, seated in the photo above, gave a workshop at Winnipeg’s St. Vital Hindu temple, which has led to a request to begin giving regular art classes there later this year.

“My role in the gallery is not to be a verbal witness, but rather to be an example through the relationships I have with schools, community groups and individuals of other faith backgrounds, Dirks says. “If I ‘preached’ to any of these contacts, the connection would be lost. I have ongoing friendships coming out of the work of the gallery that range from Mennonites to Hutterites to Hindus to Muslims. These relationships extend beyond the gallery to many invitations to homes and places of worship. By being open to relationships across cultures and faiths, the gallery has earned a reputation as a place to have dialogue without fear. As a result, I am frequently approached by people from other communities asking if we can work together. Doors open. Today, as I speak, a group of Hindu women is touring, with great interest [in] an openly Christian exhibition on the life of Jesus in our upstairs gallery.”


Back to Canadian Mennonite home page