How to find meaning in pop culture

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | July 9, 2009

David Dark is a teacher and pop culture critic who views the media through the lens of the gospel. He shines the light of the good news on all he sees: Christendom, politics, economics, literature, movies, music. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything is his report on what he's been watching, reading and hearing.

Dark begins by establishing a safe place for questioning. First, he challenges the idea of God as an angry tyrant ready to punish doubters, worriers and the unorthodox—a God who is "a being of hatefulness and perpetual accusation…a hellish handler of human beings." Under the Gospel light, Dark says this is a "Satanic perversion of the idea of God." The God of the Bible is loving, generous and merciful, strong enough not to be threatened by even the hardest question or harshest critique we could throw His way.

Dark then moves on to the broader culture, listening for signs of hope, wonder, mystery, and resistance wherever he can find them. He quotes Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot and John Howard Yoder alongside Homer Simpson, Tom Waits and Win Butler (from the Montreal band The Arcade Fire).

There is wisdom out there, in music, movies, and even (gasp) television. Dark is obviously a fan of good music and thoughtful movies, but at the same he's dead serious about it because it's all shaping our worldview one way or another. "[The media] is all religion all the time," he says. And so Dark goes after the big fish, exegeting the discourse, worldview and political ideologies that justify violence and exploitation. Dark's specialty is literature, but he applies his discernment skills to find wisdom wherever he can, whether in William Blake or Joe Strummer from The Clash.

This kind of pop culture exegesis is familiar territory for David Dark, whose first book Everyday Apocalypse uncovered wisdom in Beck, Radiohead, the Coen Brothers and The Simpsons. Unlike some contemporary writers looking to pop culture as a way of being relevant, Dark never loses sight of the gospel as he reads well below the surface of the media, looking for wisdom and listening to the poignant questions.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything is an excellent media literacy guide, inspiring and challenging, not because it tells us what to watch or listen to, but because it helps us consider how to approach media.