Thursday, April 12, 2012

Tiffany Noyes: Paul vs. 'Wings of Desire'


Independent Blog:
At the beginning of class we read an article called “Stuck in Time: Kairos, Chronos, and the Flesh in Groundhog Day” And rereading it, I noticed more things about it, and how it can relate to other films beside Groundhog Day. All this discussion of Pauline writing and the struggles between the flesh and the spirit, was made much more interesting having watched the movie 'Wings of Desire.' We read,
Paul's idea of the flesh struggling against the spirit derived from his conviction that the old age of sin stands in conflict with the new age of Christ, and that this conflict rages inside each person at times. The flesh is the realm of self-centered pleasure, related primarily to the pleasures of public approval and honor. It leads people to think that they can gain fulfillment by manipulating others or proving their superiority by surpassing others. In the ancient as well as the contemporary world, the culture of the flesh was competitive, cut-throat, exploitative, and self-centered.”
I feel like though there is definitely a struggle between the flesh and the spirit, the world of the angels vs. the world of the humans, in this article, the spirit is quite idealized and the flesh made to look like only a bad thing, nothing good can come of it. I don't fully believe in this concept and I appreciate that the movie painted pros and cons into both the spiritual and the physical worlds. Even though I do think that a lot of Paul's writing that can be compared to Wings of Desire, I don't see this idea that the flesh is evil, and completely selfish portrayed.

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