faithasawayoflife: on DISMANTLING an atomic bomb

the follow rant offered free and unsolicited:

why is it that in our sound-bite, sex and violence loving, context and content hating nation, we . . .

well, i've just answered my own question. because we are who we are (weeping, gnashing of teeth) a good many reviews of U2's new album titled how to dismantle an atomic bomb are titled in such a way as to use the bomb image, and not the dismantle image.

a couple examples among VERY many:

U2's 'Bomb' Explodes at No. 1 on US Charts
Reuters - NY,USA

'Bomb' flattens doubts about U2
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

CD Review: U2's Latest Is More Dud Than 'Bomb'
Channel Oklahoma.com - Oklahoma City,OK,USA

U2's 'Bomb' lacks firepower
By DARRYL STERDAN
Winnipeg Sun

what is the issue with this? at the risk of sounding like a grouch, this band has been raising peace issues since day one given the context of ireland's conflicts and particular biographical things such as their school that brought together both Protestants and Catholics. and the album is about dismantling an explosive father - son relationship and as well the whole violent cold war ethos of that generation. and some of the songs 'peace and love or else' are strongly anti-war.

go figure.

anon, and +peace

Reading

Stephen J. Nichols: Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation
Well, in order to get closer to the theology of the blues, and that'd be theology in a minor key, that doesn't skip past Good Friday because it knows Sunday's coming, plan on checking out Nichols compelling new book Getting the Blues. Brazos sent it to me to read so that I can offer a pre-publication endorsement. So far, I like it a lot.
Robert Palmer: Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
A rich rewarding journey into America's gift to the music of the world, and the root of so much of what I love musically speaking: jazz, gospels, rock and roll, and more. A great starting place even if he is not that interested in the question of theology of the blues, a question I'd very much like to explore
David F. Ford: Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine)
David Ford has become one of the most important theologians writing today, and he has been mulling this one for more than a decade. I heard him speak at Yale in 2003 in response to Miroslav and Dorothy Bass' book Practicing Theology and many of these themes regarding wisdom come up. Especially powerful engagement with scripture from which he draws the idea of "wisdom cries." A practical theologian at his best. Read!
Mary Oliver: Why I Wake Early: New Poems
Here I find a carnal theology, so deeply enmeshed in the glory of the ordinary. finitum capax infiniti. read her and you will not look at an ordinary day as ordinary again. Try, for starters, "This World," on page 27. It begins thus: "I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy./ But it seems impossible./ Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it./"
Charles Taylor: A Secular Age
My teacher, the sociologist Robert Bellah, says: "This is one of the most important books written in my lifetime." Okay, enough. Rush out and get this book, just out, from one of the best living philosophers and certainly the most important for Christians.

Comments

So true. I was thinking about posting on the repetive titles, but you've put a nice additional spin on it: there is definitely more bombing language than dismantling language, and how inappropriate is that? Now if only we could also do away with all the articles on the band whose headlines contain the words "You Too...."

Posted by: Beth | December 02, 2004 at 06:09 PM

I used to be a newspaper copy editor, and included among my duties was headline-writing.

This is not to criticize U2, but it was almost a guarantee that an album with that title was going to show up in headlines with the "bomb" image rather than the "dismantling" image. Why? Because "bomb" is a shorter word and it fits, spacewise, in a headline where "dismantling" does not. And, of course, "bomb" is a more vivid image.....although if the word that meant "dismantling" were only four letters long and the word that meant "bomb" were 11 letters long, you might have ended up with a different result.

That being said, we could speculate that whoever does marketing for U2 knew quite well that when they put the word "Bomb" in the title of the album, that that was the word that was going to get the attention.

Maybe I'm just being cynical, but maybe I'm just being a realist....

Michael Kunz

Posted by: Michael Kunz | December 03, 2004 at 09:22 AM