Culture archives

Douglas Coupland and the Art of the Extreme Present

2021 is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Douglas Coupland’s first novel, Generation X. To mark it, there will be an online international conference – the first on Coupland’s work – on 23–24 April. ‘Douglas Coupland and the Art of the Extreme Present’ will ‘explore the richness of Coupland’s engagement with contemporary life’ through […]

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Media in a post-truth world – part 2

Why do people click so frequently on false stories? How do these lies spread so rapidly? It is certainly true that facts and non-facts circulate at a speed that would have been inconceivable before the Internet and social media. Most people do not have the means, or perhaps inclination, to fact check the things that […]

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Media in a post-truth world – part 1

This post was first published on Engaging Media, the website of the Lausanne Media Engagement Network. Oxford Dictionaries chose ‘post-truth’ as its Word of the Year for 2016. Editor Casper Grathwohl said, Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth […]

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Gift Horse

The tenth sculpture to occupy the long-vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is Hans Haacke’s Gift Horse. The plinths in the other three corners of the Square have been occupied by their statues from the outset. The one in the north-east corner supports a statue of George IV on horseback. The north-western one, built in […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part six)

This is the last in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Two more aspects of responding to film and literature 4. Morality Image from iStockPhoto.com We have considered the moral […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part five)

This is the fifth in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Celebrate the good1 Image from iStockPhoto.com If the ideas actually make sense, we need to acknowledge that fact, even […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part four)

This is the fourth in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Image from iStockPhoto.com Worldviews in film and literature While not wishing to over-emphasise this aspect of responding to art […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part three)

This is the third in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Five aspects of responding to art If, then, art and media are the product of people made in the […]

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Art's Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part two)

This is the second in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Two-faced human beings Adam and Eve were tempted by the freedom to make their own moral choices; they wanted […]

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Art's Desire: Responding to Film and Literature

This is the first in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Reflecting or shaping? Marvin doesn't like living in a media-dominated world. He doesn't watch television, avoids the cinema, shuns […]

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Worldviews and Cultural Apologetics

These are my slides from a day of teaching on worldviews and cultural apologetics for Care's Leadership Programme. You can download the pdf from Slideshare. Related posts: Understanding teen culture Perspectives on Media Responding to Media Culture Now Using Film in Christian Communication - downloads

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On Defending Beauty

I was struck by these comments about the loss of beauty in British life by the philosopher Roger Scruton:   In the '50s and '60s, when my generation was growing up, British people were actively recruited by the educational system and the worlds of art and religion to an aspirational culture. Those were the days […]

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Understanding teen culture

On Saturday (21 November 2009) I led two workshops at Good Book Company's 'Growing Young Disciples training day on youth and children's work. The first was on Understanding Teen Culture. Forty minutes is a very short time to do anything other than scratch a tiny part of the vast surface which is youth culture. Anyway, […]

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© Tony Watkins, 2020
The Tony and Jane Watkins Trust oversees and supports the ministries of Tony and Jane Watkins in Christian training, education, and communication. It is a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 1062254.
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