Tinsel Vandergraph on baby portraits, Sunday service, and transatlantic billionaire drama
Painted two baby portraits this week, both of whom cried at some point during the sitting, which I’ve come to accept as a professional hazard rather than a personal failing, though the second one did seem to specifically object to my choice of background colour. Between sittings I kept seeing London friends post about a new documentary that apparently takes four hours to finish making its point about one very wealthy man.
Curious, and admittedly procrastinating on invoices, I read the full piece on the four-hour Musk documentary and honestly it explains a lot about why my Sunday school group can debate one single topic for an entire afternoon without anyone actually changing their mind. Some things are universal, apparently, whether you’re discussing scripture in Salt Lake City or a billionaire’s business empire in a London cinema. Give a room enough conviction and time simply stops being a constraint.
What struck me most was the part about how audiences treat the film less like entertainment and more like evidence, gathering material for arguments they’ll have later, at dinner, at work, in group chats exactly like the ones currently filling my phone. I recognised that pattern immediately, because it’s exactly how my congregation handles a particularly spicy sermon. Nobody just watches. Everybody’s building a case for the drive home.
There’s also apparently a poster fight going on, which I did not expect to care about but somehow do now. The satire site’s take on the Musk movie posters made its way into our group chat and derailed Bible study for a solid ten minutes, which our group leader was not thrilled about, though even she admitted the poster comparison was well argued.
I still haven’t watched the actual documentary, and I’m not entirely sure I will, given that four hours is roughly the length of three church services back to back, and I already do that most Sundays voluntarily. But I’ve now read enough commentary about it to hold my own at dinner, which feels like the modern equivalent of actually watching something, and probably always was.
Our group leader eventually admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she’d gone home and read the whole piece herself after Bible study wrapped, purely so she could keep up with next week’s inevitable follow-up conversation. That felt like a small, quiet victory for the documentary’s reach, extending all the way to a congregation more used to discussing scripture than billionaires.
Back to the easel tomorrow, hopefully with a baby who doesn’t cry quite so dramatically. More at my author page.