Culture: August 2023 Archives
Eternity 1950-1989 : Free Texts : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Internet Archive has borrowable grayscale scans of the full 1950-1989 run of Eternity, a monthly Christian magazine founded by Donald Barnhouse, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis writes: "I am taken by the earnestness of the topics addressed and the quality of the writers, such as John Stott, Bernard Ramm, Billy Graham, G. Elton Ladd, and others. It was a magazine of serious evangelical commentary. I found articles on the God is dead theory, race relations, various political issues, LSD, youth culture, television (note the cover I posted from 1976), and other issues of moment.... I wrote a few articles for them [in the mid '80s], one rather long piece on New Age politics. By combing through these old issues, I see that Eternity gave us solid evangelical commentary and Bible study back in the day and for many years. For this, I am grateful and look forward to working my way through the years of their magazine." Because the magazines are still under copyright, you must have an Internet Archive account to check out a copy for viewing one hour at a time. The final issue dated January 1989 has cover stories by Brian Frickle regarding the moral content of architecture and by Thomas L. Kerns on architecture and creating a place of worship.
A Simple Age Verification Law Is Blowing Up the Online Porn Industry - POLITICO
"An important consensus seems to have emerged that childhood exposure to pornography is one of many things negatively affecting the minds of Gen Z. Anxiety is mounting around the country over the devastating and humiliating mental health crisis afflicting my generation. Some blame social media; others chime in to add oversensitivity, overdiagnosis and a therapeutic culture. It hardly seems like a leap to throw limitless internet porn into the blame basket.
"As the Louisiana law posits, 'Pornography may also impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.'"
The Big Eye painting craze of the 1950s and 1960s, started by Margaret Keane, with many imitators. An excerpt from Citizen Keane: The Big Lies Behind the Big Eyes by Adam Parfrey:
"[Walter] Keane's fortune was made from a style stunning in its simplicity. Weeping waifs. Tearful children. All bearing hypnotic, saucer-size orbs. It was said that if you looked at them long enough, the distressed children seemed to stare at you, even if you moved about the room. "Let's face it," he boasted to Life magazine: "Nobody painted eyes like El Greco, and nobody can paint eyes like Walter Keane." More discriminating art enthusiasts, critics, and academics didn't quite agree, finding the paintings formulaic and sickening in their sentimentality. But the rest of America fell in love with Keane's Big Eyes, and he became a household name.
"Meanwhile, lurking in the background, and painting Keanes in a basement studio, was Walter's long-suffering wife, Margaret, the true artist behind the Big Eyes. But more on that later.
"As the Big Eyes grew in popularity throughout the 1960s, dozens of imitators moved to cash in on the Keane style. Big Eye prints sprouted like toadstools; "Gig" painted moony-eyed mongrels and alley cats; "Eden" did corkboard prints of Keane-like waifs dressed as moppets in tattered clothing; "Eve" transformed Keane-like kids into precocious go-go dancers. Even black-velvet iterations of Big Eye kitsch followed in their footsteps."
