| I’m reminded of this quote from C.S. Lewis (from Weight of Glory):
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
“You saved my life. Why?” (Marcus)
“I don’t know. It looked like it needed saving.” (Bama, Terrence Howard)
Marcus had it all, by street measurements, but he recognized that there was still something missing. Sadly, his epiphany arrived as he faced the moment of his death. When he knew he was about to die, he realized that he still expected his father to save him. The problem was that he was looking for the wrong father. The conclusion he comes to was that his life was every bit the tomb—much like the one his mother had created for herself—and he had to find his way out. His escape came in his ability to express himself, to make his mark: a kind of salvation through music. His “I'd rather die like a man than live like a coward” ethos aside, Marcus best summed that self-salvation scheme this way: “I’ve been looking for my father my whole life. And I realized that I was looking for me.”
The rules governing the streets makes sense if you don’t have God, the Father. Qoholet, the Teacher (the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, not to be confused with KRS-ONE) would call this lifestyle “vanity of vanities.” Put another way, if we pursue the things in this life "for merely human reasons, what have [we] gained? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” (I Corinthians 15:32) We all need to see the need to walk away from our old lives and embrace a new one. We have to opt out of a worldview of selfishness, one that promotes the death cycle. We esteem prison life and values. We devalue women, sex, and relationships with hip hop values marketed as videos. A fascination with a death culture where one can sell poison, settle disputes with gunfire, in order to subsidize empty life on the way to an inevitably bloody demise. Instead, we ought to buy into a worldview that promotes dignity, work, marriage, family, and healthy community.
50 Cent is not an actor, but he is a charismatic figure. Get Rich or Die Tryin' is too long, with an often meandering script showing surprisingly little heart, as if it can’t quite reach its emotional core. Too often the movie felt like it was going through the cinematic motions (I won’t even comment on the ridiculous Rocky-like montage). However, there’s a good story somewhere in this mess of a film and themes very much worth wrestling with.
by MAURICE BROADDUS
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