Max from wild things

Max Where the Wild Things Are

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Wild Things and the Heavenly Host — CenterForLit

Emelie Thomas | March 1, 2021

It’s a wild world we live in. Consumption runs rampant, our politics resemble a rumpus, and we are cordoned off from community. Max, the wild child from Maurice Sendak’s iconic Where the Wild Things Are, knows a thing or two about such predicaments. From the confines of his bedroom, Max travels to the wildest world of all, embarking on a mysterious, monster-filled journey which culminates in a reminder of hope and our heavenly haven. Perhaps the Wild Things can call us to turn from our rebellion and revel in the one in whom authority and glory resides.

Maurice Sendak’s “wild things” look like monsters. Furred, feathered, and fanged, they can be frightening (I witnessed my nephew scream and refuse to sleep for fear of them when introduced at age four). They are a fascination, a figment of Mr. Sendak’s imagination — not the sort you’d expect to see strolling down the sidewalk. In the course of our reality-deadened, mundane days, this menacing menagerie would seem strange; and yet, the Bible shows us that we are constantly surrounded by formidable and fearful beings. Scripture describes terrific angels who greet our kind with words to ward off fright (“Fear not...”) and creatures surrounding the very throne of God, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind and six wings apiece; elsewhere, there are dragons, great beasts resembling winged lions, four headed leopards[1], and terrible beasts with ten horns and seven heads[2]. Max’s wild things, who “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws” are paltry when compared to these beings; yet, they can draw our attention to a transcendent reality whose terrors we would do well to regard.

‘There is gnashing of teeth — the wild things must be demonic!’ you might think. Perhaps… and we would do well to entertain this notion. Max becomes the king of the wild things, commanding them with words akin to Christ’s authority over the demons; yet, Max is no Christ-like king. Max entertains the wild things, engaging in their rumpus, and then, after telling them to “BE STILL!” Max sends the wild things to bed without anything to eat. Max does not have any food to give; he does not resemble the good shepherd, the Lamb who lays down his life for his sheep and bids them eat of his flesh. Max wears a wolf suit, acting in the guise of the one who snatches and scatters.

“The night Max wore his wolf suit…” begins Maurice Sendak at the beginning of the book, going on to depict Max making “mischief of one kind and another...” Max’s mischievous actions include pounding nails into the wall, hanging his stuffed animal in a noose, and stealing after his dog while wielding a fork-weapon. We are so familiar with Max and his wild things that we might not think twice about their actions (I love reading this book to my children, and admittedly, have a couple cutesy-looking wild things lurking in the corners of my stuffed-animal bin). Yet, upon closer examination, Max’s mischief at the outset of the story eerily parallels the thief, or wolf, in scripture, who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy[3]” (Max steals after his dog, kills his stuffed animal, and destroys the wall). Max does not enter through the door; by climbing in a different way, he gets sent in another direction entirely – to his room, without any supper.

Jesus cautions us against the thief and the wolf. The threat of the demonic is real and it is all too easy to align ourselves with it, or to become complacent. Thankfully, although Max assumes the guise of the wolf in his collusion and coronation with the wild things, he is not THE wolf. Max is a sheep, like us. And his mischief, like ours, is a distortion wrought by fallenness. “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” cries Max as he defies his mother. Max’s challenge is poignant because eating is the start and the heart of our sinful, surfeit appetites. In our sin, we consume one another, affront those we love, and too-readily retreat into self-isolation.

If Max continues in the way of the wolf, he too will be scattered. His shepherd knows this. When Max climbs in another way, the door is shut on him (his bedroom door, that is). Yet, his journey brings him closer to the true door. Max takes his turn at being king, and discovers his emptiness; he sends the wild things to bed without anything, and acknowledges a void that mischief and rebellion cannot cover. “Max the king of all wild things was lonely, and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.” Max is a sheep, and was never meant to be a wolf or a wild thing; because of this, he can still sense the shepherd’s summons.

“Then all around from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat…” The answer to Max’s deepest desire is a transcendent feast — food that nourishes the soul[4]. But Max cannot partake of it in his sinful, self-righteous state. As we do before approaching the Lord’s table, Max repents, turning from his self-erected throne; “... he gave up being king of where the wild things are”.

Yet the wild host surrounding Max bewail his departure: “Oh, please don’t go — we’ll eat you up — we love you so!” These wild things are not the cherubim and seraphim of the Almighty Creator, but they know one of the most fundamental gospel truths. Love consumes.

“So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.” John 6:53-57

Max leaves the wild things, “sailing back over a year / and in and out of weeks / and through a day” and leads us, the reader, back into the confines of his room. He has journeyed, at the last, to a place prepared for him, to the love of a parent, to a feast set out in his true home. So, too, Christ leads us into transcendence, preparing our heavenly, eternal home even as he enters our hearts, our homes, and our houses of worship in the here-and-now.

It’s a wild world we live in, but there is nothing new under the sun. There will come a day, after the rumpus described in Revelation, where the Son will say “BE STILL” and will draw all things to himself. He is, after all, all-in-all, more wildly wonderful than we can ever imagine.

[1] Daniel 7:6

[2] Danile 7:7, Revelation 13:1

[3] John 10:10, ESV

[4] “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Psalm 34:8, ESV

Emelie Thomas is a nuclear trained Naval Officer with a degree in English Literature. She is married to Jay Thomas, who shares the same odd pedigree, and they are parents to three children. Emelie spends her days with the Nuclear Navy and spends her evenings celebrating literature and liturgy with her little ones.

5 wild things Joaquin Phoenix did for his roles

Demanded to call him by another name and starved the extras

In Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix plays the legendary country singer Johnny Cash, with whom he at first glance does not have nothing in common. Cash was tall, Phoenix was quite average, Cash sang in a deep baritone, and Phoenix's voice was more like David Bowie or John Lennon. To become Johnny Cash on the screen, the actor had to step over himself and bring the Stanislavsky method to frightening limits.

Not only did he study Cash's biography for months and did not part with the guitar on the set, Phoenix asked all colleagues on the set to call him J.R. (real initials of the singer) and did not respond to his own name. And during the scene in the prison, he forbade feeding extras who portrayed prisoners - everything to create the necessary tension on the set. His efforts paid off: for his role in Walk the Line, Joaquin received an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical.

Became a fireman

You don't have to be a fireman to play a convincing fireman. So right? Joaquin Phoenix thinks - no, not like that.

To play a fireman trapped inside a burning building in Jay Russell's "Team 49: Fire Ladder", Joaquin didn't limit himself to reading his memoirs. He entered the Baltimore Fire Academy, learned from the inside all the intricacies of the profession, trained on a par with the rest of the students, graduated and for some time even went to calls with a squad of firefighters and put out real fires. "I wanted to understand how the guys at the academy felt because my character was a rookie."

According to Phoenix, his firefighter friends wrote to him after the film's release that the depiction of their profession on screen couldn't be more believable. “Firefighters watch this film and say that this is an accurate description of their life. And that's all we could ask for."

Ended his career for a year and a half and behaved like a psycho

After filming James Gray's The Lovers, Joaquin Phoenix and his close friend Casey Affleck had an unusual idea - they decided to make a mockumentary "I'm Still Here", exploring the theme stardom and the relationship of stars with the media and the audience. To do this, Phoenix made a public announcement that he was retiring from film and would pursue hip-hop music.

What started as a joke ended up dragging on for a long 18 months, during which Joaquin did not go out in public from his new image: overgrown with hair and a beard and always muttering something incoherent. In the same image, for example, he went to promote "Lovers" on the evening show with David Letterman: mumbled something inarticulate, behaved as awkwardly as possible and even stuck chewing gum to the inside of Letterman's table. In interviews, he said terrible things about colleagues, performed at real concerts with terrifying rap, and all this, of course, for the sake of art. In the end, "I'm Still Here" turned out to be one of the most impressive examples of pushing the boundaries between cinema and reality, and Phoenix himself, according to him, was able to find new dimensions in his acting skills thanks to this extraordinary work.

Hungry

In order to play no less than Jesus in Mary Magdalene, Joaquin Phoenix carefully studied all four gospels and realized that the information in them is extremely contradictory. He began to carefully select those characteristic features of the Son of God that seemed close to him, and, in his own words, tried to find "human" in such a deeply spiritual mythical character.

In addition, Phoenix, who tends to be relatively obese, began to starve himself and went on a strict diet to look emaciated. According to him, this process was especially complicated by the fact that the movie was filmed in Sicily, and the temptation to escape from the filming for a plate of good pasta was too great. “Working with Joaquin is like working with a beautiful wild animal. You have to give him space, freedom, so that his playing can find itself: raw, uninhabited and truly natural. From the very beginning, I did not imagine another actor who could play Jesus, ”said the director of Mary Magdalene, Garth Davis, later.

Tied his jaw and destroyed part of the scenery

In The Master, Phoenix played Freddie Quell, a World War II veteran who falls under the influence of a cult leader (which apparently hides the founder of the Church of Scientology Lafayette, Ronald Hubbard). According to director Paul Thomas Anderson, Joaquin remained in character throughout the filming and more than once harmed his own health. Once, during one of the more intense scenes, he even destroyed the toilet on set.

For the sake of a specific smirk that does not leave Freddie's face, the actor also went to the dentist, so that he put braces and special tourniquets on his teeth, which did not allow the jaw to open. “I told Paul I was not going to be held back in any way. I wanted to open up as much as possible." Paul Thomas Anderson was terribly pleased with the performance of Phoenix, and who, in general, was not - a well-deserved Oscar nomination and the title of one of the most powerful performances of our day.

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Max cleans up (Christian Tillman)

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The book by Christian Tillmann, published in the "Reading Yourself" series by the Omega publishing house, will introduce the kid to funny and inquisitive characters - Max and his girlfriend Paulina.
Best friends love to play fun games. But today, Max's room is such a mess that there is simply no place to play! How to quickly put things in their places? A fascinating story will tell the kid that putting toys in their place is not only important, but also very simple.
Bright, funny and detailed illustrations by Sabina Kraushar will attract the attention of the child and increase the interest in reading. The self-reading edition will be a good gift for preschool children and will fill their leisure time with interesting and useful activities on a trip, in kindergarten and at home.

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Christian Tillmann's book, published in the "Read It Yourself" series by Omega publishing house, will introduce the kid to funny and inquisitive characters - Max and his girlfriend Paulina.
Best friends love to play fun games. But today, Max's room is such a mess that there is simply no place to play! How to quickly put things in their places? A fascinating story will tell the kid that putting toys in their place is not only important, but also very simple.
Bright, funny and detailed illustrations by Sabina Kraushar will attract the attention of the child and increase the interest in reading. The self-reading edition will be a good gift for preschool children and will fill their leisure time with interesting and useful activities on a trip, in kindergarten and at home.

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