← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 13689 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-05-14
2004-05-14 08:46 | User Profile
It's no secret that I'm not a True Believer, but we atheists are a generous-hearted lot who understand that, in America Today, the absence of Christianity is a void that must inevitably be filled with Jewthink, the default religion of the West. Thus, this heads-up that your faces are about to be slapped [I]yet again [/I] by shabgoys on behalf of their supervising rebbes:
[QUOTE][url]http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s04050048.htm[/url]
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
NEW MOVIE MOCKS CHRISTIAN FAITH
MOVIEGUIDEî
HOLLYWOOD, CA (ANS) – Ted Baehr, world-renowned media scholar and founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission™ ministry, says that the new Hollywood movie SAVED!, to be released May 28 by MGM, is a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith.
He urged other religious leaders, including Jewish and Moslem leaders, to warn their constituents about the bigoted movie, which stars Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin in a story about self-righteous Christian youths in an uptight Christian school. COLOR=Blue[/COLOR]
“SAVED! is a hateful, politically correct movie,” Dr. Baehr declared. “It is being heavily marketed to the community it mocks to lead Christian youth astray and make them resent their own faith.”
“The one character who tries to preach the Gospel in the movie,” he noted, “is actually the villain. The heroine Mary, played by Jena Malone, has a vision that Jesus tells her to fornicate with the school hunk in order to save him from homosexuality. At the end, Mary learns that her only true friends are Cassandra, a irreverent Jewish girl who claims to have been a stripper, and the villain’s brother, who denies being a Christian and lusts after the stripper.”
Dr. Baehr adds, “Cassandra is the real heroine who turns Mary away from the uptight Christian students who believe in faith, values, and the power of prayer. Imagine if this movie were set in an Orthodox Jewish school with faithful Jewish children cast as the villains and a Christian girl shows how legalistic the Jewish girls are. Or, what if it were set in an Islamic school with faithful Muslims cast as the villains and a Christian or Jewish Girl exposes how legalistic the Muslims are? The outcry in the press would be tremendous! Not to mention the righteous outcry from Jews or Muslims!
“Looking at it from the point of view of other faiths,” Dr. Baehr continued, “highlights how bigoted the movie SAVED! is and reveals how MGM is marketing it to Christian children to try to divorce them from their faith! This is abhorrent and people of faith and faith must be forewarned,” Dr. Baehr concluded.
(c) Baehr, 2004.[/QUOTE]
But wait...these Jeezus-types are [I]always [/I] turning a stubbed toe into the latest sign of the impending Rapture. Perhaps Boehr is simply blowing this movie out of proportion? Well, here is an advance-review of SAVED from one of your garden-variety secular-humanist wannabe-Eberts who infest cyberspace like human kudzu, and the gefilte-stink even got to [I]him[/I]:
[QUOTE][url]http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=1060[/url]
I don’t think Brian De Palma ever anticipated the effects his brilliant, genuinely subversive but unquestionably compassionate adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie would have on modern film culture. As oppressive as Piper Laurie’s fundamentalist she-devil may have been, she was nowhere near as horrible as the vicious teens that tortured and crucified Sissy Spacek’s titular character on her prom night. From Grease to Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Carrie’s lousiest rip-offs fail to embrace and reinterpret the spiritual challenge of De Palma’s film. Instead, modern filmmakers seem to be attracted only to the story’s blood lust, using it to appeal to that juvenile sensation that gets off on seeing the social outcast embarrass the abusive bully before a crowd of their peers.
An early contender for the worst film of the year, the painfully unfunny Saved! is every bit as reductive as your average high school underdog fantasy, except it also has a bigger fish to fry than Mandy Moore’s psycho-bitch: Christianity. When Mary (Jena Malone) finds out her boyfriend may be gay, she looks to Jesus and sleeps with Dean (Chad Faust) in order to cure him. Naturally, Mary’s act of mercy fails, and when her boyfriend’s parents find the leather-daddy porn under his bed, the boy is dutifully shipped to the Mercy House for conversion therapy. Pregnant and alone, Mary befriends the school’s outcasts, wheelchair-bound Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and Jewish Goth-freakazoid Cassandra (Eva Amurri), and together they fight the evil forces of Moore’s Christian monster, the racist Hilary Faye (a reference to the evangelical Tammy Faye perhaps?).
From Hilary’s attempts to cure Dean of his “faggotry” to an impromptu exorcism aimed at the virginal Mary, Moore’s ghoul is supposed to symbolize the worst in un-Christian charity, and though director Brian Dannelly has every right to address and relieve his obvious beef with right-wing Christianity and the threat it poses to democracy (especially now that gays are moving ever closer to full civil rights—make that human rights—in this country), he makes absolutely no distinction between the good Christian and the right-wing nut. Like Martin Donovan’s evangelical principal, this is a film that sees only in black-and-white, and the spectacle of Hilary’s un-Christian behavior exists not to promote kindness amongst the masses, but to mock a belief system.
The film’s good Christians can’t even be called Christians: they’re crippled (and atheists), they’re Jewish, and in the case of Patrick Fugit’s missionary skater boi, they’re more than happy to eroticize Christ’s crucifixion (how scandalous!). Surely it’s no coincidence that Fugit never mentions Jesus in the film but Moore’s character engages his name a good hundred times. In essence: Good Christians are born by distancing themselves from Christ. By film’s end, Hilary is destroyed but not before taking Jesus down with her (again, scandalous!). Like Mary, perhaps it’s not too late for her. Just as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ looks to connect Christians to God via an unhealthy spectacle of violence, this equally cruel but infinitely more snide After School Special seems to exist only to promote anti-Christian resentment. Here’s hoping the next Christian-aimed film cultivates a theoretical and philosophical aesthetic that isn’t so, well, black-and-white.
Ed Gonzalez é slant magazine, 2004.[/QUOTE]
2004-05-14 11:46 | User Profile
I am disgusted, but I am not at all surprised. In movies and television these days, the white (usually male, often Southern) Christian is always, always, always the villain.
Did anyone see that recent crapfest Gothika? I, unfortunately, did. The villain seems to be a black guy, but wait! Oh no, it is really a Southern white guy with a crucifix around his neck. Of course! The Shawshank Redemption? Yes, the Southern white guy with a Bible verse on his wall is the sadistic antagonist. What a surprise! How about Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Well, there is this guy named Caleb who dresses in a priest's collar who goes around murdering people. How daring!
I've got a little experiment for ya'll. Try to think of the last time you saw a mainstream movie (not some Left Behind junk) that portrayed a Southerner, a white man, or especially a Christian in a postive light. If you can think of one that portrays a Southern Christian white man in a positive light, then you have practically done the impossible.
2004-05-14 12:23 | User Profile
Oddly I can think of a few, but then I enjoy old movies. See any Will Rogers movie, or most anything by John Ford. Once you pass 1965 in the Wayback Machine, you can find hundreds of examples.
Now is a different story. The most recent one that comes to mind is SIGNS (though the character isn't Southern, it's still a positive depiction of a white man/Christian).
2004-05-14 14:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno] Now is a different story. The most recent one that comes to mind is SIGNS (though the character isn't Southern, it's still a positive depiction of a white man/Christian).[/QUOTE] Ragno, good call. That was a surprisingly positive portrayal of a white Christian man; although that movie is now two years old, which sort of in and of itself points to the overall dearth of such portrayals. My wife, who doesn't particularly share my politics, went to see Hidalgo with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and even she commented on the fact that all the white characters were villains. Perhaps I am rubbing off on her. :wink:
2004-05-14 14:50 | User Profile
I was going to say the film "Master And Commander" had positive portrayals of White men, but obviously they weren't American Southerners. Also, they engaged in Fratricide, so, I guess, well, the search goes on.
2004-05-14 18:55 | User Profile
It is best to think of white male actors who are liked, and then work from there. Thus we get Brad Pitt (Fight Club, Troy), and Matt Damon (the Bourne Identity). Also, Jim Carey films might count, even as they are comedies -- still in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' despite portaying an ugly Jew boinking a ravish Nordic blonde, we do find the 'main couple' of the film to apparently by Gentiles, and there is even a scene where they break into the house of a Jewish couple, 'David and Ruth.' At which point the female lead proclaims, 'I am going to dress up in something a little more... Ruth. I am feeling Ruth-less!' (Ok, you had to be there.)
None Christian or white, but at least Pitt and Damon are fair-haired.
There is also the recent Van Helsing, which seems to have a white, male, Christian lead, although the 'Christian' part is rather in doubt. Of course, the film also portrays the blond male companion as a bufoon, and has the lead take up with a Gypsy female (who, oddly, looks almost totally European).
Actually, I can't think of very many movies that portray Christians in a positive light, period. Of course, we also don't learn characters political party affiliation, or the like. Religion and politics are often just left open.
As far as Southerners go, there is 'Lush,' which is quite a good film about a Southern ex-pro-golfer and his searches for love in New Orleans. Again, not obviously Christian, as far as I remeber, but perhaps I am forgetting a scene. (I think the family might have been portrayed as Catholic.)
I am still looking for a recent film where a blond/red-headed male and blonde/red-headed female hook up. Apparently, this is some kind of Jew nightmare.