"The Exorcist" had warning signs out in front of the theater -- it's a question of common sense. This is not a movie for squemish, for anyone with any kind of health problems where stress could cause something like the death reported. It's a horror film in the disguise of a religious experience which for some it may be, but for many it will be an excrutiatingly painful experience. Is this the introduction to bringing back the fear of a wrathful God kind of religion? Talk about preemptive strikes.
Incidentally, I don't consider myself squemish having no problem with a film like "The Exorcist," but this film is shockingly brutal and bloody. I just feel Gibson went over the edge of sensibility and if that's what he wanted, that's what he got. It doesn't mean he can dictate that we all must love it or else.
Lightwizard wrote:"The Exorcist" had warning signs out in front of the theater -- it's a question of common sense. This is not a movie for squemish, for anyone with any kind of health problems where stress could cause something like the death reported. It's a horror film in the disguise of a religious experience which for some it may be, but for many it will be an excrutiatingly painful experience. Is this the introduction to bringing back the fear of a wrathful God kind of religion? Talk about preemptive strikes.
Strange you should ask. Neo-con poster boy David Brooks had this to say:
No More MR. Nice Guy.Jesus Is COming and Is He Ever Pissed!
Quote:Hooked on Heaven Lite
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 9, 2004
Who worries you most, Mel Gibson or Mitch Albom? Do you fear Gibson, the religious zealot, the man accused of narrow sectarianism and anti-Semitism, or Albom, the guy who writes sweet best sellers like "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven?"
I worry about Albom more, because while religious dogmatism is always a danger, it is less of a problem for us today than the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. As any tour around the TV dial will make abundantly clear, we do not live in Mel Gibson's fire-and-brimstone universe. Instead, we live in a psychobabble nation. We've got more to fear from the easygoing narcissism that is so much part of the atmosphere nobody even thinks to protest or get angry about it.
Albom is far from the worst of the schmaltzy shamans, but his fable "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" happens to sit at No. 3 on the Times best-seller list and pretty much exemplifies the zeitgeist. It's about an 83-year-old man who feels lonely, adrift and unimportant, and who dies while trying to save a little girl from a broken carnival ride.
He goes to heaven and meets five people who tell him that he is not alone and that his life was not unimportant. They reconcile him with his father, who had been cruel to him. They remind him of what a good person he was. He gets to spend time with his wife, whom he'd neglected and who died young. He is forgiven for the hurts he accidentally committed while alive.
All societies construct their own images of heaven. Most imagine a wondrous city or a verdant garden where human beings come face to face with God. But the heaven that is apparently popular with readers these days is nothing more than an excellent therapy session. In Albom's book, God, to the extent that he exists there, is sort of a genial Dr. Phil. When you go to his heaven, friends and helpers come and tell you how innately wonderful you are. They help you reach closure.
In this heaven, God and his glory are not the center of attention. It's all about you.
Here, sins are not washed away. Instead, hurt is washed away. The language of good and evil is replaced by the language of trauma and recovery. There is no vice and virtue, no moral framework to locate the individual within the cosmic infinity of the universe. Instead there are just the right emotions ?- Do you feel good about yourself? ?- buttressed by an endless string of vague bromides about how special each person is, and how much we are all mystically connected in the flowing river of life.
"Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the `psychological man' of the 20th century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate against it," Christopher Lasch wrote in "The Culture of Narcissism." Lasch went on to call the therapeutic mentality an anti-religion that tries to liberate people from the idea that they should submit to a higher authority, so they can focus more obsessively on their own emotional needs.
Reading "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" is a sad experience because it conjures up a mass of people who, like its hero, feel lonely and unimportant. But instead of offering them the rich moral framework of organized religion or rigorous philosophy, instead of reminding them of the tough-minded exemplars of the Bible and history, books like Albom's throw the seekers remorselessly back upon themselves.
The flap over Gibson's movie reminds us that religion can be a dangerous thing. It can be coarsened into gore and bloodshed and used to foment hatred. But we're not living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Our general problem is not that we're too dogmatic. Our more common problems come from the other end of the continuum. Americans in the 21st century are more likely to be divorced from any sense of a creedal order, ignorant of the moral traditions that have come down to us through the ages and detached from the sense that we all owe obligations to a higher authority.
Sure, let's get angry at Mel Gibson if he deserves it. But let's not forget that the really corrosive cultural forces come in the form of the easygoing narcissism that surrounds us every day.
I can agree almost entirely with that. Let's see, who might be the narcissist in passing off his own guilt ridden religion as a plate of food we should all consume and relish? I'm sure Mel is at least giggling all the way to the bank and I can't say if it hurt that he got overwhelmingly bad reviews by the major critics but there it is anyway. Mel has to live with what he has wrought.
Quote:Americans in the 21st century are more likely to be divorced from any sense of a creedal order, ignorant of the moral traditions that have come down to us through the ages and detached from the sense that we all owe obligations to a higher authority.
Well, the Brooksian notions highlighted by this passage do provide a handy value-set for the conservative and authoritarian minded. All those folks out there, that is, the rough peasantry (membership in which David Brooks and Bill Bennett have somehow escaped) don't really have the fortitude or wherewithall or that oh so necessary harmony with the cosmic order that might stave off temptation and false ideas to which the weak are so prone.
But isn't all this remarkable reaction to Gibson's film merely a much larger example of precisely the same thing? Why else is so much energy expended to condemn something far less violent than (say) most rap lyrics, video games,or escapist Hiollywood films for that matter?
It appears to me that the critics here are themselves, the most proximate embodiment of the intolerance they profess to fear.
Have you seen the film, georgeob1? This film is not far less violent than what you mentioned.
I have not seen it. Moreover I have not listened carefully to the lyrics of most new rap performers, nor do I spend much time in video games. I'm willing to stipulate there is much violence in all three. However, I don't see much in the way of any point behind that which occurs in rap music and video games, but do recognize the possibility of a meaningful one in the film. Whether or not it was done with appropriate balance and excellent artistic effect is an open question, which I am not in a position to answer. However, I note that the question of redeeming merit does not even arise in the other two cases. That alone makes me rather skeptical of those who cry so loudly about this film.
Without even seeing the movie, it's difficult to take you seriously. The "redeeming" features are:
1. A better than average but not original sounding soundtrack.
2. A better than average but not original looking cinematography.
3. The villians (the Rabiis amongst them) get their due by being shaken to the ground by an earthquake (don't the villians always get their due?).
4. The movie ended.
Quite simply, this film makes any other bloody, violent movie pale in comparison. The redemption for the Christian viewer as a tear jerker is I am sure a sincere expression of emotion. However, one needs a movie to affirm their faith, they are in deep trouble.
I "see" the real violence in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. There has existed violence in real life and fiction that far exceeds what Gibson shows in his film. I really don't understand what all this broo-haha is about. It's a film, for crying out loud!
Sophistry. Art does what it does. We don't ordinarily characterize one who finds a moment's elevated awareness of some feature of life or perception as an indicator that he is "in trouble". Something redeeming is certainly better than nothing at all.
Your reactions are your own. Others apparently see it differently. I generally don't like rap music: others find it entertaining.
Better than average generally means better than most: not bad overall, and hardly then worth all the furor on this thread. Originality, though desirable, is not either the primary or a transcendent virtue in art.
A film is not great by being better than average:
Artistic downsides:
1. Another Hollywood Hunk Jesus who doesn't look in the least like the Jews of the era. Jesus has historically been more likely to have a round ordinary face and beardless.
2. Too many movie gimmicks, especially CGI effects that make the film have more in common to a "Star Trek" flick than a religious movie.
3. Over-the-top violence and blood (Cazieval who starred as Jesus was physically wounded twice due to Gibson's over-zealous direction but what can one expect from a religious zealot?)
4. The cinematography slipped several times into the typical horror film "Silence of the Lambs" ambience.
5. Really doesn't tell the story in any different way except showing what Gibson speculates was what the beating and crucifixion looked like).
I suggest it is pure sophistry to comment on a film one hasn't seen. This is my review and I stand by it.
If it's just a movie, c.i., why has William Safire, a conservative columnist, stated that it could very well incite violence against Jews? There was, in fact, an act of violence here in Southern California directly after a speech by a prominant Jewish speaker (I'd have to look up the link if anyone cares). It's a dangerous step backwards into the inquisitional kind of religion. It's popularity can be as disturbing as any other news.
Didn't hear about the violence against Jews as a result of anybody watching this movie. However, I think it's rather somewhat dubious to blame a movie for violence against anybody if the perpetrator needed any excuse. That's MHO.
That's true to an extent but Kubrick withdrew "A Clockwork Orange" from theaters when look-alike violence began occuring. This was the director's own action. One cannot usually trace violence conclusively back to any movie and it's up to the director to withdraw a film. I am totally against any censorship regardless of my own opinion of a film, book, et al.
It doesn't change the idea that fundamentalism and zealotry in any form is often dangerous and should be exposed as sociologically backward.
cicerone imposter wrote:Didn't hear about the violence against Jews as a result of anybody watching this movie. However, I think it's rather somewhat dubious to blame a movie for violence against anybody if the perpetrator needed any excuse. That's MHO.
What a thoroughly reasonable opinion.
I'm forced to wonder why BillW isn't blaming the Jewish speaker for the violence that occurred after his speech. I note that he does not claim that the person who committed the crime saw Gibson's movie.
There's not really any "storytelling" in this film -- the storytelling in "Ben Hur" is leagues ahead, for instance.
They haven't apprehended all of those who perpetrated the crime so there is no conclusion -- it was just offered as a case in point with whatever conclusion anyone wants to derive from it.
...and another voice is heard from someone who hasn't seen the movie.
Lightwizard wrote:It doesn't change the idea that fundamentalism and zealotry in any form is often dangerous and should be exposed as sociologically backward.
Is that true of
secular zealotry as well, or only when it has a religious basis?
