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December 07, 2007
Ten Most Anti-Christian Movies of All Time
New York Entertainment's article "Ten Most Anti-Christian Movies of All Time" has been making the rounds, so I thought I would share it here. It's a pretty interesting list.
I suppose it's not hard to cook up a list of A. Movies that cast a hard glance at Catholicism, or B. A list of movies that have made some pope or another mad. Stigmata, The Exorcist and The Da Vinci Code didn't make the New York Entertainment list, I noticed, although they did ping Belief Net's "Top Ten Most Controversial Religious Movies of All Time".
I personally don't care a whole lot about that particular genre, since everyone disagrees about something a some point for some reason. I have to admit though, Christopher Durang's play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You has been a favorite of mine since Dear Boyfriend directed it his senior year of high school. Sure, my fondness may be related somewhat to the oh-so-bizarre sight of my once-beloved Cabbage Patch doll being crucified on stage in that particular production, but it's a hilarious spoof of Catholicism.
Aside from that though, I prefer a subtler approach to the whole debate/question of religion in art. Like I said before, we're all going to quibble about something, so I'd rather see people play with ideas instead of argue pointlessly over them. The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus Christ Superstar are some of my favorite Christian/Church themed movies, and although Christians got plenty mad about those too, I think they bring up much more interesting points about the faith than Christian movies Christians actually liked, such as that horrible Passion of the Christ business. It seems terribly narcissistic to me to focus on the brutality of the sacrifice, to revel the artistic process of measuring the exact extent of excruciation a man endured. It seems far more interesting to me to examine the oft-ignored sacrifices Jesus might have made, and for some reason people seem to think that looking at anything besides the last day is a giant blasphemy.
Last Temptation and Superstar both highlight for me that Jesus gave up his life long before going to chat with Pilate. The way the story usually goes, he never got the girl, and had to give up a nice, normal, comparatively easy life of a wife, kids, and all that to go wandering around in the desert preaching a message not many people wanted to hear and wondering the whole time if he was crazy or if the god of Moses really WAS talking to him. So while Temptation and Superstar do include scenes of the passion, they don't need to make it explicit to get the point across that Jesus' whole time on earth was one giant sacrifice. Furthermore, Superstar especially looks at the kind of interpretations of Jesus' message and the following he had-- over and over the poor guy sings about how no one quite gets it, even his right hand man Judas.
For that matter, I'm also a fan of Garth Ennis' Preacher graphic novel series, because although its downright sacreligious, and lampoons The Church horribly with its Grail organization, it is one of the funniest comic series I've read in ages and it sure does call into question the big split between God throwing down fire, brimstone, judgment and damnation all the time and then calling himself "A loving god." That is one series sure to make the pope's hit list, but it's about so much more than the church and religion (Westerns, the army, vampires, friendship, good shooting, true love, car thievery, Southern Gothic etc.) that really it's just an interesting take on one huge part of our lives, like most of the things listed in parenthesis above have become in the American consciousness.
So there's my food for thought for the day. When I go to see the latest movie to stir up the Catholics sometime this weekend, I'll be keeping my eye out not for what everyone else is whining about but to see if The Golden Compass offers any of the books' more diverse and subtle musings on religion beyond the basic "Church authority skews the real deal" concept.
| By Spike | 12:50 PM
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