Posted on 05/28/2004 1:19:53 AM PDT by kattracks
What do you get when you cross the village atheist with the village idiot? Saved -- the alleged comedy polluting theaters nationwide this weekend.
Recall the wailing and hand-wringing that accompanied the release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, in February. Given the hysterical reaction to Gibson’s opus, you’d think Hollywood had suddenly become an adjunct of "The 700 Club." But The Passion was an aberration that never would have been made without the influence of its famous producer/director.
Saved is far more typical of the way the movie industry does religion these days. The teen sex comedy is politically correct, tedious, nasty and loaded with anti-Christian stereotypes.
The heroine, Mary, attends a Christian academy – American Eagle Christian High School – a combination of the Valley Girls’ school in "Clueless" and a parody of a revival meeting.
Mary learns her boyfriend has homosexual tendencies. Jesus comes to her in a vision – Jesus and Mary, get it? – and commands the good girl to do everything in her power to save the lad. She ends up pregnant and ostracized by the school’s Bible-belt Barbie in-crowd.
Mary joins the academy’s misfits, including a Jewish girl who claims she’s an ex-stripper – in modern movies, Jews are okay, as long as they’re safely secular – a skateboarder, and a wheelchair-bound cynic, played by a grownup Macauley Culkin, who would have been better off at home, alone.
Naturally, the outcasts are all swell kids, while the Christian students are portrayed as Nazi airheads.
What’s more interesting than this latest cinematic assault on Christianity, is the mind-set behind it: Not how, but why Hollywood hates the followers of Jesus.
Since at least the 1970s, Hollywood’s treatment of Christians has been only slightly more benevolent than al-Qaeda’s attitude toward Jews.
Gone are the kindly Barry Fitzgerald priest, the wise rabbi and the steadfast minister. In their place is a rogue’s gallery of lusting priests, sadistic nuns, perverted pastors and con-men TV evangelists – not to mention ordinary Christians (Catholic or evangelical) who are depicted as superstitious nitwits, malevolent hypocrites, or both.
Saved joins the Hollywood hit parade of blasphemy and slander, includeing:
· The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – wherein Jesus is given a fantasy sex life.
· Priest (1994) – a good, homosexual priest battles "repression" in his Church and heterosexual incest.
· Dogma (1999) – another reputed comedy, wherein an abortion clinic worker (the perfect heroine, from Hollywood’s perspective) and the great-grand-niece of Jesus (?) saves the world from destruction by fallen angels trying to enter a church to reenter Heaven. Don’t ask. When it comes to an opportunity to bash Christians, no plot is too ridiculous.
· The Magdalene Sisters (2003) – set in a convent school run by nuns who could pass as concentration-camp guards.
· The Order (2003) – teen heartthrob Heath Ledger battles yet another secret order within the Catholic Church bent on no-good.
· The Saint (1997) – frequently, anti-Christian characterizations bear little or no relation to a movie’s plot. They are gratuitous, but damaging nonetheless. This movie opens in a Far Eastern orphanage run by a brutal priest who beats and starves the children and is responsible for the death of one of his charges.
· Stigmata (1999) – the entire Roman Catholic Church is shown to be hiding the "real" Gospel, and a priest tries to murder its last true disciple.
Along the same lines, but somewhat more restrained, there’s the paddle-wielding priest in The Basketball Diaries (1995) and the brother who thinks he’s Mike Tyson in Heaven Help Us (1985).
The above only skims the surface of Hollywood’s anti-Christian crusade. As they do in so many areas, movies shape popular attitudes and perceptions here as well. According to the Barna Group, the percentage of Americans who only attend religious services for holidays or on special occasions, increased from 21 percent in 1991 to 34 percent today.
When it comes to different denominations, Hollywood isn’t an equal-opportunity offender. Here’s a short lists of religious groups it wouldn’t dream of baiting: Unitarians, Presbyterians, members of any liberal, Protestant denomination, Cafeteria Catholics, Reform Jews, Buddhists, Wiccans and Moslems. (Producers and directors may be anti-religion, but they aren’t suicidal.)
Why are traditional Catholics, evangelicals and – to a lesser extent – Orthodox Jews, considered fair game?
Because the Hollywood Left (in other words, 98 percent of the self-styled artistic community) views them as the enemy – more even than the military (which occasionally come off well in action films) and corporate executives, and about on par with the CIA, Southern sheriffs, Republicans and companies bulldozing the Brazilian rainforest.
Hollywood hates authentic Christians, because Christianity is diametrically opposed to its worldview – a dogma reflected in the very deep thoughts of Michael Moore, Tim Robbins and Barbra (color me stupid) Streisand. It's based on the following tenets:
1) Sexual Liberation – the glorification of pre-marital sex (including adolescent experimentation), adultery, homosexuality, abortion and the sexualization of children. This may be contrasted with the Judeo-Christian ethic of sexual restraint/responsibility, and the sanctification of sex within marriage (raising the carnal to a spiritual plane).
2) A Live-for-the-Moment Ethos – the here-and-now is all there is, or as the beer commercial used to put it, "You only go around once; so grab all the gusto you can." This is opposed to the Christian emphasis on life eternal. Christians and religious Jews live not for the moment but for eternity. Hollywood’s seize-the-moment ethic must ultimately lead to a total rejection of the Ten Commandments and all biblical morality.
3) The Cult of Self – or to put it in the lingo of pop psychology: "self-actualization," really self-gratification. From this perspective, putting anything ahead of your own happiness is dumb, if not psychotic. Christianity and Judaism both teach that your life isn’t your own. It belongs to the One who gave you life.
4) Gender Sameness – the bizarre and amply refuted doctrine that men and women are psychologically identical, that gender roles are socially imposed, instead of reality-based. This dogma lies at the heart of liberalism’s push to radically remake the family. The worse invective the Left can hurl at the family (from its perspective) is "patriarchal" and "male-dominated."
5) Militant Secularism – the belief that religious expression should be confined to a white clapboard building, and that traditional faith should play no role in shaping our laws and institutions. Thus, someone who speaks of rights being "endowed by their Creator" (like the Founding Fathers) or saying that America is a nation "under God" (like Abraham Lincoln) becomes an enemy of democracy.
What really enrages the Hollywood Left is the realization that, more than any other group in our society, evangelical Christians – who now constitute the nation's largest identifiable voting bloc – stand in the way of its political agenda: abortion on demand, a contraceptive culture, erotic indoctrination masquerading as sex education, universal day care (the literal Nanny State), the complete societal blessing of gay marriage and hate-crimes legislation that criminalizes religious speech. By attacking Christians, Hollywood is advancing its agenda.
Actually, it is to the credit of Christians that Hollywood considers them the enemy. Similarly, Jews can take pride in the fact that, in the 20th century, both communists and Nazis hated them, as do Islamacists today.
Over the past 40 years, Hollywood has been primarily responsible for the rapid degeneration of our culture. Modern cinema is filled with violence, sadism, sex at its most animalistic, crudeness, nihilism and despair. If Hollywood wants to treat Christianity as the antithesis of all it holds dear, Christians should feel complimented.
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant.
>> I think Rabbi Daniel Lapin summed it up best in saying the left hates Christianity because they understand it's the only thing standing between them and complete cultural hegemony.
In Lapin's book, "America's Real War", he points out how every tenet of Liberalism is anti-God. His book clears up some of the contradictions of liberalism, such as opposition to the death penalty for murderers, while supporting the murder of the unborn.
I loved his explaination for the uniformity of thinking on the left and the secular; "there are many ways to worship God, but only one way to reject Him."
The concept of right and wrong really scares these propaganda-pushers, doesn't it?
The Bible says "satan comes as an angel of light", so the devil pretends to be christian in some of the charletons that extort money from christians..and then he uses the other worldly spokepersons to blame christianity for everything that opposes them, citing his own 'disciples of light' that he has setup for that purpose. Its going to always be that way til end of time!
We speak TRUTH and uphold JESUS, and let chips fall where they may. Jesus said that they would hate us, because he lives in us...it is him they hate and anyone connected with him. "Wide is gate that leads to destruction, and narrow is way that leads to eternal life".
It does seem obvious, but it doesn't hurt to restate what should be common sense when we're drowning in a sea of un-common sense.
Yes, Satan knows scripture better than most Christians.
I think the words "sheep traffickers" and "wolves in sheep's clothing describe his disciples.
There seems to be different categories of humans, considering Paul's writing of Romans 11:7-11 v7 What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.
v8(According as it is written, "God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear";) unto this day.
Paul further expounds on this in IIThessalonians 2:9 Even him, whose coming is after the woking of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should belive a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had the pleasure in unrighteousness.
13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
Interesting how "the beginning" is noted here as TIME for some being "chosen" because of the belief of the truth...
"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first."
And I really don't think you know me well enough to cast aspersions upon my principles, sparky. In fact, I know you don't.
That's about it. He's a born-again drunk Yalie-legacy frat boy who got over all the coke, booze, and girls. He's a veritable Augustine, and they fear his example. That business about his being stupid (seizing on his dyslexia, which his dad also has, and his mediocre academic record at Yale, which he loused up with his partying) is pure invention and raw need. They absolutely need him to be as bad as they say he is, for their own egos.
Vampires and Van Helsing both portrayed the Roman Catholic Church as an ancient and mortal enemy of vampires, and the slayers as children of the Church, following the formula set by The Exorcist.
Of course, someone always has to stick in a dig: a cardinal who betrays the slayer, an ecumenical Catholic skunk-works lab pullulating with non-Christians, etc.
But they are shooting themselves in the foot. Advertise the existence of an underworld, like The Omen or the comic book movie Hellboy, or even better The Exorcist again, and you exercise the maxim that demonstrating and even celebrating the existence of the Antagonist is proof of the First Cause.
Amen. Praise God for the raising up of prophets. My web site will be up in 2 weeks where there will be teachings as well. Please visit it at www.preparetoleave.com.
I curse this film in the name of Jesus.
Holly weird hates christianity because they hate right from wrong because they have been told their particular life is based on doing wrong (drugs homosexuality promiscuity etc.)
You run into this when you attmept to have any meaningful discussion with a leftist. When you cit an example (ie the causes of homosexuality, drugs are harmless) you get some form of "but not my life" (my mother loves me and my father accepts me, drugs have never hurt me).
Hollyweird has to bash christianity because its validation of their own life choices.
One counter point is that the hollyweird and the left have sold themselves on the notion that christians and conservatives in general are close minded and they, by virture of the self indulgence and hedonistic choices, are open minded and intellectual.
There is an excellent story/short film that describes the situation. Its an odd short, its called "the line and the dot" or the "line and the swiggle"
Its a story about a line that falls in love with a dot but she is in love with a "wild" squiggle. Eventually the line learns the benefit of being a line vs an unrully squiggle. After a face off, the line outshines the undisciplined squiggle and wins over the dot. Ok I said it was an odd little short.
The left is the "wild" squiggle who can only make unrully squiggles. They offer nothing for the future nothing to contribute to continuing society.
this is a link to the goals of the communists:
note the efforts to destroy society dovetail perfect with hollyweirds actions:
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
a few pieces:=start snip=
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. ((read any positive reviews of Ann Courlters book in the NYT))
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. ((Alphabe soup))
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art." ((hollyweird))
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy." (((homosexual marriage, DSM removing homosexuality, APA attempt to remove pedophilia from DSm))
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state." ((ACLU))
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. ((The ACLU and the NLG does this))
bump for later
LOL
boxofficemojo.com says Open Range earned $58 million in theatrical release. It's production costs were $22 million and its marketing costs were estimated at $20 million. According to my math, Open Range made a $16 million profit just in the theaters. DVD sales (which are BIG for Westerns) are gravy on top and I don't know those numbers.
It's about profit. If you don't spend $100 million making and marketing the movie, you don't have to sell $100 million in tickets just to break even.
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