Sunday, August 30, 2009

The Blog Continues... The Vlog Begins

Greetings y'all! Now yours truly has a presence on You Tube. Be sure to check it out. "evangelical" was already taken so I am "evangelical1" there. That last symbol is a numeral one not a letter elle. I hope to eventually post a semi-professional movie there in which several people are discussing natural theology. It will be a while before that happens but, be looking for it. Shalom out.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Spoofernatural (NOT that Christian parody band)

I have a confession to make. One of my favorite genre's of movies is the spoof. One problem with this aesthetic preference is that there have never really been a lot of spoofs to watch. Until recently, of course. Now there are a plethora of them.

I had high hopes for "Epic Movie" and was let down. Much of fantasy literature, at least in the early days, had definite Christian connotations. Even something modern like "Harry Potter", perhaps, has echoes of the Christian influence much more explicit in "The Chronicles of Narnia", for example. Some of the Christian influenced fantasy literature of yesteryear was recently made into movie form. And "Epic Movie" satirised it. I hope they did not realise that Aslan is really Jesus because, in it, they portray Him as having sex with multiple persons at once, male and female, and all underage. That is blasphemy.

But there is not stink in all of Denmark. I recently purchases "An American Carol" at my local video retailer. It was directed by David Zucker of "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" fame. I was totally shocked as I noticed a very Christian like vibe to the flick. I am not saying that Zucker, or whomever wrote the script, was a true believer-but there was a definite odor of Christian sensibilities to the picture.

Two parts of the movie particularly stick out in this regard.

One was while Bill O'Rielly was interviewing a character, on his Fox News show, who was supposed to be Rossie O'Donnell. He showed a clip from her new documentary. It was all about how fundamentalist Christianity was, on Rosie's view, just as bad as fundamentalist Islam. Seeing as how the movie is a spoof-and 'spoof' is practically synonymous with 'satire'-the message was clear. Remember, satire is bringing something to ridiculous extremes to paint a negative portrait of it. But I guess you'd have to see the clip from the fictional documentary to really grasp the satirical force of it. That message can best be stated rhetorically. How many present-day nuns or priests have committed acts of terrorism or performed suicide bombings? In contrast, how many Muslim terrorists are there? It is politically correct to say that Islam is a religion of peace. And many in Islam are peace loving, I understand. But the idea of jihad comes straight out of the pages of the Koran itself. Fundamentalist Christians believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. Fundamentalist Muslims believe "death to the infidels". These are harsh words that may hurt your ears, but somebodies got to say it.

The second part of note, of the movie, was the one musical number. The spirit of general Patton brings the main character-who is supposed to be Michael Moore-to a college campus. While the Professors are lecturing they break out into song. In the lyrics to the song, the teachers explain they were hippies back in "1968!". As they became yuppies they got teaching jobs to indoctrinate the younger generation with there liberal, left wing, propaganda. They got their dogma, as they continued to sing, from "1968!".

What is so uncanny about the song-and-dance in the secular movie, is that Bill Craig, a Christian apologist, was just talking about this very same thing on his audio blog (he presumably has not seen the movie). On his blog he was talking about the idea that the counter-culture movement of the 60's failed. But the protesters didn't give up their cause. Instead, many of them got teaching degrees so they could brainwash tomorrow's generation through the back door. A less direct, and more subtle (and successful) approach. And since many in colleges are themselves soon-to-be teachers in elementary and secondary schools, the entire educational system has long since collapsed. The prophecy of men without chests has finally become fulfilled. Once the Logos has been crucified, logic (not to mention ethics and aesthetics) is soon to follow. Looks like Nietzsche wasn't so mad after all.

But I digress. Back to the main point of this entry. I was so unbelievably surprised, in a good way, by "An American Carol". It was so much more than Leslie Neilson enacting corny puns. There was actually a moral behind it! A good moral!! The moral was more political than religious. Nevertheless, the moral is one that can resonate with more explicitly Christian ones. Kudos to Dave Zucker and company.