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It’s always a bit amusing (though not really in the "ha ha" sort of way) for me to find myself in the odd position of having to voice an opinion which might easily be seen as me "defending" religion…and yet. What with that small but intense recent flurry of faith-as-sectarianism front-page articles over Easter (Macleans’ "Is Religion Poison?" was my favorite, for sheer bile), the loud Internet critic backlash against Time U.S.’s article which dared to imply that actually reading the Bible might be useful even if you are not yourself Christian (especially since politicians who are keep on making decisions that will affect you, claiming specious Biblical interpretation as their motivation), plus Owen Glieberman’s uninformed-as-ever dump on The Reaping in last week’s Entertainment, there’s been a heck of a lot of the ol’ these folks is SCARY crazy by definition-ness going around. And that’s not such a great thing, IMHO.
But hey, before we go any further, let’s define my filters: As I say in the Afterword to The Worm…, I was basically raised to see every mythology as being, well, mythology first and foremost; I consider myself an Agnostic more than anything else, though not an Atheist (but mainly because the Atheists I’ve come across tend to be ten times more humorless and proselytizing than any of the Christians, Muslims or Jews). If Zen was a religion, maybe I’d be that. And yes, since my husband is a Catholic geek caught at the intersection of a hardcore secular set of fandoms, watching him struggle with the way every single frigging person around him seems to link his post-Vatican II/C.S. Lewis-inflected beliefs to how hard Sister Mary Whatever hit them with a ruler when they were five is difficult, even on good days—I like him, along with his father the deacon, his uncle the priest (who married us) and his mother the First Communion teacher, and that means more to me than any academic principle is ever likely to. Not to mention that HE’s going to have to be the one to eventually field those sticky "Daddy, is Mommy going to Hell?" questions, whenever.
Anyhoo—what I want to say is that though you can often find "they don’t worship the same God/the same way we do" at the heart of almost all the conflicts currently causing people to do stupid, rancid, life-denying shit all around the globe, I do not, personally, think the idea of hope is dumb in and of itself. I don’t see anything innately childish in wanting to perfect and/or accept ourselves, to believe there might be an afterlife, or to follow a code of conduct predicated (in the main) on not behaving like a fucking knob to the person next to you. Yes, many religious people get their panties in a knot over things we find ridiculous, or want us to stop doing—or being—what we think defines us, completes us, makes us whole. But that’s not every religious person. And the idea that daring to put somebody’s faith-based conflict front and centre in a horror film is somehow automatically dismissable on account of "preachiness" is such amazing bullshit I couldn’t possibly raise my virtual voice loud enough to call it the way I really want to.
I get that some of you disagree, and I assume you’ll extend me the same privilege, because that’s central to the basic social contract we’re all supposedly working from. God (if It exists) knows, unlike Steve, I can certainly easily manage to live with the idea that people around me may not believe the same things I do—but really, that’s pretty much all any of us can ever ask. Right?
Re Gleiberman, meanwhile: I'm obviously not going to know 'til I see the film, but the point of his review seems to be not "This film has the Big Mallet that Goes Bok Bok on High" (to steal a Diners phrase), so much as "This film has religious content in it, treats religious themes like they have weight, and that is by definition Bok Bok-y". Which is, to my mind, a dumb-ass opinion.
Then again, it's not like Gleiberman and I usually agree on much.;)
But hey, before we go any further, let’s define my filters: As I say in the Afterword to The Worm…, I was basically raised to see every mythology as being, well, mythology first and foremost; I consider myself an Agnostic more than anything else, though not an Atheist (but mainly because the Atheists I’ve come across tend to be ten times more humorless and proselytizing than any of the Christians, Muslims or Jews). If Zen was a religion, maybe I’d be that. And yes, since my husband is a Catholic geek caught at the intersection of a hardcore secular set of fandoms, watching him struggle with the way every single frigging person around him seems to link his post-Vatican II/C.S. Lewis-inflected beliefs to how hard Sister Mary Whatever hit them with a ruler when they were five is difficult, even on good days—I like him, along with his father the deacon, his uncle the priest (who married us) and his mother the First Communion teacher, and that means more to me than any academic principle is ever likely to. Not to mention that HE’s going to have to be the one to eventually field those sticky "Daddy, is Mommy going to Hell?" questions, whenever.
Anyhoo—what I want to say is that though you can often find "they don’t worship the same God/the same way we do" at the heart of almost all the conflicts currently causing people to do stupid, rancid, life-denying shit all around the globe, I do not, personally, think the idea of hope is dumb in and of itself. I don’t see anything innately childish in wanting to perfect and/or accept ourselves, to believe there might be an afterlife, or to follow a code of conduct predicated (in the main) on not behaving like a fucking knob to the person next to you. Yes, many religious people get their panties in a knot over things we find ridiculous, or want us to stop doing—or being—what we think defines us, completes us, makes us whole. But that’s not every religious person. And the idea that daring to put somebody’s faith-based conflict front and centre in a horror film is somehow automatically dismissable on account of "preachiness" is such amazing bullshit I couldn’t possibly raise my virtual voice loud enough to call it the way I really want to.
I get that some of you disagree, and I assume you’ll extend me the same privilege, because that’s central to the basic social contract we’re all supposedly working from. God (if It exists) knows, unlike Steve, I can certainly easily manage to live with the idea that people around me may not believe the same things I do—but really, that’s pretty much all any of us can ever ask. Right?
Re Gleiberman, meanwhile: I'm obviously not going to know 'til I see the film, but the point of his review seems to be not "This film has the Big Mallet that Goes Bok Bok on High" (to steal a Diners phrase), so much as "This film has religious content in it, treats religious themes like they have weight, and that is by definition Bok Bok-y". Which is, to my mind, a dumb-ass opinion.
Then again, it's not like Gleiberman and I usually agree on much.;)
