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revdorothyl at 07:29pm on 20/06/2004 under movie reviews
revdorothyl at 07:29pm on 20/06/2004 under movie reviewsJust a quick note about the movie "Saved!", which I saw and mostly found very funny yesterday afternoon. I'll try to avoid spoilers and just speak in general terms about certain aspects of the film which I thought maybe didn't work so well.
Unlike the friend I saw the movie with (a Methodist minister of about my own age and with similar years of parish experience behind her, before she entered the PhD program in Hebrew Bible), I didn't really see "Saved!" as perpetuating secular culture's sterotyped view of all committed Christians as being narrow-minded, repressed, and excessively smug prigs. I didn't even think it was implying that everyone involved in the particular Christian sub-culture represented by that Christian school (except for Cassandra and Roland, the self-identified non-Christians) was narrow-minded, mean-spirited, and gullible.
I have tutored a student at a conservative Christian high school and I've had many graduates of Christian high schools as students in my university Bible classes. Mostly, they're basically kind, decent, and well-educated people -- which comes as no surprise to me.
Occasionally, I do come across college students (whether educated in religious schools or not) whose theology is as rigid and black-and-white and concerned with being-good-in-order-to-reap-earthly-rewards-and-avoid-any-bad-experiences-ever as that attributed to Hilary Faye in the movie. And I feel fearful FOR those students, rather than OF them, because experience has taught me that a theology so brittle and so far removed from contrary evidence (like the book of Job) will not serve them well when, inevitably, misfortune or genuine tragedy befalls them.
They may not respond as violently as Hilary Faye does at the end of the movie, screaming at a God who has not kept to their implicit 'deal' and rewarded her good works as she expected. But they will get hurt, and perhaps hurt more than they need to, when they discover that bad things do indeed happen to good Christian people, and unquestioning obedience to what they're told is God's will does not give them an impermeable force-field against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
So, the fact the Pastor Skip had some issues of his own he needed to work out and that some of the students showed less-than-Christlike love for the rest of humanity and that the word "Christian" was being slapped like a brand-name or seal-of-divine-approval onto every conceivable aspect of life and work, no matter how trivial -- none of that really bothered me.
What did bother me, near the end, was that the movie turned 'preachy' -- and it didn't do it well. (Professional standards at stake, there -- don't presume to do my job and then do it badly and sloppily and shallowly . . . because there are enough bona fide fellow preachers doing that already, and we really don't need any amateurs mucking it up even more!)
Rather than using the character of Patrick, perhaps, to demonstrate the (to me, well-known) fact that one can be a fully committed Christian and still think that divorce is sometimes justifiable, or that the Bible (if read in its entirety) isn't at all a simple book full of black-and-white instructions, or that gays and lesbians are created and loved by God just as they are, thanks very much . . . Instead of doing that, or doing anything else to suggest that the definition of Christianity being critiqued and poked fun at in this film isn't the only definition, we got a wishy-washy kind of vague assertion of faith that maybe-God-does-exist-because-he/she-made-us-all-so-different-and-wonderful as the only alternative credo for anyone who has trouble swallowing Hilary Faye's version of Christian faith.
I don't mind a good critique of Christianity -- I even get paid to do it myself on a regular basis from the pulpit -- but I do object to the movie not taking the the same critical light it had shed on its particular BRAND of Christian faith and shedding it also on the 'alternative' faith proclaimed by its young heroes at the end. That's just kind of a weak ending and cop-out for a very acerbic, often funny, and sometimes sort of insightful movie.
So, "thumbs up" -- but with all critical faculties engaged and on high alert.
Unlike the friend I saw the movie with (a Methodist minister of about my own age and with similar years of parish experience behind her, before she entered the PhD program in Hebrew Bible), I didn't really see "Saved!" as perpetuating secular culture's sterotyped view of all committed Christians as being narrow-minded, repressed, and excessively smug prigs. I didn't even think it was implying that everyone involved in the particular Christian sub-culture represented by that Christian school (except for Cassandra and Roland, the self-identified non-Christians) was narrow-minded, mean-spirited, and gullible.
I have tutored a student at a conservative Christian high school and I've had many graduates of Christian high schools as students in my university Bible classes. Mostly, they're basically kind, decent, and well-educated people -- which comes as no surprise to me.
Occasionally, I do come across college students (whether educated in religious schools or not) whose theology is as rigid and black-and-white and concerned with being-good-in-order-to-reap-earthly-rewards-and-avoid-any-bad-experiences-ever as that attributed to Hilary Faye in the movie. And I feel fearful FOR those students, rather than OF them, because experience has taught me that a theology so brittle and so far removed from contrary evidence (like the book of Job) will not serve them well when, inevitably, misfortune or genuine tragedy befalls them.
They may not respond as violently as Hilary Faye does at the end of the movie, screaming at a God who has not kept to their implicit 'deal' and rewarded her good works as she expected. But they will get hurt, and perhaps hurt more than they need to, when they discover that bad things do indeed happen to good Christian people, and unquestioning obedience to what they're told is God's will does not give them an impermeable force-field against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
So, the fact the Pastor Skip had some issues of his own he needed to work out and that some of the students showed less-than-Christlike love for the rest of humanity and that the word "Christian" was being slapped like a brand-name or seal-of-divine-approval onto every conceivable aspect of life and work, no matter how trivial -- none of that really bothered me.
What did bother me, near the end, was that the movie turned 'preachy' -- and it didn't do it well. (Professional standards at stake, there -- don't presume to do my job and then do it badly and sloppily and shallowly . . . because there are enough bona fide fellow preachers doing that already, and we really don't need any amateurs mucking it up even more!)
Rather than using the character of Patrick, perhaps, to demonstrate the (to me, well-known) fact that one can be a fully committed Christian and still think that divorce is sometimes justifiable, or that the Bible (if read in its entirety) isn't at all a simple book full of black-and-white instructions, or that gays and lesbians are created and loved by God just as they are, thanks very much . . . Instead of doing that, or doing anything else to suggest that the definition of Christianity being critiqued and poked fun at in this film isn't the only definition, we got a wishy-washy kind of vague assertion of faith that maybe-God-does-exist-because-he/she-made-us-all-so-different-and-wonderful as the only alternative credo for anyone who has trouble swallowing Hilary Faye's version of Christian faith.
I don't mind a good critique of Christianity -- I even get paid to do it myself on a regular basis from the pulpit -- but I do object to the movie not taking the the same critical light it had shed on its particular BRAND of Christian faith and shedding it also on the 'alternative' faith proclaimed by its young heroes at the end. That's just kind of a weak ending and cop-out for a very acerbic, often funny, and sometimes sort of insightful movie.
So, "thumbs up" -- but with all critical faculties engaged and on high alert.