What the church needs now, is love, sweet love…

No amount of theological enquiry, seminars or admonition could get one over the starboard bow like media can - and funny media at that. These two videos pretty much describe the state of the prosperity crowd now a days, including those meddling is soft porn prospertiy gospel.

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Ben Stein’s Eval of Borat

Let’s talk about Borat. I finally caught up with it at my local theater here in Rancho Mirage not long ago. It made me laugh a few times, but basically I hated it. Here’s why.

1.) The auteur and star of the movie, Sacha Baron Cohen, is a Jew of high degree in England and now in Hollywood. But much of the movie is viciously anti-Semitic. This includes not just some but many "jokes" about killing Jews, about how Jews are the devil, about how Jews will kill for money, about how Jews are like cockroaches (the last a direct steal from Joachim Goebbels, who compared Jews with breeding rats and insects). This is in a world where we just lived through an anti-Semitic holocaust with the same themes and another is promised by the terrorists in Iran.

These are not funny jokes. These are really just old-fashioned sickening racism disguised as hipness. It’s also a smug joke by Sacha Cohen which is basically his endlessly saying, "I hate Jews, too, even though I’m Jewish, and hey, I guess I don’t look Jewish because I can say all these horrible Jew hatred things and no one says, ‘Hey, what are you doing? You’re a Jew.’"

It’s repulsive.

2.) Much of the movie is about Borat making fun of people who have been completely kind to him. This is just infantile and narcissistic oppositional disorder. It’s also rude, and it’s not very funny. Maybe it is if you are five.

3.) Much of the story is mocking and belittling Southerners as a group. When I watched it, I thought, "How unoriginal can you possibly get? This is standard Hollywood fare and has been for fifty years. What is at all creative or new about this?" Plus, I like Southerners. Love them. They are great brave people who fought like demons to beat the Nazis who were killing us Jews. How ungrateful can you get?

4.) It has a genuinely nauseating mockery of a woman just because she happens to be black. Why aren’t people getting upset about that? It’s pure, unadulterated KKK type racism. You have to see it to believe it.

5.) Worst of all, it has acute mockery of Christians. There is a long scene mocking Christian fundamentalists, in which Borat makes cruel fun of the idea of Jesus as Savior. He makes fun of Christians who take him in and save his life. Why isn’t anyone noticing this? Are Christians just so used to getting kicked around that they don’t notice anymore? It makes me very uneasy for a Jew like Sacha Cohen to explicitly mock Christ. It’s sacrilege to the great majority of people in this country, for one thing. For another, it’s insulting to the great majority of the people in this country who have made us Jews feel so welcome — unlike people almost anywhere else. When did mocking Christians become the business of Hollywood? Was I out of town when that happened? I don’t like it.

A close friend who saw the movie the same night I did said, "It makes you laugh, but then you want to take a shower after you’ve seen it."

Amen.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He also writes "Ben Stein’s Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator’s monthly print edition. You can now subscribe to Ben Stein’s Diary for just $1.95 per month. Click here to subscribe. And to subscribe to the full magazine, click here.

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Books and Reviews | Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp.

This report leaves more of a boot camp aftertaste in my mouth as opposed to the summer camp feel the program initially had in mind. I couldn’t help but think I would hear or did hear the English translation or transliteration for Jihad amongst those little campers. If those kids would have been speaking another language (as opposed to English and “tongues”), one could easily have envisioned a future suicide bomber in their midst. I thought the report made the whole evangelical, but especially the Pentecostal and Charismatic compartments, come across has VERY CREEPY. It made me want to pull my kids out of children’s church and avoid every future Kids Camp our church may be involved with. Footage like this Saving Holly

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piece makes Christians in general seem so narrow minded, intolerant and brainwashed into robotically saving souls. It doesn’t depict most Christian’s normal day to day life having conversations with non-Christians about something other than their eternal destination. Now, while maybe I always introduce myself by saying, “Hi, my name is Juan, if you died tonight where would you go… Heaven or HELL.” Then closely following up that rhetorical question with “Why would my Jesus let you in to His heaven?” that doesn’t mean every Christian follows my example of living la vida loca.

On another note, being a youth pastor, I was also slightly offended, yet found myself chuckling, at how my colleagues or should I say peeps were portrayed. Youth Pastor is equivalent to skate parks, rock concerts, and being a republican if you actually think about politics beyond the abortion and homosexuality issues. I would love to put my two pesos in and simply say that the evangelical movement can include and indeed does include, youth ministries that read books written by NT Wright, discuss abortion and homosexuality as moral issues and discuss political issues knowing full well you can be a democrat and go to heaven and that many republicans are going straight to hell. I will be doing a follow up documentary about this movement’s other gathering; when Christians aren’t brainwashing kids at some charismatic, George Bush worshipping camp, they seem to be putting up a front as if they had some critical thinking skills by putting together conferences like this one…

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Get Rich or Die Trying - Reviews In

Well, some of the early critics have spoken and yet again we have he case of a auto portrayal + good director + don’t care because I’m stinkin rich + I smile throughout the whole movie = bad production. Here are the comments:

“On one hand you’ve got Tupac Shakur, Will Smith, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg, Ice-T, LL Cool J, Sean Combs and Andre Benjamin. On the other you’ve got 50 Cent. This kid stinks! “
– Sean Burns, PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY

5/10 “50 spends the film with one look on his face, and itÂ’s the look that you imagine a caveman would have when confronted with a cellphone.”
– Devin Faraci, CHUD

2.5/5 “With the emotional range of a wet sock, Jackson mumbles through his lines with a blank expression.”
– Stefan Halley, HERO REALM

D+ “50 Cent’s fanbase might love this valentine to the rapperÂ’s ego no matter the quality, but other audiences might not be as forgiving with this half-realized urban fairy tale.”
– Brian Orndorf, EFILMCRITIC.COM

2/4 “A reiteration of the now-clichéd hip-hop rise-to-fame legend that duplicates the crime-to-rhyme formula of Hustle & Flow.”
– Nicholas Schager, SLANT MAGAZINE

1.5/4 “Get Rich or Die Tryin’ will always be known as the 50 Cent movie. Not because of who stars in the film, but because that’s how much it’s worth.”
– Phil Villarreal, ARIZONA DAILY STAR

7/10 “A good introduction to the rapper and his music, but also an entertaining movie in its own right.”
– Edward Douglas, COMINGSOON.NET

“Everybody loves Marcus (50 Cent), from relatives to homeboys to would-be killers.”
– Cynthia Fuchs, POPMATTERS

With that said, Curtis Jackson (aka 50 cent) is laughing all the way to the bank. Does he care whether his movie bombs? Probably not. Is it further damaging the stereotypes? Yeap. Just listen to what Spike Lee (whom I usually don’t agree with) said in a recent interview:

Lee described a billboard in Los Angeles promoting the current film “Get Rich or Die Trying” which featured rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson holding a gun in one hand and a microphone in the other. Lee said that billboard sends young black men the message that there are only two ways to succeed: “get a record deal or shoot the s**t out of somebody, excuse my language.” Lee said the billboard has since been removed after criticism from the black community.

And the same messages are being promoted by many rap artists and, perhaps more important, by the record companies which determine what CDs get released. Lee said those negative stereotypes are just as damaging to white suburban teenagers, who are a key market for hip-hop CDs, as they are to black teenagers.

“We’ve put pimps on a pedestal,” he said. While Lee has met the rapper Snoop Dogg and likes him personally, he said the promotion of Snoop Dogg’s pimp image in mainstream culture — such as a Chrysler ad featuring Snoop Dogg with Lee Iacocca — is a bad thing.

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After the Dust Settled: Post Considerations on Kill Bill

The Spill on Kill Bill

There are few movies that glorify gore for the sake of cultural expression such as Kill Bill. Quentin Tarantino whose credits include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown has made modern inroads with his glorification of a variety of mediums and genres sutured with violence in Kill Bill. The following is not intended to give a full blow by blow analysis or critique of the movie but an overview that will highlight some of the crucial points the movie established, thus impacting a Christian worldview. One could visit Focus on the Family’s Plugged In to get a family review[1] or Michael Medved’s editorial in USAToday for an overall critique of the film.[2]

The film which opened up on October of 2003, gave movie goers the ride of their life as they saw images that contrasted between what seemed real and fantasy, between the macabre and the tender moments of death and suffering. The movie’s main thrust comes from the “The Bride” played by Uma Thurman as the movie depicts her quest for vengeance as team of assassins left her for dead. The Rotten Tomatoes movie review website gives a great synopsis about the movie.

KILL BILL: VOL. 1 tells the first half of the sprawling story, which is quite simple at first glance. A female assassin, referred to as “The Bride” (Uma Thurman), is attacked on her wedding day. Dead are her soon-to-be husband and unborn child. However, she doesn’t die. Four years later, she wakes up from a coma looking for revenge. Although her ultimate target is her former boss, Bill (David Carradine), it’s quite clear that The Bride is saving the best for last. And before she can track him down, she must methodically take out the minions who ruined her life. VOLUME 1’s targets include Vernita Green/Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), and the heartless O-Ren Ishii/Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu). Using a blessed sword handmade by Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), The Bride begins her relentless assault.[3]

The film includes a variety of genres such as action, suspense, and horror among others. In addition, it artistically involves a variety of color tones that are used for different sequences with tender but eerie songs that are reminiscent of the Kung Fu theater scores and the Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns. If one could compare it with a painting, Tarantino uses a variety of stylistic instruments as well as mediums such as crayon, clay, oil and watercolor paints, and so on. The darkened theaters and the surround sound give this particular canvas an effect that could leave any viewer somewhat mesmerized. Nevertheless, we will discuss the juxtaposed images that give Kill Bill a name for its own.

In addition to the beautiful color expressions and mixing of different mediums is the actual content of the movie itself. One has to give credit to Tarantino as he tries to give new backgrounds to different shades of violence depicted throughout the movie. In cinema a person is made aware of incoming violence, whether it is glorified or not, by the usual shift in setting. The marked differences could be registered by a change of darker colors and suspenseful music thus categorizing violence as such. Nevertheless, in Kill Bill we see that Tarantino uses juxtaposed images to denote an eerie violence. For example, there are scenes in the movie where there is an immense amount of blood and gore by the heinous revenge The Bride carries out. This, in turn is backdropped by melodic tones that are downright opposite of what you are seeing.

Furthermore, the introduction of Japanese Anime and a style format that carries out like a book shows that Tarantino wanted to tell a story in every possible way. In essence, once again, Tarantino has to be given credit for exploring different avenues a storyline can be conveyed. Nevertheless, the content is what strikes a chord against the Christian worldview.

Means with Ends

As was mentioned before, what concerned us here is what Tarantino purported to convey in the storyline, in other words the content. As other critics have pointed out, there really is no content to Kill Bill’s storyline. As Michael Medved’s piece points out, there isn’t much of anything in the movie.

Widely described as the bloodiest feature film ever released by a major studio (in this case, Disney’s Miramax division), the movie stands out not because of the presence of graphic violence but due to the absence of anything else.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 offers no characters, no relationships, no plot, no suspense, no clever dialogue and no resolution. Instead, it plays like an extended, unspeakably gory trailer for Kill Bill: Vol. 2, scheduled to be released in February. Other films will deploy extreme brutality to advance or intensify a story, but this one concentrates on violence as a substitute for story or intensity.[4]

Hence, we should not confuse the means with ends. Just because the movie uses a plethora of means to convey content it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has any. This is a very fundamental and crucial point in regards to a Christian worldview. We entertain ourselves to death by the graphical acupuncture that stimulates us to a lull while content (in this case contentless) information seeps in to our minds. On amazing example was What Dreams May Come, directed by Vincent Ward. The scenery and background (music, lighting, color tones, etc) was so mesmerizing that few people noticed that it was assuming a pantheistic/new age worldview that advocated themes such as reincarnation and karma. It was a very beautiful and aesthetic movie indeed; however the message came with what I call a worldview compromise. A worldview compromise is where there is a sort of mental give and take that happens when we as Christians are not truly rooted in truth. Therefore, when we see movies such as Kill Bill and What Dreams May Come we compromise truth by passively receiving variables that without all the production glitter and glamour would otherwise strike us at being in odds with biblical principles.[5]

Conclusion

In short, Kill Bill is dangerous not because of how upfront it is with violence but because it caters to the non content-like stories (or lack there of) that are promulgated in a Western postmodern society. It is literally a passion play for it plays on the passions and not on the intellect, thus bypassing reason. Therefore, as our children lull before contentless material, they receive it with no reasonable justification. At least with content one has the opportunity to see if it is tied to themes such as redemption, vengeance, vindication, etc., so that we are able to use judgment, reason and opinion to justify or disregard. This is not the case with Kill Bill.

This reminds us of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) in the movie The Fifth Element where she happens to look through video player at what seems like hours of footage with images of violence. She stood there watching as she tried to learn from millennia of history through a series of images depicting pure violence. Afterwards she went into despair as she gave up on the idea of saving earth. The content she saw on the spaceship impacted her to the point of not wanting to exist anymore. However, what the movie failed to provide was that images are just that, images. In a certain sense they do not speak for themselves for they lack content and context; elements that are lacking in many movies today.

Therefore, it is imperative that one is more discerning with the content of movies. This will help in being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to such movies.

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