As a disclaimer, it's worth noting that I'm going to be completely honest about my impressions of religion here. I am mostly neutral when it comes to any sort of religious topic or debate but I have strong views when it comes down to particulars so if you are even remotely sensitive about the topic of religion you have been warned, I'm not holding back.
Spoiler Warning: This article contains Spoilers for the movie Se7en and references to non-spoiler themes from the movie Easy A.
I'm fairly open when it comes to religion. Different cultures fascinate me and with just about any widespread or mainstream culture the most defining influence is religion. I was the class geek in Religious Education at school, not because I was ever intent on passing with flying colours but because the ethical and existential opportunities for intelligent and provocative discussion really appealed to me. Other than media studies and perhaps English Literature it was the only subject that didn't involve hard facts, that opened up a thought and invited everybody to dissect until they had found their own preference or, for some people, their own answers.
An example of my open-nature: when I was still living with my family, some Jehova's Witnesses knocked on our door and asked if we were interested in their religion. Initially, I said no and they left at which point my sister expressed some confusion about their practices. As an atheist who is merely curious about religion, I didn't have all the answers, so I decided to take my sister down the street to meet them after they had finished at the next house. We made clear that we weren't looking to convert, but were interested in what being a Jehova's Witness is all about and made casual, interesting conversation for about a half an hour. Every few weeks they would stop by to chat, sometimes about religion, sometimes just to say "Hi" and admirably, never put us under any pressure to consider converting. I have no problem saying that they were remarkably nice people and I have no regrets about the time I spent with them.
Despite all this, I am a very cynical individual who struggles to trust any organisation that is too large. I couldn't tell you how large is too large but let's just sum it up as the Government, the corporate enterprises of Rupert Murdoch and any form of Organised Religion. Naturally, Christianity is the most portrayed religion in contemporary media and I think I need to get this article back on topic so let's dive straight in. I recently caught two films that featured, how can I put this sensitively, Chrisitan enthusiasts of an extreme nature. The first is Se7en: now, it's not much of a spoiler to point out that religion plays heavily in the plot of Se7en and if you don't know how the Seven Deadly Sins feed into Christianity, I recommend you take a gander at Wikipedia for a few minutes. Anybody who has seen Se7en will know that the killer, John Doe, is an obsessive Christian who believes that he is helping the world by making an example of sinners, kind of like a biblical Jigsaw, really. John Doe is a portrait of a man who may be labelled as insane a million times over, but his thought process and awareness of his actions make it clear that this is simply not the case. If murder is a moral imperative then the nature of Doe's crimes make him something worse than evil. He really is something of a monster. We'll come back to him soon.
Easy A makes fun of Christians in a much more light-hearted manner: they're much more in line with the traditional Jesus Freak archetype that most modern day comedies or suburban dramas will make use of, the spin here being that they're teenage Jesus Freaks looking to get rid of a girl they believe to be a harlot. There was one moment in the movie Easy A that caught my attention and that was when a group of these obsessed Christian kids began singing a song about Moses and his oppressed people. I can only assume the point behind this particular...hymn was that the film-makers wanted to suggest an irony behind the notion that these kids are actively attempting to oppress the main character and are mindlessly asinging a song drilled into them by their parents from birth. What stuck in my mind however was the irony that a film actively mocking an entire faith is giving that faith their own argument of oppression. If any Christian was to take offence at the way Easy A caricatures the Organised Religion Christianity they could cite fascism and as I'm sure we know from every religion based war of all time, there's little more dangerous than an angry religion.
Naturally, Se7en walks a similar if not much more dangerous tightrope. Although it doesn't mock religion it certainly raises the point that Doe is using his religion as an excuse for his slaying. Even more disturbing is the concept that Christianity in fact inspired him to kill which is his own argument, that God does not talk to him but nonetheless he is doing God's work.
Referring back to my mistrust of religion, the examples above pretty much encompass everything I've come to loathe about Organised Faith. I'm more than happy to acknowledge that different people believe different things to get through the day but there are certain minorities that stand out and set a bad precedent for the millions of people just getting on with their lives. The overtly vocal, who attempt to force their way of living onto people who are comfortable and well adjusted with something entirely different, whether they are street preachers, snobby elitists or those who will tell you that you're going to burn unless you convert are one of these minorities and characterised in Easy A. The benefit is that these people are at least trying to help you The other minority, is the far more terrifying prospect of an individual looking not to change your life but to end it because you're not worth the air you breathe. Clearly, killing you is not going to help you in any sense and that is not something that these people care about. I'm more than happy to accept that some atheists are just as bigoted as those who subscribe to religious beliefs but I have never heard of an atheist killing a Christian because he is a Christian.
So, if media representations of Christianity can be construed as oppression, why have we not heard more thunder about it? I think that mostly it's because both sides, media and religion, are currently in a place where each is sensible enough to just let it go. The media is diverse enough to have a God channel, and it's only free speech to crack the occasional joke about every faith, Christianity is merely the most accessible in this day and age. And Christianity is, as I have already mentioned, mostly made up of down-to-earth people who simply have different beliefs than atheists. The minorities will still come out in full force whenever they smell a hint of persecution (take for example the 'furore' over Kevin Smith's Dogma) but after a day or two of headlines, the whole thing just begins to blow over. It's an interesting position to consider but fortunately adults seem to be running both the Vatican and the film-studios and as long as they're capable of tolerating each other I doubt we have any real media war to worry about any time soon.
Originally posted on Screened.com on March 4th, 2011
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