The Passion Rotterdam

No, not about Mel Gibson's movie. It's about a local production, The Passion, provided by the Dutch Evangelical Broadcasting Community with some support from the Roman Catholic Church and the Dutch Protestant Church. It was huge and spectacular. 1.7 million people watched it on television, more than 10% of the total Dutch population. I read nothing but praise about the technical aspect and the delivery. The artists were all local celebrities. Personally, this is an instance where two loves meet for not only am I fascinated by popular expressions of religious sentiment, I do have a weak spot for Dutch local artists too. There is something pathetic and familiar about it that strangely warms my heart just as much as Christian sentiment is able to. If Christ doesn't feel strangely familiar to me then at least the Dutch artists certainly do. And here they are, celebrating the story of my buddy Jesus!

But what do I see? In 2012? Nothing but criticism from both the secular and the religious sides it seems. Most striking is that the secular side is complaining about this story being portrayed irreverently. What! If anyone the secular side should be able to recognize that the idea of religious integrity is suspect at the very least. Either the non-religious have not yet completely emancipated themselves from religious sentiment or they abuse an idea of religious integrity to bash a type of popular entertainment that they can't stand, for of course it is the intellectuals that complain about this. Most likely a combination of both.

But even from the theological side I hear complaints. Really? Well go ahead and dig your own grave with complaints for shovels then! If popular culture is seen as something that can only corrupt religion then pretty soon that religion will be over and done with. I would like to see how someone from the United States would react to this European type of criticism. "Are they crazy?" My fictional evangelical American friend might ask. "The Gospel should be told and made heard, whatever it takes," he would argue. I guess the US has more of a tradition of catering to popular sentiment, making use of popular entertainment and modern media. Also in the US the religious emphasis seems to be more on experiencing religion than subscribing to a set of beliefs. The reasons for things growing differently in the US and in Europe are many but the bottom line is, if the EU clergy isn't going to wise up they might keep an eye on the classifieds ads printed next to their angry letters in the newspapers.

Trailer of the show.

The whole thing can be seen on the website: http://www.eo.nl/evenementen/thepassion/

Nathalie

So there you are, an ambitious evangelical Christian, that wants to preach the Word to the youth. What do you do? You could create an animated series. That is difficult though, because you must first learn to understand the idiom and the technique, which doesn't always work out that well. But what other options are there? Well why not just buy the rights to some cheap Japanese cartoon series and dub it over in the native language of your country cramming it full of Jesus? That is what the local Evangelical Broadcasting Network here seems to have done with the Japanese series Katri, Girl of the Meadows, that they renamed Nathalie. This story is strange anyway and somehow very modern and international. The 1980s series is Japanese and based on a Finnish book set in Finland during the First World War. So already the series is culturally somewhat of a stretch. But then the Evangelical Broadcasting Network here in the Netherlands bought up the rights and made it into a Dutch series with a strong Christian message. This is not on a Golden Rule do-unto-others level, Jesus was invoked himself. It was quite explicit. I am amazed now (although perhaps a bit naively) that the series wasn't evangelical at all to begin with. In a way, just buying some secular series and then dubbing it into sanctity is quite cunning. If you can't beat them, rob them blind?

 Katri, a.k.a. Nathalie.

Dutch DVD front.

Dutch intro song.

Veggie Tales

So in line with my recent entries on Christian kid's shows (like SuperBook and Davey & Goliath) today let's talk about the one to end all others: Veggie Tales. This is one of the few crossover success examples of evangelical popular cultural products being picked up in the secular market too, not just remaining in the evangelical subculture, according to Heather Hendershot. It's pretty much your cutesy series about anthropomorphic vegetables (a divergence from the usual animals) that go out on adventures. Subtle certainly for evangelical Christian standards is the embedded message that doesn't focus on Jesus but focuses more on proper behavior and interpersonal (intervegetable?) contact.

 Okay maybe they aren't always that subtle.

Website: http://veggietales.com/
Source: Hendershot, Heather. Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture. London: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Davey and Goliath

So after yesterday's SuperBook, more on kids shows. Another one that I see popping up in literature every now and then is Davey and Goliath. This is somewhat fascinating. If SuperBook seemed to still match the standards of its genre, this does not seem to be the case with Davey and Goliath. It's somehow very stiff. First of all in a technical sense. The stop-motion animation isn't smooth. It's crude and uneasy. Perhaps this is inherent to clay-animation itself, but even so, this just looks and feels clumsy. I wouldn't say heartless because it seems the people did actually care about what they were doing, they just didn't really know how to do it. It looks amateurish. This shows even more in the stories though. I've watched a few episodes now and... there isn't really a story. Just some morals in sequence that are so big you sort of gasp for air every time they punch you in the stomach with one. No plot or script or nothing - and a gruelingly slow tempo to add. No suspense either. Which brings me to another striking feature: where is evil in this world? The most evil things seem to get are only a suspension of good, after which a quick restoration of good follows to underline that ultimately all is fine and dandy in this here lovely God's creation. Postman Pat, although twenty years younger still the secular series that Davey and Goliath remind me of primarily, also doesn't have evil, but somehow it's different. In the lovely sweet universe of Postman Pat the creators seem to have consciously suspended evil although they damn well know it's out there in the real world. In the case of Davey and Goliath the creators seem to want to illustrate that evil doesn't really exist, giving it a feverish quality because they don't seem to convince even themselves of this fact. With Postman Pat it's a game, with Davey and Goliath it's dead earnest.

SuperBook

So this is an old pre-animé type Christian animation series. I remember this kind of series, they always looked rather cheaply produced (probably because they were). Endless shots of heads of two altering frames to cut costs, that sort of thing. Brought home probably by the Pokémon series. But I know it more from the old eighties series like Nils Holgersson and the Wizard of Oz animated renditions (oeh and that terrible one where they wanted to teach you about the human body. It was awful. No matter how young you are, you automatically react allergically to educational-purposes animated series). It wasn't very good but hey I was ten, it moved, that's all that mattered, I was happy with it. Even though the Evangelical Broadcast Network did have some series of its own, I don't really remember this one. Only vaguely perhaps but given that I was hardly even in my double digits of age my mind is likely to play tricks on me and fill in blind gaps with lies. Anyway, since there were secular animated series, of course there were also evangelical counterparts. This one seems, given the standard that it emulates, not bad though. The premise seems to be your average computer-gone-bad because of which some kids are sucked into another reality type model. Of course in this case they end up in the many stories of the Bible. Probably this series isn't so bad because the Bible stories do beg to be turned into an animated series... well okay perhaps not all books and stories but still quite a few of them.

Bloody Bloody Bible Camp

Not a spontaneous product from a religious culture, but quite like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, this one is too good not to mention. The idea is already genius but Jesus Christ makes a quick appearance, played by none other than porn clown Ron Jeremy. Now thát's what I call casting!

I bet they included a "don't you hate it when people try and stuff their religion down your throat?" joke.

Website: http://www.bloodybloodybiblecamp.com/

Left Behind: The Movie

So, it's been a while now that I've been wanting to talk about this. But the day is here. That dragon of a movie: Left Behind. My latest experience with this movie was in class recently where a good chunk of the movie was shown. This was for a Christianity in the United States class and everyone was paying close attention, scrutinizing for religious symbols, scribbling down notes carefully. But... nobody laughed? The poort acting, the weird story twists, the crippled dialogue? Nobody noticed?

Perhaps I'm biased about this movie, having read what especially Heather Hendershot had to say about it. The team behind it was all psyched about making the very first crossover movie success, thinking they'd take Hollywood by storm. With a movie based on a best-selling book, appealing not only to the evangelical subculture from which it sprang but also to the broader public, they did have reason to expect it.

Yet nothing more than a gush of wind it turned out to be. Or in fact, according to the reviews, a very smelly fart. A by now infamous description of the movie by the critic Desson Thomson writing for the Washington Post that reads "A blundering cringefest, thanks to unintentionally laughable dialogue, hackneyed writing and uninspired direction" pretty much sums up the common sentiment about this movie amongst reviewers. Not even the own team was all too wild about this movie, where HollywoodJesus.com didn't have too much praise to sing for it and even the evangelical periodical Christianity Today sighed out a quiet "ahem."

Granted, in the long (long long) run, it did generate some money with video sales. However, it was meant to shine at the box office. 17 million going in, just over 4 million grossed... that's a far cry from the spectacular success that the makers had anticipated. The idea that they could live up to the Hollywood norm with this movie is beyond naive. But why did the team behind this movie think it then?

Hendershot touches on a couple of reasons. One is that the producers thought this movie was quite subtle because they cut back on all the “Jesus”es flying around. Still, for any outsider watching this movie, it’s pretty clear what’s going on. It’s a good bit of end-times propaganda. You almost watch it not as a fiction movie but as a scenario for what is about to happen according to its creators. Also to me it seems these people had no critics at all. They sort of just... went along with it. I know that bands sometimes tend to think they made the greatest record ever because they convinced themselves of this fact in their isolated bubble and not because they critically compared their product to other ones out there. Usually also then, cold harsh reality tends to prove such bands wrong. The feel of this movie very much reminded me of such bubble-reasoning. Whatever the reason might be though, it presented us with a pearl of oblivion from the evangelical subculture!

PS: I do remember now, that when I did finally see the movie after having heard so many bad things about it, I did think: Was that it? I had somehow expected to see the very worst movie ever. In fact, I was looking forward to this. Give me the worst movie to end all worst movies! It was bad, sure, but that bad? I didn't really think so. Could it be then that there was a little bit of politics involved? Secular media cranking the critique dial up a notch or a few to punish the unrealistic expectations of the high-and-mighty evangelicals? The production team did present itself for target practice going on and on about how great this movie was and how it would show all people the way of movie-making of the future, but I don't know if it deserved quite the all-devastating criticism it got. I for one have seen worse. Far... far worse!

Source: Hendershot, Heather. Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture. London: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Do The Burka!

So this post requires me to dive into the messy world of politics for a bit. As a tourist though, not as a resident, as I've made clear again and again that I don't like to get involved in it. But I can describe it. Or at least try to.

You see, in Europe the debate about Islam has been building up. There are those that feel that Islam doesn't belong in Western society. They feel that it is backward, that it oppresses women, that it is a cruel system that not only condones but even encourages violence. Our own by now famous and infamous politician Geert Wilders even went so far as to call it not a religion at all but nothing more than a political ideology.

On the other side of this discussion are those that say that Islam cannot be reduced to a fixed set of characteristics like that. They argue that a fringe group of radicals is being mistaken for the largest group of members. They even say that this "mistake" is intentional, so as to create an idea of an enemy that needs to be defeated. It is thought that this imagined enemy can then function as a way to bring together people to persecute members of this perceived threat as a scapegoat.

It can all get complicated, where sometimes the allegations of those who try to fight Islam are actually being reinforced by representatives of the religion itself. When its enemies claim that it is a violent ideology they might use video footage of Muslims that say themselves that it is the sacred duty of all Muslims is to fight the infidels. This makes it very easy of course to mistake the testament of a few for an absolute statement. This, in turn, gives the anti-islamists some empirical ammunition again.

Embedded in this discussion is also the question about what Islam really is. Is there truly an absolute Islamic tradition or are there only Islams existing side by side? In the case of the burka, a piece of cloth that is supposed to cover the entire face of a woman save most of her eyes, this is being highly debated. Is it part of Islamic tradition or is it just a cultural practice that got picked up somewhere along the way? Recently in the Netherlands the anti-islamists approved a law banning the burka from the public space. Officially the reason was mainly safety. But the message underneath might be that Islamic tradition must always be subject to state interests. This however assumes that the burka is indeed a part of Islamic tradition, even though it is deemed such by outsider political forces.

This is a very very long road to what I want this post to be about. It’s also a long way to justify it’s religious significance, since arguably this is about culture and not religion (from a secular point of view, I'm actually not sure if the difference between the two can accurately be upheld). Where there is political and religious controversy of course there is also mockery. And this mockery is also bad. Very. Very bad. Oh Lord how you spoil me with such sweet suffering! So delightfully unbearable! Ladies and gentlemen, with great pride do I give you this golden turd of a video from my very own country: Do the burka!

I must once again thank Roel for bringing this to my attention. May Allah bless you my friend! ;)

The Ten Commandment Boogie

Another tip I got, from Geert this time. Thanks Geert! Just when you think you've seen it all, you're looking at a dancing clown!

Der Jesus Tanz

Ah yes, Germany. Home of the likes of Luther and Schleiermacher. Such a rich Christian tradition, arguably the intellectual heart of Christendom ever since the reformation. So what is the status nowadays? What gems of theology, moving and deep, has this country recently blessed us with? Well...

Toll, na? :) I gotta thank Roel and Boudewijn for bringing this to my attention. Thanks guys!

Ronald Reagan's 1981 Christmas Speech

It fills me with joy to know that yesterday's post certainly did seem to stimulate the stomach with some readers. Some believe that erst kommt das Fressen, dan kommt die Moral, and since we seem to have das Fressen out of the way, let us now seek some moral inspiration for these the Christmas holidays. And where else to turn than to that president of presidents Mr. Ronald Reagan? Perhaps the climatic blend of theater, politics and religion - a mingling that according to for example R. Laurence Moore might date as far back as George Whitefield in the eighteenth century - Mr. Reagan was at the very least a fascinating figure. A fascist perhaps, yes, but still quite a fascinating one. Fascistinating if you will. Be your heart's feelings about the man as they may, let them all melt in this warm Christmas message that Mr. Reagan wishes to share with you!

Meat Nativity Scene

What am I thinking? It's Christmas time! I should be talking about Christmassy things! So let's get to it and celebrate first with this meat nativity scene. I have been holding this one in, saving it up for a special occasion, but I do believe the time is here. Feast your eyes my friends!

Also, I think I'll have to include this Christmas video from the Epic Meal Time show.

Life Is Worth Living

Catholic Archbischop in America Fulton J. Sheen was quite the media figure. I can't help but think he sort of looks like count Dracula in that picture that I found on Wikipedia. Anyway, he was friends with television and made quite a few "Life Is Worth Living" bits. Arguably it was some televangelist trailblazing that Mr. Sheen did.

Tom Cruise's Scientology Video

Probably biologists and cultural analysts alike would agree with me that things can get pretty interesting if you isolate a culture and just let it develop, to lift the rock a little while later and be amazed with the completely unexpected and incredible result you find. Some of you might be thinking of Jersey Shore right now, I was thinking more of Tom Cruise. Probably Hollywood has an isolating effect on it's own. It is near impossible to just be amongst the people sometimes. Add to this religious zeal and what comes rolling out of the equation? Tom Cruise. This little film clip is just so very strange because, well, not because the things that Mr. Cruise is saying might be considered strange, but more because he absolutely seems to not realize the weirdness of what he's saying. It's a little while back that I saw this but it's just so strange. Also the length of it. And the total amateurishness. Seeing Mr. Top Gun / Mission Impossible / whatever other slick Hollywood blockbuster be in this far too long poorly edited bit with the Mission Impossible theme drilling on embarrassingly in the background is just not something you'd expect to see. I certainly was impressed by his presentation but probably not for the reasons he had in mind.

Carman

A new month and let's start with a jewel. There are those things in life that make you divide it in a before and after. Before you got married, after you got married, before you got a kid, after you got a kid, that sort of thing. I definitely would like to split my life up around a very significant moment. Before I learned about Carman and after I learned about Carman. He's an evangelical singer, entertainer and performer and he manages to make evangelicals feel ashamed of him. Yes that's right. Evangelicals... are shamed by him. That, in it's own right, is quite an achievement. But he does seem to have what it takes. It's sort of an evangelical version of Vanilla Ice. But that still doesn't do him justice. His videos are about as narcissistic as they are spectacular. He usually plays all the roles himself and he is unapologetically Christian, somehow mocking what tends to be fundamentalism while practicing it. Truly, an artist! His acting strongly reminds me of that of Will Ferrell only Carman does it without the slightest hint of irony. By now it should be clear that I am at a loss for words praising this God of a man. I'll include several videos that I had to watch a few times over in order to actually confirm that they indeed do exist.

Moral Decay

This is a video game, ultraviolent, starring none other than. In a description I found: "MORAL DECAY. Chris T. [get it?] has risen from the grave to stop a terrorist plot, restoring peace and justice to the world. Guide Chris T. as he battles Yakuza goons, wild animals, aliens, and the Dark Lord himself!" Sounds quite interesting alright. After some more digging, I found out that in fact Apple (it is for iPhone/iPad) rejected the game a few times before it could live with a watered-down (wine jokes, anyone?) enough machine-gun-wielding Messiah. I wonder if the original game is still out there.

The development company is Infinite Lives. There is a nice little article here on the short history of the game.

Father Dowling Mysteries

Another series that I used to watch in the 80s/90s. "Father Frank Dowling is a Catholic priest who continually stumbles over murders, abductions, and other high crimes in his hometown, Chicago, Illinois." (wiki). A lot of mistery solving and not a whole lot of religion going on in Chicago then it seems. Some might argue that this is an improvement and that for once a Catholic figure was actually doing something useful? But let's not talk about that. Let's talk in stead about how hot Sister Stephanie was! There is something proto-Sarah Michelle Gellar about her. The casting of the series was good, there was just something... believable... about the Father Dowling character. By the way, I like the VHS effects in this YouTube video.

Alpha Course Commercial

If I could ask God one question, it would be why the hell did He allow this crappy commercial to be made.

The Flying Nun

The Flying Nun is an American TV series from the 1960s. The series "centered on the adventures of a community of nuns in the Convent San Tanco in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The comic elements of the storyline were provided by the flying ability of a novice nun, Sister Bertrille, played by Sally Field" (wiki). I remember watching this on rerun on TV as a kid and thinking this was weird but probably it made sense in the universe of grown-ups or something. I'm not sure if I'm part of that universe quite yet today, but at the very least this series still seems weird to me. It's one of those things where you wonder who the hell approved the proposal for this show at the time and what the hell was he smoking? I am able to see now, as opposed to then, some of the sweet 1960s what you might call innocence in television production. The bright smiles, the saccharine music, the clumsy jokes (catch that dog, Sister Bertrille!). What marvel! I wonder if all too many religious communities actually got up on their hind legs about this series. Because of nuns flying around mind you, not because of its innocence.

Judgment - The Movie

Lets talk about bad habits first. I found the trailer for this movie Judgment somehow, I made a not of it, but now that the day is here that I want to write about it, yes indeed, the day of Judgment, I can't remember the context of my find. Well, I'll just dig it up from scratch.
        First thing I want to notice is that Mr. T is in this movie. That already makes it a winner. "They want fire and brimstone? Then they gonna get it!" You tell 'em B.A.! Second cool thing is that at the end of the movie trailer they mention a website, www.judgment-themovie.com, which doesn't work. Then again, this movie is from 2001 so I suppose that's forgivable.
        Looking it up on IMDB, the cover makes this movie look like the ones that are all piled up in one big incosolable box at the checkout counter of your local supplies store with a sign that reads "3 for 5 dollars!" This would actually be the one you lift out of that pile of misery for a few seconds because you go "oh hey look, this one has Mr. T in it!" only to quickly throw it back again when that surprise wears off and you realize that you're probably holding something unhygienic that must be banished back to the basket of ill hygiene from whence it came.
        On IMDB, the phrase to describe it is "The devil arrives on Earth to prove Jesus never existed." Good thing they mention that, because the trailer really doesn't tell you at all what this movie is about. It's about a trial, but it's not really clear about what. You do hear lovely lines like "I call to the stand... Jesus Christ." They throw some "imagine a world..." type intrigue lines around, but mystery is pretty much all you're getting. The acting is way over the top which makes it lovely. It looks like the acting from a Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker movie, but then without the irony. The production company is Cloud Ten, which is a "Christian-themed movie company and record label that is passionate about producing inspirational Christian film and music." I'm sure I'll run into them again some time.