|
New
Orleans
Secular Humanist Association |
|
CHRISTIAN CINEMA By William Sierichs Jr. Various groups are demanding that Hollywood restore "Christian" values to movies and television. They contend this will not only save the U.S. from moral decay but will bring back to the theaters millions of people who won't go unless a Walt Disney movie is on the bill. The Christian Film and Television Commission pushes a highly-restrictive code to rein in Hollywood, presumably to be rechristened `Holywood.' Of course, Holywood risks losing viewers who aren't satisfied unless they see Arnold or Sigourney or Mel and Danny blowing away bad guys, using the latest in bloody special effects, with a little sex on the side. As wealthiness is next to godliness - so televangelists attest - Christian cinema must be broad-based to fleece the flock. Now let's get real: Holywood won't draw sex-and-violence fans with the life story of Mother Teresa. (Although the "Life of Saint Augustine" might be worth a shot: Playboy turns pious, abandons family for faith. It's definitely `high-concept,' and quite Christian, allowing for lots of sex before Augustine converts and turns his back on his personal responsibilities.) Fortunately, God has provided an easy solution to this dilemma. Films have only to be faithful to Biblical and Christian history, and they'll give good `s and v,' while simultaneously promoting those values historically associated with Christianity. After much work on the movie vision-thing, I've developed a few historically Christian plot ideas which also have enough `s and v' to appeal to "Terminator" and "James Bond" junkies out there. Some samples to whet Holywood's appetite: For a big-budget flick, there's nothing like a Crusade for an epic tale with plenty of potential for star appeal and special effects (God smites the Muslims; God reveals the Lance at Antioch; God makes duplicate relics so thousands of the faithful can each have a big chunk of the Cross; etc.). But the story's so large, it needs a main character the audience can identify with. I see a heroic knight, a regular guy who also has lots of pull with the kings. He'll be from the Rhineland so we can call it "Germania Jones and the First Crusade." We start with the crusaders in Europe in 1096, when they massacre Jews in Worms, Mainz, Cologne and other cities. Plenty of `v' potential, such as scenes of tearful Jews killing their children, then themselves, as crusaders break down their doors. As our hero, Germania Jones will successfully convert worthy Jews to Christianity, saving them from horrible deaths. We follow him on to the Holy Land, where Western Christians slaughter Muslims, Jews and Eastern Christians alike. The streets of Antioch and Jerusalem will be rivers of blood from the enemies of Christianity, an image that has always thrilled the hearts of the devout. Again, Germania converts the most worthy of the enemy, and kills large numbers of the unrepentant while traveling through ancient cities and historic sites. If "First Crusade" is a hit, we have plenty of sequels. In "Germania Jones and the Third Crusade," we watch Richard the Lion Heart slaughter thousands of helpless Muslim women and children in Acre on Aug. 20, 1191, after promising to spare their lives. In "Germania Jones and the Fourth Crusade," our heroes slaughter Christians in Europe, then sack Constantinople in April 1204. The `s' comes from the Crusaders' rapes of women in the city - including nuns - and the French prostitute who sings a ribald song while sitting on the Patriarch's throne in the revered Church of St. Sophia. (Perhaps we could persuade Melina Mercouri to do "Never on Sunday" again.) We'll also have "Germania Jones and the Crusade of Doom," about the Children's Crusade of 1212, when thousands of Christian children from Europe marched toward the Holy Land but were sold by Christians into slavery to Muslims. Germania Jones, of course, rescues them and returns them to their homes; it's not history, since the real children - those who survived - spent their lives as Muslim slaves, but a Christian audience won't care about petty details. (After all, they ignore the many goofs in the Bible.) Speaking of the Bible, we can show the earlier crusade of the Israelites into Canaan, with all the `s and v' an audience could want. We'll have Moses or Joshua at the massacres of the total populations of Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, etc. We'll also show the defeat of the Midianites, when Num. 31:17-18 says the Israelites slaughter - in a Biblically acceptable way - the men and divide the young virgins among themselves. We'll have a hero, of course, who'll fall in love with a young Midianite girl. He'll wait until she recovers from the shock of her parents' murder before he marries her, while the other Israelites simply rape their new slaves. I imagine some prudes will object, but these scenes will be easy to defend since they're in the Bible. The publicity may even boost ticket sales. Throw in the battle where the Bible says Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky (Nevermind that it's the Earth that moves, not the sun; Christians don't care about details, remember.), and we'll call this "The Original Longest Day." We'll remake DeMille, also. "The Ten Commandments" is great, but we'll take a new angle for "The Ten Punishments." Our version will show the fear of Egyptian peasants as their drinking water is poisoned and they and their cattle are tormented by poisoned water, flies, frogs, boils, etc. So what if they're ignorant of what Pharaoh and Moses are doing and powerless to overrule their king; Christians don't care, they want holy special effects. The murder of the Egyptians' first-born will be the ultimate "snuff film." We'll show the peasants' shock as they learn how brutal the Judeo-Christian god is. Christians will be able to relish what terrible things happen to people born into the wrong religion, who never heard of the all-powerful Christian god. Another juicy Bible story is about Lot. When he offers his virgin daughters to the mob of rapists, as righteously told in Gen. 19:8, the audience will be on the edge of its seats. And when the daughters later seduce Lot, as recounted in detail in Gen. 19:31-36, it'll be a really hot `R'. We can make an NR version for good video sales. But we'll have to be careful how we handle it. Child abuse is not popular today, and an audience corrupted by modern values will expect us to condemn Lot. But if we're going to stick with the Bible, we can't do that. The Rewrite crew will have to work overtime to keep "Big Bad Papa" literal yet acceptable to modern society. It'll be easier to film the killing of the pagan philosopher Hypatia in Alexandria, Egypt, in A.D. 415, which offers the perfect mix of `s and v.' The story goes that she was a beautiful, intelligent philosopher and mathematician, and dedicated to her virginity. She offended the devout bishop of Alexandria, Cyril (now Saint Cyril), who had his monks strip her naked in the street, drag her into his church and cut her slowly to pieces with shards of broken crockery. Her body parts were then displayed around the city before being burned. "Body Heat II" will end with Cyril blessing the killers as he protects them from prosecution. Rewrite just can't make this tale of murder better than history. Kathleen Turner would make an interesting Hypatia; and William Hurt might be a suitably vicious Saint Cyril. Costume epics won't have to carry the whole weight. People have always enjoyed a good fright, even Christians. Look how disturbed they get when the 95 percent of the population that is religious hears that 5 percent is nonreligious. Christians scare themselves silly expecting to be doomed by this small minority they don't control. So we need some horror films. For a start, Holywood could call upon Clive Barker for scripts about the Christian witchhunters who burned hundreds of thousands of innocent women at the stake. Vincent Price and Christopher Lee would make great heroes in this series: "Hellburner I, II, III, etc." For the `s', we'll show the witchhunters closely examining the naked, bound bodies of their prisoners, using their sexual organs as pincushions - as required by Christian doctrine - to find signs of the Devil. Any mole would do for proof. We can mix horror and science fiction in "The Hex-Terminator." A scientist (We'll call him Arnie.) invents a time machine and, while traveling to different periods, discovers that one of his ancestors in the Dark Ages (We'll call her Lynn.) is to be burned as a witch - before she has children. Although Lynn is young, beautiful and looks innocent, an Irish priest (We'll call him Joe of McCarthy.) had recognized her evil. Lynn denies she's a witch, but learned men know better and apply traditional Christian interrogation techniques to her for several days by tearing her joints on the rack, breaking her bones and burning her all over with heated irons. Lynn at last admits she rode through the sky with the Devil on the backs of demon goats, horses and crabs. Further, she gives Joe the names of 205 Satanists in local government (So Joe can come back in H-T2, H-T3, etc.). Thus she is condemned. But Arnie, donning various disguises, pursues relentlessly, killing all of Joe's escort en route to the execution site. In an epic final struggle, Joe manages to hold Arnie off long enough to set fire to the wood about Lynn. As she dies, shrieking in pretended pain (Good Christians will know she's faking; she's really afraid because she's about to meet the Devil.), Arnie also fades out - along with several hundred thousand of his Christian relations - as his and their ancestors by Lynn also disappear, having never been born. For high-quality horror, we'll do the story of Torquemada; it's very high-concept: a psychopathic killer as the highest Christian government investigator of 15th Century Spain. We'll definitely have to try for Anthony Hopkins as the lead, with Jodie Foster as his chief prisoner. Imagine the conversations they can have as he tries to break her to his will and she resists. She won't go to the stake like the tens of thousands of other Inquisition prisoners, of course. For the good of her soul, Torquemada tortures her to death, then eats her flesh and drinks her blood in a final sacrament. It'll be an excellent use of symbolism from Christianity's own ritual cannibalism. Critics will love it. We need a catchy title: "The Silence of the Stake," perhaps, or "A Christian and a Torturer," or maybe "Psycho Too." I don't see the story of Giordano Bruno as very high-concept. I mean, freethinker burned at the stake at the Pope's orders for refusing to give up his convictions? Not enough action. But if Umberto Eco novelizes it, we could do the adaptation. Sean Connery is definitely the lead for "Bonfire of the Sanities." Of course, we'll have to change history so that Bruno comes to his senses, recants and is saved from the fire. Even Christians wouldn't accept 007 screaming in raw agony as his flesh sizzles and roasts and his blood boils while His Holiness and Vatican bystanders gloat at Bruno's fear and pain. That's another one for Rewrite. Very high concept is the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. I mean, what a film noir: Catholic Christians all over France plot a simultaneous massacre of Huguenots, and no one gives away the plot before the killing starts! We can borrow Coppola's technique from the christening scene in "The Godfather" by showing Huguenots mingling peacefully with Catholics on one day, interspersed with shots of the slaughter of the next morning. Totally excellent irony. As the massacre arose out of basic religious impulses, we'll call it "Christian Instinct." We definitely need Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone as Henry of Bourbon and Margaret of Valois. They'll be a good draw, aside from all the `s and v'. "Invasion of the Pagan Snatchers" will be a horror film with a twist: It's other people who are scared of Christians, which will give our viewers the sadistic thrill of being the creators of fear, rather than the victims. The plot: In the 6th Century Byzantine Empire, pagans still indulge freely in wide-ranging philosophical discussion under their 1,000-year-old doctrine of freedom of speech (the "license of the philosophers" as they quaintly put it). So we'll show polytheists, monotheists, atheists, atomists, Platonists, neo-Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans and all the other intellectuals of the Ancient World debating important issues. Then, in his 529 laws, the Christian Emperor Justinian abolishes freedom of speech. Soon, one-by-one, the pagan philosophers begin to disappear, and in their place are people who can say nothing but: "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Our antihero (He's a pagan.) searches for his friends and soon finds them being burned, crucified, hanged or torn to pieces by wild animals by the Christian government. Nearby, in a Christian school, he sees thousands of innocent children being brainwashed into the new beliefs and song, without the freedom to debate contrary ideas. Our audience will rejoice in the happy ending as our antihero is caught and tortured to death, symbolically destroying freedom while the Dark Ages begin. "Pagan Snatchers" might be a little too intellectual for many horror fans. As a bloody quasi-sequel, we could do the story of Justinian's successor, Tiberius, who, according to the chronicler John of Ephesus, sent an army to the Bekaa Valley to torture, crucify and slaughter non-Christians in the late 6th Century. In "Night of the Christian Dead," we'll change the army from Christian warriors to Christ-possessed zombies, which will make them even more merciless and conscienceless than they were historically. If it's popular, we could try a prequel, "Dawn of the Christian Dead," about the first Christian massacres of pagans in the 4th Century, at the orders of Christian Roman emperors. In fact, we could do annual sequels for centuries, using the many massacres committed by Christian zombies, all the way down to the 20th Century killings in Ireland, Lebanon, Nazi Germany and the former Yugoslavia. Great `v'! (We'll have to completely copyright the idea to prevent foreign versions: "Night of the Muslim Dead," "Night of the Hindu Dead," etc., about the many slaughters committed by other religions. We don't want anyone else imitating Christian cinema; that would be blasphemous!) Holywood, of course, will need to be sensitive to minorities, but within a Christian context. Here's what I see: First, we can explore the effect of Christianity on American Indians. In "Native Apocalypse," a Spanish priest in 16th Century Yucatan is ordered to destroy the Mayan Indian libraries. He pursues the books into the deepest jungles. Since the Bible makes clear that God pardons all actions done for His greater glory, our priest will use various techniques: Torturing a Mayan priest (played by Brando, perhaps?) to reveal the hiding place of a library; seducing a Mayan princess to lure a librarian into custody (giving us our `s and v.'). The final scene, when all the Mayan books are brought together in one great pyre for burning, will give us a great line: "It was necessary to destroy the whole culture in order to save its soul." We might set the bonfire to "The End," for a rock video to attract young Christian viewers. They'll love the sight of books burning in the morning. And our priest will become a bishop for his success. We can go to TV for a miniseries to redo "Roots." "Uprooted" will show brave Christians entering the jungles of Africa to rescue pagans from damnation. Our heroes will carry the Africans to the New World, where they'll be lovingly taught the Protestant work ethic on plantations while being instructed in our Lord's higher ideals by Christian owners. Maybe Ed Asner can be persuaded to play a slaveship captain again, this time anguishing over the many deaths in his chained-up cargo, since their souls weren't saved first. Also for TV, there's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Holy," a series on great spiritual leaders who led interesting lives. The uplifting stories of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, who raised themselves from nothing to the heights of wealth, until brought down by deceitful women (and we know what the Bible says about them), will nourish the flocks. Other wealthy faithful, such as Peter Popoff, Robert Tilton, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts and Jerry Falwell, have enriching tales. We could even recreate Rev. Falwell's religiously inspired 1950s sermons when he explains to the unenlightened how the Bible requires racial segregation. Let's not forget Aimee Semple McPherson, who brought many to the Lord until, through Satan's wiles, she was caught in an embarrassing situation with a man other than her husband. For a spinoff, we could go back into history for "Lifestyles of the Rich and Papal," about those popes who had mistresses and children and led the faithful in sex orgies. We'll have guest stars, maybe even try musicals. Streisand might play the pope who was rumored to be a woman, adapting songs from "Yentl." And we don't always need to keep it serious. How about Monty Hall doing the story of the three popes of 1409? It can end with a game: Is the infallible pope in City Number One, Number Two or Number Three? Only their Lord knows for sure. For the more nervous among us, we can show the end of the world, as the Apostle Paul and various millennialists, Millerites, Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. have predicted. It'll be a smash as Leonard Nimoy goes "In Search Of the Rapture", with a weekly show about each time a group has foreseen the Last Day. Since Christians have been proclaiming the end every year - sometimes several times a year - since the first century A.D. we'll have an endless supply of shows. It'll be the ultimate in reality programming. We have to feed the critics occasionally to keep those Oscars coming in. It's often good box office, too. So we'll get Akira Kurosawa to remake "Rashomon," but about the Death and Resurrection of Jesus! In "Sonofman," he'll do each Gospel's version literally, so we'll see four separate versions of Easter - the most significant moment in Christian history, carefully recorded by witnesses. I'm sure Kurosawa can find insight in comparing Matt: 28 (two women see an angel roll back the tomb's stone, its guards faint, and the angel tells them Jesus is risen and in Galilee, where the disciples later meet him); Mark 16 (where three women find the tomb already open - no guards - and enter, find an angel sitting inside, etc.); Luke 24 (many women enter the empty tomb - no guards - then two angels appear, etc., disciples first meet Jesus in Judea); and John 20 (One woman finds empty tomb - no guards - summons two disciples, they inspect tomb, disciples leave, two angels appear to woman, then Jesus appears also.) He'll add in Paul's earlier version from 1 Cor. 15:5-8 (No details of the Resurrection, but Paul lists more sightings of the risen Jesus than any of the later Gospels). And finally, a Christian visionary - she'll see Jesus on the side of a rusty water tower - will talk to the Man Himself for His version of the Big Event. (Like, where exactly is Hell? Another dimension? How exactly does an immortal entity `die' and be `resurrected'?) Special effects will make Him 900 feet tall. We'll also get to ask Him the big question, which will go into our main Christian epic. This one's for the Oscars, all of them. We'll go back through history - possibly using televangelists as guides (sort of "Pat and Jerry's Excellent Adventure") - to find out why Jesus allowed all those crusades, inquisitions, pogroms and witchhunts. It's like this: He's the Prince of Peace, and if he can do things such as help the Emperor Constantine win a war by slaughtering thousands of pagan Romans (Look, I don't make up these contradictions, they're in the history books; we'll get Rewrite to change it - Constantine converts his enemies and doesn't kill them after all!), then Jesus could certainly have stopped all the killings and repression by Christians. His silence is puzzling to the peace-loving. Holywood will send our questing souls through time to ask the big question: Why did Christians murder millions until the late 18th Century Age of Reason, when skeptics of Christianity like Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, Washington, Paine, etc. made them stop? We can show Jefferson in 1800 confronting preachers who call him an atheist; Paine writing his anti-religion tract; Madison and Washington leading the 1787 Convention to keep religion out of the Constitution; Virginians putting freedom of religion into law; Americans restoring the freedom of speech that Justinian banned; Adams discussing his freethought principles; etc. You get the idea. Critics will love its sharp moral contrasts; something that's not just for a mass audience. This is the big one, and it'll need a lot of backing to do the greatest story never told. But I can already see Hopkins as one star taking an Oscar home again for "The Silence of The Lamb." I'm ready to do lunch with Christian
filmmakers in Holywood. We can easily keep these projects in budget
since I don't expect a lot of points for my script ideas. After
all, it's not like I had to make them up; all I had to do was check
out the history books.
|
|
Home |
|
Contact
Info: Website
comments: |
