Religulous? I don't know, all I know is Bill Maher is a pretentious ass.

I wanted to mention this in my previous post, but I felt like this topic needed its own post. Sara and I rented Bill Maher's new film "Religulous" while I was up visiting her. This film caused quite a stir in Utah, I don't know how much of a stir it caused elsewhere. It must be noted however, that anything involving a controversy surrounding the LDS church, whether it be the church's alleged covert support of Proposition 8 or the filming of "Religulous" in Salt Lake City, is ridiculously magnified and in some cases, sensationalized here in the local news media. I doubt other news agencies still are following Prop 8 or any other church related news as regularly as Utah's media does. Then again this could just be the media catering to its viewership, either way I feel that assuming everyone in Utah is Mormon, or cares about when the Prophet eats dinner, is rather ridiculous. Anyway, back to my previous thought.

As I mentioned Sara and I watched "Religulous," a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know "Religulous" is a film by Bill Maher, a comedian mostly known for the HBO late night talk show "Politically Incorrect," where a panel discussion of whatever celebrity flavors of the week led by Maher discuss the political events of the past week. "Politically Incorrect," I feel, is a rather pretentious show where the celebrities and Maher try to show Americans how smart, witty, and how much better they are than pretty much everyone else. "Religulous" in a nut-shell focuses on Maher traveling around America and the world questioning religion, and the existence of God. As of late this has really been Maher's bread and butter, ever since his favorite whipping boy, George W. Bush entered the oval office eight years ago.

The film is pretty straight forward, Maher questions the three largest religions of the world, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Maher focuses most of his film on Christianity, thus not providing an equal amount of criticism to the other two religions. For me this leaves his film suspect. If Mr. Maher focuses most of his time on Christianity, why not just question the validity of Christian religions? This also leads to another question: Due to recent events in the uslim world, at the time of this movie's production, involving the depiction of the prophet Mohammed was Maher too afraid to ask the hard questions about Islam? This last question brings Maher's credibility as a journalist into question, I believe, because he is self censoring himself. If this is the case, he is not performing his duty as a journalist, which is to ask hard questions and follow the answers to wherever they lead, no matter what the consequences are. As for Maher questioning Judaism, there really isn't much to report, Maher talks to some Jews for Jesus and goes to Israel, but while in Israel his focus seems to be more on the historical antagonism between Jews and Muslims. I think he mentions some doctrinal beliefs concerning Judaism, mostly focusing on the Jews denial of Jesus being the messiah. This talk of Judaism's doctrinal beliefs transitions nicely into his Jews for Jesus chat. But being as there really was no memorable mention of Judaism in "Religulous" I will not go any further. The main point here is just that "Religulous" is skewed mainly towards Christianity.

Now I don't consider myself very religious, I don't know if I even believe in God, but I do know this: I don't like it when someone thinks they have all the answers and then tries to flaunt it in front of all our faces. On that note though, I must say I do agree with Maher on a few points. Maher mentions that no one should subscribe to a religion just to cover their own ass. I agree with this, subscribing to a certain religion just to make sure you are saved or go to heaven or whatever is just wrong, and defeats the purpose of having faith in God in the first place. I also agree with Maher on the point that the Bible shouldn't be taken so literally. Maher likes to point out the talking snake in the Garden of Eden as on of his major bones of contention with Christianity. He wonders why Christians can be rational with most things, but when it comes to the Bible they believe a snake actually talked to Eve. As with all documents, one must read them critically, even when it comes to reading the Bible. I like to think of the events in stories such as the creation story, and the fall of Adam and Eve as metaphors or allegorical in context, i.e. the snake is used to show how deceitful Satan can be. When it comes to the creation story I think the authors of the book of Genesis used the days of the week to demonstrate that God's time is different from man's time. It may have taken God millions of our years to create the Earth, but to God it was a day. Who knows? That is just what I think. One must think about the audience these books were written for thousands of years ago. This ancient audience was not as educated as we are now. The authors of the Bible had to figure out a way to describe complex ideas in such a way that the common man and woman could understand. Others may disagree with me, but this is what I think.

Another point Maher doesn't specifically mention in his film is the commodification of Christianity. The theme of commodifying Christianity provides more of a backdrop as he visits the "Holy Land" Theme park in Florida. The "Holy Land" is your basic run of the mill theme park just with making a buck off of Jesus added to the mix. Maher doesn't come out and condemn this in words, he uses a more powerful medium, imagery. Maher films a performance in the park focusing on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. People clap when a Roman soldier beats Jesus, I am not making that up, they do actually cheer and clap as this Roman guard decks Jesus in the stomach. They also cry as the actor portraying Jesus is led to his cross and so forth. There is even a moment where people rise to their feet and raise their hands in praise of Christ and God. I don't mean to denigrate these people's experience, but there just seems to be something wrong with going to a theme park and paying to see this type of thing. People should not have to pay to have a spiritual experience. I felt the same way when I worked at the Carmike in Great Falls with the release of " The Passion" in theaters. Our theater sold out for two months of special Sunday showings in a row, all the while Carmike was making a fat profit off of people's spiritual health. This is just wrong, and those who blatantly take advantage of people's spiritual needs like this are quite frankly some of the lowest scum on Earth.

So enough with what I did agree with Maher on, lets move on to the problems with his movie. As I mentioned before, Maher mainly focuses on Christianity, particularly protestant religions and evangelicals. He does bring up the Catholic church and its controversy surrounding priests and little boys. Maher makes all Christians out to look like they are ignorant and just plain stupid. For some reason he also characterizes all Christians as Southern, redneck, good ol' boys. Maybe this is due to the fact that our last President fit this archetype, who knows. He holds this generalization for Christians until he gets to Salt Lake, then all of a sudden everyone is blond and excruciatingly nice. He spends about five minutes focusing on the LDS church. He mainly talks about garments (referring to them as magic underwear), temples, and temple rituals. Maher also talks to two ex-LDS members, who I believe are the exception to the rule in their experiences with leaving the church. These men apparently were disowned by their families for denying some of the basic principles of Mormon doctrine. I don't think this happens to most people brought up in the Mormon faith who later decide not to subscribe to it (me being one of those). To say the least, when it comes to the LDS faith Maher doesn't say much, just provides the usual fare in the way of questions aimed at the validity of the LDS church (i.e. Joseph Smith's vision, temples, baptism for the dead, Garments, Kolob, etc...), and the two former members he interviews are somewhat suspect. This is not to say the experience of those former Mormons are not valid, or not true. I just don't think they are representative of most people who leave the church. I must say though, I don't see where the controversy is with his focus on the LDS church. Maher just brings up questions that almost everyone else brings up about the LDS church. Maybe the media in Utah just got its undies in a twist just for the fact that he questioned the LDS church.

Another problem I had with Maher's film focuses on Maher himself. The way he carries himself in these interviews is just ridiculous and disrespectful. He has this sly grin on his face that seems to say to the cameraman and audience "Are you getting this? I mean look at this guy make an ass of himself! To think, he actually believes in a talking snake! Harumpf, Harumpf, Harumpf." Regardless of what Maher believes he should at least have the courtesy to respect others' views as he interviews them. The sheer pretentiousness Maher portrays on screen is astounding. It's like he just walked into these peoples' homes and (forgive my language here) shit on their carpet and acted like it didn't stink. It is just disrespectful. These people are letting you into their lives and trying to explain themselves with good intentions while Maher just laughs (figuratively) in their faces.

Maher's editing techniques also cause a problem for me with his film. In one interview he talks to a biologist who is a Christian. Maher confronts him on the validity of the bible, his focus being the bible was not written by eye witnesses as events happened, but sometimes decades or even centuries after the events happened. The interviewee tries to explain why he believes the Bible is one of the most true documents ever written, but is systematically cut off and interrupted by Maher. This interview is so chopped and staggered that the interviewee comes off looking like an imbecile, all the while Maher comes out looking like some sort of genius bringing enlightenment to the masses, and making a highly educated man look stupid. I understand that not all material can be used from an interview, and editing is necessary. But to edit a piece so much as to take the interviewee's various responses and arguments to a question out of context so as to make them look stupid is abhorrent. I thought this interview spoke volumes about Maher's intentions. Maher doesn't want to look stupid, and will go to any lengths to achieve this. He cares more about his "celebrity" status than actually providing some sort of insight into the problems with Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Maher would rather just point a finger and yell out "You all are idiots," rather than actually provide his audience with someone's unfiltered opinion regarding their beliefs.

Well I think I have run out of things to say about this film. This film was most likely produced a some sort of sensationalist piece. For the most part this film has no substance, and does not provide and eye opening revalations (at least I didn't think so). Maher tries to point out that religion will end the world with its fanaticism, but really Bill, that's not much of a revalation. We have been hearing that from other sources more skilled in their approaches than you. Instead "Religulous" falls flat, and ends up sounding like a real bad fart joke. I imagine this would appeal to Maher's left wing friends, but it did not appeal to me (and I consider myself left of center). I found it disrespectful on most accounts, but I didn't find it controversial. "Religulous" just recycles the same questions and ideas others have come up with before. And that is the biggest tragedy with this film. A good documentary should not only answer your questions, it should also tell you something you didn't know before, or give leave you with some questions you need to answer yourself. "Religulous" did not do this. Instead this film just goes on an hour and a half tirade about religion, ending with a montage of images insinuating that organized religion will be the death of us all.

I'm sure there are other points I have missed while discussing "Religulous," but I really don't have time to address all of them. All I know is that this film rubbed me the wrong way, and instead of being a discusssion about religion, it ended up being an O'Reillyesque tirade focused on how stupid religious people are. I was not impressed, and you would think for a man who thinks he has a better idea of how to express himself than men like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, Maher would back it up with calm debate. Maher uses some of the same dirty tricks that these other "shining" examples of journalism frequently use when "interviewing" those with opposing view points.

Well that does it for me today. Tune in next time.