Atheism in media watch – Paul
I’m always interested to see how atheists are depicted in mainstream media. In my opinion, most atheists are depicted as “broken” in some way. Their disbelief is used as a plot element to highlight their alienation from “normal” people.
When this is done, it pisses me off. I’ve taken to chronicling my perceptions of how atheists are depicted in media.
Paul, the latest comedy by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost represents one of the first times I’m chronicling an atheist in media because it makes me happy.
Pegg and Frost are are both atheists so for once, the fact characters in the film are atheists is not something that makes them different or awkward.
I’m not going to spoil the film (even though it is a year old) by explaining funny situations in a way that is not at all funny.
Instead, I’m going to say that the nice thing about the character of Paul is that he is unapologetically evolutionist and atheistic because he’s seen enough to know. As a bonus we get a character who transitions from a fundamentalist Christian in a positive way.
The difference in the way this film depicts an atheist is, I think, in the fact that atheism is just part of who Paul is. It doesn’t define him or make him so terribly different from anyone else. It happens so rarely in media, I think it is worth pointing out.
Shit That Pissed me off This Week – 3/9
Brittany Spears’ Criminal
Three times in a row my weekly tirade has started with a song that made me angry. I’m sorry about that. They keep playing this crap at work and I can’t escape.
The thing that annoys me about this song is the musical hook. It is horrible and they won’t stop playing it. It feels like the entire song is that one banal progression of notes.
Those notes are, oddly, the exact opposite of an earworm to me. Instead of being a tune I can’t get out of my head, it is a tune I instantly forget until it gets played again and I remember how much I hate it.
It’s like having short term memory loss. I forget about the song until it gets played again so every time I heard it, I get to say “what the hell is this horrible song? Oh, it’s that one.” That might not be so bad except for the fact the annoyance doesn’t subside with repeated exposure to the song. Completely unfair.
Alphabetical Movie – His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday is about the newspaper business in the same way that Casablanca is about running a nightclub. The characters in the film work for a newspaper but what they really do is engage in entertainingly witty banter while, theoretically, doing their job.
Coming from a background in theatre (and by “background in theatre” I mean “I have a degree in theatre that I haven’t used in twenty years”), I find that I often look at films and jump to the conclusion that they are based on a play and when I jump to that conclusion, I’m usually right.
Riddle me this
So Rick Santorum is a devout Catholic.
And Rick Santorum is also an outspoken creationist who believes that teaching kids evolution is actually a plot to turn kids into atheists.
The Catholic Church believes there is no conflict between evolution and the Catholic Faith although they do support the view that human evolution was “guided” by god. They accept scientific findings as to the age of the earth and fossil records.
Devout Catholics are supposed to follow the teachings of Rome.
All of this leads me to the question: is Santorum all that devout or is he really just an opportunistic jackass?
Alphabetical Movie – Highlander
I watched Highlander a lot last year in preparation to write “Highlander: The Musical.” The show was a part of the 2011 Minnesota Fringe Festival and did pretty well. We didn’t win any major awards but most of the people who watched it said they thought it was funny so – you know – go us.
Here’s the thing – and I know that I’m a bad geek when I say this – Highlander is not a very good movie.
What saying “Atheism is a Religion” is really about
I get pretty riled up every time someone says to me “atheism is just another form of religion.”
It is such a common statement that you can find dozens of pages arguing both for and against the claim. I, of course, think the statement is ridiculous but the thing is, the argument isn’t important. It simply obscures the real question – which is the evidence for why I believe what I believe.
Alphabetical Movie – High Noon
High Noon is known to be an allegory for the HUAC by Senator McCarthy. Gary Cooper searches a town for someone who will help him defeat a gang of men looking to kill him and finds that at the end of the day, he must face them on his own. It is a bleak film about a bleak time. Cooper looks old, tired and utterly alone.
Watching clips of the McCarthy hearings, the film looks like a pretty well constructed allegory.
Shit that pissed me off this week – 3/2
Forgive the absence of my weekly bitch session – I’ve been on vacation for the last two weeks. Some of this stuff is a little old but I wanted to bitch about it anyway.
Alphabetical Movie – High Fidelity
I don’t read a lot of fiction. When someone asks me if I’ve read “The Hunger Games,” I respond with some variation of “I really want to” and then comment that my son read it and loved it. In fact, I have several friends who are published writers and to date, I’ve read none of their books.
I’m a pathetic excuse for a friend. I know that.
I actually enjoy fiction but the problem is, I also enjoy sleep. When I start reading a good book, I want to finish it. Immediately. If that means I have to stay up until 3:00 A.M. to finish it, that is what I will do.
I have the same problem with seasons of “Dexter.”
If I’m going to read fiction, I need to be sure that the sleep deprivation is worth it.
It is notable, then, that when I watched High Fidelity the first time, I really wanted to read the book. I enjoyed the film a lot but I knew there had to be more to the story in the book and, to the film’s credit, I wanted to know the rest of the story.
Reading the book may have been a mistake because while I still like the film, the book is one of the funniest I’ve ever read.
“High Fidelity” is one of the few books I’ve read that made me genuinely laugh out loud. I read humor books all the time and they certainly make me smile. This book made me laugh. In the middle of the night. When my wife was trying to sleep.
When thinking about it, getting someone to laugh out loud while reading to themselves is extremely hard. Reading is a private experience so we are programmed to keep it private. We don’t shout out in triumph when a character wins an important victory and if someone writes a good joke, we typically don’t bust out laughing.
So even though I’ve only read the book once, I remember “High Fidelity” because it made me react in a way most books don’t. When I re-watched the movie, I was thinking “I really should re-read this book.”
I’ve been encouraging my wife to read the book because she didn’t like the movie. She believes (rightly) that the main character is a man-child who is, for a large part of the film, pretty unlikable. I agree with her but like the character’s journey from man-child to (sort of) man.
After I watched the movie this time, she said she should really give the movie another try because I enjoy it and maybe she would like it better if she watched it again. She may be right.
Still, given the book has left a more lasting impression on me than the film, I feel she’d have a better experience with the story if she reads the book first.
Books and movies are different mediums. I don’t believe one is inherently superior to another although I imagine I’d get a lot of argument on that point of view. I believe there are times when the source material is better than the film and times when the film manages to surpass the source material. Frequently, I will argue that they are both good, but in vastly different ways.
In the case of High Fidelity, I can say that I recommend the movie. If you really want a good laugh, though, read the book.
Alphabetical Movie – High and Low
Having just finished with Hidden Fortress, the alphabetical movie gods favored me with a second Kurosawa film. Rather than a samurai epic, High and Low was set in modern Japan so it served as a nice contrast to the period pieces most people associate with Kurosawa.
Most of his modern films were dripping with social commentary and High and Low is no exception. In fact, the more accurate translation of the film title would be “Heaven and Hell” and given the film looks at the sharp division between the wealthy and the poor in post war Japan, that title is actually more evocative of the film’s tone.
Grail Diary 
