Some Thoughts on 'Religulous'


Bill Maher is that rare thing: a media figure unafraid to say what he really thinks. When he intervened in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, suggesting that it’s better to deal intelligently with terrorism than to indulge in absurdist name-calling, many people, including me, supported him. We were dismayed by the cancellation of ‘Politically Incorrect’ – which had provided one of the few opportunities for serious sustained political discussion on television. In recent years he returned to the small screen with ‘Real Time’ on HBO, and the lack of censorship on cable channels has allowed him the run of himself, which is a blessing, because there’s no unreasonable restriction on what can be said. Maher’s concern for calling politicians to account, and allowing oxygen to maverick points of view is a public service; the fact that he does it with such brilliant humor makes the show uniquely entertaining. His new film ‘Religulous’ is a paradox, however – it is both an amusing deflation of religious pomposity, and an infuriating attack on faith that sadly lacks intellectual rigor.

We follow Maher on a sporadic trip around the US, the Middle East, and the UK, visiting sincere spiritual advocates ranging from the working class members of a truck-stop church in North Carolina, a violence-endorsing Muslim rapper in London, and the actor who plays Jesus at a Holy Land theme park. He asks academic theology questions and mocks the respondents for offering only platitudes; these scenes are intercut with footage of him making more fun of the unsuspecting target in a post-interview wrap-up chuckle with his director Larry Charles. The effect is rather like watching the string section of an orchestra standing in a circle and pointing with disdain at a homeless guy playing a three-stringed fiddle. It’s not pleasant; and it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know: that there are some crazy people in the world. By the same token, of course, there are plenty of intelligent spiritual believers; just as there are plenty of unpleasant atheists. Maher’s film unfortunately does not engage with people whose faith has advanced obvious good in the world, nor those who approach God on the basis that God is at least as smart as we are and that we can talk about the Divine in terms that would not shame an evolutionary biologist.

Maher himself appears to be an intelligent guy – but his film risks being intellectually dishonest. If he is, as is claimed, genuinely interested in finding out why people believe what they believe, then why didn’t he interview any of the hundreds of well known spiritual leaders who bring intelligence, wit, and grace to their conversation; nor any whose faith has propelled them into acts of mercy and kindness? It’s not as if they’re hard to find: Let’s start with Archbishop Tutu, Dr Rowan Williams, and other Christian leaders in international peace processes to name only the most obvious; add to these the invisibility of perhaps more culturally relevant figures such as Andrew Sullivan, Anne Lamott, even Maher’s own friend Arianna Huffington, or any number of the folk who blog about progressive faith, and the failings of ‘Religulous’ become even more obvious. The fact that he ignores these people, combines with the overheated monologue that closes the film, with Maher’s polemic about religion edited against footage of bombs, angry preachers, and end-of-the-world scenarios (including some from my own home of Belfast, in which an IRA funeral is misappropriated to illustrate his point; while the conflict in and about Northern Ireland has some historic religious elements, IRA members would certainly disavow any suggestion that their fight was faith-based). It feels like Maher wrote this monologue before he went out on his journey; in which case the documentary is not an intelligent exploration of a vital issue, but a polemic based on cynical preconceptions.

Bill Maher has important questions to ask: why do some religious people do such bad things?; what is the relationship between faith and reason?; what should be the role of spirituality in politics?; is religion inherently dangerous? The problem with ‘Religulous’ is that he doesn’t ask these questions of people who can answer intelligently, nor does he allow for the possibility that one does not have to be an expert in something to be a fan.

I’d add a few questions of my own: why do the levels of theological literacy in public articulations of Christianity seem so pathetically low?; why do so many religious believers seem unable to articulate why they believe what they believe?; And how is it possible for a film that deals in part ostensibly with the role of Christianity in public life in the US not to even mention the greatest public advocate of a role for faith in the history of this country, Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr?

However…I have to pause here, for as I re-read this article before submitting it for publication I realize that I may have fallen into an ancient trap, and in the process perhaps have simply reinforced Maher’s legitimate concerns. ‘First take the plank out of your own eye before figuring out what to do with the speck in someone else’s’ were the paraphrased words of another well known mystic, who doesn’t get as much attention in ‘Religulous’ as one might expect. There may well be a pretty big plank in my eye – for the truth is that one of the reasons Maher may feel emboldened to make his angry case is that people of faith have so often failed to make theirs. To make ours. To articulate a spirituality that is earthed in an appreciation of beauty, love of neighbor, and a humble, wide-eyed (but not empty-headed) wonder at the notion that Someone far greater than any of us may just be more present than we realize. If Christians can be made so easily to look boring, it is partly because we have not articulated a better story. If Christians are held in low regard because we are seen to be primarily concerned with issues of private morality and Puritanical codes, it is partly because we have not paid enough attention to reason and human experience as guides to interpreting our faith. If, in short, it is easy to portray Christians as stupid, spineless and dangerous, it is partly because we have failed to be loving, peaceable and brave.

A Call + Response to end Modern Slavery


Last week two films were released that present propagandized visions of the United States. Bill Maher’s Religulous suggests that religion is poison and its adherents are crazy; the spoof An American Carol wants to say that questioning President Bush is itself an act of treason and critiques of the war in Iraq deserve no attention because they are inherently spineless. Both films are intellectually disingenuous and add little positivity to the current national debate. So it’s something of a relief to say that another piece of cinematic propaganda goes on a national tour of movie theatres this weekend, one whose moral compass is something of an antidote to the arrogance and victim mentality of An American Carol and Religulous in the form of a shocking expose of the horror of modern slavery: human trafficking. In Justin Dillon’s film Call and Response, the stories of the 27 million people currently in labor bondage are illustrated with graphic hidden camera footage and intercut with interviews and musical performances by the likes of Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, and Emmanuel Jal.

It’s a powerful film, in which interactions with the victims of trafficking speak for themselves. Talking heads such as Nicholas Kristof, former U.N. Ambassador John Miller, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and actor Ashley Judd make the case that there are more people in slavery today than at the time of the abolition movement and outline the relationship between the arms and drug trade and the buying and selling of people. Human trafficking, bonding labor, and sexual slavery are vastly profitable businesses, and so the question of supply and demand is obvious. And you don’t need to look far for this horror, for even people who serve in your favorite restaurants may be subject to the oppression of not being able to make their own choices.

Everyone who sees this film will have their own most striking moment –- for me, when a former child prostitute says she was forced to service 1,000 men a year for six years, but can’t add up the total as she has never been to school, I had to pause watching for a while to absorb the extraordinary sadness of that statement. I was also shocked by the statistics. For example, the film claims that 1 million people are trafficked through the United States every year, but there have been only 50 related criminal convictions in the past decade.

These stories are so beyond our worst imaginings that this film provides nothing less than a prophetic community service: It exposes an unpalatable truth and cries out against injustice.

Important questions are alluded to, and hopefully the film will inspire people to find their own answers:

What are the economic roots of violence?

What is the relationship between recreational drug use and human trafficking?

What does it mean when we value products that may have been produced under oppressive conditions solely on the basis of their price?

How do we restore human decency in a world where even the Christian church is sometimes complicit in nurturing identities of shame and humiliation (which themselves contribute to the context where human trafficking can occur)?

How can the mid-level officials (police officers, hotel and restaurant managers, and others) who serve as intermediaries with those who use sex slaves be held accountable?

And, as Dr. Cornel West asks, “How do you convince a folk that are prone toward paralysis to keep on moving?”

The film does not prescribe particular forms of action, instead inviting the audience to ‘open source’ activism through dialoguing with others on its Web site and supporting organizations that are working to free slaves and end human trafficking. Perhaps the most important philosophical statement in the film is the suggestion that nostalgia for freedom movements of the past will get us nowhere. Only when people of passion and action get more committed to ending modern slavery than the slave owners are to perpetuating it will there be hope that a new abolition movement can succeed.

Dr. West also says that the only thing that slaves have is their voice and their bodies. Call and Response is a powerful attempt at representing the power and dignity in the words and faces of the oppressed. It deserves attention.

Call and Response will be released this Friday, with screenings organized across the U.S. For a list of screenings, see www.callandresponse.com.

Duck

I knew a guy at high school called Paul, but for some reason everybody called him ‘Duck’. It was one of those nicknames whose genesis was lost in the mists of whatever else it is you spend your teenage years doing. I remember going to see ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ (an extremely well-crafted but morally hollow film, to my mind) in 1989 at East Belfast’s Strand Cinema, which Van Morrison is photographed beside for the inlay cover art of ‘The Healing Game’ album, and where I saw more of the formative films of my 15th/16th/and 17th years than anywhere else. Duck came into the theatre just as the audience was almost fully seated, and so we called out to him: ‘DUCK!’ A few dozen people did.

That serves merely as a circuitous way into talking a little about a film I saw last night, called ‘Duck’, and for good reason. It’s about a man and a duck. The man is a widower, and earlier lost his son. The movie’s version of the US is a soulless place in which every tree is being colonised by shopping malls, and where psychiatrists mistake innocence for mental illness. The man, played by Philip Baker Hall, an actor who can genuinely be called ‘great’, not least because I usually feel exhilarated any time I see him, wanders around accompanied by the eponymous creature, a gorgeous goose, looking for the ocean. The movie doesn’t really hold together - it’s a fable whose critique of the breakdown of community is not exactly subtle or nuanced; but it’s absolutely worth watching for the central performance. Hall is so beguiling and sympathetic that he manages to invest the duck itself with a personality. It is easy to buy into their relationship, and not for a second - until after the film was over - did I think about the central absurdity and slightness of this film.

Lakeview Terrace


The Number One film at the US box office this past weekend is 'Lakeview Terrace', Neil La Bute's somewhat thoughtful thriller in which an LAPD officer harasses his new neighbors; the cop is black, the neighbors are an inter-racial couple. If the ethnic identities were switched, the film might never have been made; and if it had, would have been a far less interesting film – it would have been a simplistic story about a white supremacist and the battle for people to be allowed to live in peace. Instead, 'Lakeview Terrace' aims to wrong-foot the audience into re-considering our preconceptions, and succeeds most of the time.

I planned to write a post here about the film, and how it's well photographed and mounted with imagination, and how Patrick Wilson is turning into my favourite same-generation-as-me actor, and how Samuel L Jackson reminds us of how he really can bring it when he's working for more than just a paycheck, and the exploration of racial tension, the psychological terrain of the police officer, the power dynamics in marriages when one set of in-laws is wealthy, and the simple concept of how an obsession with private property may be at the core of the breakdown of community (good fences in this film not only fail to make good neighbors, but become a tool for concealing the sinister agenda of the bloke next door).

I was going to write about how Neil La Bute's films (see 'In the Company of Men', 'Your Friends and Neighbors' and even the misbegotten remake of 'The Wicker Man') create a beguiling mood that is rare in contemporary mainstream cinema, and that he is at least trying to say something meaningful, even if the possible benefit of his purpose has to battle to float above the apparently a priori cynicism that is his modus operandi (two Latin phrases in one sentence might be the kind of thing that would impress a character in one of his movies). I was going to write about how, for the first hour or so, I felt close to compelled by 'Lakeview Terrace', and thought it had the potential to be one of the best films I've seen this year; before it turned into less than the sum of its parts, becoming ultimately a conventional thriller.

I was going to write about all of this, when I stumbled across a news item suggesting that Val Kilmer is considering running for Governor of New Mexico in 2010. And it made me wonder if there were a connection between the La Bute film (which wants to be taken seriously as a work of political fiction) and the small but significant tendency of Hollywood actors to think they are qualified to run states because they once wore a superhero cape. That thought didn't stick around long enough for me to be too preoccupied – and so I returned to reflecting on 'Lakeview Terrace'. I'm not quite sure what to make of it other than to say it's a well-made film, feels realistic (for part of its running time), but eventually trades its pretensions to being a serious intelligent work in exchange for the cheap thrill of an utterly conventional ending. In the clichéd climax, the film-makers may be critiquing the trigger-happy culture of the LAPD, or they may simply be giving the audience the ending they think they want. It's not clear. And in a sense it doesn't really matter, because the film is raising important questions that will only ever be answered by us out there in the dark. What does it mean to be a good neighbor? What lies at the core of prejudice? How important is home ownership to contemporary identity? How is it possible to de-escalate conflict when one of the parties seems simply irrational? (I might also add the following question: Why is the MPAA giving PG-13 ratings to more and more adult films these days?)