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April 4, 2006
Prayer Worthless! -- 4
Yes, we want to carry on about how ridiculous it was to waste time proving the blindingly obvious: that a stranger's prayer can't improve your health. But maybe we're forgetting the time and place in which we live. Watching the Final Four (Okay, so I did prove susceptible to March Madness after all), I've seen ads for a TV show (CSI) about a psychic and a movie (didn't catch the name) about demons.
Posted by Mitchell Stephens at April 4, 2006 12:29 AM
Comments
But those are obviously fictional shows. CSI, while presenting a screwed up view of crime scene investigation, isn't viewed by most as an factual show involving real life situations (at least not by anyone I know). And hollywood, with it's demons, well, thats just to be expected. Anything that can go bump in the night is made into a horror or action movie. While there are those who disagree, TV, movies, and video games are, in my opinion, quite obviously seperate from reality to a good 95% of the civilized world.
What is taught in schools and in churches are another story altogether.
Posted by: Dan S. at April 4, 2006 2:10 AM
Yeah, but why? Why this wave of demon movies and plot lines treating psychics seriously? Is it just a harmless way of compensating for the waning of supernaturals in our real lives? Or is it -- treating seriously what Perry Mason and NYPD Blue (I think) never treated seriously -- connected to a religious resurgence?
Posted by: mitch at April 4, 2006 9:47 AM
There have been indeed a good number of movies recently with overt christian themes - like four movie about exorcisms, Constantine, The Matrix (apparently its a christian allegory), Chronicles of Narnia, Mel Gibson's BS, just to name a few that come to mind, although there are surely more. On the history channel in the past year or so I've been seeing non-stop hagiographies, bible story explorations, and other nonsense. I also think that 40 Year-old Virgin is conservative christian abstinence propaganda.
I definetly think it's connected to the religious revival. It just makes the nebulous concepts of god, good, evil, angels, demons, hell, etc, more palpable for the lunatics, and more sexy as well.
Posted by: Andrey at April 4, 2006 11:18 AM
The Matrix as a Christian allegory? Does that come directly from the Wachowskis?
And while the Chronicles of Narnia may have been intended as a Christian allegory, I have to agree with some others who have said that it isn't a very successful one. As a child, I loved these books and was utterly unaware of (and seemingly not influenced by) any resemblance to Christian myth. What the books nurtured in me was a love of the fantastic, an appreciation for classical (particularly Greek) myth, and a habit of reading.
Posted by: Dayv at April 5, 2006 1:23 PM
