Off the back of the success of the series of bestselling books lampooning religion, it will shortly be getting the ‘light satire documentary’ treatment. Perhaps the good natured jokeyness of the format is the best way to irritate people who take religion seriously.
Running time: Part 1 or 2 (41 mins)
One inch Punch is a very popular movie on YouTube with roughly the same viewership as an episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes. Its a full movie that is short enough for people with ADD and gives hope to those who have been bullied by colossal, barbeque munching, Nascar fanatics for having the withered limbs and pallid skin of a computer addict. It suggests that no matter how physically challenged you are, if you join a pseudo religion that looks like it has been created by Dungeons & Dragons characters, for Dungeons & Dragons fans – and work hard, you will be able to kick anyone’s ass.
I have chosen ‘One Inch Punch’ as representative of all martial arts movies which are supposed to be taken seriously and which seem to be another example of FEBL (Fucking Entertaining Big Lie) media. Its a succinct 7 minute piece that highlights perfectly what I have against spiritual fighting and in particular the bollocks that is called Kung Fu.
Yes, these guys are extremely fit, just as pro wrestlers look like Popeye, but that does not make Kung Fu any more real. What it does mean is that the One Inch Punch with a two foot follow through trick, can be performed by a suitably adept stuntman to make it look convincing. Add some commentary using hackneyed metaphors about ‘channeling energy’, by people who look like they can’t take a joke, to the de facto credibility of a tradition started by ancient monks and you have the makings of a proper little religion.
When it comes to religion I take the Hitchens amendment – i.e. what can be claimed without argument can be dismissed without argument. The reason martial arts can be dismissed is that they exhibit all the traits of a religion. They are a crypto-religious cultural artifact, the Eastern equivalent of fair maidens and broad-swords and traditional Western medicine such as blood sucking leeches, only interesting as fantasy or high camp slapstick.
Charlton Heston on the Origin of Man Part 1
Charlton Heston was simultaneously a Civil Rights activist and the head of the NRA. Confused? Well this will either help or perplex you beyond caring. Not something to sit through the whole of, but it does give some insight as to how odd Charlton Heston was.
Some fundamentalists believe that the Earth is a few thousand years old and that rocks and dinosaurs are too. This piece suggests that Charlton (what a great first name) believed that modern humans were millions of years old instead.
When young children do very adult things like dress up in sexually suggestive clothing, for a beauty pageant, say, it brings on a particular sense of revulsion at the negation of childhood innocence because of the selfish desires of adults.
This film about child preachers has the same effect. It demonstrates by direct example what Richard Dawkins explains in prose. The fly on the wall style possibly has greater effect, since it appeals to our senses rather than just our intellect. Both methods show that to call your child an ‘Evangelical Christian’, or whatever, is no less ridiculous that calling a child a neo-Trotskyist, and therefore possibly abusive.
1 hr 2 min 41 sec Feb 25, 2008
Comments Off on Baby Bible Bashers religion
Is Scientology really that much weirder than the Abrahamic religions? Its total membership is less than the number of people actually killed by them, so it is less dangerous by any objective measure. Its existence as an non-accepted cult, is far more short lived. Its world view is much closer to the size and age of the known universe and its threat to science seems to be tragi-comically confined to psychiatrists. But it is much weirder, right?
Wrong.
This was the most amusing preacher video I could find, to illustrate the point. It makes Tom Cruise look like Thomas Paine.
The format of this paranoia is very similar to both the Scientologists war on psychiatry or Evangelicals war on Darwinism. Rather like the fact that there are a small minority of biologists who believe in Intelligent Design, this documentary shows the views of some of a small minority of physicians who have problems with vaccination. There are risks with vaccination as there are with almost any medical procedure, and people who do not believe in it, but that does not mean that vaccination does not work, or that the benefits so vastly outweigh the risks that they are overwhelmingly worth it.
In the United States, the place of Tom Cruise for a war on physicians rather than psychiatrists, is taken by the quack radio host, Gary Null (who is not in this Australian documentary but is a popular anti-vaccination extremist). Null’s method is to setup vaccination as some kind of faceless government conspiracy compared with touchy feely alternative medicine, an argument which he delivers with a pleasant, soft, reassuring voice. This is an easy way to persuade people, because it is not comparing like with like.
Rather like the way that natural child birth surrounded by candles is a preferable environment to a sterile linoleum floored hospital room, but is a more dangerous one, vaccination only works if everyone does it, so vaccination tends to be delivered through the somewhat anti-septic environment of government organized vaccination programs. It is because government programs tend to be more faceless and sterile than private ones that they raise the suspicions of those who are susceptible to paranoia and equate truth with personal desirability.
The solution to damping this paranoia was spectacularly shown when we visited our pediatrician, Michel Cohen, as group of prospective parents, before our son was born. At the end of a question and answer session, one man said that he was wary of governments and therefore wary of vaccination. Dr Cohen’s answer was that although it should be the man’s choice what to ultimately do, vaccination was not so much about the individual as about the community.
By replacing society and government with ‘community’, telling the guy he had a choice and implying that lack of vaccination put the individual before the community, i.e. was selfish, Dr Cohen had pulled a Gary Null. He had expressed something in comforting terms, but this time it happened to be the truth. Brilliant, quite brilliant.
Vaccination Information Service/Taycare Pty Ltd
45 min 20 sec Jan 20, 2008
www.vaccination.inoz.com
BBC 2 58 min 14 sec Nov 25, 2007
This is a another great example of FEBL media. Compulsive viewing: travelogue; mysticism; jazz beards; toothless 300 year old Thai shamen.
A Chip Shop owner from Birmingham, England, who has spent six years living with Kung Fu monks after seeing a Tarantino movie, guides you through the mysteries of the mystical Orient. The title alone, ‘Kick Ass Miracles’ is worthy of an entire social anthropology conference.
Suggested conference panel topics:
1. Kick Arse or Kick Ass, the use of contemporary American slang in British youth TV.
2. Exorcising Noddy Holder. How presenters hide Birmingham accents when presenting British youth TV while pretending to be hip to American jive and concealing salary handicapping regional dialects by reverting to mockney (fake Cockney).
3. An ornithology of miniature Jazz Beards, Soul Patches and facial hair amongst presenters of British youth TV.
4. The clash of civilizations. 2000 year old dangerously poisonous herbal remedies and skateboard culture as exemplified by British youth TV.
5. Where Ali G gets his material.
“So ere we ah in Souf Eeeeest Aishah, wheh we gunna check aht some KNARLY two fowsand yeea owd ‘erbuw remedy. Innit.”
Enjoy.
27 min 44 sec May 7, 2007
peety-passion.com
If you spend time poring through Google Video, as I do, you have to develop a filter for the endless sea of Religious, New Age or Conspiracy Theorist crap. Zeitgeist is the latest addition to this fecal tide, but I am linking to it because its an interesting example of a media phenomenon. A bad phenomenon but an interesting one.
There are a finite set of actors for conspiracy theory plots: Christians, Merovingians, the Illuminati, Freemasons, Jews, the Federal Reserve, and the most recent catastrophe that is closest to home (JFK assassination, 911 etc.). From the anti-semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to Dan Brown’s the Da Vinci code, Alex Jones’ 911 rantings and now Zeitgeist. They are all part of the same genus – the Fucking Entertaining Big Lie (FEBL).
You can usually spot a FEBL film from the outset because they often use cheap graphic effects with bad rendering and metaphors. In Zeitgeist we have the earth surrounded by a pixelated metal cage. Zeitgeist comes in three parts and an Overture (and not much of a Coda). The Overture shows a series of powerful archive imagery of violent acts, historically relevant to an American audience. The images of violence are treated seriously, but they are basically entertainment.
Part 1. is a loosely plagiarized version of the God Who Wasn’t There, complete with much of the same archive footage. The premise is that Christianity is based upon previous religions. Fair enough, apart from the plagiarism. Part 2 and 3 show 911 and then talk about the Federal Reserve and how, you know, like everything is linked man. 911 seems to be used in the same way as the Overture – as violent pornography, a real life Die Hard, but under the guise of polemic. The argument about the Federal Reserve as a government conspiracy, begs the question – why would a conspiratorial public body setup a private central bank? In Zeitgeist, anti-Semitism has been replaced by jingoist libertarianism – somehow the idea of American income tax is un-American, and free trade within North America shows Lou Dobbs as a patriot fighting against dark forces, rather than an armchair racist.
Here is the problem, FEBL media usually means nothing and is patently false but incredibly seductive. It is the perfect scaffold to hang propaganda and acts like a bit-borne, pernicious narcotic. Although films like Zeitgeist are mildly entertaining, due to their unbelievable popularity (more than 5 Million people have watched it on YouTube), they must be taken seriously. I suspect they might actually be dangerous, and therefore, as someone who does not believe in censorship it is important to make fun of Zeitgeist as the tired piece of po-faced, visually illiterate, polemically challenged, pornographic bullshit that it is.
36 min 51 sec Nov 5, 2007 www.zeitgeistmovie.com