Arts & Culture: October 2003 Archives

Big Idea, the producer of VeggieTales entertainment for children, has been bought by New York's Classic Media, owner of several other lines of TV programming.

Some time ago, I posted an account of several teachers looking for music for various holidays, including Ramadan. I sneered about that. Well, one of them found a song for Ramadan here. This is most amusing. Here's why:

1. It is written in a Western key (A Major).

2. The text is concerned with only the outward appearances of the holiday.

3. A committed Moslem would probably have the same reaction to this as a committed Catholic to "As a Fire is Meant for Burning." Haugen-Daaz for Muslims! Ecumenical pain! Something in common!

I hesitate to call another human being self-righteous: it seems like presumption itself to think I know what someone else's inner attitude is. So let me limit myself to saying that the piece presents an image of animus and arrogance. The writer rises up and delivers condemnations: the object of his disapproval is "not Christian"; "none of that is Christian"; "an outdated, badly skewed version of Christianity"; "blatantly ignores the teaching of the church", "both devious and probably servant to another agenda".

Not that this guy is in a position to accurately represent the Catholic Church's teaching: he's a liberal Episcopalian clergyman writing a hatchet job about Mel Gibson's Passion movie.

In this guy's world, don't bother pretending there are two points of view. There's only your view. Just bash away.

Don't prove: assume. "Sure, Mel Gibson's film, The Passion, is probably anti-Semitic."

Don't document: use rumor. "Gibson, however, is rumored to be a 'traditionalist' Roman Catholic who repudiates the decisions of the Second Vatican Council held in the 1960s and considers all popes since the council usurpers."

Don't rely on direct evidence: use guesswork. "The movie, as reported by Christian and Jewish scholars who have read the script, turns the theological clock back to the middle ages...."

Rely on your target's critics; don't mention anyone who defends him from the very charges you present. Why, your readers might think there were two sides to the question.

CNN reports a story from Variety magazine: Lightning has struck actor Jim Caviezel on the Passion set, but he's fine. An assistant director was struck for the second time! As reader eje says, "This is just way, way too weird."

This one is goes out to all your Red Sox fans:

In case you didn't know, the Red Sox have been denied a victory in the World Series ever since Harry Frazee, the owner of the Red Sox, sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in order to raise money for the musical production No, No, Nanette.

From today's G-File over at NRO.

If you consider yourself a movie fan and have never seen www.moviemistakes.com, you'll find it fascinating. They pick apart movies' errors with meticulous care -- to the point that it might ruin a film for you.

This is great fun for a crap-fest like "Titanic," which, among, other atrocities, invented the stinking lie that the men on the ship were all cowards, except Leo the man-child. If you've ever sat through any movie, bewildered at the liberties Hollywood takes with real events, places, and objects
("Hey, did Picasso's 'Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon' really sink to the bottom of the Atlantic? I swear I saw it when it came to the Met"), you'll enjoy rifling through the entries.

"Gladiator," one of my favorite movies from the last few years, has more "mistakes" than almost any other. Some of them are examples of criticism gone too far, like:

Factual error: The snake with red-yellow-brown skin you see in a night-shot in Rome lives only in deserts in North America.

Ooooh! Ridley Scott must be ashamed! Then there are the mistakes that aren't mistakes:

Just before the battle with the germans begins, while the germans are taunting the romans [sic], there are many arrows in the trees and in the ground. Twice we see this. Problem is that the disciplined romans had not fired a single arrow at that point and no skirmishers, which could have been authorized to shoot before the order to "loose", can be seen in the open area in front of the defensive position.

Maybe they're right and the filmmakers didn't intend it, but there's an easy explanation for this. The Romans had ample time to prepare the battlefield before that scene, and one thing they would have done is to test the range of certain parts of the battlefield. Archers would have loosed a few arrows to gauge the distance, and so they'd know how to shoot when the battle began. The technique is used today by professional machinegunners, who will fire bursts to test the distance of objects on the battlefield, if possible.

One of the worst aspects of the Web is that people can get too carried away with all the scoffing and debunking, because there's nobody to reign them in. On the other hand, it's good to have a medium with which to take down the proud a notch or two.

P.S. If you get the DVD of "Gladiator," you can see two deleted scenes with explicit Christian references, including a Christian family about to be devoured by lions.