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Feb. 19th, 2009 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo, watched Religulous (that film about religion by Bill Maher), which was better than I thought it would be. Most of the time, mocking religion is (for me) like shooting fish in a barrel. It's not hard to mock most religions and slamming stuff like the Mormon faith and Scientology don't even take an effort. Thetans? Magic underwear? We're all from outer space. God lives on a planet somewhere. Yeah, no trouble there with the mockery on either of those two faiths.
This is not to say that I don't, sometimes, enjoy religious satire. I'm hugely fond of Life of Brian, which is nonstop amusing as hell. Probably the men-as-women-as-men scene at the stoning accounts for a great part of that amusement, but whatever works, right? Unfortunately, sometimes I have trouble telling the difference between actual satire and straight-up religion. For example, I thought that chastity balls were a fantastic effort at religious satire until I discovered that, y'know, people were taking them seriously. In much the same way, fundie gay-reeducation-camps were funny for me until I found out that they were, y'know, for real.
The film's highlight, for me, was that it frequently, and with significant comedic effect, cuts to assorted relevant and illuminatory film clips. Those were pretty funny. A lot of the rest of the thing is standard making fun of the religious, which is not particularly novel or difficult and frequently not any more laugh-worthy than making fun of the mentally retarded. (They can't help the way they are, after all.) On the plus side, Maher does exhibit equal-opportunity mockery. He hits evangelicals, jews, muslims, catholics, mormons, scientologists, and so forth. Everybody gets a shot at being mocked. That's nice.
My favorite person on the side of the religious was that dude from the Catholic church in Rome. Damn, he was funny.
This is not to say that I don't, sometimes, enjoy religious satire. I'm hugely fond of Life of Brian, which is nonstop amusing as hell. Probably the men-as-women-as-men scene at the stoning accounts for a great part of that amusement, but whatever works, right? Unfortunately, sometimes I have trouble telling the difference between actual satire and straight-up religion. For example, I thought that chastity balls were a fantastic effort at religious satire until I discovered that, y'know, people were taking them seriously. In much the same way, fundie gay-reeducation-camps were funny for me until I found out that they were, y'know, for real.
The film's highlight, for me, was that it frequently, and with significant comedic effect, cuts to assorted relevant and illuminatory film clips. Those were pretty funny. A lot of the rest of the thing is standard making fun of the religious, which is not particularly novel or difficult and frequently not any more laugh-worthy than making fun of the mentally retarded. (They can't help the way they are, after all.) On the plus side, Maher does exhibit equal-opportunity mockery. He hits evangelicals, jews, muslims, catholics, mormons, scientologists, and so forth. Everybody gets a shot at being mocked. That's nice.
My favorite person on the side of the religious was that dude from the Catholic church in Rome. Damn, he was funny.
