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17 Again

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A romantic family comedy about a 37-year old guy who gets another chance at his unachieved goals in life when he is magically transformed into a 17 year old again. Mike O’Donnel was a 17 year old in 1989 when he had a promising basketball scholarship riding on a game at his high school. The only problem is that he discovers his girlfriend is pregnant, and he decides to walk away from it all and marry her to do the responsible thing. But now in 2009, he has two kids and has never been happy because he’s blamed his wife for 20 years for his inability to accomplish his dreams. So she is divorcing him, and he is staying with his juvenile man-child friend and dork turned software millionaire Ned.

Mike has his magical brush with a “threshold guardian” who turns him into a 17-year old – again — and he considers this his opportunity to relive his dream. Until he goes to school and sees his own son and daughter as he’s never seen them before. He realizes he has been so out of touch with who they are and concludes that he is supposed to save them. He embarks on his salvific journey to build his son’s lost confidence, and to rescue his daughter from a jerk boyfriend who only wants to use her for his sexual gratification.

This movie makes a number of thematic points for the viewer. First, it addresses the universal regrets of unachieved dreams and displeased middle age lives. It shows the journey of a man who has to learn that he should not regret the choice he made for love over personal dreams. This is very unusual for Hollywood movies that tend to prioritize personal dream fulfillment over duty. When Mike gets to the end of his story as a 17 year old again, and he again has the opportunity to get noticed by talent scouts at a game, he is presented with the same exact opportunity. But when he sees his wife, who is at the game, is about to leave, just as she was about to back in 1989, he leaves the game again, this time, not for duty to responsibility, but for love. And it is in his choice that he finally realizes he did not make a mistake when he gave it all up for her.

This was a clever twist on the genre formula, that usually sets up an opportunity in the beginning for the hero, who makes a wrong choice, but at the end, he is usually set up with a very similar opportunity that, because of his journey, he will now make the right choice to find redemption. But in this film, the twist is that the choice he has to make is that he made the right choice to begin with! It is a film that questions his values, but reaffirms them at the end.

Second, it is a pro-life film in that it depicts in positive terms a teenage couple (Mike and Scarlett) choosing to marry over a pregnancy instead of having an abortion, which is the standard advice to pregnant teens. A major argument by pro-choice advocates is that marrying to take care of a child instead of aborting it results in wasted lives and potential for both men and women. But this movie makes the argument that it is not only the right thing to do to accept the responsibility and marry for the sake of the child, but can easily produce the happiness in intimacy that we are all looking for. When Mike chooses to give it all up a second time, he is saying it is the right choice to do so, it is the right choice to place duty over personal dreams.

Thirdly, it is a film that is pro-abstinence. Mike, as a 17 year old again, follows his daughter around to protect her. In a sex ed class, he makes the argument that kids should not have sex before they are adults and in love, and preferably when they are married. As he describes the beauty and responsibility of an infant daughter and how that baby should be protected by a father, he looks right as his daughter, who doesn’t realize who he really is. After his mini-lecture, all the girls are moved and give back their condoms handed out by the teacher, because they obviously want that kind of true love. When Mike is accosted by three girls at a party who literally offer their bodies to him, he holds them at arm’s length and tells them that they won’t get respect if they don’t respect themselves by such offerings. But they don’t listen, and they say, “You don’t have to respect me,” which illustrates modern teen girl’s complete lack of self-respect.

And also, the film addresses the generation gap. But not merely in the sense of Mike learning about his own selfishness through the eyes of being a teen again. But it also shows that the generation gap is also the fault of teens. When Mike gives all his advice to the other students, he is of course, a 37 year old in a 17 year old body. His is the wisdom of age from the mouth of a youth. Of course, kids don’t listen to these arguments from adults, because they just think adults don’t want them to have fun. But through the mouth of a 17-year old, they listen. Which only goes to show that teens are missing out on wisdom because of their own prejudices and ignorance against their parents.

Mike’s journey is to learn how to be a better husband and father by giving up his selfish dreams for the love of his family.

Avatar

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A crippled Marine joins a team of other humans from earth to displace a native people of another planet in order to exploit the natural resources over which they reside. The term “avatar” is a reference to the virtual world of “living vicariously” through a surrogate in another “world.” Thus, when you play World of Warcraft, the character which you play is your “avatar.” In this movie, however, they have managed to genetically create the body of an alien person, and the protagonist, through technology, is able to operate the body as an avatar. His mission is to learn the culture of the people so they can persuade them to move away. It’s a very simplistic moralistic tale with Manichean morality and stereotypical characters who obviously represent different “industrial complexes” of power to the filmmaker. There is the “corporate industrial complex,” represented by a greedy heartless fat cat corporation head who only cares about exploiting the natural resources and damn the inhabitants as savages (the resource material is called “unobtainium” an obvious reference to “unobtainable”). There is the “military industrial complex” symbolized in the mercenary who provides security, and only cares about killing people as his job, and then the “scientific industrial complex” represented in the compassionate scientist who wants to understand the culture and represents the Victorian “naturalist philosopher” notion of discovering the beauties of the natural world.

The story is a multicultural parable about the need to recognize our own prejudices by seeing through the eyes of the other. The Marine begins his mission by being a tool of the military and the corporation, but by the end he sees the world through the eyes of this primitive people (called the Na’vi) and ends up fighting against the humans and becoming one of the natives.

This story is also a pagan myth of Gaia goddess worship. Gaia is the pagan religious belief that the earth is a living organism and all living things are interconnected as “one”, and that “one” is god, a form of pantheism/panentheism. Gaia philosophy is what drives the extreme wings of environmentalism and it carries with it a corresponding hatred of technology as evil, because it depersonalizes life into mechanical functions, thus devaluing life, which justifies destructive selfish exploitation of nature. Technology is the enemy. This view posits human beings (or other sentient life forms) as mere servants of nature, which is worshipped as a goddess. It also believes in the “noble savage” myth of Rousseau, that primitive or indigenious native peoples who worship the earth are peace loving and harmonious with nature, while westernized civilization is what corrupts through science, technology and the destruction of nature in the name of “dominion.” Thus terms like “mother earth” versus “the sky god,” which is what Christianity is referred to as. The movie is an obvious parallel with American Manifest Destiny against the Indians as well as claims of “colonialism” against the West. When the Marine who has become a Na’vi avatar sides with the Na’vi, he says, “There is no green” where he comes from. “They killed their mother.” And in a critical political allusion to American foreign policy, the military leader says they are going to start killing the Na’vi in a “pre-emptive attack. We will fight their terror with our terror.”

In the movie we hear of “Ewa the goddess” of the natives, who makes up all living things,” “A network of energy that flows through all living things,” (standard New Age and Gaia doctrine). “Our energy is borrowed and someday we will have to give it back.” Like Native American religion, these natives kill an animal for food and then talk to their prey as a “brother, whose spirit goes to Ewa, and the body to the earth.” They claim that there is “electrical communication between the trees” that cover the planet such that it is all one big living organism that fights back against the bulldozers and military men. All the animals join in to fight against the exploiters, even the animals who were earlier seeking the Na’vi as prey. So, as in Gaia theory, the earth fights back against the evil human forces of exploitation (A theme also in The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Happening and others). And the image is one of “clearcutting” the rainforests as big bulldozers of the corporation begin plowing down the jungle.

Usually in movies, Christianity is linked up with the Enlightenment scientific industrial complex, as being the source of the problem through it’s theology of man’s dominion over nature. But in this movie, the only reference at all to this residue is the naming of the humans as the Sky People, a derivative of the Sky God of Christianity. But other than that, there is no explicit reference, thus making this more a movie about modern Enlightenment materialistic exploitation of nature versus the pagan mother earth religion.

The community of Na’vi also represents the oneness of existence. When the Marine avatar becomes accepted into the community, he is told he is “born twice. The second time earning a place among the people.” And the ritual is that they gather in a circle and all place their hands on one another, all the way to the accepted one, creating a huge circle of interconnectedness, embodying this theory of oneness, but also of the value of the community for individual identity.

One cannot help but notice the irony of a movie about the evils of corporate greed, and scientific technology in depersonalizing nature — a 3D movie made possible through the advanced scientific technology and greediest capitalist corporate environment that makes the biggest carbon footprint on the planet: Hollywood. In the movie, the “sky people” are criticized as “thinking they can take whatever they want.” But then the Na’vi leader yells his war cry, “This is OUR land. They cannot take whatever they want!” Kinda hard to take seriously a claim to private property, when the entire Gaia philosophy in the film is predicated on the negation of private property.

An Education

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A feminist coming of age story about a young 16 year old British girl in 1961 England being swept off her feet in a romance with an older man, forcing her to choose between the traditional patriarchal role of marriage and the life of educated independence.

The very first shots of the film show school girls learning posture, dancing, and cooking which immediately set up the traditional notion that even a girl’s schooling is to prepare her for marriage. Jenny wants to go to Oxford to read English. Her parents are traditional in their relationship as well, being depicted as goodly and kind, yet hopelessly anachronistic. So when a dashing young man in his 20s, David, draws Jenny into a world of fun, dancing, restaraunts, art, and travel, she begins to question what the whole purpose of this boring schooling is for anyway.

The examples of “liberated” women are a school marm looking single female English teacher and the principle of the school, another uptight woman who believes education is salvation. They are made to look undesirable and education is made to look undesirable, but only for the moment. Jenny even gives a rather fair assessment from a teen’s perspective of how everyone around her talks of how important it is to be educated, yet everyone in education is boring, boring, boring, so why should she devote herself to a boring independent life instead of really having the fun and enjoyment? Jenny’s father reveals that even his desire for her education is only to make her more appealing to a rich man like David. And David even proposes marriage to Jenny, which she accepts at first, and gives up her education.

But ultimately David is shown to be a deceiver. He makes all his money through questionable, even illegal transactions. He steals, he moves black families into neighborhoods in order to buy old lady’s homes for cheaper when they sell out of racist fear. Oh yeah, and David is also secretly already married to another woman. And this is not the first time he’s done this to other women. He also happens to be Jewish, which makes this movie anti-Semitic in it’s affirmation of “the Wandering Jew” a racist myth from the middle ages of the Jew as satanic tempter, wandering around, making money by exploiting people and tempting them away from salvation. But in this case, salvation is feminist education, making this film anti-semitic feminist theory. Ironic, too, that this anti-Semitic movie would even make a reference to “the Wandering Jew” from the mouth of the father, who is, depicted in this story as ultimately being right.

Jenny is able to get back on track and manages to make it to Oxford, so she is “saved” at the end through education, a myth of the Enlightenment worldview. But it is clear that this movie is about everything not being as it appears. The traditional view of marriage of the man providing and taking care of the woman appears to be romantic at first, but is ultimately destructive seduction. The life of the liberated woman appears to be boring and lonely and uptight, but is ultimately salvation. Every man in the film is either a deceiver or a fool, and every woman who buys into this traditional interpretation is depicted as mindless (David’s partner’s girlfriend who is proud of her shallow ignorance) or a kept woman (Jenny’s mother).

The real education in this film is the education of experience that Jenny has with David, learning that the traditional notions of marriage is a seductive deception that ruins women’s lives by keeping them from independence, and education is salvation.

Invictus

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A true story of Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa and his subsequent attempt to bring the country together by focusing on the nation’s rugby team winning the World Cup. The movie begins with Mandela winning the election and being installed. The racial tensions run high as everyone, including his own entourage, expect a “regime change” mentality – fire all the previous administration and replace everyone with your own agents of power. But Mandela surprises them all, by his very first act in office. He calls the previous staff in and tells them that if they want to leave, they can, but if they want to stay and help bring change, then he will keep them. Much to the chagrin of his head of security, Mandela also brings in five big white Afrikaaners to round out his security. Mandela also stops the newly empowered rugby committee from disbanding their “all-but-one-white” team. Why? Because they see that team as a symbol of the oppression of the past. But Mandela sees it as the perfect location for embodying the very future unity the country needs.

And this is the theme of the movie: Overcoming injustice through forgiveness and reconciliation, rather than the multicultural view of overcoming injustice through the will to power and revolutionary regime change. Whereas multiculturalism would preach forced or artificial affirmative action and the vengeance of reverse discrimination against whites, Mandela says, “Forgiveness starts here. A rainbow nation starts here.” If you want to overcome past institutionalized injustice, you cannot replace it with a new injustice of institutionalized vengeance. That is only a cycle of violence. Demonizing previous administrations and punishing them is the injustice of victimology, crying victim in order to justify revenge.

Interestingly, the movie does not address in detail the fact that Mandela was also estranged from his wife because of her belief in violent resistance, but it does show his estrangement from his daughter because of his commitment to a higher cause. His daughter asserts the vengeance and regime change mentality of reparations and affirmative action. But Mandela tells her, “You seek only to assert your own personal feelings. That is selfish. That will not help build our nation.” Mandela so believes in the higher cause of forgiveness and reconciliation that he will even walk away from his family because they sought the ways of multicultural hate and violence.

The title of the movie comes from a poem by William Ernest Henley, “Invictus,” that Mandela quotes a couple times in the film. The last lines are emphasized in this lyric of overcoming the “fell clutch of circumstance” that bloodies the head of the oppressed in life: “I am master of my fate and the captain of my soul.” Mandela concludes, “If I cannot change when circumstances demand it, how can I expect others to?” And so this film is a story about living out grace and forgiveness instead of getting back at your oppressors by oppressing them when you are in power. That “master of my fate” line seems to cast it in a humanistic self-derived power to forgive rather than a religious or faith oriented worldview of divine empowerment.

Me and Orson Welles

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A coming of age story of a young teenager trying to break into acting, who gets a break to be in Orson Welles’ 1937 production of Julius Caesar. This is before War of the Worlds, before his big film masterpiece Citizen Kane, the penultimate moment in Welles’ meteoric career. This appears to be a fictional romance set within an historical event. Zac Efron plays Richard, the young lead, who is 17 or so, still at home with his conventional suburban mother yet yearning for the romance of the theatre. He worms his way into the production by impressing Welles with his wit and confidence, and summarily falls for the troupe’s secretary, Sonja, played by Claire Danes. He ultimately loses his virginity to Sonja and consequently falls head over heels in love with her. He waxes eloquent with expressions of undying love worthy of the bard himself, that is, Shakespeare. But his innocence is lost when he discovers that Sonja sleeps with Welles and will do so with famous movie producer David Selznick, in order to advance her career.

Though Richard is crushed, he begins to re-notice a girl he had previously met, another innocent high school girl with ambitions of getting her poetry published. At the end, Richard meets back up with her and we get the impression that he will pursue this relationship as a sort of consolation prize, or return to innocence.

This film explores the loss of innocence in a head on collision with the cynical reality of the entertainment world of theatre, a world that perceives itself in the words of Welles, as “saving the dignity of man,” yet contrarily lives undignified immoral lives because, again in the words of Welles, “Our business is to create the best art. That’s all that matters.” Since the artist embodies moral truth in their art, they don’t need to actually live morally or truthfully in their personal lives. One is reminded of the cliché self delusion of the actor who thinks they can speak with authority because “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on television,” as if pretending confers any reality upon the individual’s experience.

Welles’ egocentric, self-obsessed, fame obsessed, prurient selfishness becomes the symbolic epitomy of this world that is larger than life, and indeed, a façade for real life. The Welles character is deliberately overplayed like a 1940s histrionic movie character, speaking as if he is always delivering lines. This embodies a “life as imitation of art” that reflects the ultimate fraudulence of that world. But this is all done lovingly by the writer/director, not with animosity for that world, but with a seeming longing for lost innocence amidst his own love of the art.

The Last Station

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Based on the true story of famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s last year of life, 1910. This is a “love/hate story” about the traumatic relationship that Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) had with his wife of 48 years, the Countess Sofya, played by Helen Mirren. It’s told through the eyes of a young neophyte Tolstoyan, Valentin, who is hired to be a secretary to Leo. It is a clash of worldviews as Leo seeks to rid himself of private property and deed all the rights of his writing to the public domain, while his wife pleads for him to not do so in order to take care of his family. They are madly in love with each other, yet also hatefully at odds with each other’s politics. And this results in a passionate recklessness of extremes in their reactions to one another.

There is a Tolstoyan commune of people seeking to live without property and in moral purity, something not easily accomplished as Valentin immediately falls for Sasha, a girl who defies the rules and they begin a torrid sex affair. The irony of Tolstoy’s position is brought out as we see his followers refer to him as a kind of Jesus Christ, and yet deviously plot to have him sign away his works to the public domain, “for the people.” Sofya is outwardly portrayed as a desperate clutching paranoid gold digger worried about a conspiracy to manipulate Leo into changing his will, yet she is also displayed as not only being right about the conspiracy, but the only one who has been loyal to Tolstoy, to his happiness, the only one honest about his humanity and faults, and the only one who passionately loves him.

It’s as if this film is showing the clash between socialism and capitalism, a reflection of the current political debates we find ourselves in.

The young secretary enters the commune with pure ideology, which draws the cynical Sasha, but he also comes to see both sides of Leo and Sofya and ends up painfully unwilling to trash Sofya as all the other conspirators do because he sees her depth of true love for Leo. It’s as if the movie is showing us that ideology like socialism, which negates private property and prioritizes the public over the private, ends up destroying the passion and life of individuals in the name of “the cause” while the apparent selfishness of free market capitalism with its priority of private property ends up creating the freedom out of which true love and human individuality is bred. Sofya is not without her selfish and histrionic faults and Leo is not without virtue for his ideals, which is what makes this story an honest portrayal instead of propaganda.

As the conspirators draw Leo away to hiding, in order to let him write his great work which Sofya seems to be impeding, Leo is nevertheless depicted as needing her for his very breath in order to live. It is their passionate love that draws them unstoppably together, but it is their philosophies that draw them apart. As stated in the film, “To love and be loved is the only reality,” and “love is what it is all about.” Leo tells his secretary that the one thing that all religions have in common is love, that it is “love that binds all mankind together.” And in this story, it is love of individuals that transcends ideology of the community.

Evidently, Tolstoy had rejected the Russian Orthodox church (another reflection of socialism is the negation of religion) and his followers are so concerned that Sofya will visit him and bring about a death bed conversion back to the church, that they seek unsuccessfully to keep her from him as he dies. As Leo’s ideologue friend Vladimir tells the naïve secretary, “A deathbed conversion will destroy everything. A simple noble death is what we want.” In other words, the truth and the individual must be sacrificed to the movement or the ideology. At this ending, just before Sofya is brought in by the now more realist Valentin, she tells Vladimir “You want to create an image of YOU, not HIM.” And so it seems this story shows that those who seek to build movements and ideologies over the individual and love will end up manipulating the individual and controlling others.

The Blind Side

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Family Dramedy. The true story of the white southern Touhy Family rescuing and then adopting a tall African American kid that has been abused by the ghetto culture, the government system, and his own family. This is an atypical film coming out of Hollywood because it’s worldview is of middle American traditional values. It portrays the Southern family in a positive light rather than negative stereotype and it champions private charity over government dependency.

Regarding the Southern Christian worldview, the family prays over their Thanksgiving dinner with reference to Jesus Christ, and they make the point of their Christian duty to help the unfortunate. Special attention is drawn to a Scriptural reference (incorrectly quoted) of the high school’s motto: “With man this is possible. With God, all things are possible.” The correct biblical reference is “With man this is IMPOSSIBLE, but with God all things are possible.” Be that as it may, this shows the Christian culture as the driving force of the compassion.

The movie reveals an occasional racist sentiment in a lone jerk, but not in the culture at large. These rich Southerners may be a bit embarrassed and don’t know what to do, but they are not hate mongers. In fact, the movie pokes good fun at both sides of the political spectrum, and portrays racism as an inherent part of the government welfare system and ghetto culture as well. For instance, the tutor for “Big Mike” confesses with fear of reprisal that she is a Democrat. Yet, the family, an obvious Republican Southern family, doesn’t blink an eye. They don’t care, they just want to help Michael. But then the dad says, “Who’d have thought we would adopt a black kid before we met our first Democrat.” Later, when the mom, Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) hears her new son Michael is threatened by his old ghetto homeys, she walks proudly up to them and says, “When you threaten my son, you threaten me.” When the gang guy threatens to bring guns and do violence, she retorts that she is a proud member of the NRA, and packs her own heat, and is not afraid. The answer to growing cultural violence here is clearly responsibly armed citizens. The only moment of violence in the movie is ironically, when Big Mike goes back to his ghetto homeys and is tempted to be drawn into their life of crime by the gang leader. But when they threaten Mike’s new white family, he explodes in violence and trashes them all. Why? Because of his love for those who loved him first. Michael’s highest value is to protect others, and so the movie justifies standing with force against those who threaten the family.

The Touhy’s are very wealthy and own multiple Taco restaurants, but they are giving charitable people who in the end care much more for people than for things. Some fun is made of the fact that their fellow lunch going friends are removed rich people who believe in giving some charity, but not “taking it so seriously as to adopt Michael,” but these people are shamed by Leigh Anne’s authentic love.

Regarding the failure of government and institutions, the movie depicts the institutions as being antagonistic to those who help people like “Big Mike.” Movies are not made in a vacuum. And this movie, coming out as it does in the midst of a time of strong appeal to government solutions creates a stark contrast with its reliance of the individual through hard work and personal charity. The government welfare system fails to help Michael, in having him fall through the cracks, his ghetto culture is depicted as failing him by succumbing to drugs, welfare slavery, and personal irresponsibility. Even the NCAA is shown as antagonistic toward helping blacks when it challenges the motives of why the Touhy’s rescued Michael and helped him to go to college, rather than honoring them.

This leads to the major theme of the movie: Family. Michael is loved by the Touhys and he adopts THEM as his family because of their love for him, as opposed to his blood which fails him. Family love transcends race in this story. The family simply loves him and he blossoms despite the government and society being against this notion. Family love wins the day. All along the way, their motives for loving Michael are challenged: They’re just doing it to feel good about themselves, they’re just doing it out of white guilt, they’re just doing it for some kind of financial benefit. But all these theories are dispelled in the face of the simple display of genuine family love. And when the NCAA challenges the Touhy’s motives of guiding Michael toward Ole’ Miss for college because of a ludicrous financial conspiracy, Michael questions his new family, but the parents tell him he can go wherever he wants to go because they love him. Then he CHOOSES Ole’ Miss anyway, because “That’s where my family went.” In this story, family love and private charity is deeper and more redemptive than race, welfare, government, institutions, hate, money, and blood.

Twilight: New Moon

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In this Twilight series sequel, Bella, having fallen in love with a vampire, is now falling in love with a werewolf. What a dilemma for this love triangle. Should I love forever the vampire I cannot be with or the werewolf right beside me? Seriously though, first let me address the underlying myth that this shares with the first movie. We have a world in which the Cullen “family” are “good” vampires who seek to do good and abstain from their human bloodlust, as opposed to “bad” vampires who do kill humans. But all vampires are sworn to a code that dictates they never reveal themselves to humans or they will be executed by the vampire council in Italy. Now, we have werewolves who are not evil, but essentially good, and whose purpose is evidently, NOT to kill humans but to kill vampires. So in this mythology, werewolves only accidentally hurt humans if they get upset and their animal nature takes over.

I don’t know a lot about Mormonism, not being one myself, but I understand that the original author is a Mormon, which brings some clarity to the underlying worldview of the story. As I understand it, in Mormonism, redemption is ultimately achieved through moral living. People can redeem themselves by doing good deeds that outweigh their bad deeds. In other words, vampires CAN suppress their evil nature and be good. This is why Bella replies to a comment about evil nature, “It’s not what you are, it’s what you do.” This is opposed to, for example, the Judeo-Christian view of human nature that what we are results in what we do. Orthodox Christianity claims that no matter how many good deeds we do, they cannot cancel out our evil nature, which ultimately condemns us. Redemption is therefore found in having our nature changed by spiritual rebirth not suppression of our evil drives. The reason why Edward won’t “turn” Bella into a vampire and therefore be together forever is because when you do so, you lose your soul and are damned. This is when Bella disagrees and tells Edward, “You couldn’t be damned, it’s impossible.” He does too much good as a “good” vampire. “It’s not what you are, it’s what you do.”

The big obvious metaphor that we are hit over the head with in the movie is Romeo and Juliet. We see Bella and Edward studying the play, and watching a movie version of it in class. And Edward can recite the dramatic sacrificial love lines from heart. And of course, this becomes their own dilemma, as Edward wants to have the vampire council kill him, once he thinks Bella is dead. She becomes his only reason for “living.” And then, when Bella saves him from the vampire council by saying “kill me, not him,” she shocks them all that a human would do this in love for a vampire. The whole thing is a reflection of the cross-cultural love story of Romeo and Juliet.

I believe that the reason why this series of stories is so popular with women is because it focuses on relationships affected by this struggle of human nature. Another element of Mormonism that seems to connect with middle America is it’s traditional values. Here is a story that depicts strong men with violent natures (both the vampire and the werewolf in love with Bella), suppressing that nature and turning it into positive redeeming protection of the woman. Maybe this is a kind of backlash to the emasculated men of modernity. Edward is erudite and educated, but his drawing power is in how he sublimates his primal drive for Bella’s sake. He would rather give up his eternity than let her become defiled. He protects her virginity. Even when she decides to become a vampire, he says he will help her do so, only on the condition that she marry him. This is NOT your average male mook, moron, or stud depicted in most advertising and entertainment. And Jacob, the werewolf, who falls in love with Bella, is a beefy mechanic earthy guy who also sublimates his own nature to let Bella in and to protect her (I heard the women in the theater breathe out sighs of joy when he takes off his shirt – I kid you not). These are all the negative stereotypes of the male in our culture that are subverted in the story into positive examples of strong powerful males rescuing, protecting, and providing for the heroine female. This is traditional moral values on the roles of male and female subverting modern notions.

SIDE NOTE: Something struck me that I didn’t catch in the first movie. This notion of the vampires shining like diamonds when out in the sunlight seemed a strange new idea to me, and I wondered where it came from. As I understand it, Mormonism believes in polytheism, that there are many gods. A Bible chapter they point to is John 10 where Jesus quotes Psalm 82 in saying, “Have I not said, you are gods?” But in Psalm 82, it talks about a council of “gods” that God sits amidst, also called “sons of God.” The problem is that the Hebrew word for “gods” is elohim, which has different meanings in different contexts. While orthodox Christianity understands elohim in that passage as divine beings (such as angels), Mormons consider them actual gods, and examples of what all humans can become. But here’s the kicker. An orthodox Christian scholar of ancient Near Eastern languages, Michael Heiser (thedivinecouncil.com), has made an argument that another verse in Psalm 82 describes these sons of God as “falling like the shining ones [‘princes”].” This is also linked to a famous Bible passage, Isaiah 14, believed to be talking about Lucifer, the fallen angel, “O star of the morning, shining one [son of the dawn].” Again, Christians would see this as divine beings such as angels, while Mormons would consider them as actual deities. Maybe this is too speculative, but it appears that the Mormon author is casting the preternatural beings of vampires, as elohim, gods, shining ones. Some are fallen, some seek to do good. At one point in the movie, Bella goes to Italy and the council of elohim, I mean vampires, actually meets somewhere in or around the Pantheon, the oldest building in Rome, which was a pagan temple to the gods (plural, as in vampires?).

2012

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In this end of the world story, we follow John Cusack trying to save his estranged family along with a few others all over the world, before the earth’s crust shifts and destroys all life with tsunamis after the planets all align (Anybody remember the predictions of the Jupiter Effect back in 1982? — 2.0). Interesting how there has been a spate of end of the world movies in the last few years, such as The Day After Tomorrow, Knowing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Road, and The Happening. Although I would say that these kind of disaster stories are in our DNA, because they continue to come up through all of history. One is reminded of all the parallel Flood stories in Mesopotamia, Sumer and Babylon as well as the Hebrew version of Noah’s Ark. Whether one believes they are legends or history, they all reflect our inherent need to face our mortality and values in life. There’s something about facing imminent and unavoidable mass destruction that makes you reevaluate what you are wasting of your life, and the need for change, repentance.

The obvious literal parallel of Noah’s ark is in 2012, as they build 7 huge arks to save important rich people who can pay their way with Euros (since dollars are not as trustworthy), along with a bunch of animals and important art works. The Ark concept was used in Knowing and The Day the Earth Stood Still. But interestingly, whereas the two “Day” movies and The Happening impute some environmentalist blame on mankind for causing it, 2012 does not because it is a huge influx of neutrinos from the sun that boils the earth’s core and causes the shift in poles and “earth crust displacement,” not unlike continental drift only really really quick. Regardless of this lack of moral blame, the movie still exalts a kind of nature worship that displaces supernatural religion with a humanistic naturalistic “we are all children of the earth” substitute. Here is how it does this:

There are all kinds of religious references in the film, from people praying to the cliché kook holding a “The End is Near” sign. A kooky but correct “Art Bell” character explains, “It’s the apocalypse, the end of days, like the Hopi Indians saw, the I Ching, even the Bible – kinda.” Kinda? There is a reference to the supposed Mayan calendar prediction to the year. But like all good humanistic subversions, the point is to undermine those religious images with a new humanistic definition. Thus, we see massive symbols of religion all over the world being destroyed, from a Tibetan monastery in the mountains, to the Rio de Janeiro Jesus statue to a long sequence of the Vatican being crumbled into dust and flames along with St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel. The extended detail and lingering on this particular Vatican destruction seems to illustrate an extra hatred and intolerance for this Christian religion by the filmmaker. The cracking of the Sistine ceiling goes right through the hands of God and Adam in the Creation of Adam, “splitting man from God,” a symbolic statement of this event. Interestingly, the director was too fearful of a fatwa being put on his head, so he avoided showing the destruction of any Islamic holy places, probably the only reason why he didn’t show the destruction of Jerusalem, since the Islamic Mosque resides in the heart of the Jerusalem Temple area. Evidently, Emmerich saved his hatred and violence for the peaceful religions that would not murder him for attacking them. When the US president gets on TV and tells the world, “We are one family stepping into the darkness together,” he begins to pray the 23rd Psalm, but is cut off before he can get past the first sentence. Another expression of the powerlessness of his Christian faith.

The central struggle in the film is the contrast of values of survival and self-sacrifice, as we see various versions of each worldview battling with each other through the different characters. The prominent one being a scientist and a Whitehouse politician from America. The politician exposes the cold reality why the government didn’t tell the people to prepare, because “Our mission is to assure the continuity of our species,” and of course if they told everyone, there would be mass pandemonium and anarchy, which would result in no one getting saved (and pandemonium does in fact, happen). As he says, “What did you think, the world’s going to sit around and join hands and sing Kumbaya?” The scientist thinks everyone should know the truth so they have time to face their demise together to comfort one another and ask for forgiveness. This is a good ethical conflict because both sides contain an equal amount of truth that causes us to think through values in conflict.

The politician says, “Nature will choose from itself by itself who will survive,” as they are about to push on without letting a crowd of people into the arks because there is not enough time or room to do so. And the scientist makes the thematic statement of the film, “To be human means to care for each other. Can we stand and watch each other die? The moment we stop fighting to save each other is the moment we lose our humanity. Everyone out there has died in vain if we start a new future with an act of cruelty” (namely leaving the extra crowds of people behind). This statement, coming as it does from a scientist as the symbol of nobility, embodies the storyteller’s view of the moral conscience residing in science rather than religion. This reflects the common modern worldview that believes religion is powerless, and then promotes morality without religion through a scientific viewpoint, which is all rather problematic, since science provides no foundation for morality. Only the religions that have been deconstructed or destroyed by the storyteller provide that transcendent basis for such a value system.

The Road

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A dark bleak view of humanity with a sliver of hope. This faithful adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel has an unnamed man and his unnamed son (thus suggesting a mythic narrative) in a very different kind of road trip movie. They are traveling south to the Eastern coast in a post-apocalyptic America, trying to find “the good guys” in a world of human gangs turned cannibals through survival of the fittest. No food left, not even animals to eat, due to some unnamed global catastrophe that reflects more of global cooling than global warming. They are surrounded by earthquakes, erupted volcanoes, burned up forests, and increasing coldness. There is no real plot to this story of father and son moving from one nihilistic situation to another, from one gang of cannibals to another, interrupted by stretches of travelling, again, very faithful to the book, and actually captivating in it’s touch on primal drives and primal relations.

It’s really a character study of father and son, as son learns the values of survival while maintaining that shred of human value in the midst of a world without values. As the father answers his son’s question about whether or not they would eat humans, “we wouldn’t eat anyone, cause we’re the good guys and we’re carrying the fire within.” That reflects the very simple black and white morality of the story, as some critics might suggest is a “Manichean view of good and evil.” Good guys who love and help others, and bad guys who eat others.

There is a thread of religious thought through the film which also is faithful to the book, sometimes to the exact words. At the beginning we see them pass a billboard with the graffiti of a bible verse from Jeremiah: “Behold the valley of slaughter.” Stories just tend to feel more “deep” when they reference Bible verses, especially in King James language. Anyway, the religion seems to be one of a replacement of God with humanity as the object of true worship. The father says some esoteric things like, “the child is my warrant” [to carry on]. “If the child is not the word of God, then God never spoke.” And another time about the child to an old man travelling companion: “To me, he’s a god.” To which the old man says, “To be on the road with the last god is a dangerous situation.” When the son asks his father. “How would the last man alive know he was the last man?” The father responds, “God would know.” The old man then says, “There is no God up there,” in this godforsaken world. But the father responds to his son quietly, “If I were God, I would have made the world just so, and not any different. And so I have you.” This would seem to suggest that the father has a view of a providential God who somehow mysteriously, and without giving us the answers, works through suffering. In a way one could read this as an affirmation of God in the midst of such suffering.

But I am not sure that is the point for the filmmakers. After all, God is replaced by the son for this man. The father puts all his hope in his son surviving to find the good guys and live with them. The son becomes the father’s hope, and God appears to be a metaphor for that hope. So when they stumble upon a survival shelter filled with foodstuffs, they pray (including the gesture of folded hands) not to God, but to the people. “Thank you, people,” they mumble, which certainly doesn’t reflect the Judeo-Christian attribution of all blessings to God, whether received through men or not. I suspect God and religion in this story is a picture of an optimistic mythic construct to help keep a person going — a metaphor for “human goodness,” which is all rather ironic, considering the bulk of humanity is out to eat them like packs of animals following an evolutionary ethic of survival. But it appears that the story contains that humanistic optimism in the goodness of man, that no matter how bad the world can get, there will always be some good people seeking to do right. The only question is: Whose right? By what standard is their right any more right than the cannibal’s right? Is their sense of right rooted in subjective humanity with its equal and opposite extremes of cruelty and mercy, or an external objective deity to whom man is accountable? Is that God hiding in the suffering or is he a metaphor for humanity creating its own values in a world without meaning? I am not sure what the story is really suggesting, but I suspect it is the latter.