Sandy Hook

Sandy Hook

Saturday, September 19, 2009

“Creation”

Censorship comes in many forms. It can be decreed by a government or it can be self-imposed by a collective body of cowards – in this case the U.S. film industry. It also is a frightening indicator of just how much the right wing is insidiously impacting every aspect of our lives – our liberties, our right to choose and our way of life.

Even movie distributors are running from any potential controversy with their tails between their legs – sort of like Hollywood’s early reaction to the McCarthy era. Careers and lives were ruined because of the demagoguery of the alcoholic Joe McCarthy and members of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Richard Nixon among them. An individual who found their names on the infamous Blacklist suddenly had no friends; contracts to act, direct, film and write dried up.

So, what does all this have to do with the recently released movie “Creation?” The people who’ve been fortunate enough to see it say it’s the best movie they’ve watched in a year. But I haven’t been able to see it because not one U.S. movie distributor wants to touch it. I’d have to go to Canada or Europe.

Besides denying the public the right to choose, their spinelessness adds up to nothing less than censorship. The producer Jeremy Thomas feels that a U.S. distributor won’t pick it up because of the division in America over the theory of evolution.

“Creation” isn’t just about evolution, however. Over half of it is based on a very loving but troubled relationship between Charles Darwin, a devoted family man, and his wife Emma. When they lose their eldest daughter to illness Emma turns to religion for comfort and Darwin to science. The struggle between his religious beliefs and the scientific evidence creates mounting tension not only within himself but with his wife. This conflict between reason and emotion is the nucleus of “Creation.”

The same groups who scare the pants off the paranoid movie industry are the same people who want “Huckleberry Finn” stripped from school libraries or who protest the showing of such movies as “The Last Temptation of Christ.” They are the same people who are considering rewriting history to reflect only Christian based indoctrination. Where does it stop? And where are the heroes with the intestinal fortitude to denounce them?



9 comments:

  1. These are the same people who demand boycotts of Harry Potter movies and The Golden Compass. While the latter movie did not live up to the book, having been dumbed down slightly for the movie going public, it was certainly fun and watchable. The fact that the books are brilliant and thought provoking and the movie is just entertaining doesn't detract from a moviegoer's potential desire to see the story play out to the finish in the theatre... but the sequels will probably never be made because of the controversy the first movie created.

    It is ironic that people who want to blot out reality and replace it with a dark, superstitious fantasy that does not even resemble genuine religion also wish to blot out fantasy with their joyless view of 'reality.'

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  2. I like that last point, eclectic. Just to play devil's advocate though, I've read that another reason it's not being picked up here in the states is because movie houses are worried that it just won't be well attended, especially in light of a struggling economy. Maybe they could write in some explosions and gun-slinging robots...

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  3. I don't think it's got anything to do with the economy, or the genre.
    The economy is bad in other parts of the world, and people like movies with guns, tits and explosions there too.

    According to The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html - it's all about the influence of the religious element in America. Note the bit about Movieguide.org.

    I'm sick of this...
    The incessant reality-denial of the religiously-minded, I mean...
    They call evolution "a silly theory" when they believe God created one man and woman and kicked them out of paradise for eating a f--king piece of fruit, crammed every lion, kangaroo, flea and alpaca into a boat in twos to escape a flood.
    I'm sick of our world still turning on what these idiots think: dull fairytales for the strictly stupid. A holdover from the dark ages of relentless superstition and dogma.
    When are they going to grow up, and tolerate the rest of us being adults?
    When are we ever going to be free of them?

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  4. 'The incessant reality-denial of the religiously-minded, I mean...'

    Religion and questions of God and philosophy occupy my mind quite a bit, but I don't deny reality. Mainstream and progressive Christians don't deny reality at all. The Catholic Church and Orthodox Judaism both accept evolution as doctrinally sound whether Pat Buchanan and Ben Stein like it or not.

    The problem is not 'the religiously minded', the problem is people who require superstition and cultural mythology to explain the world to them in simple terms and who have put both of those things into a box and called it 'religion' in place of the genuine article.

    For whatever reason, far too many Americans fall into this category. I think part of it is because of the way rural American has always been protected from the reality of America as a whole and existed in its own world, while America as a whole has always been isolated from the rest of the world and its marketplace of ideas. American cultural chauvinism makes it easy for those who wish to do so to close their minds and pretend they know it all.

    Norway is a very religious country with a well organized state church... and yet they are head of America on issues like censorship and gay rights despite the fact that we allegedly guarantee freedom of individual belief.

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  5. "The Catholic Church and Orthodox Judaism both accept evolution as doctrinally sound".

    I'm not so sure the Catholic Church is quite that accepting of common sense (Benedict XVI said the use of condoms contributes to the spread of HIV, for example, and has only recently pardoned Galileo for saying the Earth orbits the sun), but assuming you're right, "doctrinally sound" is not the measure by which a scientific theory should be judged.

    Religion is a supremely damaging force in our world, not just in America. An enabler for tyranny and terrorism among other things. The Archbishop of Sydney has attributed theories on global warming to "pagan emptiness" and instead advocates "belief in a benign God who is master of the universe".
    Great... all fears of pollution and mass extinctions solved by positive thinking.

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  6. JBW: "I've read that another reason it's not being picked up here in the states is because movie houses are worried that it just won't be well attended, especially in light of a struggling economy."

    I don't think that holds water. I think it's a weak BS excuse to not show it. If this argument were true, why are they making any movies?

    Quietmagpie says, "The incessant reality-denial of the religiously-minded, I mean...
    They call evolution "a silly theory" when they believe God created one man and woman and kicked them out of paradise for eating a f--king piece of fruit. . . "

    Kind of like the "virgin" birth?

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  7. Comment from yours truly on another post:

    Still sans computer. I live off the socialist gov., so funds are a bit tight right now. But I enjoy reading your comments, so please keep coming back. Sounds like an AA meeting.

    Will try to get something out every other day.

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  8. Leslie, mt point in saying that it might not be well attended in light of the current economy was not meant to imply that people aren't going to movies, just that they aren't going to as many movies.

    Despite the positive reviews you refer to in your post (and I've read several myself) one has to remember that this is an English period piece set in the Victorian era about a couple being torn apart by the death of their daughter and a crisis of personal religious faith. Adding the facts that much of the dialogue is taken from Darwin's personal correspondence and that the central theme is about academic science makes me assume that this flick will attract very few viewers from the under-30 crowd, which are movie houses bread and butter.

    I obviously have no problem with the movie myself (I took whole semesters on evolution in college) and I won't deny that the squeals of the religious right have probably had a cooling effect on it's reception here but the fundies also despise Moore and Maher yet their movies get shown.

    The difference is that those controversial flicks are sure to make money. I'm just saying that if Michael Bay had directed and added a few scenes of Darwin leaping across a room in slow-motion firing two guns at the same time it would have had a better chance.

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  9. JBW: re the under 30 crowd. A book published last year offers up a pretty depressing look at this group. Think of Leno's Jay Walk routines.

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