Macfistowannabe said:I've heard of this piece of crap. They take a look at the most radical sect of Christianity and expose it as if it had any link to mainstream Christianity. I guess the good thing about it is that it proves Rosie O'Donnell dead wrong for saying that radical Christianity is just as bad as radical Islam. What a ridiculous statement.
As for those who have deep resentment for Christianity, go ahead and watch it, and make sure you follow it up with Valley of the Wolves.
MrsSpringsteen said:
Nowhere near me. It played at the Boston Film Festival but I wasn't able to go.
I know enough about it to know it has an agenda that doesn't appeal to me. But if you can honestly say that it doesn't associate the wackos portrayed in the film with mainstream Christianity, I'll take your word for it.Irvine511 said:yeah, hi, i've seen the film, and i've met the directors, and it's one of the best documentaries i've ever seen in my entire life and each and every person who is in the film stands by it 100% as they think that it is fully and fairly representative of their specific kind of christianity, which is Pentacostal, and by no means do they associate themselves with mainstream Christianity -- they see themselves as fully distinct from, say, Main Line Protestanism, or Catholicism.
perhaps you should try to see the film before you render such judgements, though ignorance hasn't stopped you in the past.
Macfistowannabe said:I know enough about it to know it has an agenda that doesn't appeal to me. But if you can honestly say that it doesn't associate the wackos portrayed in the film with mainstream Christianity, I'll take your word for it.
nathan1977 said:Irvine, are you joking?
Have also seen the film. Have also read interviews with the filmmakers. To say that the film has no agenda is completely naive. What do you think of the Air America radio host whose comments bookend the film? (In one of the interviews I read, one of the filmmakers said that he was a late add, should anyone in the film think the filmmakers sided with the subjects.) What do you think of the fact that the filmmakers shamelessly (and erroneously) equated mainstream evangelicalism with this extreme, isolated strain by using the shorthand "evangelical" in nearly every statistic they showed on-screen to depict this camp, as though the one were the other? What do you think of the fact that in a 90 minute documentary the film spends about 35 minutes in the actual camp itself, and the rest of the time underlining the political element of evangelicalism? As though one woman leading a relatively small camp in the backwoods and hooting "this means war" represented all, most, or even some of mainstream evangelicalism?
"No agenda"? Give me a break.
A clip on the news was enough for me. I'm not going to put myself in a straightjacket over it.Justin24 said:MacFisto do you make people do things they don't want? If I were you I would watch it. It's not going to kill you.
Irvine511 said:
nathan, are you joking? did we see the same film? when did you see it?
the host is also from this exact area in Missouri, and i don't believe he's on Air America at all.
they used the word "evangelical" because that was what the subjects, themselves, called themselves. it would be tedious, and pointless, to qualify (to your liking, i imagine) endlessly throughout the film. there was way, way more than 35 minutes spent in the camp itself, and many of the activities that were outside the camp were camp-related activities, political or otherwise.
how would you not expect two female documentary filmmakers from NYC to be anything other than "biased" or have an "agenda"?
and how do you explain the fact that ALL the subjects are thrilled wtih the film and stand behind it and have gone with the filmmakers to festivals?
nathan1977 said:
The film sums up evangelicalism in about three sentences. The filmmakers could have chosen to sum up extreme Pentecostalism the same way. Heck, they could have chosen to add one clause saying, "Fundamentalist Pentecostalism is a sect of evangelicalism, which..." The filmmakers however chose not to, instead tarring 45 million Americans with the same brush.
Irvine511 said:
i'm sorry you feel as if you've been tarred, but that speaks much more to your own paranoia since i think the film goes to great lengths to not be about evangelicals, but about these evangelicals.
the main point is that this film doesn't resort to any sort of easy cinematic manipulation to tell it's story or present it's characters.
as for the DJ, the filmmakers said that this is a political film, and having someone who's concerned about the politicization of Christianity open and close the film isn't meant to shade meaning or understanding, rather to place the film in the political context in which it stands.
everyone in the film is on board with the film. we'd all have more "nuanced" reactions to any sort of film or television project we were involved in -- ever watch "project runway"? -- but the universal approval of the film by the subjects belie any claims to the chicanery of the filmmakers or that they're seeking to defame 45m people.
to say it's out to defame a group of people, to slander someone, to indict anyone, is totally false. it's as far from a piece of political hackery as anyone could possibly get.
shart1780 said:
Michael Moore is a moron BTW. The fact that he's endorsing it automatically makes me less interested.
shart1780 said:
Michael Moore is a moron BTW. The fact that he's endorsing it automatically makes me less interested.
nathan1977 said:This is very much in the eye of the beholder, and I'll stand by my comments on the film as a whole.
Irvine511 said:
A particularly inflammatory scene that heightens the political overtones for viewers takes place at a revival meeting lead by Fischer and her associates, in front of well over 100 children. In the scene, Fischer takes a life-size standup photo of President George W. Bush to the stage, and with a large American flag in the background, asks the crowd to raise their hands towards him in prayer.
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WTFRono said:Long live the white taliban
Irvine511 said:
every point i made in my last post stands, and i'm well versed in the world of documentary filmmaking, thank you very much, and it's sad that you think that elements like the score, the editing, the collision of images are somehow indicative of manipulation when this, in fact, actually is Filmmaking 101.
there is drama in the film, and tension, and emotion, but to view these very basic cinematic devices as evidence of willfull, deliberate manipulation on the part of the filmmakers as they go about furthering their agendas doesn't hold much water.
i also think you're wildly underestimating the audience and the ability of people to discern these evangelicals from those evangelicals and it is stated, explicitly, that these are Pentacoastal Evangelicals
nathan1977 said:
Oh come on Irvine. If you know anything about filmmaking, you know that film is an entirely manipulative medium. With every choice the directors make, from angles to shot composition to scoring to editing, etc., they are trying to evoke a specific response. Set the whole film to REM's "Shiny Happy People" and you have a very different film experience than you would if it's scored in a low, throbbing, bass drone as it is by Force Theory. Open the film with normal families putting normal kids on normal buses, or of them playing, and you'd have a very different film than when you lead off with the bizarre dance the church has put together. (Combined with Mike Papantonio's passionate assertions that evangelicals are taking over, which run over the opening images, and what point do you think the filmmakers are trying to get us to understand?) Every decision a director makes is intentional and in service of a larger goal.
But these devices -- scoring, editing, montage, etc -- are manipulative. Inherently, clearly, obviously manipulative. Every filmmaker will tell you that. Those devices are used by the filmmaker to get a specific response.
If you're going to call the beliefs of 45 million people a threat (and imply, if not outright state -- and I'd argue the film hugs a very poor line in that regard -- that the evangelicals in the film are representative of mainstream evangelicals), you'd better be damn clear who you're talking about. Otherwise, you border on agenda-driven slander in its most odious form.
Irvine511 said:
it's totally, totally distinct, and you're criticisms seem to be that, 1) it's a film, and 2) the filmmakers are using the techniques of cinema to weave together a story.
and if it were so manipulative as you claim, you'd be hearing voices of dissent crying foul at the film -- and no one, not least of which is Becky Fischer is accusing the film of being a "Farenheit 911" of Evangelical Pentacostals.
and you've yet to address the lengths the filmmakers went to in order to provide such human, fully-formed characters, and how there's no narration.
firstly, the phrase "threat" as applied to gay people is common parlance amongst the Republicans -- the threat to traditional marriage -- and i have it leveled against me, and not just on this board (and not just by you in regards to our differing stance on adoption), on such a daily basis, that the "threat" posed by gay people hardly needs to be explicity drawn out in a film. it's an understood part of culture.
ETA:
how many other "groups" get this same level of attention that you're asking for evangelicals?
nathan1977 said:
Not at all. My criticism is that to ostensibly make a film about evangelicalism, but to focus exclusively on this church and this denomination, but using "evangelicals" all the way through, and frame them in the light of Mr. Papantonio's comments which bookend the film and are dropped throughout, is both misleading and plays into a particular perspective of what evangelicalism is. My specific criticism is your comment (which mirrors what the filmmakers say) that there is no agenda. One does not need narration in a film to have an agenda, and as I've pointed out, from the subject matter to the treatment thereof to who has the last word, the film is entirely agenda-driven. (Papantonio has the first and last words, by the way.)
I'm not demanding attention. What I am saying is, if you're going to label 45 million people under one banner (yet insist that you're not ideologically-driven in doing so), you ought to at least make sure it's the right one.