Religulous
Oct. 22nd, 2008 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI saw Religulous last night, the new Bill Maher movie about how ridiculous religion (in his estimation, all religion) is.
Maher has got a few points, but for the most part, it's an exercise in watching Maher argue badly. The most pervasive flaw, that is repeated over and over, is that Maher pushes religion to its extreme, and then by showing that to be ridiculous, concludes that all of it is ridiculous.
Most of this is in his choice of interview subjects—like the Puerto Rican guy who says he is the second coming of Christ, or the "ex-gay," or the director of the museum of creationism (animatronic dinosaurs playing with children!), or the minister of the church of cannabis. Of course, this makes for some damn entertaining exchanges, but he presents these people as though they speak for all religious people, which they very much don't.
There are some run-of-the-mill moderate religious types he talks to, but with these people:
a) he forces them to argue religion based on scientific and logical merits, which of course you can't do. But as soon as they attempt to engage in a logical debate (say about the historical record about Jesus, on which point Maher was completely wrong), they've effectively lost.
b) he backs people into a corner where they say or imply that they accept the Bible, as a whole, as truth, at which point they have also lost.
c) if they agree with him that some things in the Bible are patently ridiculous, or that some parts of the modern church are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus, he takes that as tacit agreement that he's right and it's all crap.
d) since he's talking to some average joe type people, they are largely completely ignorant about their own religion, so he can win just by telling them something they didn't know, since they have no opportunity to formulate a response. I note he did not talk to any theologians who were equally informed as him and willing to engage in a debate.
There are a couple of times where after an interview he claims victory, even though he didn't manage any of the above maneuvers. He talks to a muslim who, when he asks about the all the violence perpetrated by muslims, says that that's political and cultural and not about the religion itself. Later, in his tour bus, he says about this statement that the muslim woman who said that knows that it's bullshit, and that the religion is inherently violent, and she just won't admit it because he's an outsider. Now, come on.
Even more obviously, he uses his power as creator of the documentary to recontextualize what people say to make them seem ridiculous, running subtitles under their words, intercutting with inflammatory and not particularly relevant footage. It becomes obvious that no one who talks to him stands a chance. He holds complete control over how this argument goes and how it will be seen to the extent that when one guy refuses to engage, he comes off as tacitly acknowledging that his beliefs are indefensible.
What makes the movie amusing is how much of a jerk Maher is. He says what everyone's thinking but no one would say. When he talks to the ex-gay (an interview he starts by asking if the guy ever has sex with his wife), he tells the guy that he looks gay. It's true. In a very stereotypical way, the guy looked gay, something the audience surely noticed. But by saying that, he makes it completely impossible to engage in any debate at all. It's rather interesting to watch the footwork—most of his interviews go like this:
1-Maher says something incredibly offensive.
2-The interviewee gets offended.
3-Maher then tries to have a meaningful debate.
4-The interviewee, still pissed, lashes out.
5-Maher takes the emotional outburst as proof that religious people are nuts.
Even with all of this, Maher does have a few points, and his manipulative use of intercutting archive footage with interviews occasionally hits the mark. In talking to one evangelical minister (one of those particularly idiotic ones, who tries to argue that Jesus was rich and wants his followers to be rich), the minister tells about advising a young man who was so torn up over a girl he wanted to kill himself. The minister told the man to pour all that emotion into god. Maher immediately inserts an image of a suicide bomber—point well taken.
At the end of the movie, Maher strings together a series of highly emotionally charged images (Challenger blowing up? The hell?) to try to point out that, though he's been playing this for laughs, the fact that there is religious extremism is really menacing. I should warn that one of these clips is of the second plane hitting the Twin Towers, which, as far as emotional manipulation goes, is close to calling someone a Nazi. In this case, it was completely relevant, but I still think it's a cheap shot.
He argues in not so many words that the fact that there are religious extremists who have perpetrated incredible atrocities should be enough for us to say religion is too dangerous. I think he does have a point here, though I don't agree with it. The tendency, when arguing about religion, is for moderates to distance themselves from the extremists—just because some people take it too far doesn't mean that the rest of us do. What Maher is saying is that extremists aren't irrelevant to a debate about whether religion is a force for good—they should be the entire point.
His final point, though, is a bit lost in his oversimplification. Maher, who attributed all history's major wars to religion in an interview with Jon Stewart, is arguing that we need to reject religion (all religions, though he really only addresses the big three monotheistic religions in this movie) and the world will be a better place. I think he's completely wrong here, especially about wars being caused by religion. There have been plenty of religious wars, but most of the time, religion is a cover for some other reason. The Crusades weren't even a strictly religious war—they were as much about trade routes as infidels. Ultimately, most wars happen over territory, trade, resources. Religion is what motivates the troops to fight them for the powerbrokers. Say we could shake off religion—some other ideology would rush in to fill its place. The wars would still be fought.
So overall I found it a very entertaining and thought-provoking movie, though far from convincing. And I'm sure if I tried to argue any of these points with Maher I'd lose, especially if he was editing the tape.
Maher has got a few points, but for the most part, it's an exercise in watching Maher argue badly. The most pervasive flaw, that is repeated over and over, is that Maher pushes religion to its extreme, and then by showing that to be ridiculous, concludes that all of it is ridiculous.
Most of this is in his choice of interview subjects—like the Puerto Rican guy who says he is the second coming of Christ, or the "ex-gay," or the director of the museum of creationism (animatronic dinosaurs playing with children!), or the minister of the church of cannabis. Of course, this makes for some damn entertaining exchanges, but he presents these people as though they speak for all religious people, which they very much don't.
There are some run-of-the-mill moderate religious types he talks to, but with these people:
a) he forces them to argue religion based on scientific and logical merits, which of course you can't do. But as soon as they attempt to engage in a logical debate (say about the historical record about Jesus, on which point Maher was completely wrong), they've effectively lost.
b) he backs people into a corner where they say or imply that they accept the Bible, as a whole, as truth, at which point they have also lost.
c) if they agree with him that some things in the Bible are patently ridiculous, or that some parts of the modern church are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus, he takes that as tacit agreement that he's right and it's all crap.
d) since he's talking to some average joe type people, they are largely completely ignorant about their own religion, so he can win just by telling them something they didn't know, since they have no opportunity to formulate a response. I note he did not talk to any theologians who were equally informed as him and willing to engage in a debate.
There are a couple of times where after an interview he claims victory, even though he didn't manage any of the above maneuvers. He talks to a muslim who, when he asks about the all the violence perpetrated by muslims, says that that's political and cultural and not about the religion itself. Later, in his tour bus, he says about this statement that the muslim woman who said that knows that it's bullshit, and that the religion is inherently violent, and she just won't admit it because he's an outsider. Now, come on.
Even more obviously, he uses his power as creator of the documentary to recontextualize what people say to make them seem ridiculous, running subtitles under their words, intercutting with inflammatory and not particularly relevant footage. It becomes obvious that no one who talks to him stands a chance. He holds complete control over how this argument goes and how it will be seen to the extent that when one guy refuses to engage, he comes off as tacitly acknowledging that his beliefs are indefensible.
What makes the movie amusing is how much of a jerk Maher is. He says what everyone's thinking but no one would say. When he talks to the ex-gay (an interview he starts by asking if the guy ever has sex with his wife), he tells the guy that he looks gay. It's true. In a very stereotypical way, the guy looked gay, something the audience surely noticed. But by saying that, he makes it completely impossible to engage in any debate at all. It's rather interesting to watch the footwork—most of his interviews go like this:
1-Maher says something incredibly offensive.
2-The interviewee gets offended.
3-Maher then tries to have a meaningful debate.
4-The interviewee, still pissed, lashes out.
5-Maher takes the emotional outburst as proof that religious people are nuts.
Even with all of this, Maher does have a few points, and his manipulative use of intercutting archive footage with interviews occasionally hits the mark. In talking to one evangelical minister (one of those particularly idiotic ones, who tries to argue that Jesus was rich and wants his followers to be rich), the minister tells about advising a young man who was so torn up over a girl he wanted to kill himself. The minister told the man to pour all that emotion into god. Maher immediately inserts an image of a suicide bomber—point well taken.
At the end of the movie, Maher strings together a series of highly emotionally charged images (Challenger blowing up? The hell?) to try to point out that, though he's been playing this for laughs, the fact that there is religious extremism is really menacing. I should warn that one of these clips is of the second plane hitting the Twin Towers, which, as far as emotional manipulation goes, is close to calling someone a Nazi. In this case, it was completely relevant, but I still think it's a cheap shot.
He argues in not so many words that the fact that there are religious extremists who have perpetrated incredible atrocities should be enough for us to say religion is too dangerous. I think he does have a point here, though I don't agree with it. The tendency, when arguing about religion, is for moderates to distance themselves from the extremists—just because some people take it too far doesn't mean that the rest of us do. What Maher is saying is that extremists aren't irrelevant to a debate about whether religion is a force for good—they should be the entire point.
His final point, though, is a bit lost in his oversimplification. Maher, who attributed all history's major wars to religion in an interview with Jon Stewart, is arguing that we need to reject religion (all religions, though he really only addresses the big three monotheistic religions in this movie) and the world will be a better place. I think he's completely wrong here, especially about wars being caused by religion. There have been plenty of religious wars, but most of the time, religion is a cover for some other reason. The Crusades weren't even a strictly religious war—they were as much about trade routes as infidels. Ultimately, most wars happen over territory, trade, resources. Religion is what motivates the troops to fight them for the powerbrokers. Say we could shake off religion—some other ideology would rush in to fill its place. The wars would still be fought.
So overall I found it a very entertaining and thought-provoking movie, though far from convincing. And I'm sure if I tried to argue any of these points with Maher I'd lose, especially if he was editing the tape.