The Mom of Cthulhu.

So my sisters have been having problems with their Evangelical neighbors. My brothers-in-law are both Baptists (I believe) and my sister both Catholics so there is already some question as to how the children will be raised without neighbors trying to convince them to come to their Mega Church. These are social problems much less prevalent in the North so many of us may only be familiar with Mega Churches through pop-cultural references/events like the scene from the Borat movie, the Ted Haggard scandal or Jesus Camp etc.

My eldest sister finds her neighbors particularly vexing and asked me to explain their beliefs which, having done an awful lot of religious research lately, I did. Later that week I was considering bringing a copy of Jesus Camp down to Florida with me and leaving it with my sister and asked my mother what she thought. That’s when she laid out the following gem…

“Hollywood hates Christians.”

Wow. Just wow. I was floored. How could my mother, who raised me… a graduate of NYU’s Film School, possibly have such a strange view of Hollywood? How can she, even ignorant of the film industry as she may be, equate one movie, Jesus Camp, a small indie documentary produced by a pair of English people, with the entirety of Hollywood? How can she speak definitively on the views of an entire district of Los Angeles, the equivalent of saying, “The Lower East Side hates Hindus,” and not even use a qualifier or, if she meant the film industry, as I know she did, why didn’t two mega films like The Passion of the Christ and the Chronicles of Narnia have any effect on her view that “Hollywood hates Christians?”

And further, isn’t the statement “Hollywood hates Christians” based on the assumption that Hollywood doesn’t contain any Christians? At which point we’re really just a stutter step away from what I think underlies a statement like “Hollywood hates Christians,” and its this… Hollywood is run by the Jews who hate Christians.

So from the top…

MGM is owned by Providence Equity Partners out of Rhode Island, Texas Pacific Group out of Dallas, Sony out of Japan and Comcast out of Philadelphia (but founded in Tupelo, Mississippi). Damn those Hollywood types! I didn’t check Sony but among the other largest partners I found precisely one person who could potentially be Jewish. MGM’s CEO is Jewish.

Paramont is owned by Viacom, Warner Bros by Time Warner, Universal by General Electric, Columbia also owned by Sony… do you see where I’m going with this? No? Man, you’re slow.

20th Century Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who, though potentially the anti-Christ, also owns Fox News, whose major star Bill O’Reilly is the likely culprit filling my mom’s head with this nonsense.

These are major corporations which run Hollywood far more than, and I’m struggling to come up with a name of anyone who could even vaguely be considered anti-Christian, even if several actors and individual producers or directors have views that conflict with some of Christianity’s views, run Hollywood. So who is a more powerful player in Hollywood than Rupert Murdoch?

I’d further like to point out that every year of my life I’ve been subject to nauseatingly sweet Christmas Specials on every sitcom and dramedy not to mention countless Christmas movies which actually make up more than half of my parents film collection. (Christmas Vacation, The Santa Clause, Home Alone 1 & 2, the Grinch…) Hell, even two of their action movies, Die Hard 1 & 2, both take place at Christmas.

Meanwhile, its not as though I am a champion of Jesus Camp. Its too propagandist to be a straight documentary, yet too mild to fall into a Michael Moore-esque docu-tainment film. It lacks expert interviews to put views into a historical content relying instead solely on the principal subjects to explain things for themselves. This gives you a view that would be the equivalent to just wondering through a Mega Church one day as opposed to partaking in a more comprehensive study. If these problems weren’t major enough the movie conflates the terms Pentecostal and Evangelical. For clarity its my understanding that Charismatic Christians are separate but similar to Pentecostals and are both a subset of Evangelical Christians. On the crazy scale main stream Evangelicalism only begins to approach the lunacy of Pentecostals.

Now, I mentioned that the movie was too mild to fall into the Michael Moore camp, and this is true, I didn’t feel that movie was purposefully misleading anyone (even with charged musical choices), but when you’re depending on virtually any ten year old to convey any vaguely complex idea chances are there will be gross over simplifications and mild confusion. This also extends, really, to any non-expert, which includes the faiths rank and file practicers.

Noting that its not a very aggressive film, I’ll point out that some of the crazier and more insulting (to non-Evangelicals) material didn’t make it into the final film. Such as the parents explaining their idea that the father is going to Iraq to bring Jesus to the Iraqi people, or Ted Haggard’s bizarre comment that the sermons of Catholic Priests were written a “thousand years ago.” Huh? A thousand? Really? Man, they had some amazing predictive powers back then, eh?

Well, I’ve lost the thread of this rant. The point to all this is that I insulted Bill O’Reilly and my mom wouldn’t return my calls (or speak to me at all for that matter) for a week and it’s been the week leading up to my crazy family meeting my fiancée’s crazier family…

So this oughta be a good weekend.