Urban Thought Collective

RELIGULOUS (R)

MOVIE BIASES:
As an agnostic and fan “Real Time with Bill Maher,” bring it on.

MAJOR PLAYERS:
Bill Maher (HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”) and director Larry Charles (Borat).

Remember when there used to be separation between church and state? Or, better yet, WHY there’s supposed to be such a separation? In an age where more and more (of one) religion is being crammed down America’s secular throat under the tacit approval of an administration that has openly admitted using God as impetus for FOREIGN POLICY, Bill Maher, a self-proclaimed libertarian atheist and $^@#$* proud of it, dares tackle the seldom-discussed Third Rail of American society: religion. Why do people cling to, depend upon, or revel in it? What is its current role in American society, and why? And, more pointedly, what is the point behind religion? Strap in for an uncomfortable review of an often touchy subject that may have you cursing Bill Maher and THE REEL DEAL’s names. All in the name of the Lord, of course.

“I honestly believe that religion is detrimental to human progress…It’s selling an invisible product.” Tell us how you REALLY feel, Bill! Crisscrossing the world (Amsterdam, Israel, the U.S., London, etc.), comedian/political provocateur Bill Maher deadens his aim squarely on the cross (or Torah or whatever) in an outsider’s not-so-innocent investigation behind religion and those whom adhere to it. Maher casts the blinding interrogation light on as many religions as he can cram into a two hour documentary, from Christianity and Catholicism to Islam and the Church of Latter Day Saints.

En route, Maher examines the social ramifications religion plays upon civil rights (homosexuality), economics (profit gospel), and international relations (nationalism and terrorism). When Maher asks basic but loaded questions of believers, experts, scientists, Senators, and the like “Why is faith good?” his subjects’ emotional, visceral, and oftentimes offended responses fuel the dialogue of this film.

Openly preaching “the gospel of I Don’t Know,” Maher exposes the arrogance of religious absolutism with dark and wholly inappropriate humor that belies the gravity of his thesis. Larry Charles proves that “Borat” was not all pointing a camera in the general direction of Sacha Baron Cohen and watching him go. The Hassidically bearded director keeps pace with his resolute but curious protagonist by offering subversively subtitled interpretations of subjects’ sanctified responses along with deftly edited and interspersed archival footage to underscore key points with humor and relevance.

Charles also seems to know how to rein Maher in, if Maher himself doesn’t. Famous for his moments of towering self-righteousness on his oftentimes profane, pay cable TV show where he’s used to controlling the horizontal and the vertical, Maher and his personal certitude wonderfully takes a backseat to allowing his subjects’ POVs to shine, although he still skewers them with pointedly simple, direct questions, suggestions, and commentary designed to extract TRUTH out of the interview, the person, or the religion itself.

He compares the fairy tale suspensions of disbelief needed for Christianity and other religions to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (”You don’t believe in Santa Claus but you believe in a talking snake??”). Maher goes one-on-one with a Jesus impersonator at Orlando’s Holy Land theme park over the ludicrousness of the Virgin Birth. In laying out the tenets of Scientology at London’s Speakers’ Corner, he becomes convinced that being religious is a bit of a “neurological disorder.” Even the Mormons’ magic underpants and exclusive policy toward African-Americans get a goosing. That SOOO many people he knows or interviewed are just so sure about their beliefs, their God, their faith, go to the heart of his own disbelief: “Faith means people who don’t have all the answers acting like they do.”

To Maher, religion, on the face of it with its morally instructional tall tales, creation stories, and violent, fiery ends (many religions prophesize of an Armageddon or Judgment Day of some sort), is just as goofy as it is dangerous. I am inclined to agree. Although there is nothing goofy about one’s having faith - one of those aspects of life that, for me, is most genuine when it is more personal - the dangers of the interpreters of religion, if not the tenets of some religions themselves, should give any Constitution-loving American pause.

You have those church leaders who openly pimp their congregations for material gain (Maher’s interview with “Dr.” Jeremiah Cummings of Ezra Center is particularly, almost inspiringly contradictory in every way) in the name of the Jewish carpenter who preached against the abuses of excessive wealth. You have those who have perennially used the ancient, very fallible nature of the Bible (sorry, y’all - it was written by men, and not all at one time), and its four wildly varying versions, as literary credit cards they use to underwrite their prejudices (”I don’t hate [gays],” claims one subject. “God hates them.” Nice!). You have those who use religion to influence people any way they want because they claim they ARE Him; Jose Miranda, a man who claims to be the direct descendant of Jesus Christ with 100,000 followers worldwide, preaches that sin itself doesn’t exist anymore. PARTY!!

Of course, you also have those normal, average, mythically Palinesque “working-class people” who simply believe what they believe and you cannot tell them any different. To that end, Maher is respectful yet resolute in asking them to elucidate upon their faith: “Why is believing something without evidence good?”

That is Maher’s fundamental question, my fundamental question. As an agnostic-ish person, I’ve always been “I’ll believe it/God when I see it.” If I can’t touch or otherwise prove it to myself with one of my five senses, science, or logic, I don’t believe it. That’s my right to believe what I want to believe, right? With a rampaging Christian in office plunging us headlong into “freedom”-quests to parts of the world that have as much pride and even more history than the U.S., somewhere along the way it became un-American to believe in something other than God.

Appreciate how Bill Maher boldly thrusts such a national fallacy into sharp relief by reminding us how American it IS to question everything, respect everybody, and to basically just do you. Sure, he preaches largely to the (non-)converted; “Religulous” probably won’t sway you one way the other, kinda like the electorate during these presidential debates. Still, it’s healthy, Hell (hee hee), AMERICAN to have the discussion.

Believing in God, not believing in God, or questioning why to believe in a faith at all doesn’t make any one of the three more or less American, because these differences are FUNDAMENTALLY American.

It would be un-American to assume or propose that we all are or should be monolithically Christian. It would be un-American to blur the line between church and state (oops - did I just call our “saved,” pigheaded, 29% approval rated, college C-average bailout Bush a Communist? My bad. But he ain’t acting American…). It would be un-American to hate on this review because you and I don’t believe the same things!

Okay, maybe not; sorry, got a little carried away there. But that is the ever-loving point, the thing that makes America one of the greatest countries in the world: our constitutionally granted ability to, and respect of, dissent; it’s in the literal fabric of the country. Pardon my frustration at the co-opting of Christianity as national foreign policy that has made us less secure and more reviled around the world. If you think God wants us to “win the war on terror” or our beer league softball game, you just might have a “neurological disorder.” It’s GOD. Why would He/She/It CARE?

While Bill Maher attests that “Religion must die in order for mankind to live,” I disagree. I think all religions and their adherents need to learn how to play nicely with others and just get along without trying to proselytize to, intimidate, or convert each other, much like the 16% of us nonreligious Americans who regularly put up with open displays of overzealous religious tomfoolery. Don’t use it to wage a war/fatwa/uprising, justify slavery, or force-feed me the teachings of Joseph Smith on my doorstep. Use religion the way it was meant to be, as a personal affirmation of life, community, and powers beyond your control. While you may be sure about God and faith and all that, I, like Maher, am not. “Doubt is humble,” claims Maher because “the most human thing about us is our mistakes.”

What is so great about a film like “Religulous” is that it can get us all talking about and exploring our different viewpoints with respect and without the need to intellectually colonize each other. Even if you’re cussing my heathen ass out for this review. It’s your right - enjoy it. Just like I did “Religulous.”

@@@@ REELS
(FOUR REELS)
An urban legend/instant classic

UTC’s resident film critic Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for The 213 Magazine, and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com where his new novel I DO? is available NOW.