Speaking of people getting frozen in 1945 and waking up to a changed world in the 1960s (as this weekend's box office hero, Captain America, did in the original comics):
I think you could argue that the only two films on the list of 100 highest-grossing (domestic box office) films of all time, adjusted for inflation, that aren't fantasy, action, or historical/epic of some sort are: The Bells of St. Mary's and The Graduate, the first a 1945 film about a priest and a nun rescuing a run-down New York City Catholic school and the other, a mere twenty-two years later in 1967, about a man fresh out of college being seduced by an older woman. Make of that what you will.
(And remember that cowboys are back on the big screen next week.)
As reassurance that my aversion to libidinous 1960s folk does not logically entail a fondness for 1940s Catholics, here is a photogallery of stupid things that Christians think look like Jesus, Mary, or a pope. The one in there of a plant that some guy in India thinks looks like the elephant god Ganesh should give you perspective on how stupid the adulation over the other objects looks to us non-Christians, especially the kudzu that North Carolinians think looks like the Crucifixion. It's plainly more like Swamp Thing (or in a deeper sense, Rorschach).
I think I'd better go to a birthday party full of Skeptics tonight.
P.S. None of this changes the fact that my favorite rock video of perhaps the past two decades is "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie" by the band meWithoutYou, the two brothers at its core, now beloved by evangelical Christian fans due to their spiritual themes, raised Sufi Muslim by parents converted from Episcopalianism and Judasim (and the band brought to my attention by self-described "ignostic" Daniel Radosh, author of Rapture Ready!). Note the emphasis given the "crescent cookie" and "prayer" lines in this song. Also: puppets! Speaking of which: tomorrow, a note on Muppets.
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