Sunday is typically family movie night with the Tribe and last night the boys inflicted Constantine on me. I was held captive by my own set of values of what a good mother is suppose to do. I really need to double check the manual and see if there is an escape clause for demon movies nulling all the obligations of motherhood that requires that I sit there relatively passively. I was suitably irked by the whole concept of demonology so that the blessed big sleep couldn’t overtake me. While watching the movie what struck me as odd is that all these demon/devil films pit Catholics against the Devil/demons types.
Just why is it that Catholics are perceived by Hollywood as the last bastion of hope against the Dark? Where are the Baptists, Lutherans or the Pentecostals? I can understand there being no Presbyterians as the upper echelon of leadership of the USA Presbyterian Church seems to be on a mission to sanctify a number of very human monsters but really where are the other Protestants? Every notice that the devil/demon character types get a real hard on for either fallen or ex-priests? I have yet to see a demon/devil in a movie get very excited about the prospecting of receiving the soul of a United Church pastor.
The only partial exception I can think of is the Left Behind movies but as I have yet to see one I can’t vouch for any Baptists going head for head and battling Beelzebud with dragon’s breathe firing out of some kind of crucifixion gun. I know what my parish priest would say but anyone got an answer? I think the Protestants have a legimate case to be made against Hollywood.
3 comments:
I don't think it's just a Hollywood convention; I have seen some low-budget Brit flicks which have the same bias. You'd think that the Anglican state religion would get a bit more screen time over there.
My guess is that it's a lot easier to postulate fictional ancient Catholic rites involving the bringing together of certain objects and the chanting of certain Latinesque phrases. If you asked a more modern Protestant denomination how to handle the demon problem they'd posit something that basically boils down to "prayer and fasting" -- which seriously limits the dramatic possibilities. No arcane Latin chantery, no time-critical, globe-trotting effort to get the mystical icons of whatever. No water-spritzing, power-of-Christ-compels-you. Know what I mean?
But Chris, fasting and prayer are Catholic rituals as well. I can't count the times some priest in one of the movies recites "yea though I walk through the valley of death I shall fear no evil" whether it is said in latin, English or hebrew is simply a Jewish psalm common to all Christian denominations. But who knows, maybe its the holy water, who else has copious supplies of holy water but the Catholics? I must have twelve bottles in the cupboard myself. I get a new every Easter and what's a demon/vampire movie without the holy water. It just strikes me as a singular particular thing about the genre.
That's true, Kate. I should have been clearer. I'm not saying that Catholics prefer rites grounded in ceremony and superstition -- just that movie studios certainly do. More recent strains of Christianity do not have as lengthy a history, and thus their back-story potential is severely limited.
If you're going to come up with arcane, complicated rites to free someone or something from demon-posession, is it more believeable to have as the token Hollywood-style faith warrior:
1) A Catholic priest, drawing on supposedly forgotten knowledge of the millennias-old Catholic chuch (which claims Jesus' contemporary, the apostle Peter, as the first pope)?; or
2) A Baptist pastor, drawing on supposedly forgotten knowledge of the Southern Baptist Convention (est. 1845 in Augusta, Georgia).
There's been precious few eruptions of incontrovertible demon activity in North America since, say, 1845, and I think that's why newer denominations will be forever locked out of the running.
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