In the defiant spirit of the New Enlightenment and such best-selling authors as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris…
Towards a Cinema of Rationalism
Atheism and Christian Myth in Popular Cinema
a Wider Screenings Guide by Robert Cettl
The Origins of Rationalist Cinema:
Humanity asserts Darwinist Truth over
Theocratic Law
in Politically Satiric Sci-fi Epic
PLANET OF THE APES
HOLLYWOOD POST-DAWKINS!
Religion: Theist "choice" between
competing absurdities
The post 9-11 War on Terror was spear-headed by President George W. Bush, a Born-Again Christian whose slender hold on the US Presidency was delivered to him through the machinations of specialist advisor Karl Rove in courting America's vast and powerful Christian political lobbyists, collectively known as "the Religious Right". Just as Americans were thrust into a system of governance that fused Church and State in Biblical messages of ruthless Judgment inscripted on official White House correspondence - just as they sought to battle Islamic Holy Warriors intent on destablilizing America's "gloablization" agenda in the name of Allah, yet another Invisible Man in the Sky dictating human morality. Cinema in the War on Terror firstly made terrorism a taboo subject in American genre filmmaking - a prohibition that ended with a wave of films in 2007-8 criticizing Bush War on Terror ethical compromises to American democracy in Body of Lies, Traitor, Taxi to the Dark Side, Standard Operating Procedure and director Oliver Stone's boldly satiric denouncement of the Bush government's fusion of Church and State in W.
Concurrent with this revision of popular American genre filmmaking in the War on Terror was the publication of several atheist bestsellers - Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great and Sam Harris' The End of Faith. Their popularity signalled a worrying new sign in the Christian press - militant, political atheism.
The works of these Atheist best-sellers has revolutionized America in ways that cinema is now beginning to respond - from exposing religious absurd stupidity in Bill Maher's Religulous to propagandaistically endorsing the blandest of Patriachal Catholic values in Angels and Demons. Indeed, popular cinema is showing signs of generic revisionism, of using popular genres (such as science fiction and the war movie) for a thematic re-structuring of traditional genre dichotomies according to the principles of secular humanism, scientific rationalism, secular humanism and moral relativism.
Now you can read how this is occuring, and what cinematic antecedents lie behind the current movement towards the Rationalist re-structuring of popular film culture.
Beginning the first systematic atheist study of popular cinema!
Towards a Cinema of Rationalism features chapters analyzing key films and groups of films from a Rationalist-Atheist-Secular Humanist-Moral Relativist Perspective, combining the rigours of Academic film analysis and journalistic editorial scrutiny with the popular user-friendliness of the new world of ebook scholarship.
The Mad Rationalist anti-hero confronts
the failures of the Woodstock generation:
THE OMEGA MAN (read more)
TOWARDS A CINEMA OF RATIONALISM
CHAPTER CONTENTS
* The Christianization of Rationalist Fantasy:
a comparison between three screen versions of Richard Matheson's novel I am Legend, filmed firstly with Vincent Price as The Last Man on Earth, then with Charlton Heston in The Omega Man and most recently with Will Smith in I am Legend. For this Will Smith film, the filmmakers were presented with two endings - one Rationalist and one Christian: they chose to release the film with the Christian ending and its associated ideological dogma. Why and how was an essentially Rationalist screen franchise turned into Summer Christian Propaganda?
* Planet of the Apes as Rationalist Myth:
recent scholarship about the fan favourite science-fiction series Planet of the Apes (the original of course again featuring The Omega Man's Charlton Heston) has it interpreted as a popular race allegory from the Civil Rights era. But although such was the intent of British director J Lee Thompson when as an international journeyman director he took over the last Apes sequels it was not intended that way. Indeed, the original impetus behind the Apes series was the humanist assertion of human individuality (and its Darwinian ancestry) over narrow-minded religious totalitarianism. Why and how did American Film's first Rationalist Screen Epic become one of science-fiction cinema's most beloved series, its popularity enscribed with a Tim Burton remake?
Hollywood Musical Pomp Deployed for Intelligent Design Christian Psuedo-Science ("the God particle") in ANGELS & DEMONS (read more)
* Nazi Humanism as a Rationalist Genre:
the Academy Award winning triumphs of Schindler's List and The Pianist have proven the acceptable face of Holocaust drama but post 9-11 cinema (Hollywood and international) is latching onto Holocaust-related scenarios for an assessment of the role of "faith" in human morality. Thus, Valkyrie posits a Hitler regime founded on Christian Totalitarianism while Defiance and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas vividly render a world in which Theist belief is an irrelevent, dangerous and hypocritical absurdity (God does not answer the prayers of either his chosen people the Jews or of innocent children). How and why is the Rationalist "Nazi Humanist" genre using the Holocaust ethos / saga to establish the danger of religious totalitarianism and re-examine human morality from a morally relativist rather than theist-absolutist frame of reference?
* From Christ Allegory to Christian Messianic Eschatological Fantasy:
the founding spirit of Rationalist defiance in American film has ironically taken the device of the Christ allegory, hence such films as Easy Rider and Cool Hand Luke. Indeed, even at the height of the Cold War, the Rationalist appropriation of Christian myth began in Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (helmed by the man described in the Christian press as "the most powerful Christian in Hollywood") sought to re-deploy Christian Messianic ideology not as allegory (as it was for the Rationalists) but as moral principle, heralding Hollywood's appropriation of the Christian pseudo-science of eschatology (studying Judgment Day) for a revival in apocalyptic fears founded on the clash between science vs. faith in Knowing, Angels & Demons and even through to the Messianic Terminator: Salvation (at cinemas now). How and why did Rationalist Christ allegories turn into Judgment Day crisis of faith fantasies?
AVAILABLE DECEMBER 2009 IN E-BOOK
a Wider Screenings Guide through Inkstone Digital
coming soon to
weekly e-column in
Transforming and Empowering Humanity from "the Freedom of Religion" to "the Freedom FROM Religion"!
