Having just finished this fucking philosophy thesis that has been keeping me from loving the internet like I should, a friend recommended me a recent horror film called The Ruins. And it wasn’t bad. To start with, it had that guy from 100 Girls, which is favourite b-grade, pseudo-intellectual teen comedy of all time. I mean, that’s good, but it’s not very scary. And including people from the cast of Pulse was never, ever, ever going to help the success of the movie.

But how many times do we have to sift through the same story in a different setting? The past 20 years of horror movies haven’t seen too much innovation in the genre (disregarding, of course Scream and it’s partner in crime, Scary Movie 1). Apart from an intensification of gore, the storylines consist of ‘regular’ people (just like you and me!) that somehow end up in bizarre situations where their reasonable beliefs are devoured by some supernatural or currently-unexplainable-by-our-science creature that has somehow managed to evade not only scientists but batshit insane cryptozoologists for centuries. This supernatural mystification, that giant Other lurking in the background - and it has to be the background, for how else would it be unexplainable?? - is pretty much essential as a plot device. Otherwise, how can we get scared?? How many Saw-esque movies based entirely on gritty special effects and gore scenes are we gunna have to watch before we get bored? Looking at the imdb database of top rated horror movies, the most recent horror film that sits in the top 50 seems to be Evil Dead II, the other two notable exceptions being Grindhouse and Sean of the Dead, which are both parodies of the genre in a sense. This is surely saying something. But what????

The first answer that comes from the lips of many friends: aren’t you just fucked up? This shit is brutal, man. But you’ve spent so much time on the internet and researching strange social fetish groups (religion included, of course) that you’ve become desensitized to the brutality! But the words just make me think of Metalocalypse and how funny death by metal can be. Is parody all that’s left here? We all laugh at Nazi jokes, even if the methodological slaughtering of Jews was the worst tragedy of the reasonable and industrial modern world. If parody is all that’s left, this cynical, jaded apathist won’t be disappointed - it may even be worthwhile.

But a man like myself who so often falls into inconsistent banter cannot rest content at this though - why do I keep watching if every story has been told over and over in the back of my mind? It is not true that every supposed horror film I’ve witnessed in the past few years has been full of crap. Of course it’s not. But when I think to the ones I hold in esteem, what is the link? Audition was the most recent addition to my favourites collection, and among recent non-parodical horror Cannibal Holocaust and Devil’s Rejects sits up there too, despite my not liking it at all at first. Takashi Mike has given me a few good cringes and laughs, to be honest. But it’s hardly fair to group him with other western gore/horror directors.

There’s a decent theory spinning around my mind about this: we educated westerners have forgotten how to be scared. We’ve grown so accustoms to the clichés of genre that we can predict every movement that is made on the screen. Of course the critical girl is going to die. Of course there’s going to be a male who scarifies himself in hope that some weaker character can escape, and of course there’s going to be that shot that so obviously hints that this redemptive hope can never be realised. Either that, or like the fucking bastardization of I am Legend we are presented with some ridiculous eutpoian religious salvation. And this deluded hope is obviously enough to tide over most of the people who watch movies like this. The money makers are the films that play on many people’s greatest fear: that we will not be saved from death, that there is no salvation for any of us. A few may offer a happy conclusion in some redemptive state, but the horror has been looked into; the temporary status of life, the futility of redemption. But for us educated bunch, believing something in spite of evidence is more than a little silly. Hence, our horror films are parodies of the great alien invasions or supernatural travesties of decades past.

But does this mean that there is no redemption for horror?? Are we condemned to be the reclusive ironists of the film industry? I think not. And the reason I think this is that what we know is a hell of a lot scarier than what we do not know. The recent success of the prominent new-atheist movement attest to this: the fact that there are a billion people out there who would kill you for their gods is fucking scary. The Dionysian brutality of human nature will always be scarier than whatever bullshit ’supernatural’ theme that the modern monotheistic majority can throw at us. And if this is too ‘brutal’, too fucked up for your liking, than maybe you should stick to reading your bible than watching these shitty, repetitive and unconvincing horror films.

 Unfortunately, and rather obscurely, this movie has no men on fire (I don’t recall any, but I was rather drunk when we watched this). But like any movie in the action genre you have hyper-masculine, masochistic, wounded protagonists spinning off cheesy one-liners as they kill everyone and everything in their way – in an often convoluted manner.

Even more unfortunately, the plot for this movie was stolen directly from Rambo II. John Creasy, ex-CIA (Rambo, ex-army), depressed at the failings of his previous occupation, takes a new job in hope of redemption, fails new job, goes on redemptive killing spree. But whereas Rambo was inspired by post-Vietnam America, Man on Fire is inspired by Bush-administration family values.

With this in mind, one shouldn’t be surprised at all the random cross-and-crucifixion shots dished out. The problem is that appealing to family values and Jesus is more difficult when you’re trying to make a gory, sadistic action film.

Firstly, the ‘bad guys’ are in an organised religion. Institutionalised enemies are good bad-guys, because even if their motivation is the same as the good-guys, their deeds can be rationalised within a hierarchy. The bad guys are pointed out always saying “we’re professionals – we’re just doing our jobs”, implying some Nazi–bureaucracy where no single person thinks that they are to be held responsible. In this film, it is the individual that is responsible – for his own salvation, for the family (that he represents) and for justice itself. Welcome, protestant audience.

There are obvious verbal pushes to indicate how personal justice (ie. Vengeance) is more efficient than organised justice. The police point out that Creary is doing more to remove corruption in the force than they could hope to achieve in years of organised work.

The problem, as it normally is in these types of movies, is where does the justification for this overkill arise? This is especially problematic when there is also a Christian theme. The injustice of the seedy Mexican underworld is made out to be the construction of a chain of corruption: man-made evil. The free-will defence is being applied here. There is no injustice in the natural scheme of things, but the actions of free men imposed it regardless. So technically, it’s up to men to fix it, right?

Here is the scary crux of the free-will argument. The divine punisher, the imposer of God’s will, is no longer God. Men must take up God’s will, whatever religious creed they have been indoctrinated into. The bible says to forgive, and only God can pass judgement. So says an old man to Creary. But, Creary says, they have an appointment up there – and he’s just pushing them to the front of the line.

And this line of reasoning is what made this movie so fucking scary to me. The way that these action films are meant to work is that we, the audience, are supposed to empathise with the protagonist and his struggle, and cheer his overkill, revel in his Dionysian bloodlust. But this is the deus-ex-machina of religious fanaticism. This is the hundreds of martyrs and saints killing the heathens in hope of apocalypse.

This is a reminder of the dangers of religious justification and its implication to everyone in a free society.

The new movie I am Legend cries the catch phrase “The last man on Earth is not alone”. Matheson’s book on which the movie is based has Vampires and a rather pessimistic twist at the end, offering us interesting thoughts about xenophobia. The point to the new interpretation is much simpler. Will Smith’s character will be fine in a zombie-filled world because god is with him.

All the ridiculous suffering in that occurs in this movie is reduced to human ignorance. In trying to cure cancer, scientists unwittingly introduce an airborne virus that turns its hosts into zombies. It is this “playing god” (in inverted commas for many reasons) that leads to the destruction of the majority of the people in the world. Blatant cross-bearing and prayer seems tame after Will Smith’s character is given a Jesus-like sacrifice for the good mankind deal and the small human settlement that survives has a few buildings and a big fuck-off church.

Not only is the flimsy at best free will defence employed, but the movie fucks up its theology in trying to make a zombie film into a jesus story. For starters, it should be pointed out that it’s not a fucking sacrifice if the one who is being sacrificed tried to commit suicide a few hours beforehand and has no reason to live.

Most importantly for the bad theology, these types of “playing god” ideas are implicitly new-age environmentalist at heart. The logic runs something like this: god is good, what god made is good, if we interfere there is the possibility of making it bad. Maybe this is how environmental extremists sometimes value the natural world over humanity itself, relegating us to being simple groundsman here to serve the world’s bidding in some impossible communication with a pantheistic being. But in Genesis, Adam is given dominion over the world. The Christian analogy fails here too.

What’s worse is that the “playing god” scenario isn’t even a Christian idea - it was stolen from the Greeks and their silly ideas about fate. Oedipus tries to change the natural order of things, and being a mortal, eventually fails.

The idea of the wrongness of interfering is an impossible one, even if a god sat up in heaven stroking his beard in our general direction. Geneticists often get accused of “playing god” in manipulating DNA. But when it comes down to it, how could one not interfere? We have been genetically modifying animals for centuries, choosing which stock to keep, valuing those that are most ‘domesticated’. An analogy can be made with the larger picture: how could we tend to the world, living in it and manipulating it (even by sitting still), without interfering with it? Ways of knowing what’s best for the world involve living in the world and current religious zealousness conceives of us as mere visitors that should leave the place as we found it when we leave. Just as circumstance is going to affect genetics, every one of our actions will be interfering with the world and “playing god” because we’re part of it.

The movie closes on a shut-in compound, enclosed from the world and centering on the church. Now I think about it, it does seem fitting. Otherworldliness thinks itself to be clean and free from the dirt of our animal, worldly and finite behaviour. Truth is that no man is ever an island and anyone thinking themselves outside of the world is simply deluding themselves.

    It has probably come to everyone’s attention that December has arrived and Christmas, whatever that means to us, is around the corner. Although I hear that Americans atheists have to suffer the torments of a hegemonic Christian reading, down here in Australia a rather secular tone is wafting out streets. Still, everyone in the West, regardless of nation, must put up with the horrible TV schedule dished out to us. Dodgy re-runs and cherished “Christmas Classics” permeate our poor television sets and for someone who in normal, non-holiday circumstances has the privilege of downloading whatever they want to watch it can be quite a traumatic experience.

With the largely secular atmosphere down here there is not too much for an atheist to say. Theism is sometimes tacked onto the end of a news broadcast, but most of the attention goes north to visit Santa. All those Christmas-Santa-ish movies are being screened at the moment. Last night it was The Santa Clause. Tonight it is Elf or something. They all follow the same plot: disenchanted parent (most likely a business autocrat of some type) realizes that the world can be an exciting, enchanted place due to some magical happening and despite being regarded as delusional by those around them continue in their sugary existence. THE END. The (more often than not) bitter skeptical characters such as the step-father in The Santa Clause are shown to be the irrational ones, having committed to their mechanistic beginnings at an early age (the step-father stopped believing in Santa after being disappointed at age three). They invested so much of their personality in being heartless that they cannot accept any enchantment when it is presented to them.

Sure, if an elf from the North Pole started talking to me I would not be in a position to doubt its existence. But if no one else could see it I would most likely check myself in to some sort of Institution and stop drinking so much. And so skepticism is treated in these films as being one of the more disgusting traits of humanity. Oh, us bitter, joy-killing, godless heathens!

But if you really want to milk the stereotypical Mr. Gruff, you will find that it is not the religious zealots who are benefiting from the caricature. Kmart started stocking tinsel about a month ago (I know this because I have a tinsel fetish). The famous Myer ‘Christmas Window’ in Melbourne opened a few weeks ago too. Shopping centers are the source of enchantment for everyone at this time of year, including the religious. If anyone hears of a religious family not buying each other presents they will be accused of being cold and bitter; disenchanted from the spirit of giving at Christmas. The joyful Christmas displays generally exist solely around the sites of consumerism that we worship to a larger extent around this time of year, with ‘Meet Santa’ booths opening everywhere. The festivity is here to intoxicate us, with those 50% of my street competing to see who can muster up the most extravagant lights display on their front lawns.

The problem is that this is such a religious event - it seems scarily all-encompassing. If I do not buy a gift for my girlfriend I will most likely be dumped and if I neglect my family members I will be shafted as the greedy and selfish black sheep. I enjoy the fact that this time of year makes everyone happy, but I never asked for gifts! I don’t want gifts, for fucks sake, I’m a philosophy major who has his bass and his computer and is content!

But anyway; while it is hard for the disenchanted to get out of participating, we should at least try to keep a cynical, condescending eye open to mock the spirituality of the other, right? And now I need my morning coffee.

Preaching to the choir.

Gives no compelling moral reason to reject certain aspect of religious belief, such as faith (Sam Harris).
Gives no intellectual (edit: epistemological) reason to question its plurality and origin (Daniel Dennett).

I want a documentary written by these two and hosted by Richard Dawkins (but only for his charm and sexy accent). And probably edited by someone with a qualification - I mean really, even 9/11 conspiracy docos have better production.

Sorry Flemming, but you’re not going to make people think focusing on a singular religion.