TINSELTOWN TESTAMENTS

GALATIANS 5:21

Douay-Rheims Version: “Envies, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.”

Revised Standard Version: “Envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

New American Bible: “Occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Animal House: “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

STILL VOICES #016

WEEKLY NEWSREEL – 3 1/2 TIME-OUTS TUESDAY (VOL. 38)

Good evening Mr. & Mrs. Catholic, and all you other Christians at sea. It’s time for another Newsreel, sponsored yet again this week by the fine folks at Acts of the Apostasy, home of the 3 1/2 Time-Outs Tuesday. Now off to press.

I

The Washington Post notes that, in Israel, glasses that blur your vision is “the latest prescription for extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex… The ultra-Orthodox community’s unofficial ‘modesty patrols’ are selling glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses. The glasses provide clear vision for up to a few meters so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry …so they don’t have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed.” Well, we Christians have always lived by the Gospel adage “if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.”, so we can certainly appreciate the sentiment being expressed by our Jewish friends here. But, you know, “if your eye causes you to sin, then slightly obfuscate your vision with silly eyewear” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

II

Lest you think the Orthodox Jews are overreacting, CBS reports that “a recent study finds that our brain objectifies women as different body parts, while viewing men as a whole. The study, published in June’s European Journal of Social Psychology, was conducted by Sarah Gervais, a psychology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She conducted experiments by presenting 227 participants of the study with images of men and women, finding that men were perceived as a ‘global’ - or whole – cognitive processing level, while women were seen on a “local” cognitive processing level… ‘We don’t break people down to their parts, except when it comes to women, which is really striking. Women were perceived in the same ways that objects are viewed… We always hear that women are reduced to their sexual body parts; you hear about examples in the media all the time,’ Gervais said in the study. ‘This research takes it a step further and finds that this perception spills over to everyday women, too.” Interestingly, while Gervais’ study demonstrates the truth of the objectification of women in our culture, it doesn’t appear to offer any explanations as to why such a thing is happening. Fortunately, Pope Paul VI already tackled that problem in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (as noted in our definitely PG-13 review of Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls) and offered us a few solutions on how to combat the ill effects of the sexual revolution. Maybe in another few decades science will catch up to those as well.

III

Alas, it would appear that our eyes aren’t the only thing causing us trouble these days. Our ears are having problems also. Reuters passes along the information that “researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.” And what were the results? They "found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse… [and] obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years… They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.” Basically, they have conclusive proof that today’s pop music is vapid, monotonous, and inconsequential. We here at the B-Movie Catechism will simply let the facts stand as they are with no editorial, but if any of you feel compelled to insert your own snarky comment regarding contemporary Christian music here… we’re not going to stop you.

III 1/2

And finally, speaking of ears, Live Science relates the tale of “a woman who checked into China's Changsha Central Hospital Wednesday (Aug. 8) with an itchy ear [and] learned she had a small spider dwelling in her ear canal, according to news reports. It had crawled inside five days earlier while she slept.” We’re not sure if there are any spiritual insights to be discerned in this story or not, but we just couldn’t resist passing along this bit of nightmare fuel.

AHHH! AHHH! AAAHHHHHH!!!!

And with that we sign off this week’s Newsreel, as is our custom, with the immortal words of the great Les Nessman. Good evening, and may the good news be yours.

OUTTAKES #042

OUTTAKES #041

Oh yes, the clips are absolutely from a real movie. Allow me to introduce you to Homodi, better known around these parts as Turkish ET Part 2. Never let it be said we don’t support foreign filmmakers here at the B-Movie Catechism.

THE B-LIST: MOVIES THAT WOULD BE BETTER WITH ROBOTS IN THEM

Even though I’ve got a backlog of my own stuff to finish up, like any good blogger I’ll shamelessly steal anybody else’s premise if I think it’ll make for a decent post. So when frequent commenter Xena passed along a link to Tor Book’s 10 Movies That Really Need Robots, I knew I couldn’t let it pass by without putting a little B-Movie Catechism spin on it. You see, while Tor’s list is perfectly fine, it’s just a little too grounded in mainstream sci-fi for my tastes. In my opinion, if you’re gonna make a mash up of chick flicks and robot pics, then you really need to use bots from B-movies in order to get the most bang for your bucks.

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STEEL AND LACE MAGNOLIAS

For example, Tor suggests that what the perennial tearjerker Steel Magnolias really needs is a robotic hairdresser in order to provide some comic relief. Which is kind of confusing, because I thought that was the role already played by Darryl Hannah in the movie. No, instead of going that route, what would truly make Steel Magnolias better would be an extra 30 minutes in which Sally Field’s character, unable to cope with the tragic death of her daughter, digs up Julia Roberts’ body and transforms it into an unstoppable, yet still quite fashionable, robot zombie. Sure, she’d have some mild psychotic episodes, but on the plus side, It’s a good bet that nasty old Ouiser would finally learn to keep her mouth shut after Robo-Julia pulled out the power drill.

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DELIVER US FROM EVA DESTRUCTION

You know, an urban update on Taming of the Shrew isn’t really a bad idea, but don’t you think it could be just a tad bit better if, in addition to being a complete diva, Eva turned out to be a runaway robot armed with an onboard nuclear warhead that could go off at any moment? Surely Shakespeare would approve.

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DEADLY FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Want to know how to spruce up a tired by-the-numbers outing in which two friends foolishly agree to attempt a sexual relationship with no emotional strings attached? Well, how about making Mila Kunis’ character a robotically resurrected woman with a silicon chip on her shoulder? That way, instead of just getting all mopey when she begins to realize how empty the arrangement is, she could fly into a fit of rage and smash Justin Timberlake’s head in with a basketball. Now that’s entertainment.

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THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT CHERRY 2000

In this version of the Farrley Brothers gross out rom-com, the obsessed stalker hopelessly lovesick Ben Stiller wouldn’t have to bother trying to track down his old high school infatuation. Instead, all he would need to do is run down to the local WalMart and buy his very own sex robot version of her to keep around the house. What? Like that would constitute anymore of an objectification of women than the stuff the original version put on screen? Doubtful.

Actually, you could probably make a good argument that most of the B-movies (and a couple of the mainstream ones) noted above objectify or fetishize women in some way or another. Robot movies just seem to be a natural outlet for bringing up such issues. Cherry 2000, for example, provided a perfect opportunity to discuss the problems that arise when we dehumanize our sexuality. But there are also non-sexual issues that robot movies bring up as well. Both Steel And Lace and Deadly Friend deal with bereaved individuals who take the dead bodies of their loved ones and provide them a pseudo-resurrection through the use of robotics. And unfortunately, while we might understand grief driving someone to commit such an act, as Catholics we can’t really approve of such a desecration of human remains.

The Catechism explains that “the bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit. Autopsies can be morally permitted for legal inquests or scientific research. The free gift of organs after death is legitimate and can be meritorious. The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body.” As Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk notes, these teachings are a natural extension of the fact that “Catholic moral thought does not regard body and soul as entirely separate. Rather, it recognizes that human beings are embodied spirits. That means the body is more than just a container for the soul. The Church’s concern for the dignity of the human person extends, therefore, to the body even after the soul is no longer present.” So, based on all that, I think it’s pretty safe to say that stealing the bodies of the dead and grafting robot parts onto them, especially for one’s own emotional benefit rather than that of the deceased, would not be treating human corpses in a manner that affirms their unique dignity as a human person created in the image of God. Just in case any of you were thinking about trying such a thing, now you know.