PULP CATHOLICISM #083

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU: JESUS, THE SADDUCEE, AND DR WHO

From the mind of LarryD, with a little assist on the images from yours truly, comes the hereto untold conclusion to the confrontation between Jesus and the Sadducees from Matthew 22.

Head over to Acts of the Apostasy to see the whole thing.

SHORT FEATURE – POPEYE: YOU GOTTA BE A FOOTBALL HERO

For Aleteia this week, I reviewed When The Game Stands Tall, the story of the legendary coach of the De La Salle Spartans, Bob Ladouceur, and how he his team recover their spirits after blowing a 151 game winning streak. As is often the case with films directed by television veterans, the movie is kind of static and in no way flashy. Because of this, I’m pretty sure a lot of the big critics are going to beat it up. Ignore them, it’s a good movie.

Besides, it’s football season. Who doesn’t like the action, the drama, the… spinach?

That Olive Oyl sure is a fickle one isn’t she? It seems like all it takes to sway her affections is a check in the win or loss column.

Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary notes that happiness “implies a state of well-being and not some single experience, and a relative permanence and constancy.” Hence, you can’t expect to experience a lot of happiness in a relationship if you never know what state it’s going to be in from moment to moment.

Oh sure, the occasional fight here and there is fine. But if the whole shebang could end in a moment’s notice just because your significant other happens to glance a big galoot carrying a football better than you, well, I’d say there’s a lack of relative permanence and constancy there. No wonder poor Popeye always has that squinted up face and is mumbling to himself continuously. His woman’s inconstancy keeps him miserable.

Oh well, that’s just another reason to choose a spouse who makes an effort to conform themselves to God. As the Catechism notes, “In all his works God displays, not only his kindness, goodness, grace and steadfast love, but also his trustworthiness, constancy, faithfulness and truth.” Nowhere does it say he’ll dump you for falling behind in a football game.

PULP CATHOLICISM #082

THE B-LIST: 11 MOVIES FEATURING EVIL SEVERED HANDS

I’ll admit, even on a good day, the humor on this site can be a bit obscure. For example, last week I posted a cartoon about religious prejudice and crawling severed hands. Definitely not an SEO post.

The reason for the religious angle you can probably guess pretty easily. But as for why the hands, well, that depends on whether or not you know you’re familiar with all the killer hand flicks released throughout the decades. Let’s take a tour of that particular genre’s cinematic history with 11 movies featuring evil severed hands.

The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)

The granddaddy of all crawling hand movies! Peter Lorre chews up the screen in this tale of a deceased pianist whose hand isn’t ready to stop playing yet.

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

A needle sprouting severed hand AND little green men with bulbous heads who kill their victims with alcohol poisoning? Yes, please!

The Crawling Hand (1963)

Okay, so it’s actually an astronaut’s whole arm crawling around instead of just his hand, but that only makes this MST3K staple all the more silly.

Dr. Terrors House of Horrors (1966)

One of the stories in this venerable anthology features Christopher Lee as an art critic tormented by the disembodied hand of the artist he drove to suicide. A bit of wish fulfillment fantasy from the writers of bad movies perhaps?

And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)

The poster prominently features the “dead hand that crawls”, but most folks just seem to remember the woman who gets assaulted and impregnated by a ghost. Go figure.

The Hand (1981)

A film about a cartoonist’s severed hand putting the squeeze on people starring Michael Caine and directed by Oliver Stone? Yes, it happened. And oddly enough, it’s not considered Stone’s worst film.

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

If you don’t already know about the evil crawling hand in this film, you probably arrived at this site by accident.

Severed Ties (1992)

Another film with a full arm, but this time the experiment gone wrong grows a tail as well. Scientists never learn, do they?

Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)

Technically, the sinister severed hand in this story made it’s debut in the first Waxwork, but it gets a lot more screen time in this one. Bruce Campbell shows up for a few minutes, as well. Guess he likes these hand movies.

Quicksilver Highway (1997)

An anthology composed of stories by Stephen King and Clive Barker sounds like a no-brainer, right? It would, if  only those stories didn’t feature a set of killer chattering teeth and a bunch of hands that rise up against their oppressive human overlords.

Idle Hands (1999)

And finally, it’s the part killer hand/part 90s stoner horror comedy that no one was asking for. It always reaches this point, doesn’t it? If this setup had been done in the 40’s when the whole crawling hand business had just gotten started, it would have been an Abbot & Costello movie. Without all the marijuana, obviously.

So, as you can see, the severed hand genre has been around for a while. Still, we haven’t seen any new evil crawling hands at the theater for some time now. Where’s our reboot of The Beast With Five Fingers? Maybe the lack of dastardly digits in cinemas is because modern writers haven’t figured out an angle to approach the subject matter yet. I mean, what is it about disembodied hands that is supposed to be so unnerving anyway?

It’s possible the whole genre could just be filmmakers playing around with the notion of “Limb Phobia”, the irrational, constant fear of losing a part of your body (not to be confused with Apotemnophobia, the fear of people with amputations). The problem with that is Limb Phobia would account for the horror in seeing the hand cut off, but not so much in its coming back.

Another psychological explanation might lie in Freudian analysis. In his work, The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud discussed Wilhelm Hauff’s fairytale, The Story of the Severed Hand. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that the good doctor reached the conclusion that the amputation in that story “certainly has an uncanny effect, and we have traced that effect back to the castration complex.” Basically, anytime a body part comes off in a story, Freud blames it on the author’s unconscious fear of castration as punishment for inappropriate sexual urges. That’s our Freud (cue laugh track). Again, though, the problem with that hypothesis (one of the problems anyway) is that it only accounts for the fear of losing the appendage, not in having it return.

To get to an idea that includes both separation and return, it might be helpful to look in the Bible. Jesus is quoted in a couple of places as saying, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” He was speaking metaphorically, of course (only certain atheists take stuff like that literally). It was a clever way of telling us we need to completely detach ourselves from whatever sinful habits we may have or immediately remove ourselves from occasions of sin we may find ourselves in.

But as anybody who has ever tried to kick a habit or break an addiction can tell you, that’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Whatever sins troubled us in the past always seem to find a way to come back and try to snare us again. As the Catechism puts it, “If we do not allow the Spirit to lead us, we fall back into the slavery of sin.”

And that’s the subtext likely to be found in a number of these movies. Evil Dead 2 and Idle Hands are the most obvious examples, with demon possessed paws coming back to cause more trouble even after their owners have lopped off the offending appendages. But it works for most of the others as well, with miffed off mitts returning to exact a toll for past sins. Oh sure, you get the occasional social allegory such as with Barker’s story in Quicksilver Highway, but for the most part, crawling hand movies do a fine job of visualizing the difficulty in escaping those parts of our inner selves we’d be better off leaving behind.

All those who agree, please raise your hands. If you’ve still got them, that is.

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

My review for Aleteia this week was for Calvary, John Michael McDonagh’s new film detailing what happens after a good priest receives receives a death threat from a former victim of child abuse during the sacrament of reconciliation. It’s intense, somber, and bleak… and I really liked it. So did The Happy Catholic and she scored a brief interview with the director.

Speaking of serious movies, we’ve mentioned the Vatican’s list of important films before. Well, it looks like R. Jared Staudt, Ph.D. at Catholic Exchange is taking a shot at watching as many as he can.

Moving a little closer towards the stuff we usually discuss around these parts, CNS reports that Archbishop Charles Chaput has gone gaga over the new movie, The Giver, calling it “well above standard ‘family’ fare in quality, rendered by an excellent cast.”

I guess the same can’t be said of Revenge of the Nerds, a film which Catholic Skywalker has decided must be one of the most morally corrosive movies of the 1980s.

For something a little less harsh (okay, not by much), why not head over to the Acton Institute where Joe Carter believes he’s discovered the proper way to understand Snowpiercer, Song Joon Ho’s sci-fi post-apocalyptic action film in which all of humanity lives aboard a giant speeding train.

And finally, in case you haven’t heard about it yet, well known Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin has started a new blog in which he intends to review every single episode of Doctor Who ever made.

Well, that’s enough reading for one week. We’ll see you next time.

PULP CATHOLICISM #081

SHORT FEATURE: THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ON OPRAH

I reviewed the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Aleteia this past weekend and, unless there’s a bug on the site, it seems to have inexplicably become the single most shared thing I’ve ever written. Why? Beats me, it’s just another average review for an average movie. The Internet just doesn’t make sense sometimes.

Of course, there are lots of things involving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that don’t make any sense, like, say, their appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show back in 1990. That went way beyond senseless to… to… I don’t know what. You’ll just have to watch for yourself. Be warned, the video stops around the 3:30 mark and doesn’t return, which is probably merciful.

Um, did Oprah just suggest that April O’Neil should engage in bestiality? Seriously, is there any sexual deviancy daytime talk show hosts won’t approve of? Maybe it’s just because that of the four states in which Oprah owns residences, three of them don’t have laws outlawing getting amorous with animals (the things I research for this blog). Not really surprising in California and New Jersey, I suppose, but Colorado?

Oh well, no matter what the law does or doesn’t say, zoophilia has been a big no-no in God’s eyes since the beginning. Leviticus 18 unambiguously states, “You shall not have sexual relations with an animal, defiling yourself with it; nor shall a woman set herself in front of an animal to mate with it; that is perverse.” No wiggle room there.

Besides the fact that the idea of bestiality is just kind of gross to the majority of people, such a rule also makes sense if you have a good understanding of chastity. Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary defines chastity as “the virtue that moderates the desire for sexual pleasure according to the principles of faith and right reason… Chastity implies an opposition to the immoral in the sense of lustful or licentious. It suggests refraining from all acts or thoughts that are not in accordance with the Church's teaching about the use of one's reproductive powers.”

So, since you can’t be married to an animal (not yet anyway, and certainly never in the sacramental sense) and you can’t naturally produce offspring with one (science is just speciesist in that respect), sexual desire for animals definitely qualifies as a huge sin against chastity. You’d think this notion would be common sense, but you know, some things are just senseless, especially when it involves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

PULP CATHOLICISM #080

THINGS TO COME: BELIEVE ME & LEFT BEHIND

Two trailers for faith-based movies showed up in my inbox today. Here’s the synopsis for the first one entitled Believe Me:

Sam (Alex Russell) stands on stage as thousands of fans go wild. Smart, charismatic, handsome, he moves them with his message, and when he calls for donations to his charity, the money pours in.  Only thing is, Sam doesn’t believe a word he’s saying.  Just months earlier, Sam was a typical college senior focused on keg stands, hookups and graduation. But when a surprise tuition bill threatens his dream of law school and leaves him thousands of dollars in the hole, he’s forced to think outside the box. He convinces his three roommates they can make a killing on the gullible church crowd and the guys start a sham charity, campaigning across the country, raising funds for a cause as fake as their message.  For Sam, embezzlement is easy compared to getting attention from the only person he cares about. When Callie (Johanna Braddy), the tour manager and Sam’s love interest, finally discovers the guys’ ruse, it’s Sam's moment of truth.  On the final night of the tour, before a packed auditorium and alone in the spotlight, Sam must decide what he really believes.

Here’s the trailer…

So, basically, Believe Me is kind of a Millennial take on the old Steve Martin vehicle A Simple Twist Of Fate, just with an overt pro-Christian storyline.

The other movie, which we’ve been awaiting for almost two years now, needs little introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, Left Behind starring Nick Cage…

Okay, so Catholics don’t believe in Left Behind’s premillennial rapture premise, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a film like this. It’s Nick Cage for crying out loud.

Now the interesting thing is, both these movies come out within a few weeks of each other. One is designed to start out seemingly making fun of the faith, but slowly teach a lesson about it. The other is designed to teach a lesson about the faith, but is all but predestined (see what I did there) to end up causing people to make fun of it.

Which movie do you think will probably get some actual mainstream press coverage?

INTERMISSION: WHICH STAR TREK CHARACTER ARE YOU?

So, I had a few minutes in between movies and thought I would take the “which Star Trek character are you” quiz? Can’t say I was expecting this as the answer, though.

Your results:
You are Will Riker

Will Riker 80% James T. Kirk (Captain) 60% Geordi LaForge 60% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 60% Data 59% Jean-Luc Picard 55% Spock 49% Deanna Troi 45% Worf 40% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 35% Mr. Scott 35% Beverly Crusher 35% Chekov 30% Mr. Sulu 30% Uhura 25%

At times you are self-centered but you have many friends. You love many women, but the right woman could get you to settle down.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz...

Self centered? Okay, fine, I can accept that. Many friends? Um, does that mean Facebook friends, or actual face-to-face folks? I’m kind of a hermit, so there’s a big gap between the two. Love many women? Um, maybe three decades ago, but I’ve been married to the same woman for almost 25 years now. Guess that means I found the right one. And just look at that photo. I don’t even have a beard, for crying out loud! Either the accuracy of this quiz is in doubt, or… maybe I don’t know myself quite as well as I thought?

Commander Will Riker once asked, “How the hell do we defeat an enemy that knows us better than we know ourselves?” Not a bad question. Sounds like it would be a good idea to follow Socrates’s advice when he proclaimed, “Man, know thyself.” According to the old 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia article on Socrates, he believed self-knowledge to be the starting point to all knowledge, because “the greatest source of the prevalent confusion was the failure to realize how little we know about anything, in the true sense of the word know. The statesman, the orator, the poet, think they know much about courage; for they talk about it as being noble, and praiseworthy, and beautiful, etc. But they are really ignorant of it until they know what it is, in other words, until they know its definition. The definite meaning, therefore, to be attached to the maxim ‘know thyself’ is ‘realize the extent of thine own ignorance’.”

Oh, well, that’s okay then. I can certainly recognize my own ignorance. After all, I display it often enough on this blog to know it when I see it. It’s a good thing too because, as the Catechism explains, “Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so.” And among those means the Catechism lists are practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, fidelity to prayer, and yes, you guessed it, self-knowledge.

So, basically, it’s easier to resist temptation if we have a firm grasp on just how dumb we can be sometimes. Fate may protect fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise, but a little self knowledge can protect your soul.

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

For Aleteia this week, I reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy. You’ve probably already heard a lot of good things about it. They’re all true, it’s a blast. And let me be among the first to say, if Disney doesn’t release a dancing Groot action figure, they are going to be a lot of disappointed people come Christmastime.

On a more serious note, the Happy Catholic had a chance to take in Calvary, the recent indie film about an innocent priest who receives a death threat during confession from an abuse victim. Like Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s also getting rave reviews, but obviously not for the same reasons.

As for films unlikely to get a good review, Fr. V at Adam’s Ale has seen Sharknado Two; the Second One and wonders just who is going to help clean up the mess it left behind.

On the more philosophical side, The Curt Jester asks us to consider the spiritual implications of Star Trek’s transporter technology.

As long as we’re asking questions, Daniel McInery has 3 of them for director/actor Zach Braff.

And, finally, a little something for animation fans. Aspie Catholic takes a look at the stop-motion feature Mary & Max, while Joe Wetterling at the Barptized imagination ponders the short lived Green Lantern: The Animated Series.

Hope that gives you some fun stuff to read. See you next time.

CUTAWAYS: FLASH GORDON & MARRIED AT FIRST SIGHT

Hey, did any of you out there ever convince your spouse to allow you to use these wedding vows?

On the impossible to one chance someone answered yes, you might want to check into getting your marriage convalidated, because I’m pretty sure it’s not recognized by the Church. As the Catechism notes, “The Church holds the exchange of consent between the spouses to be the indispensable element that ‘makes the marriage.’ If consent is lacking there is no marriage. The consent consists in a ‘human act by which the partners mutually give themselves to each other’: ‘I take you to be my wife’ – ‘I take you to be my husband.’ This consent that binds the spouses to each other finds its fulfillment in the two ‘becoming one flesh.’ The consent must be an act of the will of each of the contracting parties, free of coercion or grave external fear. No human power can substitute for this consent. If this freedom is lacking the marriage is invalid.”

Even in most arranged marriages where the spouses have never met, there is still an element of consent. For example, all the way back in Genesis 24, when Abraham sent his servant to arrange a marriage between Isaac and Rebekah, the girl’s father Bethuel was quick to insist, “Let us call the young woman and see what she herself has to say about it.” Only after Rebekah agreed to the arrangement was the marriage contract finalized.

But is consent all that is needed to make a marriage valid? Maybe you noticed or maybe you didn’t, but a few weeks ago A&E rebranded their Biography channel with the name FYI and introduced a new lineup of reality TV shows (because just what the world really needed right now was more reality TV shows). Of the handful of new titles introduced, the closest FYI has to a breakout hit is the American version of Married At First Sight. Just as the title implies, this show is a “social experiment” in which a small group of people agree to marry, sight unseen, a spouse chosen for them by a panel of psychologists, sociologists, and something called a Humanist Chaplain (basically an atheist with priest envy). After they tie the knot, the three couples are given one month to see how things work out, at which point they may continue on in their arranged marriage or be granted a divorce.

There is no doubt that the couples on Married At First Sight have consented to their arranged marriages. That’s the whole premise behind the show. But if you’re like me, you probably still feel like something is a bit off about the whole deal.

On the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website, For Your Marriage, we find the following: “A valid Catholic marriage results from four elements: (1) the spouses are free to marry; (2) they freely exchange their consent; (3) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children; and (4) their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister.”

Yep, there it is right there. Number three is the problem. I’m not a bishop or canon lawyer or anybody else in a position of authority, but since the marriages on the show have a built-in test period, I don’t see how they qualify as valid given condition number three. I mean, think about the three questions asked of each party in a Catholic wedding. (1) Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? (2) Will you honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives? (3) Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?

The only possible answers to these questions on Married At First Sight would have to be (1) yes, (2) well, at least for the next month, and (3) quit rushing things, we may be divorced before the wedding cake even gets stale. Heck, they may as well use Ming’s vows from Flash Gordon. At least he made his intentions clear up front.

In short, the marriages on the show may be valid from a civil standpoint, but in the eyes of the Church, they aren’t worth the paper the licenses are printed on. That doesn’t mean they can’t be at some point, but for the moment, they are invalid, and certainly not sacramental.

Truthfully, I hope things work out for the couples and that, over time, they will all come to have a deeper understanding of what marriage really is. But as for the “experts” behind the show who think marriage is just another thing to be experimented upon, maybe they deserve a little scorn. With all the hits the institution of marriage has taken over the past half century, it really doesn’t need garbage like Married At First Sight heaped on top of it as well.