PULP CATHOLICISM #140

PEANUTIZE THYSELF!

By now, I’m sure you’ve all seen images from the Get Peanutized! website popping up everywhere in celebration of the upcoming Peanuts Movie. Well, since I’m a movie kind of guy, I thought I would give it a spin…

I don’t know, something’s missing. Maybe it’s the mustache. After all, I started growing the thing when I was fourteen and I’ve only shaved it off once in my life at the request of a girlfriend (something she immediately regretted, naturally). So, let’s try adding that in…

Not bad, but still not quite there. I just can’t put my finger on what it could be. Oh wait! Now I know…

Perfect.

Hey, it’s like the old Delphic Maxim said, “Know thyself.” Of course, since that was just two words inscribed on a temple wall, the maxim wasn’t exactly long on explaining why such self-knowledge is important.

For the Catechism, self awareness is a necessary part of being able to properly live a holy life. “It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection: Return to your conscience, question it… Turn inward, brethren, and in everything you do, see God as your witness.”

So, go forth and Peanutize thyself. Just, you know, keep it honest.

DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY: PULP CATHOLICISM #007

This is one I drew back in March 2013 when Pope Francis was first elected. The tendency of the networks at that time to concentrate their coverage on a handful of protestors while ignoring the throngs of happy thousands gathered in St. Peters Square was painfully transparent. Equally obvious was just how miserable those pitiful protestors seemed in comparison to the joyous Christians they were railing against. I’ve actually experienced this dichotomy firsthand during the various Walks For Life I’ve participated in. One year, during which two sad middle-aged women dressed in vagina costumes stood on the sidewalk screaming obscenities as we marched by, is particularly etched in my mind.

The tactics have changed for Pope Francis’ visit to the States, though. Instead of concentrating on the protestors, the networks are instead working overtime to spin the Pontiff’s words to support their desired narrative. And I suppose I have to grudgingly admit that to some degree they’re succeeding. Still, it’s taking some creative editing on their part, as the Pontiff I’m hearing is doing his best to deny the political gain anyone hopes to make out of his words. Take his speech to Congress, for example, which was a master class in deflating the sails of the political class.

POPE: We must address the problem of climate change for the good of the family.

DEMOCRATS: Hooray!

POPE: An institution, by the way, which your policies are destroying.

DEMOCRATS: (befuddled silence)

POPE: We must also recognize the sanctity of human life at all stages of development.

REPUBLICANS: Yippee!

POPE: Which includes, by the way, the lives of every rat bastard on death row.

REPUBLICANS: (sounds of crickets chirping)

Okay, so I’m paraphrasing.

The point is that the paltry platforms of political parties pale in comparison to the moral demands of religion. As the Catechism states, “The diversity of political regimes is legitimate, provided they contribute to the good of the community… The common good consists of three essential elements: respect for and promotion of the fundamental rights of the person; prosperity, or the development of the spiritual and temporal goods of society; the peace and security of the group and of its members.” Let’s be honest, none of the Frankenstein patchwork of “values” put forth by either party comes close to meeting all of those requirements, so it was kind of amusing to see His Holiness, however gently, call them on it. Naturally, the news selectively edited his comments later for their highlight reels, but still, it was fun while it lasted. Of course, I’m a Christian, so I can always find some reason to smile.

PULP CATHOLICISM #139

OUTTAKES #054

PULP CATHOLICISM #138

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

I haven’t been going to see too many new releases lately, so I thought I would try and get back into the swing of things over at Aleteia before awards season kicks into high gear. Alas, 90 Minutes In Heaven probably isn’t going to be receiving any nominations anytime soon. Still, I wasn’t too harsh on it because I’m pretty tired of beating up on faith-based films. They really are making an effort to address all of the criticisms they’ve gotten over the past few years in regards to poor stories, bad acting, and overall lack of quality. They’re not quite there yet, but at least they’re trying.

Speaking of awards, the Bible Films Blog takes a quick look at Cecil B. DeMille’s only picture to ever net him the Oscar for Best Director… The Greatest Show On Earth. Yep, that’s right, not The Ten Commandments, for which he didn’t even get nominated. At least he got one, though. There are some folks who would do just about anything to achieve that. In fact, at ChurchPop, Joseph Sciambra details how there are some famous people who have sold their soul to Satan just to make it in Hollywood.

It’s almost enough to make a person lay off movies and actually read something for a change, isn’t it? Good thing The Sci-Fi Catholic recently popped back up with a recommendation for the Sci Phi Journal, a magazine that harkens back to the pulps of old while also aiming to showcase stories built around philosophical concepts. With something along those lines as a goal, author Declan Finn has an article up at Catholic Geeks discussing what its like to try and write Catholic romance with a bloodsucking twist.

If you enjoy that kind of horror stuff, then drop by Catholic World Report where Anne Hendershott and Daniel Kempton do their best to make a convincing argument that Stephen King provides the last bastion of biblical morality in popular fiction. If you prefer Sci-Fi, though, then stick with Catholic Skywalker as he offers his opinion on the first gay character to appear in Star Wars canon.

And finally, a kind reader pointed me towards the Comics Are My Religion column over at Comic Attack, so I’m passing it along to you for your reading pleasure. There’s quite a few articles up, though, so you might want to have one of these tasty Bat-Burgers if you’re perusing the selections around lunchtime.

And if that’s not enough to keep you busy for awhile, I don’t know what is. See you next time.

CUTAWAYS: GIRLFRIEND FROM HELL

Ever heard someone toss around the old term Church Militant? Well, I think I’ve discovered video evidence of just what that means in this clip from 1989s Girlfriend From Hell…

Okay, so maybe not.

Perhaps its best if we just stick with the old Catholic Encyclopedia’s explanation. It tells us how the word Ecclesia, meaning body of believers, “may signify the whole body of the faithful, including not merely the members of the Church who are alive on earth but those, too, whether in heaven or in purgatory, who form part of the one communion of saints. Considered thus, the Church is divided into the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant.”

Taking a closer look at this division, it goes like this.

• The Church Militant refers to members of the Church on Earth, the ones actively living a Christian life and working together to try and make things on Earth as they are in Heaven. 
• The Church Suffering refers to the members of the Church who didn’t quite attain their full perfection in life and are now in Purgatory getting cleaned up a bit.
• The Church Triumphant describes the members of the Church who have already made the cut and are in Heaven praying for the rest of us.

The Catechism doesn’t actually use the old terminology anymore (maybe the word militant is just too scary these days), but it does recognize this threefold state of the Church, proclaiming…

“When the Lord comes in glory, and all his angels with him, death will be no more and all things will be subject to him. But at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is. All of us, however, in varying degrees and in different ways share in the same charity towards God and our neighbors, and we all sing the one hymn of glory to our God. All, indeed, who are of Christ and who have his Spirit form one Church and in Christ cleave together.”

So, whether we use the old terminology or not, pondering the three divisions of the Church can be an uplifting exercise as it reminds us that we are not alone in our struggles here on Earth, that those who went before us are still an active part of the Church, interceding and adding their prayers to ours in the battle against evil. Thus, while I imagine a rocket launcher could come in handy for those times when you absolutely need to blow up a devil-possessed road-raging girlfriend from hell, I’m pretty sure having the kind of spiritual firepower the ENTIRE Church provides is going to turn out to be a lot more useful to us in the end.

PULP CATHOLICISM #137

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #21 – YETI, GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY

As those of you who follow me on Facebook or Twitter are well aware, I stumbled across this little gem on YouTube over the weekend…

Yeti, Giant of the 20th Century was the Italian entry in the international stampede to cash in on the popularity of Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 remake of King Kong, a surprisingly crowded field that included the likes of Hong Kong’s bizarre Mighty Peking Man, South Korea’s jaw dropping A.P.E., and Britain’s utterly ludicrous Queen Kong. While each of those knockoffs have something to recommend them to diehard bad movie lovers, the one thing I can’t say is that I remember any of their soundtracks. I assure you, that will not be the case with Yeti, Giant of the 20th Century. Give a listen to the movie’s theme song and you’ll see, or should I say hear, exactly what I mean…

Oh, 1970s, you’re the gift that keeps on giving. Even better than the simple fact that this exists, though, is the realization that they actually released this thing in Greece as a single. You can listen to the flipside, Funky Disco Sound, on YouTube as well, providing your heart and ears can take it.

Now I’m sure everyone out there recognized how The Yetians (most likely a group of studio musicians assembled by composer Sante Maria Romitelli) took the liberty to, shall we say, ‘borrow’ just a little bit of O Fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. How could I? It’s not like we Americans raise a fuss over My Country, ‘Tis Of Thee lifting its tune straight from Britain’s God Save The Queen, and no self-respecting Catholic would ever say a word about Charles Gounod appropriating Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major for use in his Ave Maria.

Still, My Country, ‘Tis Of Thee was just trading one anthem for another, and Bach, while a devout Lutheran, accepted a commission for at least one Catholic mass, so he probably wouldn’t have been too put off by his work being used for an Ave Maria. Yeti, Giant of the 20th Century, on the other hand, is a story about a defrosted oversized beast-man, while O Fortuna is about… what exactly? You know, the tune is so ubiquitous in movies that I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to check. Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but it was quick) translates the Latin lyrics as follows:

O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice. Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy. Fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!

Basically, the poem (originally written by Catholic monks, it’s a long story) is a rant against Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck, and her annoying habit of turning on people at a moment’s notice. One minute you’re up, the next you’re down. Solomon sure seems to have recognized this sentiment when he penned in Ecclesiastes…

Again I saw under the sun that the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the valiant, nor a livelihood by the wise, nor riches by the shrewd, nor favor by the experts; for a time of misfortune comes to all alike. Human beings no more know their own time than fish taken in the fatal net or birds trapped in the snare; like these, mortals are caught when an evil time suddenly falls upon them.

Of course, it was Solomon who also wrote in Proverbs…

The Lord has made everything for a purpose, even the wicked for the evil day… Into the bag the lot is cast, but from the Lord comes every decision.

So, yeah, we Christians complain when bad things happen, but we also recognize that in some mysterious way, those same misfortunes still fall within God’s providence, either because he directly wills them or, more likely, because he allows them to happen in order to preserve our own free will. Doesn’t really make them suck any less, but it’s an ultimately more satisfying explanation than ascribing misfortune to pure blind chance.

You know, maybe that theme of sudden turns in fate is the reason why they used a bit of O Fortuna for the theme to Yeti, Giant of the 20th Century. After all, the big fellow never asked to get frozen in an iceberg or to get thawed out by flamethrowers and brought to civilization in chains. I mean, who could have possibly predicted stuff like that was going to happen. So it kind of fits.

Or maybe I’m just over thinking a terrible movie and they simply ripped off O Fortuna because they could. Unless Orff is stuck in an iceberg somewhere waiting to be defrosted, it’s not like he’s going to come back and complain about it.

BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: THE LAST CHILD

“Back before he was producing Charlie's Angels, Aaron Spelling was a major supplier of made-for-television feature films, particularly to ABC, on which this movie premiered in 1971. The Last Child takes place in America in 1994, a time in which a massive, chronic overpopulation crisis has resulted in the passage of Draconian laws, declaring that no couple can have more than one child, and that nobody over the age of 65 can receive any but the most superficial medical treatment. Michael Cole and Janet Margolin play a young married couple whose first child died; she is pregnant again, and they now find themselves hounded by the authorities when she refuses to submit to a legally mandated abortion. Chased across country by Population Control agent Edward Asner (a sinister figure in his pre-Mary Tyler Moore period), they plan to escape to Canada but find the border closed. They receive unexpected help from Van Heflin, in his final screen performance, portraying retired U.S. Senator Quincy George, who opposed the Population Control Laws. He shelters Cole and Margolin at great risk to himself, using what political clout and respect he still commands in his own state to block Asner's pursuit. They must find a means of escaping the country, however, as the authorities close in even on this momentarily safe haven.” ~ AllMovie

September 6, 2015: Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

Sometime in the not too distant future... It’s with those ominous words that the 1971 made-for-television movie The Last Child begins. Of course, the near future the film was predicting was 1994, so I suppose you can take any warning it contains about impending dystopias with a grain of salt. Still, the story is designed to make you think, and that it does.

As with most made-for-TV movies of the time, robbed of the graphic sex and violence filling the movie screens of the early 70s, The Last Child has to rely on atmosphere to keep things interesting. In that respect, the film opens pretty strong with a scene set in a bustling airport in which a frantic woman trying to find her lost son is discovered by security guards to be pregnant with a second child. As American law forbids women to have more than one child during their lifetime, she is immediately arrested so she can undergo a forced abortion. Two men gallantly step forward to complain about the woman’s rough treatment, only to be taken into custody themselves for daring to question the law. All in all, the opening sequence does an admirable job setting up a sense of paranoia and desperation.

One of the men detained by the police, it turns out, also has a wife who is pregnant with a second child, their first having died only 15 days after birth. As the above synopsis indicates, it isn’t long before this young couple, The Millers, are on the run for the Canadian border with an angry Ed Asner in hot pursuit (which is actually more unnerving than it sounds). At one point, they are temporarily detained and interrogated by a doctor, leading to what is probably the eeriest scene in the film. Calmly, the physician explains how, because Mrs. Miller’s pregnancy is so far along, they will have to wait until the baby is delivered and then dispose of it with quick and efficient kindness. “Not every human being has a right to live.” he politely intones.

Now, before you start thinking The Last Child is some nightmare vision of the future (near or not) concocted by the pro-life movement, remember this was made in 1971, two years BEFORE Roe v. Wade. So what was the deal? Well, according to Michael McKenna’s book, The ABC Movie of the Week: Big Movies for the Small Screen, "The Last Child was a byproduct of a burgeoning cultural and academic point of view arguing that the planet and its in-habitants faced inevitable extinction if global population controls were not enacted. The most well known, if not infamous work, was Paul Erlich's bestselling book, The Population Bomb (1968). There were also a number of TV shows and theatrical films featuring the overpopulation theme, including a very similar ABC presentation from the show Stage 67 (1966), and feature films, such as Soylent Green (1973) and Logan's Run (1976)."

These days, Erlich’s book is finally being discredited as the junk science it is, leading those with teaching authority in the Church (as we already noted in our review of Elysium) to declare its erroneous findings a work of unmitigated evil. Back then, though, Erlich’s ideas were pretty much accepted as gospel (at least by the media) and the fears they engendered were just beginning to seep into the public consciousness. That’s why, even though the Millers are undoubtedly the heroes of The Last Child and the audience is encouraged to root for them, the film also in some ways is downright sympathetic to the population control methods employed by its fictitious police state. Just about every public scene is filmed in tight, claustrophobic medium shots and close-ups, depicting throngs of people jostling and bumping into each other. In this way, the movie makes it quite evident that the overpopulation problem in its version of 1994 is real. And the doctor that questions the Millers, while clinical in his discussion, isn’t entirely without humanity. He admits to having many sleepless nights, but does what he must for the greater good of all. "If only we had practiced planned parenthood in the past." he opines. Yes, the movie actually name drops the organization that has since turned the unnecessary industry of population control into a blood-soaked cash cow.

Which brings us to the actual here and now where the overpopulated future of The Last Child never materialized and the science which predicted it has been debunked. And yet, despite all of that, some of the population control methods the film depicted, such as limiting care for the elderly, seem uncomfortably closer to becoming a reality (yes, I understand the linked article is about nudging oldsters to voluntarily forego care rather than outright denying it to them, but this kind of crap has to start somewhere). That reality makes the movie, despite its humble made-for-television production values, quite unsettling.

Still, even though we seem to be inching ever so slowly towards the police state depicted in The Last Child, it’s hard to get too scared because of passages like this week’s first reading from Isaiah which was directed towards the Jews who had been subjugated in Babylon for decades:

"Thus says the Lord: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water."

So, perhaps it will one day get as bad as what we see in The Last Child, or maybe even worse, such as what we currently see happening in Syria (don’t forget to pray for those folks daily), but evil eventually gets its just due in the end. And when that day comes, things will be even better than before. The lame won’t just walk, they’ll dance in the streets. The mute won’t just talk, they’ll burst into song. There’s a better tomorrow out there, be it next week or a few generations away, we just have to stick to what is true and good right now.

NOTE: Sadly, since The Last Child is a made-for-TV movie, there’s no trailer available, but hey, the whole thing is on YouTube, so watch away.

PULP CATHOLICISM #136