"Two TV icons are demoted to the big screen." That's the headline over Christopher Orr's piece in The New Republic about the careers of Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Jessica Parker, who seem diminished in the multiplex. Not that their TV shows -- "Friends" and "Sex in the City," respectively -- were anything special. They made for mediocre television at best, and on the occasions I attempted to pay attention to them I likened the experience to visiting a distant planet populated by synthetic creatures who could not have been less interestingly humanoid if they tried. I did not enjoy my time spent in the company of these banal, studio-fashioned aliens, and I question their resemblance to any carbon-based life-forms on Earth.

But at least on their long-running series Aniston and Parker were big, pretty fish in their teeny-tiny sitcom puddles. In the movies ("Rumor Has It," "The Family Stone"), the comedy hasn't gotten any bigger or better, but they've seemed outscaled, like little floundering fish out of water. I'm not convinced either has the presence for the big screen, although Aniston was terrific in "The Good Girl" (a small movie) and Parker, who strikes me as more of a character actress than a leading lady, was suitably kooky and vivacious in Steve Martin's "L.A. Story" and hilarious as Johnny Depp's exasperated wife in Tim Burton's low-scale "Ed Wood." On the other hand, in the company of incandescent actresses such as Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack in "Friends With Money," Aniston -- ostensibly the biggest name in the cast -- faded out, becoming blurry and indistinct almost like that actor played by Robin Williams in Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry."

Orr puts it this way:

There was a time, not so long ago, when going from TV star to movie star was an unquestioned step upward. George Clooney managed the transition with such aplomb a few years back that the most recent Oscars ceremony essentially anointed him King of Hollywood. [It wasn't that easy. Orr forgets the failed pre-"Out of Sight" attempts like "One Fine Day," "Batman & Robin" and "The Peacemaker" that prompted many to question whether Clooney had the stuff movies are made of.] But lately, as television has innovated and improved and mainstream film largely stagnated, it's not clear that the old hierarchy still pertains, at least not for those fortunate enough to star on successful series. Take Kiefer Sutherland, who was never more than a middling presence on the big screen, but has become a contemporary icon on the little one. Or take Aniston and Parker: Both have had plenty of bites at the cinematic apple and are scheduled for plenty more, but neither is likely ever again to have a role with the cultural stature of a Rachel Green or Carrie Bradshaw. Big-screen outings such as "Rumor Has It" and "The Family Stone" -- both released on video this month--are more likely to erase the actresses from public memory than to plant them there anew.

John Patterson at The Guardian ("Move Over Hollywood") agrees that mainstream movies have largely taken a back seat to television when it comes to "cultural stature," impact, innovation and creativity:

Today, US television is where cultural debates are sparked, and where popular culture renews and reinvigorates itself. Over the past 10 years, TV has slowly seized the creative initiative from the movies and run with it, all the way to the Emmys -- and to the bank. With entire seasons of TV shows available on DVD and cheap iPod downloads of popular shows online, television is now teeming with beautifully written, well-made programmes, including "The Sopranos," "Deadwood," "Law & Order" and its many spin-offs, "Lost," "24," "Six Feet Under," "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck." Umbilically connected to the internet, TV is also able to attach itself swiftly to new currents in subterranean culture and bring them to viewers in a matter of days. This inventiveness affects all areas, from news to drama. And it is because of the sudden upsurge in TV drama, along with the immense fortunes to be made in it, that so many names we associate with the cinema are moving to television.

The article quotes Lorraine Bracco of "The Sopranos" in Entertainment Weekly: "I haven't seen a movie that's inspired me as much as 'The Sopranos' has. A lot of our one-hour episodes are as good as any movie out there today."

Dr. Melfi is right. I observed recently that a series like "24" makes a movie like "Mission: Impossible III" (or "Miiii") irrelevant. The movie may be bigger and louder, but that doesn't make it more engaging when it's not better written, acted or directed, and the special effects and stunts often aren't nearly as convincing or compelling. Meanwhile, "Veronica Mars" was doing splendid Southern California high school film noir long before the acclaimed indie "Brick," and "The Sorpranos" has more to say about the history and mythology of the gangster genre, from "Scarface" (the 1932 Hawks/Muni original) to "The Godfather" to "Scarface" (the DePalma/Pacino remake) to "GoodFellas," than any gangster picture since "GoodFellas." From what I've seen, "Deadwood" is doing things with the Western that no movie would dare these days. After "Twin Peaks" (and the failed series pilot released as "Mulholland Drive"), David Lynch doesn't have a show on the air anymore, but the mysterious, surreal spirit of those creations can be felt in a show like "Lost."

Last week I watched the season finale of "House," a crisp and economical medical-detective series that I watch mainly for Hugh Laurie's misanthropic title character. The show itself is as formulaic as most American movies (and the writing often similarly just above functional), but Laurie is a more interesting leading actor than most of the performers who get cast as the leads in studio pictures today. One thing I really like about "House" is how it just begins and ends -- with none of the transitional filler usually employed to pad out the hour. Several times when the series has gone into its last commercial break (which I promptly speed through with TiVo), I've expected there to be another segment -- but it's over. I realize that's just because we've been conditioned to expect these little unnecessary codas. But "House," like its main character, is too prickly and abrupt for that. (They really ought to just cut to black for a couple beats at the end; it would improve the effect.)

I admit, some of the (downright Cronenbergian) medical imagery on the season finale (a man with a horribly blistered and swollen tongue; an eyeball erupting from its socket; an exploding scrotum; a butchery by surgical machinery) was so gross and explicit I had to block part of the screen from view with my hand. It's as graphic as the stuff in horror movies, but it's medical and "CSI" has made that kind of gore acceptable even on broadcast television.

But despite this (and not because of it), I came away feeling that if this episode -- basically an autopsy, or exploratory surgery, performed by Dr. House on his own body, character and personality -- had been presented as a film (I imagine it as a David Cronenberg exploration of the mind and the flesh, or a Francois Ozon psycho-thriller, or maybe even a Mamet picture where it's not clear who's conning whom), it would have played film festivals and received serious critical attention. But here it was being offered as commercial television. For adults.

Meanwhile, back at the multiplexes: For the next few months its superheroes, cartoons and anti-Christs. I don't know about you, but I'm superheroed out. Maybe in the fall we'll get movies about people again.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 12:32 PM | Permalink

From Nathan Marone, Chicago, IL:

I am an evangelical Christian from Chicago. I've been very interested in your blogs concerning "The Da Vinci Code" (naturally). Much of what you say is true. There are many Christians who don't really read the Bible much, or for that matter any literature that seriously deals with their faith. The subject of Church history eludes most Christians, and the complexities of academic theology can often be too much for them (and me sometimes, for that matter). I wish that this weren't true, but sadly it is.

But I want to take the opportunity to defend some Christians.

If the Church were to reach my ideal, we'd all know Greek and Hebrew, know Church history pretty well, understand the various opinions on theology and philosophy... and then make sense of it all. But there are a few reasons that this does not happen. 1) People are lazy. It's easier to be ignorant and believe. Much easier. Even the Bible acknowledges in Ecclesiasties that "with much knowledge comes much pain." 2) I'm not sure that everyone has even the time to know all of the things that we ideally would have them know. Many Christians have jobs, families, and other obligations in life.

You know a s--tload about movies. It is easy, though, because it's your job to know s--tloads about movies. We can't all be scholars and academics. Having said that, I do think that point #1 factors in more than #2. Your articles also take some nastly little potshots. You call belief in Intelligent Design "preposterous," complain that Christians don't know enough about history, and then on the other hand say that faith alone should be enough for a Christian. Christians seem damned if they do and damned if they don't here. Should we just ignore history, and believe in Jesus? Should we scour history to validate what we believe?

What troubles me even more than any of this is that I don't think you have a detailed concept of Church history, how the Biblical canon came into existence, what non-Biblical evidence there is for the existence of Jesus. And yet you fearlessly, and dogmatically comment on all of these issues with the assurance of one who has studied these issues his whole life.

Sometimes I think the real reason that so many people are a bit uneasy about Christianity has nothing to do with creation/evolution, violence in church history, or other political issues that come with associating yourself closely with the Bible. I think that the real reason is that Christianity claims to be the one true religion. It claims superiority over Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other religion you'd like to throw in. In a world that is increasingly concerned with tolerance and political
correctness, Christianity is a real party pooper.

I know that this letter has been long, and that you may dismiss it as gibberish. The issues, however, are important to me, and it'd difficult to watch a movie critic pontificate so ruthlessly on issues he is not so deeply educated on. I love movies. I love them to death (I'm proud to say that there's only a couple of movies on the 102 list I haven't seen). I know that in order to comment on movies you must comment on the rest of the world, but please be careful.

Dear Nathan:

Thanks for a most thought-provoking letter. To be honest, I don't think it's at all easy to get to know a s--tload about anything (even if it is one's job... and, let's face it, an awful lot of people are not very good at their jobs!). And faith is not -- and should not be -- easy. But I should say that, although I am by no means a religious scholar or academic, I've been reading and studying religion seriously on my own for even longer than I've been studying movies. (The two are closely related in my mind, art and religion.) And I know I can get grumpy and snarky and dogmatic -- but I promise it's motivated by passion and enthusiasm, not just derision.

As I said in response to an earlier letter, I hope I made it clear that I was writing specifically about those Christians who claim their faith determines the fate of their immortal souls, and who also say that faith is based on the inerrant word of the bible -- but who nevertheless haven't bothered to find out much about the bible, what it says, or how it was written, edited, compiled. In which case, I say: If you don't have the time or inclination to study something you claim determines the fate of your soul for all eternity, then you really shouldn't go around blithely professing to believe in it.

According to the bible, as you know, Jesus says repeatedly that the other worldly concerns you mention -- job, family, children -- are absolutely unimportant compared to following him, and that faith itself is the only true family. Now, I don't think the writer(s) of this passage really intended to have Jesus commanding his followers to hate their parents and renounce their children and spouses and siblings and everthing else in their lives, but that's what the King James translation literally says: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke, 14:26) Seems to me those words ought to be read with a little poetic license, as a suggestion that faith ultimately transcends worldly concerns. Especially if you believe there is anything beyond this world.

If somebody proclaims, "My relationship with God (or Jesus) is the most important thing in my life, and I base my faith in, and understanding of, God (or Jesus) on the bible" -- then I think it's only right to consider how much that person has studied and understood the bible and its history. (By "history" I mean the history of the bible and how it developed, not the limited version of human history presented in the bible, which is another issue.)

While science and history are not necessarily incompatible with Christian faith, a literal reading of the bible is absolutely incompatible with what we know about history and science -- and Christianity. People who claim to take the bible literally are, therefore, either: 1) ignorant of the bible, except in bits and pieces (and therefore not even attempting to swallow the whole thing literally at all); 2) using it selectively to justify pre-existing beliefs; 3) using it to justify beliefs they don't even know if they hold, but figure they ought to because they think the bible says to; and/or 4) otherwise using the bible in ways it was never intended.

As Max von Sydow says in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters": "If Jesus came back and saw what is being done in his name, he would never stop throwing up." Likewise, Moses and Muhammad. We see a lot of fundamentalists of all stripes today using their sacred texts to justify an array of beliefs and behavior that have nothing whatsoever to do with spirituality or compassion or faith in God. I keep thinking that if Moses were to appear in the 21st century, he would recognize how many allegedly "faithful" people have turned sacred texts themselves into the false idols (or "graven images") warned against in Exodus and Deuteronomy. (Yes, if you believe in biblical prophecy, the recent creation of the "literal bible" may well be the symbolic incarnation of the "golden calf" that the Israelis falsely worship, causing Moses to smash the first set of tablets he was given by God on Mt. Sinai in a fit of pique.) By distorting, misunderstanding, and/or misusing these texts, the blind-leading-the-blind are drawing away not only from the secular world, but from many of the core values and traditions of their own faiths. What kind of "fundamentalism" is that? It's not a return to the roots of faith, but a denial of those roots.

So, the main point I wanted to make was that religious faith does not in any way require the concrete validation of historical accuracy (e.g., whether the physical existence of Jesus of Nazareth can be conclusively determined) or science (e.g., the "Intelligent Design" creation scenario, which isn't science at all). It's not that "Christians can't win, either way" -- but I think it's a mistake to look to history and science for confirmation of faith, just as we should not look to religion to confirm history or science. Instead, an understanding of history and science should keep you from developing a false faith. (Which is why, as I said, any faith that can be overturned or undermined by pulp fiction like "The Da Vinci Code" isn't much of a faith to begin with.)

It's an unprecedented misuse of religion, history and science to attempt to invoke the latter two to prop up the former. On the other hand, any Christian who understands the bible as a complex book of parables and metaphors, or who acknowledges that mortal institutions and man-made documents (like churches and governments and sacred manuscripts) are by definition fallible, or who says they're primarily interested in aspects of the of philosophy of Jesus that come through in the New Testament (like Thomas Jefferson, who edited his own version by stripping away all the other stuff), has no reason to feel defensive in the face of my arguments -- or the slick fiction of "The Da Vinci Code."

I hope you'll check out the Salon.com interview with religious scholar Karen Armstrong (author of "A History of God" and several other great studies) that I cited in answer to another letter. Here's something else she says in the same interview that I think speaks to some of your concerns:

KA: If you look at the healing miracles attributed to Jesus, they generally had some kind of symbolic aspect about healing the soul rather than showing off a supernatural power. Western people think the supernatural is the essence of religion, but that's rather like the idea of an external god. That's a minority view worldwide....

Q: ... You know, religion used to explain all kinds of things about the world. But science for the most part does that now. And people who are not religious say they can be just as morally upright.

They can. I fully endorse that. I don't think you need to believe in an external god to obey the Golden Rule. In the Axial Age, when people started to concentrate too much on what they're transcending to -- that is, God -- and neglected what they're transcending from -- their greed, pompous egotism, cruelty -- then they lost the plot, religiously. That's why God is a difficult religious concept. I think God is often used by religious people to give egotism a sacred seal of divine approval, rather than to take you beyond the ego.

As for scientists, they can explain a tremendous amount. But they can't talk about meaning so much....

So would you say religion addresses those questions through the stories and myths?

Yes. In the pre-modern world, there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato, for example, called them mythos and logos. Myth and reason or science. We've always needed both of them. It was very important in the pre-modern world to realize these two things, myth and science, were complementary. One didn't cancel the other out....

... Religion is hard work. It's an art form. It's a way of finding meaning, like art, like painting, like poetry, in a world that is violent and cruel and often seems meaningless. And art is hard work. You don't just dash off a painting. It takes years of study. I think we expect religious knowledge to be instant. But religious knowledge comes incrementally and slowly. And religion is like any other activity. It's like cooking or sex or science. You have good art, sex and science, and bad art, sex and science. It's not easy to do it well.

So how should we approach the sacred texts? How should we read them?

Sacred texts have traditionally been a bridge to the divine. They're all difficult. They're not a simple manual -- a how-to book that will tell you how to gain enlightenment by next week, like how to lose weight on the Atkins diet. This is a slow process. I think the best image for reading scripture occurs in the story of Jacob, who wrestles with a stranger all night long. And in the morning, the stranger seems to have been his God. That's when Jacob is given the name Israel -- "one who fights with God." And he goes away limping as he walks into the sunrise. Scriptures are a struggle.

Is faith a struggle?

Well, faith is not a matter of believing things. That's again a modern Western notion. It's only been current since the 18th century. Believing things is neither here nor there, despite what some religious people say and what some secularists say. That is a very eccentric religious position, current really only in the Western Christian world. You don't have it much in Judaism, for example.

But it's not surprising that religion has become equated with belief because these are the messages we hear as we grow up, regardless of our faiths.

We hear it from some of them. And I think we've become rather stupid in our scientific age about religion. If you'd presented some of these literalistic readings of the Bible to people in the pre-modern age, they would have found it rather obtuse. They'd have found it incomprehensible that people really believe the first chapter of Genesis is an account of the origins of life.

So how should we read the story of creation in Genesis?

Well, it's not a literal account because it's put right next door to another account in Chapter 2, which completely contradicts it. Then there are other creation stories in the Bible that show Yahweh like a Middle Eastern god killing a sea monster to create the world. Cosmogony in the ancient world was not an account of the physical origins of life. Cosmogony was usually used therapeutically. When people were sick or in times of vulnerability, they would read a cosmogony in order to get an influx of the divine, to tap into those extraordinary energies that had created something out of nothing.

That seems to be a question that scientists are struggling with now. Did the big bang come out of nothing?

Exactly. And I think some scientists are writing a new kind of religious discourse, teaching us to pit ourselves against the dark world of uncreated reality and pushing us back to the mysterious. They're resorting to mythological imagery: Big Bang, black hole. They have all kinds of resonances because this is beyond our ken....

Posted by Jim Emerson at 10:33 AM | Permalink

I am a big fan of absurdist advertising campaigns. My all-time favorite is still Monsanto's astonishingly brilliant '60s slogan: "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible." The delicious disingenuousness of that tag line still makes me well-up with laughter and delight, even when I am chemically depressed. I treasure its Pythonesque logic: Chemicals support life. Monstanto manufactures chemical products. Therefore, Monsanto supports life! (My second-favorite is the possibly apocryphal story of the launch of Pepsi's "Come Alive!" campaign in Taiwan, which was supposedly translated into a distasteful and not-at-all easy-to-swallow: "Pepsi raises your ancestors from the dead.") Now the concerned folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute have come up with an ad to counter Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" (recently unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival) -- and it's bold and hilarious enough to rival Monsanto's.

Go here. Select "Energy" (with the little girl blowing on the dandelion seed head -- kind of reminds me of the infamous Lyndon Johnson ad with the little girl, the daisy and the mushroom cloud), and prepare yourself for a gaseous treat. (It's also on YouTube.)

The slogan: "Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life." The gist: Carbon dioxide: You can't see it. We exhale it. We need it to live. "It comes from animal life, the oceans, the Earth, and the fuels we find in it." Therefore, it's not a greenhouse gas -- it's part of life! Now, get over it!

Wow. That's so good I can't even think about it without breaking into a huge smile. In that sense, I guess it's more like nitrous oxide than carbon dioxide. Every line, every image, is perfect, and perfectly vacuous. Indeed, this may be the funniest one minute I've ever seen -- up there with the best ad parodies on "Mr. Show" and "SNL." Only it's not a parody. Or it doesn't know it's a parody.

("The Earth, and the fuels we find in it." What a phrase! That ol' Intelligent Designer Mother Earth went and hid those "fuels" in her belly as an Easter egg hunt for us humans... millions of years before we even existed. She knew we'd be making internal combustion engines one of these days and would need to find, and refine, some fossil fuels in order to free us from back-breaking labor, light up our urban centers and transport our loved ones in SUVs. We're a whole species of Jed Clampetts, with our fortunate fuel-findin' luck! Well doggies!)

Thank you, CEI. Thank you for more outrageous laughs in sixty seconds than in all the films of Adam Sandler and every episode of "Friends" combined.

Think about the possibilities: Air is roughly 78 percent nitrogen and the rest is mostly oxygen, with a few other gasses, like our beloved, life-giving carbon dioxide. But we know that oxygen is essential to life, so let's have more of that, too! Carbon dioxide is great, but maybe it can be improved -- life-enhanced, if you will. It already has two oxygen atoms -- let's just knock off the carbon one (chemically), add another oxygen (chemically), and get rid of all that nitrogen (chemically)! Then we can all breathe ozone! Oh, wait, that's toxic to life on Earth. And a significant form of air pollution. But it's just made up of harmless little oxygen atoms that you can't even see, so I call it life. (BTW, I hear nitrogen is colorless, odorless, tasteless -- so, how bad can that be? I think I'll put a little more of it into my bloodstream -- like fertilizer. Oops! Nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream is called "the bends," and scuba divers sometimes die from it. But I call it life!)

And, you know, when you're the Competitive Enterprise Institute (not to be confused with the Bush administration's pet org, the American Enterprise Institute), this is the right and proper attitude for you to have. It's all about the competition. For air. And the air rightfully belongs to... whoever can make money with it. The Human Drama of Atmospheric Competition!

P.S. A link above reminds me of some other Great Moments in Global Competition (although I can't vouch for the authenticity of all of them):

The Chevy Nova did not sell well in Mexico because "no va" translates as "no go."

The Ford Pinto was not desired in Brazil, because "pinto" was slang for "tiny penis."

The Coors slogan "Turn it loose" came out in Spanish as (loosely) "Get diarrhea."

Kentucky Fried Chicken's "Finger-Lickin' Good" was translated into Chinese as "Eat Your Fingers Off."

A phoenetic translation of the product name "Coca-Cola" in China was initially written in characters that meant "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" -- depending on the regional dialect, of course.

(Tip: AS)

Posted by Jim Emerson at 08:14 PM | Permalink

From Sam Vicchrilli, Salt Lake City, UT:

As much as I typically despise letters to the editor, I would like to write a few words to you about your blog on "The Da Vinci Code."

I have not read Brown's book. I read the first several chapters and thought the writing was pedestrian and the mystery too obviously teased out. There is a stack of books I wish to read before returning to that bit of fiction. But I have heard about the book endlessly from my mother who adores it. We are Mormon.

While it has not deterred our religiosity (rather it drove us to the bible for clarification on doctrinal points), I can understand why Christians around the world are questioning themselves due to this piece of pulp fiction. I think part of it is that they are unaware of what the bible says and how it was put together, as you have suggested. Moreover, I think most people are not very bright to begin with.

I wonder what you think of me as a practicing, believing Mormon. I wonder if you think I am not very bright. I have read the bible and the Book of Mormon several times, and prefer the former. Perhaps this is because the King James translation carries Shakespearean qualities. However, I am confused by large portions of it. Such as when God sends bears to kill children, a prophet seduced by his daughter, a talking ass, and Esau's father being duped into giving away his birthright. I am, as Anthony Burgess alluded to, a Christian who finds his intellect getting in the way. I simply make do as a student of the allegedly divine.

So I am one who has, to some extent, researched his religion (and others) and I feel that Mormonism is a good place for me to be. Being Mormon has supplied me with many worthwhile principles that I do not know I would have otherwise acquired. My mind has been quickened at times. I have been able to understand concepts - felt them penetrate my mind and heart - and later not been able to duplicate my momentarily profound understanding. And so on. I will not dwell on why I am Mormon because I doubt it interests you.

Here is my point. And it runs parallel to yours:

A good rule of thumb is to never get quotes from large book of quotes. The problem being, it is always being taken out of its context.

Case in point: Many folks use the phrase "a little learning is a dangerous thing" to advise people not to get educated (or read books that question the status quo) based on the idea that it will upset the balance of their life. In religious communities, this means higher education will eat your faith the way worms will eventually eat your body.

I once took a course in World Religions and was advised by the professor that nothing he was going to say should shake us from our religious foundations. "If so," he said, "Your faith wasn't worth a damn to begin with." That is right.

The Alexander Pope quote "a little learning is a dangerous thing" is followed by "drink deep." This means to only know a little is dangerous because you don't see the whole image - you don't know enough to act.

In my experience, people who learn a little think they know close to everything. If you've ever had a very basic college philosophy class you know what I'm talking about. I pity those that automatically buy into the first radical/unusual thought they stumble upon. (Few people are more unbearable than first year college students - I was one of them.)

I write this to debunk the stigma that religiosity and intelligence are incompatible. People convinced out of their faith by a conflicting school of thought simply have not investigated deeper, or did not have much of a faith to begin with.

"The Da Vinci Code" is hardly an intelligent piece of work, but because it seems so, that is enough to derail the uneducated.

Dear Sam:

No, I don't think you are "not very bright" because you are Mormon. Your articulate letter demonstrates you are both educated and intelligent. I agree with you: I have never been so certain that I knew everything as when I was about 15 to 17. The more you know, as they say, the more you realize you don't know, doubt and openness being essential components of any kind of knowledge or wisdom. Part of what I have been trying to get at, in my roundabout way, is narrowly addressed to those who claim to base their faith on a literal reading of the bible. It's better articulated in this interview with the great Karen Armstrong (author of the terrific book "A History of God") at Salon.com:

KA: The trouble is that we define our God too closely. In my book "A History of God," I pointed out that the most eminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you couldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being. It was better to say that God did not exist because our notion of existence was far too limited to apply to God....

You're saying these ancient sages really didn't care about big metaphysical systems. They didn't care about theology.

No, none of them did. And neither did Jesus. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. In the Quran, metaphysical speculation is regarded as self-indulgent guesswork. And it makes people, the Quran says, quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian. You can't prove these things one way or the other, so why quarrel about it? The Taoists said this kind of speculation where people pompously hold forth about their opinions was egotism. And when you're faced with the ineffable and the indescribable, they would say it's belittling to cut it down to size. Sometimes, I think the way monotheists talk about God is unreligious.

Unreligious? Like talk about a personal God?

Yes, people very often talk about him as a kind of acquaintance, whom they can second-guess. People will say God loves that, God wills that, and God despises the other. And very often, the opinions of the deity are made to coincide exactly with those of the speaker.

Yet we certainly see a personal God in various sacred texts. People aren't just making that up.

No, but the great theologians in Judaism, Christianity and Islam say you begin with the idea of a god who is personal. But God transcends personality as God transcends every other human characteristic, such as gender. If we get stuck there, this is very immature. Very often people hear about God at about the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. And their ideas about Santa Claus mature and change in time, but their idea of God remains infantile.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 01:32 PM | Permalink

As a species, we humans are designed to connect the dots. But so many of our problems and mistakes arise from: 1) not knowing (due to misunderstanding or lack of information) where, exactly, the dots are; 2) not knowing what they signify; and 3) misattributing conscious intention to some hidden force behind the nature and placement of those dots.

I'm alternately amused and bothered by responses I've seen to "United 93" and "The Da Vinci Code" that claim to know, one way or another, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the events of 9/11, the history of the bible, the historical validity of Christianity and the existence of a monotheistic deity. (I have to pause here, just to laugh at that last sentence.)

The biggest conspiracy theory yet invented by mankind is "Intelligent Design," the idea that everything that currently exists was destined to "turn out" the way it is right now because a supernatural intelligence (conspiring, apparently, with itself) made it happen deliberately. No room for chance or coincidence or (shudder) evolution in that fixed, closed-world view. But the only reason a concept as preposterous as Intelligent Design can continue to exist is because there are still so many things we don't know about the development of life on this planet (or any other). That's why Intelligent Design is also known as "God in the Gaps." Anything that's unclear or can't yet be explained? Just plug "God" into the equation and voila! -- it's complete! Conspiracies about 9/11 or Christianity are, in principle, exactly the same: Just fill in the gaps in what is known with a top-secret cabal guiding everything behind the scenes, and suddenly it all makes sense. I guess that's why they say a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Critics of conspiracy theories too often make the very same, fundamental logical errors that conspiracists (especially Intelligent Designers) do. They assume that: 1) because there is some perceived flaw or gap in what is known, a whole set of related knowledge or information is invalidated; and 2) the only alternate theory that can replace the one they attack is (of course) the one they already hold to be true.

This results in multiple absurdities. The answer to "There sure are a lot of things that don't add up in the official accounts of 9/11" is not, automatically, "It must have all been planned by the Bush administration." Nor is it, "We know everything about exactly what happened and how." Nor is it, "The Jews did it" (though the latter has certainly been a handy one-size-fits-all explanation for a long time). The answer is: We sure need to know more before we can make sense of the evidence we already know about. Meanwhile, the truth is, a lot of information is still unavailable to the public (for reasons unknown).

Recently, the U.S. government released a few frames from a long-withheld security camera pointed at the Pentagon when it was hit on 9/11. But because that camera took only two frames per second, you really can't see much. As a BBC reporter put it: "... it doesn't add much to the sum of public knowledge." The frames were released after a Freedom of Information Act request; the government said they were part of the evidence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, and therefore could not be revealed to the public until after his trial. Some officials said they hoped the "definitive" footage would put conspiracy theories to rest. Others wondered why the government waited four and a half years to release something so inconclusive.

Indeed, in the BBC video report linked to above, the reporter first says this is "the only footage" of the Pentagon attack... although five frames from a Pentagon security camera had been published by the Associated Press back in March of 2002. He claims one blurry image shows the plane "skidding" before hitting the Pentagon. I can't make out anything at all, but other images that day show no physical evidence that the plane touched the ground before hitting the building. And a frame-by-frame analysis of the video, the BBC notes: "The photos, taken by a surveillance camera, show the date of 12 September and the time of 1737, even though the crash took place the day before at 0937 local time."

What is one to make of all this? I say there is only one possible conclusion to be drawn: The evidence sure is a mess. Does that make it a conspiracy? No, it makes it a mess. The vacuum of available knowledge and information creates a natural and human desire for further explanation. It's perfectly legitimate and responsible to want to know the rest of the facts, and to wonder why so much evidence that exists is still being withheld. But it's not so logical or responsible to assume that you already know what's missing from the puzzle and why (or to attribute sinister organized causality to the whole kaboodle, thrilling as that may be).

The debate about "The Da Vinci Code" (and the origins of the bible) are similarly sloppy and inconclusive. Slate.com does a swell job of debunking pieces of the "Code," but it's not going to make biblical literalists feel any better:

In the book and the movie, Teabing asserts that other texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary, were cast out of the New Testament because Constantine and those mean old Nicaean bishops wanted to impose their beliefs on the rest of Christendom. These texts, however, reflect an elitist attitude disdainful of ordinary Christians and their beliefs. It is unlikely that their authors ever sought to have them included with the writings of the emergent New Testament. In any case, they weren't chucked from the canon in an act of suppression. They just never won the confidence of a sufficient number of Christians to make the grade in the first place.

Even this paragraph (which makes the formation of the New Testament sound kind of like "Biblical Idol," with Christians voting for their favorite manuscripts) is rife with unsupportable assumptions -- for example, that the "authors" of the gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary (for example) were a) individuals, and b) known; or that said authors would even be aware of any "emergent New Testament" canon; or that proponents of any gospels would necessarily know of, or be able to seek inclusion in, such a canon.

I guess you could say the bible, as we know it, evolved over eons, shaped by many influences of many different kinds. It is a patchwork of incomplete and inconsistent texts from a variety of sources, created and edited and copied by many different people(s) in different regions and times and circumstances and languages. That, however, doesn't make for such a taut thriller structure, so Dan Brown took innumerable liberties with the bible's history to construct his fictional best-seller.

Again, the "answer" to the errors and misrepresentations of conspiracy-minded "The Da Vinci Code" is not to say, "The bible is literal, historical truth" -- any more than the "answer" to the "hole-y" bible's documented history of man-made changes and contradictions is to say, "It was a conspiracy -- just like the one in 'The Da Vinci Code'!"

Posted by Jim Emerson at 02:36 PM | Permalink

Look at these numbers: "Mission: Impossible III" gets a 70-percent critical approval rating on the RottenTomatoes.com TomatoMeter (fresh!), and yet takes in a devastatingly disappointing $48 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office.

Two weeks later, "The Da Vinci Code" is destroyed by critics at Cannes and across America, ranking a lowly 21 on the TomatoMeter (rotten!) -- and yet it took in $77 million opening weekend in the States and set international box-office records.

Asks The New York Times' Manohla Dargis: "Does this mean that critics are out of touch with the public? Maybe, but really, who cares? All that box office doesn't make ['The Da Vinci Code'] a good movie."

Surely the most likely explanation is that millions of people worldwide are conspiring to undermine the all-powerful hegemony of cinematic critical opinion! I mean, isn't that what critics are supposed to do -- predict box-office results? How can they wield their indomitable might (along with Hollywood and the Liberal Media) if people won't cooperate?!?!

Or maybe I'm wrong.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 11:57 AM | Permalink

When "Donnie Darko" sank without a trace after its theatrical release in October, 2001, writer-director Richard Kelly feared his (potential) career had gone down with it. Then, the movie became a cult phenomenon on DVD and Kelly, like his alliterative hero, was given a second chance.

The signs since then have not been enouraging: a screenplay for Tony Scott's "Domino," a film that graced many of last year's Ten Worst lists; and (far more disturbing) a "director's cut" of "Donnie Darko" that indicated Kelly didn't know what he'd done right the first time. All the best qualities of the film -- its teasing ambiguity, its creepy playfulness -- were nearly crushed in an attempt to laboriusly spell out an elaborate science-fiction/time travel mythology. What was once a tantalizing undercurrent was thus made literal and dull. More "explanation" of geeky but arbitrary "rules" simply reduced the movie's sense of possibility and imagination... and made it a lot less fun. If the "DD" director's cut had been the original version of the movie, it would never have piqued enough curiosity to have developed much of a cult following.

Now, the reviews from Cannes of Kelly's long-awaited and highly anticipated sophomore feature, "Southland Tales," suggest Kelly hasn't learned anything from his "Donnie Darko" director's cut experience. Most of them are devastating -- by which I mean they're at least as bad as the ones for "The Da Vinci Code," and worse than the ones for "X-Men: The Last Stand."

Roger Ebert: "The greatest disappointment so far this year... Running an unendurable 161 minutes, it’s an apocalyptic mess..."

Todd McCarthy, Variety: "this wannabe visionary epic may find cult believers among gullible undergrads... But the fiasco at hand will be evident to everyone else, making commercial prospects exceedingly dicey."

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: "The festival's real clunker so far has unfortunately come from Richard Kelly, the success of whose cult classic 'Donnie Darko' has emboldened him to make a completely addled sci-fi comedy thriller..."

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: "I might not care about the incomprehensible plot, larded with biblical quotations and unspecific intimations of doom, and I might be willing to accept that Kelly has some kind of Godardian pomo deconstructionist hoo-ha in mind, if I ever believed he were in control of his material. But I think back to the pitch-perfect suburban surrealism of 'Donnie Darko' and just feel sad. This is an overamped, lumpy, jumpy film that never establishes either its plot or its characters clearly, and the dialogue is often cringe-inducingly bad.

"Yes, there are moments of pure visual magic here, and the scope of imagination and ambition at work in 'Southland Tales' is everything you would expect. If Kelly recuts this, takes out all the nonsense and releases it as an experimental, almost wordless, nonnarrative film (at, say, 90 minutes) it might become a rare and beautiful thing. As it is now, it's about the biggest, ugliest mess I've ever seen."

Dave McCoy, MSN Movies: "I can't give you a proper review, because it's against my ethics. I don't review movies that I walk out on.... Instead, I can give you a brief sketch of what made me walk out of a film that I'd been excited about for five years. Kelly is his own worst enemy. Sophomore slump doesn't even begin to describe this accident."

Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter: "Deep into Richard Kelly's miasmic 160-minute fantasy 'Southland Tales,' an actor who used to call himself 'The Rock' places a gun at his temple and says, 'I could pull the trigger right now and this whole nightmare will be over,' and every impulse screams: 'Do it!'"

James Rocchi, Cinematical: "Sprawling, messy, willfully self-indulgent and incomprehensible, 'Southland Tales' is the biggest sophomore slump for a seemingly indie-filmmaker since Kevin Smith's 'Mallrats' -- and the scope of 'Southland Tales'' failed ambitions and vain pretensions make its failure all the more depressing. I'm sure Kelly felt that he was making a movie about something; along the line, though, it's pretty obvious that he forgot all about the basics of making a movie."

Mike D'Angelo, Nerve.com: "'This is a potential career killer, I suspect.... 'Hudson Hawk' -- a much better movie, I have to say -- [was]... the last time I can remember seeing so much strained pseudo-satirical whimsy in one motion picture."

Sadly, the phrase that seems to recur most frequently in all these reviews is, simply: "not funny."

On the equally uncomfortable but squirmier-about-it side, there's Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, who comes across like one of those old-timey, fretfully hedging pre-Scott/Dargis New York Times reviewers ("Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is/Do you, Mr. Jones?") -- not quite sure what's going on, and too timid to articulate an opinion. Poor Wells puts himself through terrible contortions trying to put some kind of positive spin on the "Southland Tales" experience. He writes: "I liked portions of Kelly's film here and there (especially the musical numbers and the wild fantasy stuff that kicks in toward the end), but mostly it felt like a struggle and a muddle. I'm sorry to say this because I think Kelly is one of the best younger filmmakers around, but this is the kind of difficult film that only an audacious visionary could make....

"'Southland Tales' is absolutely not a movie for your average 55 year-old. I'm not saying all younger people will like it, but you can almost certainly scratch the boomers."

I don't know (or care) how old the apparently age-obsessed Wells is, but for some reason (and, honestly, I think it's just because he likes Kelly and doesn't want to hurt his feelings -- plus, he was supposed to go to a "Southland Tales" party later) he adopts the persona of a senile 97-year-old, vexed about not really understanding these feisty young whippersnappers of today, but god bless 'em, anyway, with their nutty space-age hormones and apocalyptic picture shows. Wells further rationalizes: "This is a crazy, no-holds-barred, go-for-it Richard Kelly film. And I think vigorously challenging mind-scrambling movies are good for the soul, even if you don't get everything about them." (Amen. But wait: Didn't Ruth Gordon say that in "Harold and Maude"?) The question remains: What are some of the holds that Kelly does not bar? What's the "it" that he goes for? Unfortunately, Wells doesn't hazard a guess.

Yeah, looks like what we've got here is yet another typically "crazy, no-holds-barred, go-for-it" Richard Kelly Film. The, uh, second one. (Or, after the "DD" director's cut, maybe "Southland Tales" is Kelly's "2 1/2.") I'm afraid that Wells' unctuous and unconvincing comments remind me somewhat of Martin Short's (far more assured) agent in Christopher Guest's "The Big Picture," telling a young filmmaker (Kevin Bacon): "I don't know you. I don't know your work. But I think you are a genius. And I am never wrong about that."

Now, hardly anybody tries to make a bad movie (unless, like Alan Parker or Oliver Stone, they simply don't know -- or care about -- the difference). I would like Kelly and "Southland Tales" to succeed, against all odds. After all, I'm a big fan of the original version of "Donnie Darko," and have written about it extensively. I mentioned in that piece that I got the sense from the director's commentary on the original disc that Kelly had made a much better film than he seemed to know he'd made -- in fact, quite a different one than he thought he'd made.

So, I do hope he can cut a good movie out of "Southland Tales," and that the film can get an American distributor, but things don't look promising. Most discouraging: On the "Director's Cut" DVD and in "Southland Tales," Kelly keeps company with Kevin Smith, which pretty much marks certain death for any aspirations toward cinematic integrity or ambition (or comedy). And I am never wrong about that.

P.S. Another bad omen: This excerpt from Wells' frat-boy interview with Kelly last year, in which he tries to create some kind of creepily "intimate" masculine bonding/branding image, reminsicent of a Photoplay magazine profile of Rock Hudson circa the 1950s:

Kelly might be lonely and a bit of a dweeb at heart (like all writers...don't get him started on women). He talks like a grounded adult and seems to know about focus and discipline. But ask him a question and he digresses and meanders. (You have to keep going back and ask it repeatedly -- he'll eventually cough up an answer.)

Becoming famous "has certainly helped me get more dates with women," he comments. "All the sorority girls at USC thought I was interesting but kind of dark and weird. They were more into the guys from Orange County who were going to be stockbrokers. I got made fun of a lot for being a cinema student, and after a while it started to get to me. I started to doubt myself, and writing 'Darko' was my response to that self-doubt."

OK, I wish I hadn't read that. Glad to share it with you, though! Maybe it will help you get more dates with women. Or, at least, sorority girls.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 08:26 PM | Permalink

OK, this is what I was talking about: Dr. Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder of Movieguide.org, has a piece in USA Today (and a slightly different version on Movieguide itself) in which he says:

It would be wonderful to believe Christians can argue the facts to Dan Brown's hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians and history. The truth is, however, that many people have not read a Bible or understood their faith sufficiently to counter the story's intricacies.

As they say in church: Bingo!

Baehr continues:

Does the average person know what Gnostic Gospels are? Are people familiar with the Catholic group Opus Dei? What is the answer when Christians are asked whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did they have children? Has the church hidden important facts from the faithful? These are just some of the complex issues discussed in "The Da Vinci Code." Although it is fiction, it contains enough references to history to make Christians question their beliefs.

The slanderous distortions and falsehoods are as dangerous as they are numerous. The movie threatens to strike another massive blow to people's understanding and knowledge of God, Christianity and history.

Let me repeat that: "What is the answer when Christians are asked whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did they have children?" OK, where do I begin? When I think about this, I quote myself: "Just let me say that if you are so credulous that a novel (fiction!) or Hollywood movie can upend your comprehension of one of the most dominant religious traditions in the world, then you are possessed of all the faith (and reason) you deserve."

So, "The Da Vinci Code" (book and movie) has the temerity to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth was a man and a prophet, but not the Divine Son of God. Good heavens! What a novel idea! It sounds like... Judaism! Or, for that matter, Islam. This particular question about the divinity of Jesus has been out there for a little while. If 21st Century Christians still aren't aware of what, exactly, makes them Christians to begin with -- what beliefs differentiate them from other Abrahamic religions -- then, I'm sorry, you can hardly blame 2003's or 2006's "The Da Vinci Code" for that.

If Christians honestly believe that their religion determines the fate of their immortal souls for all eternity and they don't bother to read a bible (so they might know, at the very least, whether the stuff about Jesus and Mary's Big Fat Jewish Wedding is in there or not) or learn about, say, the Gnostic Gospels or how the texts in the bible came to be in there, then what kind of shallow, hypocritical "believers in Jesus" can they be? They don't know diddly about Jesus or Christianity, so by what right do they claim to believe in them?

Dan Brown absolutely, intentionally fudged the line between fact and fiction in his book -- and that should be pointed out. But what are these "facts" and "history" that Baer says most Christians are too lazy and ignorant to argue in opposition to the mishmash of "The Da Vinci Code"? Richard N. Ostling, an "AP Religion Writer," says the movie has softened "some of the religiously disputed aspects" of the book, and notes:

Indeed, there's no historical evidence Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a couple, and the Mrs. Jesus idea upsets many — it's a particular sticking point with Roman Catholics, due to the celibacy rule.

True-ish. What Ostling does not say is that there is no reliable "historical evidence" of Jesus, period. There are only copies of copies of religious manuscripts, riddled with gaps and inconsistencies, dating from decades to centuries after the time the Jesus of legend was said to have lived. There is no "fossil record," you might say, of Jesus's existence -- and even if there were, what are we to make of that puzzling "gospel gap" in the New Testament between the time he arrives on Earth with great fanfare and when the story picks up again, decades later in the canonical gospels, shortly before he is crucified? If you like Jesus, this is actually a good thing: After all, Jesus is the central figure in what eventually became a rather powerful force known as Christianity. Do you think any of these Jesus stories would have survived into the present day if people had not repeated them and re-written them and re-translated them over the centuries in their efforts to form a new religion and spread the word?

I have never understood why some (certainly not all) Christians insist they need "historical evidence" for their religion. Aren't the philosophical teachings of Jesus good enough on their own? Whatever happened to faith? And if conclusive historical evidence of the Messiah existed, wouldn't that be incontrovertible "proof" that Christianity is the One True Religion? That would sure settle a lot of ancient, worldwide religious disputes once and for all (and make "The Da Vinci Code" far less controversial), but if you want that kind of proof you're not going to get it in this life. You'll just have to wait until the Second Coming (which you may or may not believe is coming, depending on how much you believe what's in the books of the bible). If it happens, though, it should pretty much resolve everything for everybody.

When it comes to Christianity, Baehr says he does not think we should "teach the controversy." I do not know if he feels this way about teaching "Intelligent Design" in science class, but he writes:

A few pundits are arguing that Christians should read the bestselling book The Da Vinci Code and see the movie to "engage the culture" and as a tool for evangelism.

By that argument, we should encourage people to read other popular, but infamous, works: Chinese dictator Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, or The Communist Manifesto. Or, why not Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic diatribe popular in Muslim circles?

Well, it depends on how and why you encourage people to read them, doesn't it? There's this gift called "critical thinking" (or "reason" or "skepticism") that human beings have, and it's one of the very best things about being human. In fact, it's inseparable from this other great thing called "free will." What it does is it allows you to test, challenge and sort out the principles and information that you use to form your own beliefs! I've read parts of all these infamous works (they're tough slogs for me) for the same reason that I sometimes watch Fox News: I think it's important to understand what they're saying and figure out for myself why their professions do or do not hold up to moral or factual scrutiny. So, in response to Baehr: I think Mao and Hitler and the Soviets (who were not "communists" at all, but totalitarians who perverted Marxist theory for their own ends) and Henry Ford, the great US proponent of "The Protocols," had some pretty rotten ideas about politics and religion and humankind. But you will find some familiar echoes of Jesus's philosophy in The Communist Manifesto -- especially when it comes to the inequitable gap between the rich and the poor, a major moral priority for Jesus. And Ford's assembly-line idea for efficiently manufacturing large quantities of automobiles was actually pretty savvy, although his anti-Semitism was appalling.

Baehr himself won't even go so far as to encourage people to read the bible in response to "The Da Vinci Code." Might be too threatening, raise too many disturbing or unanswerable questions.... (This is where the methodologies of science ["critical thinking'] and certain dogmatic religions fundamentally diverge: In science, it's always preferable to know more, even if it leads you down a false path or proves to be a dead end. Then, at least, you know that. This is not always the case in religions that do not recognize the wisdom inherent in doubt.)

Meanwhile, "The Da Vinci Code" is right about one thing: Various kinds of church-building politics were definitely involved in determining what went into the bible and what was left out, and how Christian dogma was shaped and pruned over the centuries. What it gets wrong is... well, what happened and why. USA Today offers this in an article headlined "Theologians debunk 'Da Vinci Code' dogma:

Q: One character, a historian, says Jesus' divinity was not part of church doctrine until he was "voted" into godly status at a fourth-century council. Proof of Jesus' mortality, the historian claims, "will drive the church to its knees." Is any of this true?

A: Bishops settled numerous theological disputes at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, but they always considered Jesus to be divine. "No human being can upgrade someone to God. Jesus claims his divinity in the earliest gospels, hymns and creeds of the church. He is described as 'the image of the invisible God and the very nature of God,' " says Southern Baptist theologian and author the Rev. Lee Strobel....

The Rev. Thomas Lynch, a Roman Catholic priest who teaches church history, says that only a handful of Roman church patriarchs were with the 220 or so Eastern bishops who attended the council. It would be another century before the Rome-based church developed real clout.

The critical theological accomplishment at Nicea, says Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, was the council's overwhelming vote to distinguish Christianity from the many gods of pagan belief. One way they did this was branding as heresy a teaching that Jesus was not the exact same substance as God.

(The key concept here, I think, is "branding." They were trying to make their product stand out in the religious marketplace.) As for Mary Magdalene as Mrs. Jesus:

"[T]here is no historical evidence, archaeology or letters — and no evidence is sin No. 1 for historians — that Jesus married Mary Magdalene or had a child with her, or that she went to France," says Kate Jansen, associate professor of history at Catholic University and author of The Making of the Magdalene: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Jansen says it's "The Da Vinci Code," not the church, that demeans Mary Magdalene, treating her "only as a vessel to pass on a holy bloodline. Her ideas, thoughts and actions don't matter. She's merely a holy uterus, a container. The actual history is so much richer."

Here, Jansen commits a typical sin of omission, failing to note (once again) that there is no historical evidence, archaeology or letters to the effect that such a person as Mary Magdalene ever existed. There are only religious texts, telling various versions of stories that later either wound up in the New Testament or didn't. These stories were written by people who were founding new churches, recruiting new adherents and thus addressing particular concerns of particular contemporary audiences; they are not, and were never intended to be, history or journalism by today's standards.

A "White Paper" attacking "The Da Vinci Code" at Movieguide begins with a quote from book critic Peter Millar in the June 12, 2003, edition of the London Sunday Times:

"This is without doubt, the silliest, most inaccurate, ill-informed, stereotype-driven, cloth-eared, cardboard-cutout-populated piece of pulp fiction that I have read. And that’s saying something. It would be bad enough that Brown has gone into New Age overdrive by trying to draw together the Grail, Mary Magdalene, the Knights Templar, the [bogus] Priory of Sion, Rosicrucianism, Fibonacci numbers, the Isis cult, and the Age of Aquarius. But he’s done it so sloppily."

That pretty much makes everything else Baehr & Co. have to say about "The Da Vinci Code" superfluous.

(Note: Movieguide.org describes itself as "a ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives and helping families make wise media choices.")

Posted by Jim Emerson at 03:52 PM | Permalink

The protests against "The Da Vinci Code" are expected to reach their peak this opening weekend. And in reading some of the reactions to the movie and the book (see here), I noticed that much of the heat seems to center around whether people will mistake the book's and movie's fictions for historical realities. You'd think the general public would be smart enough to understand what a novel is, and that such books are different from scholarly works of nonfiction, even when they incorporate actual facts or events.

For example, one of my all-time favorite novels is Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and it is about a bomber squadron based on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa during World War II, but to my knowledge the titular rule has never been part of U.S. Air Force regulations, nor did Clevinger actually pilot a plane into a cloud and not come out the other side. In part, that is because Clevinger, like Robert Langdon (the hero of "The Da Vinci Code" and Dan Brown's previous novel, "Angels and Demons"), is a fictional character. World War II and the U.S. Air Force and Pianosa, however, are real. And so is the Mediterranean.

Anyway, I was surprised to find that Wal-Mart is (still) selling "The Da Vinci Code" on its web site with this false and misleading description:

... Langdon learns the late curator was the gatekeeper of the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci -- and has sacrificed his life to protect the Priory's most sacred trust: the location of a vastly important religious relic hidden for centuries. It appears that Opus Dei, a clandestine, malevolent, Vatican-sanctioned religious sect that has long plotted to seize the Priory's secret, has now made its move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can crack the Da Vinci code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, the Priory's secret -- and a stunning historical truth -- will be lost forever.

Truth is, the Priory of Sion is a well-known hoax that wasn't even created until 1956, which was a little after Leonardo's time. In case you missed the recent "60 Minutes" debunking of the Priory of Scion (how much more public can you get?), you can read a history of the hoax at Answers.com.

I mention this for two reasons:

1) You may recall that Wal-Mart has gotten into some trouble for this kind of thing before. In 2004, it was found to be selling the anti-Semitic hoax "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" on its web site, with a description that, according to a letter to Wal-Mart president and CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr., from the National Director of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, "suggests it may not be a forgery":

In fact, there is no question that the Protocols is a forgery, created by a Czarist official in the early 20th century to promote the conspiracy theory that Jews are plotting to control the world. Historians, jurists and other authorities have publicly attested to its fraudulence....

ADL is not in the business of banning books, no matter how reprehensible they may be. While Wal-Mart has discretion in what books it chooses to sell, it owes it to its customers to unequivocally state the nature of the book and to disassociate itself from any endorsement of it.

In this instance, Wal-Mart made "business decision" to stop selling the book. But now they're misrepresenting the factual accuracy of another book critical of a major religious group, in this case Roman Catholicism (and, by extension, all of Christianity).

2) Other major online booksellers do not misrepresent "The Da Vinci Code" on their sites the way Wal-Mart's unattributed description does. The Amazon.com "editorial review" by Jeremy Pugh notes that "some will quibble with the veracity of Brown's conjectures." And the Publisher's Weekly review describes the Priory of Scion as "legendary," concluding the author "has assembled a whopper of a plot that will please both conspiracy buffs and thriller addicts."

At BarnesandNoble.com, the brief "From Our Editors" review simply sketches the novel's set-up, but the first review excerpt (from Patrick Anderson of the Washington Post) says:

Whatever the reader makes of the religious theories put forth, Brown has a great deal of interest to say about the early days of Christianity, the influence of pagan religions on it and the legend of the Grail. He says the revelations about Jesus — not to be revealed here — have been whispered about for centuries, but have never overcome the opposition of organized Christianity. How much of this is fact and how much is fiction? Read the book and make up your own mind.

So, what is Wal-Mart trying to sell?

Posted by Jim Emerson at 10:36 AM | Permalink

The infamous, mysteriously suppressed "South Park" episode that poked fun at Scientology and Tom Cruise (sacrilege!) still hasn't been shown on TV in the UK -- but the prestigious National Film Theatre in London hosted a free, big-screen presentation of "Trapped in the Closet" Monday. The screening was in connection with a Stanley Kubrick Masterclass conducted by "South Park" auteurs Trey Parker and Matt Stone. According to a wire service item that ran in the New York Post and in many other outlets:

Tom Cruise has lost his fight to stop an episode of South Park mocking his Scientology beliefs being shown in the UK....

Organizers were thrilled the actor failed in his attempts to stop the free screening, which accompanied a talk given by creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, insisting it was a display of free speech.

A spokesman said, "If we were charging there may have been legal problems, but it was a free event, so it should be fine."

Free DVDs of the episode were given out after the screening. (BTW, this is Day 65 of "South Park" Held Hostage in America, for those of you who, like me, are keeping a Freedom Vigil. Keep that Mr. Hankey burning in the window... for Freedom.) I wonder: If Oliver Stone can get away with showing a 20-minute promo reel for his "World Trade Center" at the Cannes Film Festival this year, why didn't the festival offer the 20-something-minute "Trapped in the Closet" to those poor Europeans who haven't been able to see it? Bet that high-definition cut paper animation would look great at the Lumiere.... (tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Posted by Jim Emerson at 07:09 PM | Permalink

My favorite headline of the week (so far) comes from Reuters: "Reading 'Da Vinci Code' does alter beliefs: survey." According to a poll of Britons, Dan Brown's phenomenally popular novel has effectively re-written the bible for many Christians and non-Christians alike -- so much so that some Catholics are saying the book and the movie should carry "a health warning":

LONDON (Reuters) - "The Da Vinci Code" has undermined faith in the Roman Catholic Church and badly damaged its credibility, a survey of British readers of Dan Brown's bestseller showed on Tuesday.

People are now twice as likely to believe Jesus Christ fathered children after reading the Dan Brown blockbuster and four times as likely to think the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei is a murderous sect.

"An alarming number of people take its spurious claims very seriously indeed," said Austin Ivereigh, press secretary to Britain's top Catholic prelate Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. "Our poll shows that for many, many people the Da Vinci Code is not just entertainment," Ivereigh added....

ORB interviewed more than 1,000 adults last weekend, finding that 60 percent believed Jesus had children by Mary Magdalene -- a possibility raised by the book -- compared with just 30 percent of those who had not read the book...

Hold on a minute: They're saying a whopping percentage of (at least technically literate) Brits now believe the pseudo-biblical "revelations" in "The Da Vinci Code" are true? I suppose it's no wonder millions of people in the modern world claim they believe in the bible, "Intelligent Design" and astrology -- even when they admit they know virtually nothing about them. In so many ways, we still live in the Dark Ages. Just let me say that if you are so credulous that a novel (fiction!) or Hollywood movie can upend your comprehension of one of the most dominant religious traditions in the world, then you are possessed of all the faith (and reason) you deserve.

A "prominent group of English Roman Catholic monks, theologians, nuns and members of Opus Dei" commissioned their poll from Opinion Research Business (ORB) and, according to the Reuters article, has "sought to promote Catholic beliefs at a time when the film's release has provoked a storm of controversy." (If they hire a publicist, I do not recommend Tom Cruise's sister for the job.)

Ron Howard's ultra-super-secret movie of "The Da Vinci Code" kicks off the Cannes Film Festival Wednesday. And the Catholic establishment is... madder than heck:

The English group... which stopped short of following the Vatican line of calling on Catholics to boycott the film, accused Brown of dishonest marketing based on peddling fiction as fact.

Imagine that -- presenting a book of preposterous events as if it were historical fact! The nerve of some people...

But, again I ask: How could a 2003 pulp-thriller novel (it wasn't even a phony memoir, like "A Million Little Pieces of Jesus") so radically alter so many people's views of the fundamental tenets of Christian lore? I suggest it's because most people, including those who identify themselves as Christians, have only a vague, piecemeal concept of what Christianity is (and what it has been over the centuries), and have never actually read, studied or understood the bible, relying instead on the easily swallowed, decontexualized tidbits served up in pop culture ("A Charlie Brown Christmas"), church sermons and evangelical TV talk shows. And ya gotta give Pat Robertson some credit here: His apocalyptic vision of the bible as an instrument for smiting the wicked (non-Christians, assorted sinners of his choice) often hews pretty closely to the actual text.

(BULLETIN: My favorite line from Todd McCarthy's pan of "The Da Vinci Code" in Daily Variety: "It's esoteric, heady stuff, made compelling only by the fact that what it's proposing undermines the fundamental tenants [sic] of Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, and, by extension, Western Civilization for the past 2,000 years." Well, at least there's that.)

OK, not to worry. The bible has still outsold "The Da Vinci Code," plus it's been around a couple millennia longer. (And to my knowledge, nobody has been giving away free copies of "The Da Vinci Code" door-to-door, on the street corner, or in hotel rooms....) But I'd be willing to wager that there are more unread copies of the bible scattered about, hither and yon, in nightstand drawers and under wobbly furniture, than uncracked copies of "A Brief History of Time" on all the world's undusted shelves and coffee tables. That might be one way of accounting for the 30 percent of Brits who thought Jesus married Mary Magdalene, even though they hadn't read "The Da Vinci Code." Seems they hadn't quite grasped the basics of the Jesus story, either.

People find comfort not so much in what the bible says (much of which is not comforting at all, which they'd know if they'd read it), as in what it is: a venerable object used as lucky charm -- and one that might even stop a bullet and save your life if you kept it in your breast pocket. (Please note: I neither endorse nor advocate this view the bible; I'm just saying it's my experience that many persons of my acquaintance over the years who call themselves "Christians" espouse it. They know nothing about the bible or how it came to be the way it is. But that's not unusual. Religious hypocrisy is far easier than scholarship, and far older than what we now call "fundamentalism.")

In general, I'd say, a whole lot of modern "Christians" (particularly in Western Europe and America) aren't terribly devout; they're Sunday-morning supplicants. Despite what they may claim about their belief in the bible, they don't really base their religious faith on first-hand reading of sacred texts (unlike certain rigorous orthodox Jews, who are taught to examine and question the meaning of every line of the Torah for themselves, and to consult volumes of criticism and interpretation). They prefer to do what feels comfortable for them, usually in a social or family context, and not examine their fuzzily held notions of religion too closely. It's a philosophy otherwise known as, "Let sleeping dogmas lie." And that's all religion is to many (most?) people: Whatever works; whatever makes you feel good.

And yet, if asked, these good folks would say their faith is grounded in the bible as the (inspired) word of God. They just aren't quite aware of what those words are that they believe God said, and that the Almighty deemed important enough to set down in holy scriptures. But they probably are reasonably certain it has something to do with an eye for an eye and turning the other cheek and not killing other people and not coveting thy neighbor's wife and being fishers of men and water into wine and lying down in green pastures. And angels and shepherds and mangers and swaddling clothes and frankincense and myrrh and celebrating Christmas on December 25th because there's a war on, dammit! (Unfortunately for these Christians, many of them American politicians and Fox News personalities, the very God in whom they claim to believe is not likely to be fooled by superficial proclamations of faith. How can true faith arise from the ashes of doubt if there's never been enough serious and dedicated consideration of the faith to allow for any doubt in the first place? Or is that yet another religious Catch-22?) No wonder it's so easy for a silly entertainment like "The Da Vinci Code" to get them to change their perceptions of Christianity. They never knew all that much about Christianity to begin with.

On the other hand, as my Irish Catholic-raised friend Julia Sweeney says in her monologue "Letting Go of God," the Catholics have always tended to treat their big old sacred anthologies as something best left to the professionals. After all, these volumes are a mess of transcribed and re-transcribed fragments, all of them fallible copies and translations of dubious authenticity; none of them originals; many of their stories pre-dating not only Judaism and Christianity but written language itself. So perhaps it's best to understand them in that light, and to see them as, well, "poetic" meditations on metaphysical themes.

As a priest told Julia, the Old Testament, especially, might best be seen as a collection of ancient tales of wonder and mystery that were once told around campfires by wizards and shamans. And like the mystical pros of old, priests, cardinals and popes have long specialized in picking and choosing and interpreting these tortuously mangled texts for public consumption -- and putting their own personal spins on the stories and their lessons in the process, too. So, maybe the bible never was meant for laymen -- unless the early priests and church officers somehow anticipated the invention of the Gutenberg printing press (first printed bible: 1452) by many centuries. Maybe that's why the bible is such a poor vehicle for conveying coherent messages from God. Even Jesus's disciples couldn't figure out his parables half the time. Talk about a failure to communicate! Besides, when it comes down to it, there's just too much in there you don't want to know about if you're going to believe in it.

Indeed, as Julia concludes, the quickest way to get a Christian of any stripe to abandon his faith is not to give him "The Da Vinci Code" (or the Koran or the Book of Mormon), but to to simply get him to actually read the bible. There are moral horrors and immoral teachings (regarding murder, rape, incest, slavery, sadism, bestiality and other anti-family values) in the Old and New Testament that dwarf anything Dan Brown could ever have dreamed up. Sensational stuff, but hardly a reliable or infallible guide to living a moral life, by any definition of the word "moral."

I've often wondered how many "biblical literalists" have read the appalling biblical accounts of Lot and his daughters, or Abraham and Isaac, or Job, or Noah after the flood, or just about anything from Leviticus. You'd have to be insane not to find these stories reprehensible, if you take them literally. And that's just the Old Testament. (According to religious scholar Karen Armstrong, literalism/fundamentalism is a uniquely 20th Century Protestant way of interpreting biblical texts as a reactionary response to the predominant secularism of the modern world. And while it flies in the face of thousands of years of Christian tradition, it is mislabelled as "fundamentalism" because it is an entirely new phenomenon, not a return to the roots of faith but a complete distortion of them. Nevertheless, fundamentalism is on the rise in nearly all major religions -- and doomed to failure, Armstrong says, because it attempts to "return" to some mythical pre-modern ideal that never existed in the first place.)

"The Da Vinci Code" concerns the "family values" of the New Testament figure of Jesus -- the guy who allegedly said: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26, in the King James English translation, which some latter-day English-speaking literalists insist is the inerrant word of God, except for when they say it isn't and there must've been some kind of translation or transcription error). According to Brown's novel (I guess you'd call it "speculative fiction," a term I'd suggest applies just as well to the exant books of the bible themselves, as we've come to know them), Jesus didn't give up the ghost and ascend to heaven after crucifixion, but instead married Mary Magdalene, settled down and had some kids. Then there's a whole murder-mystery cover-up plot about Opus Dei and Leonardo Da Vinci and how the institution of the Catholic Church tried to cover up The Truth about Jesus and his offspring.

From a recent background piece on Opus Dei and "The Da Vinci Code" in "The New Yorker":

The premise of Brown’s story is that Jesus of Nazareth was, in the words of a “Da Vinci� character, “a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.� The Brown theology—asserted, lecture style, in speeches by two of his main characters, both scholars—holds that Jesus was a proto-feminist married to Mary of Magdala, his favorite disciple and the mother of his offspring. This Jesus preached a message that was in harmony with goddess worship, and the early Christians practiced a life-affirming faith devoted to the “sacred feminine� until, in the fourth century, a Catholic power play replaced this true Christianity with the patriarchal, sin-and-atonement version. According to Brown, the softer Christianity’s books were burned by the Church, as were five million of its more assertive women—“female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers,� and the like. Even so, this original Christian Church could not be wiped out, and left clues everywhere telling of the sacred feminine—not only in Leonardo’s work (the artist was in on the secret) but even in church architecture. (The entrance of a Gothic cathedral, one of Brown’s characters observes, is like a vagina, “complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway.�)

OK, no wonder it was a best-seller. What kills me is not that people might put some credence in this stuff about re-shaping biblical texts for contemporary political and church-building reasons (which indisputably did happen, though not quite as outlined in the fiction of "The Da Vinci Code"), or that they would consider the age-old legitimate theological debate over the extent of Jesus's humanity or divinity, but that they would choose to accept the totally unfounded, extra-biblical idea of Jesus and Mary Magdalene getting hitched and raising a family. (We have no actual first-hand, historical evidence of Jesus at all, but that's another story.) For more reliable nonfiction accounts of the early Christian church and how the bible was developed, I suggest "Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages" by Jaroslav Pelikan; "Misquoting Jesus : The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" by Bart Ehrman; "Who Wrote the Bible?" by Richard E. Friedman; and "The Secret Origins of the Bible" by Tim Callahan. They may not have as much sexy self-mutilation as "The Da Vinci Code," but they're pretty good at illuminating biblical mysteries.

All this got me to thinking about other Jesus movies of recent years and why they were, or were not, "controversial." Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was a "best of" anthology of the gospels concerning the last hours of Jesus's life and crucifixion, with an enthusiastically pagan emphasis on grotesque blood rituals and spooky demonic imagery that appeared to have been drawn less from the New Testament than from music videos by satanic death-metal bands of the 1980s. It was a smash it -- with Protestants even more than Catholics (who traditionally don't shy away from blood and flesh in their transubstantiation ceremonies), although some condemned its voodoo-rendition of the Passion Play, and others accused it of anti-Semitism.

Although much less radical and more philosophically traditional than "The Passion of the Christ," Martin Scorsese's 1988 film of Nikos Kazantzakis's 1951 novel, "The Last Temptation of Christ," was considered enormously provocative because it dared to suggest... well, not even a wee glimmer of what is suggested in "The Da Vinci Code." Kazantzakis's and Scorsese's concept was to present the possiblity of an ordinary family life for Jesus -- marriage, kids, etc. -- as the "last temptation" with which Satan tantalizes him while he's on the cross. The Jesus of the bible (and, let's not forget, "Jesus Christ Superstar") expresses his own momentary doubts and misgivings about completing his mission; if he didn't have them, his sacrifice would be a purely physical one (like Gibson's), rather than a spiritually meaningful one. That's why, for me, Jesus's cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is so moving and shattering.

It's fascinating that the Judas of "Last Temptation" is closer to the recently discovered, so-called "Judas Gospel" than he is in any of the gospels eventually included in what we now call the New Testament. In the end, it's he who makes Jesus's sacrifice possible; he's the one who guides Jesus along the path he must take to fulfill his destiny.

I thought Scorsese's film was reverent and inspired, but it caused protests from Christians of many stripes. Today, however, even some conservative Christian groups such as the Promise Keepers have defended this interpretation of the life and death of Jesus.

Will they ever accept the alternative-universe dogma of "The Da Vinci Code"? Check back in a few decades. Or centuries. Heck, if Christianity is still around a few hundred years hence, Kazantzakis's and Brown's versions could even be incorporated into some future, further re-edited edition of the bible itself that takes out a lot of the bad and dubious stuff, displays the results of the best biblical scholarship, and offers a variety of interpretations of the core stories! Might even be a best-seller.

(Sure to be my second-favorite headline of the week: "Elephant Not Interested in Using Treadmill.")

Posted by Jim Emerson at 03:24 PM | Permalink

What do we talk about when we talk about Tom Cruise? What are our images of him really based upon, besides his own publicity stunts and some headlines? And just how did the top movie star in the world become so unlikeable in the public eye, an object of scorn and derision in the media, and a punch line for stand-up comics? Normally, a movie star's fall from gross -- er, grace -- wouldn't interest me much (although I am still trying to figure out how Burt Reynolds' 1970s career flamed out). I've interviewed hundreds of actors and filmmakers over the years and I've always made it a personal policy never to ask them, or speculate in print, about what they euphemistically call their "private lives," mainly because I really don't think it's any of my (or your) business. I'm interested in their work, not in what they do in their off hours.

But the fascinating thing about Cruise is how he's made a public commodity of his so-called "private life" (or his own image-manipulation version of it, presented for your entertainment). You'd think he would have learned something from the tabloid headlines generated by the sudden and mysterious split with his superstar wife Nicole Kidman, and tried to keep his personal affairs as private as he can. But no. When somebody boasts about details of his alleged off-screen love life on the most popular talk show in the world, goes on TV to say a pregnant actress (Brooke Shields) was wrong to seek medical treatment for her postpartum depression, and acts as a public spokesperson for his supposed "religion" in interviews (if you grant Scientology that status) -- even to the point of having Scientology tents set up on the set of Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" in case cast or crew wanted to take a Free Personality Inventory -- well, that's when the "personal" becomes part of the star's public branding. And Tom Cruise is a brand name, every bit as much as Apple or Starbuck's or Subway or Volkswagon.

In Cruise's case, however, the spin he spun (after he fired his ultra-protective longtime PMK publicity handler Pat Kingsley) seems to have gone spinning out of his control. So now what we're seeing is... backspin! But these things are always cyclical. Once everybody's done tearing him down, they'll start building him back up again, so they can tear him down again...

Phillip Kelly (NOT a suspected terrorist and no relation to "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly, as far as I know) writes:

They say Cruise’s percentage poll for women has gone down from 2005 to now due to his erratic behavior. I finally sat down and watched some of those clips that people have been talking about that I missed the first time around; i.e. Oprah, Matt Lauer, etc., etc.

First, I didn’t see any of the women in Oprah’s audience mind that he seemed so in love with Katie Holmes and that he would jump around a bit because of it (staged – I don’t know about that, maybe?), and with Mr. Lauer, while I may not agree with everything he said, I agree with some of it, and he was well spoken; it seemed like an intelligent debate; both sides taking the time to understand the other. I don’t think these things alone are what did it. I think however that the press putting such a negative slant towards all of this does.

Or hyping things that are completely unknown to be fact (Cruise pulling a "South Park" episode? Fun to talk about, but fact?) People will believe anything they read or hear about second hand. I was told that the interview with David Letterman was an uncomfortable one. That it all fell apart. I watched it and didn’t even the slightest bit uncomfortable, and I was told from someone who didn’t see it that it was. This is the way it works. It’s easy to blame Cruise for all of this, but what a juicy opportunity for gossip mongers, and the press to jump on the band wagon and blow a lot of it out of proportion, and in your case to have a little fun. Is that wrong? For the press perhaps, but for a blog to speculate, probably not.

Another thought would be that perhaps they should show what the rating approval for Cruise was before “War of the Worlds� in comparison to the poll in 2005. What an easy comparison to make, then to now. It could be that women’s interest in him has been dropping, not because of his behavior, but because of the movies he’s made, and a string of them; “Magnolia,� “Eyes Wide Shut,� “The Last Samurai,� “Vanilla Sky,� “Minority Report,� “Collateral,� “MI:2" (which sucked)… do any of these movies capitalize on his female audience? “Jerry Maguire� was really the last one that did, and was that almost 10 years ago now??? Perhaps, and god forbid we apply some logic to all this, and say his numbers have been slumping for awhile, and people have been looking for an excuse to move onto the next big star for awhile. But maybe that’s just as speculative as everything else.

But like all audiences, or crowd, or mobs, they are fickle, and I believe they’ll come back again. I happened to enjoy "MI:3," so I haven’t completely left.

You bring up some intriguing points. Let me respond to some of 'em:

1) I think the Oprah couch-jumping (some might say shark-jumping) incident probably played better in the studio than on TV, especially when it was repeated and repeated and repeated so much that it was parodied in "Scary Movie 4." (You could say the same thing about Howard Dean's infamous rally-the-troops scream; it looked weird on TV, but it was different in the room with the crowd and the noise, etc.)

2) Going on Oprah in the first place -- and shouting his love for Katie Holmes to the mountaintops -- was definitely designed as an appeal to his female fan-base, while (as you quite correctly observe) his movies of the last several years -- or, at least, his roles in them -- have been more male-oriented (and, in the case of "Magnolia" -- and maybe even "Eyes Wide Shut" -- satirically misogynistic). But going on the Today Show to tell a (not present) woman she should have treated her postpartum depression with vitamins is not the way to court female fans.

3) Cruise and/or Scientology have never denied the news and blog reports about Cruise/Scientology pressuring Viacom to pull the Cruise/Scientology-ridiculing "Trapped in the Closet" episode of "South Park" from airing at all in the UK, or from being repeated as scheduled on Comedy Central in the US (Direct links to those reports can be found in my earlier Scanners postings here and here.) The interesting thing about the "anonymous spokesperson" denials, as I noted in March, was that they centered not on whether Cruise or Scientology had pressured Viacom to withhold the episode, but whether Cruise himself had threatened to not promote "Miiii" (though Viacom and Paramount may now wish he hadn't):

A spokesman for Cruise denied that Cruise had ever made such a threat. "He never said any such thing about 'Mission: Impossible 3,'" the spokesman said.

As I said at the time, that's what we used to call, in the Nixon era, a "non-denial denial."

Of course, Cruise has done tons of interviews since March. All he'd need to have said, just once, was: "I didn't pressure them to pull that episode. I wish they'd just go ahead and put it on -- in the UK and the US." That would be the end of it. The question is whether the Comedy Channel in Great Britain or Comedy Central in the States would actually go ahead and show it. If not, what's preventing them? the ratings would be HUGE. As I also reported, the company that licensed the rights to show Viacom/MTV Networks stuff in Canada -- but is not itself owned by Viacom -- moved up the date for airing "Trapped in the Closet" precisely because of all the controversy surrounding it. (Meanwhile, we know why the "Bloody Mary" episode is not being re-run; Comedy Central openly announced it had caved to pressure from the Catholic League. They've never given any "official" reason for pulling "Trapped in the Closet.")

4) I think Cruise has simply reached the media-saturation point. He's overexposed, he's a worn-out joke, he's like Michael Jackson with money, or Paris Hilton with an actual career. He probably just needs to go away for a while -- and stop promoting his wife and his baby and his religion. I think his role in "Collateral" shows the direction he should pursue. (He shoul