religulous

last night snark and I watched 2 documentaries (well, I only watched one and a half; despite being interested, I started to fall asleep in the middle of the 2nd one, so I’ll talk about that one on another day when I actually finish watching it). the first film we watched was Religulous. political satirist bill maher goes around to different countries probing people of various religious faiths about their beliefs in religion and god. he interviews politicians, truckers, religious authorities, a number of eccentric personalities, and everyday people. As could be expected, in the film he is promoting doubt and incredulity over faith. examining such religions as Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, and Scientology, maher’s main motive throughout is to highlight the lack of logical, scientific thinking that accompanies most religious stories and doctrines. I enjoyed watching this film. I laughed a lot. I was occasionally horrified. snark and I found ourselves exchanging looks at the really scary parts (for example, the Puerto Rican man who thought he was the second coming of christ; the bible theme park and jesus christ interview; the American senator who pointed out that he didn’t need to have a high IQ to have his job; clips of george w. bush speaking about god and foreign policy…the list goes on and on). I recommend this film to those who already have reservations about religion or who outright disbelieve in god and all the stuff that goes along with that. this film really isn’t for those hard fast believers; I’m sure they will feel insulted and outraged by the film. and that, I guess, was one of my issues I had when watching it. sometimes maher was just plain rude to the people he interviewed. he’d ask a question, but didn’t wait for an answer; he often would break in right away with a witty comment. for instance, there was a man who was trying to tell his story of how he came to believe in the miracles of god. maher asked him to tell his story, but then interrupted immediately to point out the price of the very expensive mary and jesus statue in the man’s shop. an astute observation, but rude, nonetheless, since he had just asked the man to talk. What he had to interrupt with may have been funny; it may have been challenging; it may have been a perceptive comment, but when it happened more than occasionally, it just began to feel to me like maher was using his privilege as a means for discourteousness. additionally, I felt frustrated that the film didn’t explore other religions: Paganism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. Why were these faiths left out of the discussion? could he not find enough material to make fun of the people who follow these faiths? surely that couldn’t be the case. Are these religions traditionally less violent? more accepting? less hypocritical? (i don’t know!) so they just didn’t work into the scheme of his film? are they just less popular in the US and they didn’t seem relevant to him and his audience? this movie is outrageously biased, but if you can go into it knowing that, expecting that, it’s still pretty cool to watch.