Getting the hell outta Hell.

So yesterday, I'm catching up with the new reviews at the Village Voice and one of the "Sponsored Links" up there in a banner at the top of the page (they rotate, and naturally, it doesn't happen to be there now) takes me to a site for Gone, a film about three lawyers for whom "the Rapture has come too soon" and with a tagline reading, "This movie will scare you out of Hell."

The site features what you'd expect it to feature: Reviews, interviews, the trailer and so forth, plus countless quotes like this one from director Tim Chey: "I'm glad to have worked with fellow Believers who have faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I watched the final episode of Survivor where [Gone lead] Dirk [Been] shared his testimony [Season One, 5th Banished, 15 Days, Tagi Tribe] to about sixty million viewers around the world and you know that's God's doing."

Gone

I have a couple reactions to this.

First, I've been here before. Yes, decades ago, I was a teenage evangelical Christian. Reading quotes like Chey's, I don't cringe like a lot of people do. I cringe in entirely different ways. Flushed with memories, the hairs on the back of my neck lift and hover and it takes a while for them to settle back down again. Nonetheless, I have fewer regrets these days for that particular episode in my life than I did years ago. For one thing, it's bucked up a thriving and healthy skepticism that's come in handy when similarly structured ideological systems send out their siren calls. For another, it's allowed me to lend a sympathetic ear to those whose Christian beliefs are sincere yet anything but fanatic, to those Christians who struggle hard and honestly with the question, "How should we then live?" I hope I'm not being too presumptive when I say that Darren Hughes seems to be just such a person (see, for example, his "Seeking 'Holy Moments' at the Movies").

I'm also familiar with the scare tactics the sort of evangelicals for whom I have far less sympathy use to convert the heathen. There are two ways to appeal to the conscience, if indeed there is such a thing. In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis chose what seems to me to be the morally acceptable route, calmly laying out the familiar argument that there are such things as universal truths and that, in fact, the very existence of a conscience is the key evidence: It's universally understood that killing is wrong; someone must have written that law. Now, you can pick that argument apart and then part ways with Lewis relatively unscathed.

But what might be called the Late Great Planet Earth approach to winning converts plays much more cruelly on culturally ingrained "universals". This method of indoctrination is all about fear and can be filed right up there with those used by the most merciless of cults.

Other thoughts. The success of the Left Behind series of thrillers points to the existence of audience out there that's probably too big to be classified as a niche. What's more, with the vast majority of Americans professing to believe in some sort of God, one way or another, the potential audience for a film like Gone - if it were a good film, and it certainly doesn't look like one - could rival that for any number of Hollywood releases.

For some, that's a disturbing thought, but regardless, it's also an interesting one in that it should serve as a reminder that there is such a thing as a prevailing set of assumptions shared by most mainstream movie fare. And one of those assumptions is that religion plays little or no role in American life. The assumption is wrong, and I for one am hoping that it'll be a movie along the lines of You Can Count on Me that corrects it rather than a movie like Gone.

Last thought. Someone really needs to release Michael Tolkin's The Rapture on DVD. It's a trip. Posted by dwhudson at May 28, 2003 8:51 AM