By Bruce Weinstein, Ph.D.
The Ethics Guy
Bill Maher's "Religulous" is a perfect example of how not to make a good documentary.
A self-confessed agnostic, Maher sets out on a worldwide trek to understand how people can place their faith in something as seemingly irrational as religious belief. At least, this is what he claims his mission is.
It doesn't long, however, to see that what Maher is really after is to make fun of just about everyone he interviews, and to use the formal elements of filmmaking, especially editing and music, to show himself to be a morally superior human being. What a missed opportunity.
Artists are not exempt from the ethical obligations to tell the truth and to treat others with respect that apply to everyone else. What makes "Religulous" so troubling both from an artistic and an ethical perspective is that it flagrantly violates the latter responsibility and has almost no regard for the former. Maher selects as his subjects not the mainstream faithful but oddballs, kooks, and weirdos who represent a miniscule number of like-minded believers. He takes on an anti-Zionist rabbi, an Orthodox Jew who invents contraptions to get around the prohibition against doing work on the Sabbath, a Dutch man whose religion is based on the virtues of marijuana, and a Latino who claims to be Jesus Christ 2.0.
What these nut jobs are doing in a documentary that purports to be a serious exploration of rationality and religion is hard to fathom. Maher may want you to come away from these interviews thinking, "Boy, these religious people are real lunatics," but all you get is the sour feeling that Maher is using delusional people for entertainment value. By taking cheap shots in the name of philosophical inquiry, Maher abuses his privilege as a documentary filmmaker and reveals himself to be more petty, smug, and self-righteous than those he thinks he is exposing. (Is it really news that some whack jobs use religion to justify any bizarre point of view they can come up with?)
But what's really wrong about "Religulous" is that Maher spends no time examining the good works of religion and religious people. Maher seems to think that a religious tradition is nothing more than a set of beliefs, but it's actually much more than that. Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism (totally ignored by the film, incidentally), and, yes, Islam are rich cultures that are as much about community, social justice, and service as they are about doctrine and prayer. Yes, there are bigots out there who twist the noble messages of the great religious traditions to fit their own evil ends, but this is the fault of individual human beings, not the traditions themselves. As a Jew who grew up in the Bible Belt, attended a Quaker college (Swarthmore), and trained at a Catholic graduate school (Georgetown), I have been blessed to know a wide range of kind, loving people who guide their lives by the moral teachings of religion and who have brought a lot of joy to others through their religious devotion. I know I'm not the only person who feels this way, but none of the film's 100 minutes acknowledges any of this. (Also conspicuously absent are two of the best things about religious traditions: the music and the food.)
The truly ridiculous revelation in "Religulous" is not that a lot of people around the world have beliefs that don't stand up to scientific scrutiny but that a gifted comedian sought to use his considerable skills merely to make a laughing stock out of an institution that has contributed something of value to the world.
It may be irrational to place one's faith in the unknowable, but it's downright unethical to use the greatest art form ever created to make fun of people and believe you've spoken truth to power. Comics like to say that "Dying is easy; comedy is hard," but discovering meaningful truth is the hardest thing of all. With "Religulous," the only truth Bill Maher reveals is that he isn't as smart as he thinks he is.
The Ethics Guy, Dr. Bruce Weinstein, writes the ethics column for BusinessWeek Online and is a contributor to Anderson Cooper's blog, AC360.com. His latest book is "Life Principles: Feeling Good by Doing Good." In April 2009, Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press will publish his first ethics book for teens, "Is It Still Cheating If I Don't Get Caught?" For more about Dr. Weinstein, log on to TheEthicsGuy.com.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Hmmm, I'm sure there's no bias in this review at all...HA.
Here's some news for the site, too, since you have an ad for "Expelled," claiming its the #1 documentary of 2008:
"The longer-than-anyone-expected-or-even-thought-remotely-possible reign of Ben Stein's anti-evolution screed Expelled: No Intelligence Required atop the year's documentary box office is nearing its end...Expelled's $7.6 million gross is expected to succumb this weekend to Bill Maher's godless hit Religulous." -Oct. 15, Defamer.com.
The Final numbers:
Expelled's total gross: $7.60 million
Religulous total gross: $9.07 million
Looks like there's a new #1.
There's another word for this movie: "propaganda".
Propagandists like Maher can't bear to look at religion and God seriously, perhaps because if they did, they might actually have to hold themselves accountable to an objective, moral standard. Heaven forbid.
Misery loves company. Maher is like Jim Baker (or perhaps even more like Jim Jones?)...looking for converts to his own "truth faith" of no faith by appealing to emotion under the guise of reason.
Thanks be to God that there is still time for repentance. Some of the worst sinners have become the greatest saints.
Thanks for this article.
Maher,whose god is himself, who believes in the heaven of the Playboy Mansion..is a spiritually sick human being..who is still loved by his creator, "God". This sick puppy needs some prayers.
Yeah Bill Maher appears to be quite repulsive, rebellious and demanding attention. I cannot 100 per cent fully blame Bill for his outright anger towards Catholicism, of which he constantly bellows out on his shows. Sure Bill is a very intelligent adult, but the religious environment that Bill has grown up in has more than promoted his anti-religious behavior. His father having been heavily influence by the liberal leanings of television media in which he was employed; together with his disagreement with Pope Paul VI regarding Humane Vitae caused the family to stop attending Mass in 1969 when Bill was thirteen years old. Although a few year older than Bill my father also had some resentment towards Paul VI and Vatican II
Bill is definitely angry for what his father has done in regards to his Jewish mother as well as his Catholic faith, but maybe he also has become agonized over the changes that took place in Catholicism. Bill Maher although entertaining in an extreme anti-religious way is an common example of what young adults are like coming out of a mixed religious marriage. One could blame his parents and the priest who married them for not giving full instruction on the raising of children in a mixed marriage. However, additional blame must be put at the foot of Bishops, as well as the Pope for making those significant changes to modernize the Catholic Church, now considered utter failures – hence the call for the return to the Traditional Mass all over the World.
Sad enough that the results of Vatican II’s impact on the family and the current Catholic generation of young adults believe that abortion is OK. Now add that Vatican II changes and renewals to the impact of living as a child in a mixed religious marriage and it is pretty easy to see how a Bill Maher’s personality would eventually appear on our current Hollywood Media scene. His father’s television connections also helped the situation.
Come on: when 60-68 per cent of the current crop of American Catholic young adults believe that it is perfectly OK to have an abortion – Something is definitely wrong in the pews and homes of modern Catholic families.
The question is not how do we get rid of a Bill Maher? But rather how do we either return that 68 per cent to zero per cent Pro Abortion.
Should the American Catholic Bishops just start cleaning house of all those who support Abortion by informing them that they can no longer receive communion. Or should Bishops start excommunicating both citizen and politician alike for publicly supporting Abortion.
I consider Bill Maher merely a sign, not just a thorn that I can do without. Something is wrong in the pews that co-relates to the 68 per cent approval of abortion in America's Catholic Youth. And by the way, if only 60 American Catholic Bishops support the Champaign for Life (anti-Abortion) - then -
1. What is the status of the other 200 sum Bishops in the United States in this political climate?
2. Are they the cause of this high level of Abortion support?
3. What should be done about them if they are?
4. Maybe they are also contributing to the reason why we have a Bill Maher in the first place?
If 60 Bishops are doing the right thing, (regardless of the protest against them) and these same 60 Bishops are actually turning the table to help Americans youth, and possible even Bill Maher – what would happen if all 260 plus American Bishops did the very same.
Discipline comes from the word disciples, and its going to take a lot of discipline, and prayer to change these young Americans to return to the faith of the Catholic Church. If they don’t maybe we will be encountering hundreds or even thousands of ex-Catholics like Bill Maher.
Bill reminds me of the typical youth who goes out of his way to cause trouble, because what he is truly saying is ... Why did you lie to me, and not tell me the truth ... Why can't you discipline me with a merciful discipline ... I am only asking for you to hold me and tell me you love me.
What the reviewer does not seem to understand is that to a reational person his beliefs are just as kooky as those of the people Bill interviewed in the movie. Just because millions of people believe in a virgin birth does not make it any more reasonable then the ex-jew for Jesus in the movie that thinks God created water just for him. Your biased review seems to completly skip the fact that he interviewed just as many mainstream believers as so called oddballs.
How dare you call them kooks anyway. If you demand respect for your beliefs where do you get off n ot respecting others?
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.