Hamadryad, I have to agree with you about Fr. Mulcahy to a considerable extent. I remember a line by Dr. Freedman (Alan Arbus), commented about Mulcahy:
“He’s shy and studious–but he has a left hook that could stop a truck!”
And there’s no question in my mind about his courage–when, in the final episode, he braved mortar fire to go out in the open and release the Chinese POWs from the cage (and the young MP who was out there with him was brave too, although that may have been bolstered by his rifle and military training). And it just about cost him his hearing. A Purple Heart at least, if not a Bronze Star!! 
You have chastised me quite thoroughly. :o I only wish that more people who post on these boards would follow an objective sentiment, rather than impugning, as I suggested to Revtim, some negative mental trait.
There is no question in my mind that religion is quite negatively portrayed in TV shows, movies, and so on. [metaphor]Every priest is Elmer Gantry.[/metaphor] And now, of course, religion has been severely libeled by the attacks on September 11. If TV and movies have not exploited this already I expect they will soon. 
** Eve, **
I think **Andygirl ** is in charge of toasters on the SDMB. You have to see her about them.
I don’t know why I’m bothering with this but rjung was being sarcastic. His intended point was that TV and radio rarely, if ever, explicity denigrate religion. As for WKRP, I remember one episode where a religious program was yanked off the air, not because it was religious, but because the the reverend was a huckster and scam-artist selling dead-sea scroll shower curtains, etc. The station’s manager had actually wanted some religious programming but was offended and believed that the corrupt reverend cheapened and exploited the faith of his listeners. How many real-life religious hucksters have been tossed off the air? The show was actually a complex examination of the nature of faith and religion. The reverend may have been corrupt, ala. Elmer Gantry, but he was a good plot device to drive a serious discussion about religion.
So, how does that fit into your the so-called anti-religion agenda of the mass-media?
Just to continue the hijack, I think that Fr. Mulcahy was the most consistently and sympathetically drawn character on MASH*. He was a consistent source of strength, even to those who did not follow his religion.
Sua
i would like to point out that this is my first appearance in this thread.
You must choose, but choose wisely.
I can’t help it if you read insults into statements that aren’t there, dougie, that’s something you will have to deal with.
When you hear people talk of the ancient northern Germanic peoples worshipping Odin and Thor, and if someone uses the word “mythology” in reference to their beliefs, do you also read that as an insult to those people? How about the Greeks and Romans? When their beliefs are called mythologies, do you see that as calling these people stupid? I don’t.
I don’t think one is ignorant for simply having beliefs different than mine, but I might begin to suspect a person’s intelligence when they are determined to see insults when there are none.
Y’know, I don’t watch much TV (relative to most of you slobs, that it 
), so maybe that’s my problem.
But I’m having real trouble recalling examples of religion-bashing on network television.
Sure, Seinfeld often makes fun of Jews – they even make fun of Jews who make fun of Jews. But that’s not mocking the religion.
And the Simpsons makes fun of religious people – but they make fun of EVERYONE. Sincere religion is generally portrayed as something positive on the show.
Can you give me examples of television episodes that mock religious faith itself?
(FWIW, I have no problem with mocking hypocritical, hateful, or otherwise obnoxious religious PEOPLE).
Daniel
I think I’ll use this as an opportunity to attempt to wipe out a little ignorance myself. [sup](“Well, finally!”)–[/sup]
I now have reason to believe that Mr. Hart was not actually depicting a menorah in that strip.
A few weeks ago I attended my church’s Good Friday service. The order of worship was a Tenebrae service. On the altar was a seven-branched candle holder. The seven last words of Christ (listed in the above link) were read and after each reading one of the candles was extinguished, finishing with the sanctuary in darkness.
As I recall the strip, Hart depicted his candelabra being extingushed under the same “seven last words” scripture passages. He finished with the empty candle holder, with its now-bare vertical and horizontal beams, transforming into an empty cross. Basically, he artistically depicted the progression of Good Friday as observed during a Tenebrae service.
It appears to me his intent was not to have any connection with the Jewish Hanukkah menorah, which has nine branches.
Dislike the comic and the author for whatever reason you want, but IMHO, that particular strip does nothing to warrant it.
If I hadn’t thrown out last year’s fish, I’d check the strip.
You are confusing Passover and Hannukah.
“Who Watches the Watchers,” Star Trek: TNG, immediately comes to mind. And while *The Simpsons[/]’ Ned Flanders is often depicted sympathetically, he’s also portrayed as saying things like “I followed everything in the bible, even the parts that contradict the other parts.”
On Politically Correct, Bill Maher frequently lambasts religion in general, even to the point of calling Christianity “a cult” and claiming that Lisa Whelchel turned out poorly for having married a minister. (This was during an episode on former child stars.) The venom with which he lambasts religion is unmistakable.
Now, one might argue that religion is also portrayed positively – that Maher occasionally has guests who are sympathetic toward religion, for example. That’s beside the point, though. The point is that TV shows can often take overt potshots at religion, with nary a ripple from the public or the popular media.
Several months ago I had considered posting a reply on this thread, consisting chiefly of a column by William F. Buckley, in which he severely criticizes movies, rather than TV shows or any other medium, for a deprecating attitude toward religion. He made an exception, to be sure, with a movie–I think the title was Sister Act–in which Whoopi Goldberg poses as a nun and winds up doing a great deal of good in the process.
I don’t have the column with me–at the moment I am using a library computer again–but several hours from now I will be back online and I expect to be able to quote the column then. I must point out, however, that it is indeed rare that I would adduce Buckley’s column on anything and this is only the first such column since 1968 (that is, one that impressed me so much that I clipped it).
Excuse me–in another forum on the SDMB, not “on this thread.” :o
I agree, dougie. That’s exactly why I wasn’t impressed with Hart’s Sunday strip. Its obvious message was “You Darwinists are ignorant and I am enlightened.”
JThunder said:
I’m curious as to how this is religion bashing. The whole premise was about a primative people who saw the advanced Starfleet personel as Gods, and Picard proving that they weren’t, as obviously, they’re not. How is that anti-religious?
Queequeg, I am not impressed with your comment, which seems to turn my words around to use on me. That pretty much defeats the purpose I had expressed in the OP.
Here is William F. Buckely’s column, titled “Seek Hard for God in Hollywood,” as titled in the South Bay Daily Breeze, May 28, 1997:
What did you do on your vacation, Susan?
Me? I saw a movie. It’s called “Sleepers.” do you want the plot? OK. Well, there are four kids, Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Dead-end kids, though, they get sent to a reformatory school for what really was an accident. There they are terribly mauled by sadistic guards–the whole bit, torture, rape. They are let out swearing vengeance.
Flash forward 10 years. Two of the Gang of Four coast into a saloon. They are full-time hoods at this point and one of them goes to the john and, coming back, spots sitting in a booth eating his supper one of the sadistic guards. He walks over to alert his buddy that the enemy is here and the two crowd into the booth. “Do you recognize us?”
The sadist tells them to buzz off. “Why are you bothering me?”
"Because we want to see you die. Bang bang. come to think of it, bang bang, bang bang, such is the pleasure No. 1 and No. 2 took out of the killing.
They are arrested. Trial time. They have really had it from the circustantial evidence. A nice touch: The fourth member of the Gang of Four is the prosecutor. It looks like curtains for 1 and 2.
But No. 3, who wasn’t at the scene of the crime, approaches the Catholic priest (Robert De Niro) who knew them all since they were kids. Now this priest has for two whole hours played Mr. Straight. He had trouble as a kid himself and in fact spent time at the same house of horors as the Gang of Four. But he is frequently seen early in the movie trying to encourage them to do the right thing. Think of Spencer Tracy at Boys Town.
So what does No. 3 ask him to do?
To appear at the trial and testify that No. 1 and No. 2 couldn’t have been at the bar killing somebody on the night of November 1 because they were at Madison Square Garden with the priest watching the Celtics lose a game.
Holy Moses! Is he going to do it? The camera pans in close, the judge directs the priest’s hand on to the Bible, and looking the jurors in the eyes the priest defies his calling, defies the judicial system, defies God and – takes a bow from Hollywood?
The movie closes without one more reference to the priest. We aren’t even given a shot of him drunk with remorse in a back alley, or committing suicide, or turning himself in for his perjury.
It was among other things an artistic scam, because you don’t invite the viewer/reader to invest confidence in somebody whose many contributions to the story are up to a moment character-building in one very clear direction – only to see him swerve away from his own ideals in order to bail out two murderes. Bad morals, sure; but also bad art.
Bad cinema? Well, Susan, you probably have heard the complaint. Michael Medved, who is the movie critic of the New York Post and active in the Jewish faith, recently did a documentary on the subject. He reviewed 50 movies, a small number of those that are available for any survey that seeks to make the point that religion is the studied target of Hollywood. The war on religion goes so far as to introduce a religious motif merely for the purpose of debasing it.
Cape Fear was made years ago featuring Robert Mitchum as the evil man, but no mention of religion. It was remade in 1991 featuring Robert De Niro – who is introduced with elaborate tattoos all over his body memorializing apocalyptic phrases from the Bible.
In Medved’s tape on Hollywood’s war against religion, he gives us scenes from 50 movies, many of them familiar to regular viewers. The villainous figure, whether a priest, a rabbi, an evangelical, a pope, a soldier or a nun, is the figure associated with God. The Godfather Part III went as far as one could reasonably go, this side of having Deep Throat rise again, to document that St. Peter’s Basilica is owned by the Mafia.
What surprises Medved is that the great majority of the anti-religious flicks are turkeys in the market. Every now and then a director will take a deep breath and permit a friendly view of religion, as when Whoopi Goldberg disguises herself as a nun and creates a splendid choir in a movie (Sister Act) that does well.
Poor Hollywood. An early tour with an anti-religious comedy features a fat/dumb pope. In one scene he proposes giving money to starving children and is corrected by his cardinal-in-waiting: “Our job is to take in money, not to give it out.” The preliminary run was such a bomb it went back to the studio and the title was changed from The Pope Must Die to The Pope Must Diet. Didn’t help.
So, Susan, next time you’re in Rome, or in Jerusalem, send a postcard to your neighborhood Hollywood director. Tell him you’ll say a little prayer, and maybe he’ll grow up.
Pretty stiff competition for Johnny Hart, huh?
Damn, is he still alive? Shows what money can do for you!
Yes, Ned Flanders is mocked on the Simpsons. As I pointed out, so is everyone else. Do you object to the fact that the Simpsons makes fun of people, or only to the fact that it makes fun of fundamentalist Christians?
I missed the episode of the next generation that you mentioned – but from someone else’s plot synopsis, it hardly sounds like it’s mocking Christianity. Can you be more specific?
As for movies dealing with religion; I hardly think Buckley is being accurate. He points out that a lot of crappy movies are made that mock religion, and somehow uses that as an indictment of Hollywood. Eh? What about crappy movies like A Walk to Remember, or Left Behind, that embrace religion? Do these prove that Hollywood loves Christianity?
I forget who it was that said, “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data.’”
If you really want to show how Hollywood treats religion, you should probably look at the biggest-budget movies made over the last, say, five years, and set up some criteria for judging them. Suggested criteria:
-Is the protagonist shown as religious? Is the protagonist shown as atheist? (My guess is that most protagonists aren’t shown dealing with faith issues; of those that are, none are shown as atheists, although a few might actively blame God for the troubles in their lives, Job-style).
-Is the villain shown as religious? Is the villain shown as atheist? (My guess is villains are shown as members of a faith much more often than protagonists are, although you’ll have Ayn-Randian-style atheists just as often as you’ll have religious fanatics, and nonreligious depictions will be more common than either)
-Are any religions depicted as objectively true? (My guess is that when religions are depicted as true, it’ll usually be hard-core Christianity, complete with demons, hell, and the like).
Daniel
I’m sorry to hear that, as I think my assessment of Hart’s strip was obviously accurate. I used your words because they were a perfect indictment of the strip in question. I didn’t ‘turn them around’ in order to mock you; in fact, I made a point of saying “I agree with you” in an attempt to make my post seem less argumentative.
If you want me to explicitly tie my comments to your OP, I will: my point is that I don’t see Hart as a “patient” man, and I don’t think his most recent creationist strip represents an attempt to “fight back” after turning the other cheek. This is hardly the first time he’s picked a fight with evolutionary theory. He often targets liberals and secular humanists as well, and when he does, he’s usually extremely smug about it. He’s so convinced of his own enlightenment that he literally puts words in God’s mouth (God frequently appears as a character in the strip). Therefore, I’d say the longevity of “B.C.” is evidence that the media is not monolithically anti-religious.
Your assessment seems pretty accurate to me too, Queequeg. My “mythology” comment was not meant to mock a belief, but describe how I felt about it, and dougie took offense. However, Hart’s cartoon is very clearly mocking the belief of non-creationists, and I don’t think there can be any doubt that was his intent.
Nice double standard you cought him with there Quee, I wish I’d seen it first.