If we can compile an accurate and comprehensive list of movies “mainstream” maligning Christianity or Islam, we’re going to be pretty able to know the relative frequency of attacks on either. That Islamic intimidation might discourage attacks does NOT mean we won’t be able to determine the frequency of attacks that do occur. By your logic, seat belt laws prevent us from knowing how many people die in car accidents.
As others have remarked, Christianity is mocked because it’s the dominant religion in the US.
If Hollywood was based in an Arab city they’d mock Islam. Oh, wait a minute, no they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t be allowed to and would in all probability end up dead.
We have much to be thankful for.
Cite for Christianity being mocked? I’m still waiting for that.
So far no one here has been able to name a mainstream movie in which Christianity actually is mocked.
ETA: Or, what Dio said! I saw Jesus Camp for instance, and it was a pretty straightforward documentary about a fundamentalist youth camp. The filmmakers did not mock the subjects, they let them speak for themselves, and the subjects felt the film was fair. There was plenty in that movie that seemed bizarre or laughable, but that’s apparently the way these particular Christians really are.
Yeah, this. I mean, shows like the Simpsons or Futurama will poke fun at religion, Christianity more than others. Then again, it’s less impugning and more…I don’t know, just making jokes because it’s the dominant culture. Like, there was a Simpsons Bible Stories episode but no Koran stories because I don’t think that would really resonate with us. Or making fun of Ned Flanders for being a goody good who goes bapitizin’ and does all that stuff in the Bible, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff…it’s something that most people relate to (Church/Christianity) being taken to an extreme that few people do. I’m not really sure the message is even let’s criticize Christianity. More like let’s make fun of stuff in our culture or make jokes about it.
Though the Krusty being Jewish episode still makes me laugh.
Those sorts of films depend on the nature of Christianity either as 1) a monolithic bureaucracy with a huge mythos (US or worldwide) or 2) a religion that has had pop culture elements take over some elements of it. Neither of these two things are really relevant to Judaism or Islam. There are certainly plenty of films that find humor or criticism of both of them for their other aspects.
“Mocked” is a strong word, but it (or certain denominations thereof) has certainly been satirized/impugned in Elmer Gantry, Heaven Help Us, Saved, Nuns on the Run, The Princess Bride, The Magdalene Sisters, The Blues Brothers, Which Way is Up?, Mystic River, better versions of Robin Hood and **The Three Musketeers, **the most recent King Arthur, and many others.
In what way is Christian doctrine impugned or ridiculed in any of those movies. Certain aspects and personality types are satirized, but not Christianity either per se or in toto. Critiquing or satirizing things like hypocrisy and abuse of power within a given church is not the same as mocking its doctrine or its believers.
I think suggestion that there is any trend or pattern, or even a single clear example of Hollywood saying “ha ha, stupid Christians” is baseless.
The one recent movie I can think of that arguably does anything like hat is Bill Maher’s religulous, but that movie takes care to rip all religions equally, not just Christianity.
I haven’t seen most of the others, but the protagonist in Saved! is herself a Christian who is stigmatized by other Christians for getting knocked up, and retains her faith anyway.
Krokodil, I haven’t seen many of the movies you listed and don’t remember much about certain others, but I know The Princess Bride practically by heart. It does not in any way mock, satirize, or impugn Christianity or any Christian denomination. The only part of the movie even remotely in that neighborhood is the wedding scene, in which the service is performed by an elderly priest with a speech impediment. If there were some stereotype about Christians or Christian priests having speech impediments then that might constitute religious mockery, but there is no such stereotype.
The gag is that this very impressive looking religious figure performing a solemn ceremony before the royal court has a funny voice, and that he’s talking about the beauty of love at a wedding where neither the bride nor the groom actually care for one another at all. Humperdink’s eagerness to cut the ceremony short so he can get rid of Buttercup is also darkly comic. But none of the humor in this scene comes at the expense of actual or stereotypical Christian traits, beliefs, or rituals.
I guess if one wants to argue that any movie in which a Christian character is portrayed as being funny or imperfect mocks or impugns Christianity then practically every Hollywood movie ever made mocks or impugns Christianity (since most Americans and by extension most Hollywood film characters are Christians), but that would be a pretty silly standard.
Incidentally, the only characters in The Princess Bride who DO behave in a manner at all stereotypical of a particular faith are Miracle Max and his wife Valerie, whose religion is unstated but whose dialogue has a clear Borscht Belt flavor. In the book, Goldman actually refers to the Miracle Max scene as being perhaps “too Jewish”. Not that I think anyone would consider this scene to be mocking or impugning Jews, it’s more in the tradition of Jewish comedy.
Yes, “Religulous” is the only movie I can think of that outright mocks Christianity, which basically says outright that belief in God is stupid, although it does the same to other religions as well. Other than that film I am not seeing where Christianity is being mocked.
Just to give an example of humor that is at the expense of actual religious rituals, plus another example of a Jewish comedian himself making jokes about Judaism, consider the 1993 Robin Hood: Men in Tights. A Robin Hood spoof may seem an unlikely venue for Jewish jokes, but this is a Mel Brooks movie and midway through the movie Brooks himself appears as “Rabbi Tuckman”.
Tuckman introduces himself as a moyel and says he has sacramental wine. He tries to convince Robin Hood and his Merry Men to allow him to circumcise them, saying “The ladies love it!” The Merry Men are first intrigued, then horrified when they learn what circumcision actually involves. (Tuckman’s demonstration involves a carrot and a tiny guillotine.) Tuckman says he needs to start trying to get to people younger with this whole circumcision thing. The Merry Men then ask him to share the wine, and he says no, it is only to be used for blessings. The Merry Men are disappointed, so Tuckman decides they can bless the trees, rocks, etc., until they’re all good and drunk.
I cannot think of and can hardly even imagine a scene in a mainstream Hollywood movie in which a Christian ritual (say baptism) is introduced in a comic manner but rejected by the main characters as being unappealing, causing a priest to decide to start baptizing babies instead because they can’t object. A scene where a Christian priest decides to have an al fresco mass just so everyone can can get drunk on the sacramental wine seems similarly unlikely.
There were other characters–particularly the ones played by Mandy Moore and Heather Materazzo–who were caricatures of the less pleasing side of mainstream Christianity (The pious bully and the pious homophobe). The presence of the likable characters doesn’t erase the presence of the mocking/impugning ones.
It and Robin Hood were weak examples, but the clerics they depict were in a similar vein to, say, the Jewish moneymen in Mo’ Better Blues. Peter Cook was doing the Anglican equivalent of Oy vey iz mir. Not the focus of the film, but an undeniable element therein.
But the characters in Saved weren’t mocked for being Christians, they were mocked for being bullies and hypocrites. That whole movie was about showing internal conflicts among Christians, but none of it mocked Christianity.
By the way, one of the reasons Catholicism gets depicted so often as kind of the go to denomination in movies is simply that it’s cinematic. It’s visual. It has a broad, iconographic vocbulary. It has Priests, and nuns, and Cathedrals, and raised chalices and confessional booths. It’s perfect for Hollywood. You don’t have to explain anything. Everybody already understands the imagery, even if they aren’t Catholics.
Actually, that would be pretty much in line with the traditional depiction of Friar Tuck.
Or anything by the Marquis de Sade. Well, add orgies to the drunkenness.
Is there a movie where he’s depicted that way, though? Not just as a drunk I mean, but as specifically staging mock Christian rituals in order to drink the sacramental wine. I sure haven’t seen one like that, although I definitely haven’t seen every Robin Hood movie.
Again, we’re talking about movies here. If we’re going to include literature, especially historic literature, it’s not at all difficult to find negative depictions of Jews.
And I don’t just mean stuff like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, either. I once took a Medieval Lit course where we read a translation of The Quest of the Holy Grail. There was an exceedingly tedious sequence in which a knight has a vision involving a beautiful young woman and an ugly old women, then meets a monk living in the woods (they were always meeting monks who lived in the woods) and asks him to explain it. The monk goes on at great length about how it means the Jews are evil. The old woman represented the Old Testament, and those who follow her are ugly in their souls. The young woman represented the New Testament, and her followers were of course good and beautiful.
Heather Materazzo’s performance was a very specific caricature, and a blot on an otherwise exemplary acting career. I’ll give you Mandy Moore, though.
Oh, that reminds me: True Confessions with Roberts Duvall and DeNiro, a devastating skewering of the 40s-era American RCC. I list this and many of the other movies not as a complaint–most of them are brilliant movies–but because they are prominent movies that hold some aspect of Christian churches or dogma up for criticism or ridicule. This one’s the best of the lot.
You’re right–I can just never resist adding that in, what with my love of French history and thing for priests.