So there is some pretty intense media out there, movies and cable offerings that seem to keep pushing the bar of decency and acceptability. One of the hardest things for me is knowing, on the one hand, that there is such violent, evil, and sinfulness being portrayed out there, inappropriate to the church sanctuary, while, on the other hand, this is what people are going to see, this is what is popular. Do we, as the church, ignore it? Engage with it? Engage with carefully selected pieces of it?
There is one
such title that developed into something of a franchise, It has an interesting
premise and a very dark view of the human soul.
I am talking about “The Purge”.
Just watched
the original, “The Purge”, from 2013.
Danger, SPOILERS to follow. Have
not seen any of the following films, although I understand there is also a
series in the works. Where I found this
movie the most compelling was in the same place where I found “Starship
Troopers” very compelling. It was not in
the horror story unto itself, as it was not in the science fiction story of
“Troopers”. Rather, I found it most
compelling around the edges, where the “new United States” in which ‘the purge’
takes place is described.
In short, the
US was a mess, ‘new’ founding fathers took over, established the purge as an
annual catharsis of all that is evil in America, which has turned the nation
into a utopia. For one night, all the
laws of the nation are put on hold, all emergency services are, presumably,
locked down, and hell reigns.
But there are
a few notable exceptions. Government
officials over a certain level are exempt.
Weapons systems over a certain power level are forbidden. And the focus of the movie is on murder in
all its brutal, genocidal forms. When it
comes to the people who are actually involved in the purge, there are certain
typical reactions.
The most
obvious is the reaction of the ‘crazies’, who enjoy the hunt and killing. The second are the ‘average’ people who do
not go in for the killing but work very hard to accept it for the ‘blessings’
it has brought. The rich ‘average’
people can fortify their homes and be relatively assured of safety through all
of this. The last group are people who
seem to be of the ‘average’ type but, in fact, have embraced the purge as a
means of salvation from the evil inside of themselves.
That is where
I found the movie compelling. In the
appeal to the ‘new founding fathers’, these ‘average’ people believed that they
could purge their evil feelings, their sinfulness, by indulging in them. In this case, the one target family has
created jealousy in their neighbors because of how they have ‘flaunted’ their
wealth. Therefore, killing them relieves
those feelings.
In terms of
Christianity, salvation is not found in turning away from sin and turning to
Jesus Christ, it is not found in the grace of forgiveness. Rather, in this view, it is found in the
controlled and ritualized indulgence of sinful behavior. In the course of the movie, there was a
thread of the indulged, rich and bored white upper class killing the poor black
homeless man (probably a veteran too by the way he is played).
I think the
vision of the movie was one of taking the gun culture, the racism, and the
privilege of the United States and pushing it out to an extreme. It provides an almost spiritual basis for
ritualized violence as the answer to what is already a very violent
culture. As a pastor watching this
movie, I shocked myself a little when I did not respond with a dismissive ‘this
could never happen’. Rather, I found
myself running a mental list of all the elements that are already in
place. And the GREAT need of the voice
of the Christ, of our Savior, of the peace of Christ that surpasses all
understanding.
I say watch
and be scared. This is where one
filmmaker seems to think we are going.
And the building popularity of the franchise lends credence to that
possibility. We, Christians, have that
image that we need to be able to respond to.
In Christ.
Peter Hofstra
No comments:
Post a Comment