So, "Hooray For Hollyweird!" made me take a look back at my religious movie reviews.
And that made me look at my old review of "Dogma" with a lot of painful cringing.
So, let's revisit that...
From the link....
Yeah, he pissed off the Catholics, even though he is one, and wrote this big ass-kissing rationalization, and, it didn't make them happy.
Then, "Jay And Silent Bob", had Jay's trademark homophobia, it's a fucking character saying this shit, one meant for ridicule, and GLAAD got their shorts in a wad, and he wrote an ass-kissing open letter to them that didn't make them happy.
Well, I've learned the lesson if he hasn't.
FUCK EM!!
You can't make people in "action groups", happy.
it's heir ugly job to be pissed.
So, fuck 'em.
If you don't like humor, kill yourselves.
Political correctness hasn't made the world better, it's made it worse, and if you can't see it, you're just stupid.
In fact, good humor is for pissing people off that need pissing off.
If you're not getting bitchy letters, you ain't doing your job.
So, Smith, stop kissing ass.
Wouldja?
While you're at it, quit your religion, it doesn't want you, and you don't wanna be in Heaven with those sour-pussed ingrates anyway.
Oh, right, and God has a vagina in this.
That probably pissed Catholics off more than anything.
Again, good.
Urgghh, fuck sakes, I sound like every libertarian enema bag I argue with now.
Okay, let's break it down...
Yeah, he pissed off the Catholics, even though he is one, and wrote this big ass-kissing rationalization, and, it didn't make them happy.
Yeah, fuck the Catholics.
They murdered countless people, and keep fucking children.
They've got no room to whine.
Punching up at them is fine.
Then, "Jay And Silent Bob", had Jay's trademark homophobia, it's a fucking character saying this shit, one meant for ridicule, and GLAAD got their shorts in a wad, and he wrote an ass-kissing open letter to them that didn't make them happy.
GLAAD had every right to be concerned.
They'd been on this same exact ride before with Andrew Dice Clay.
He played the "I'm just playing a character" card in his day.
Sam Kinison mocked Dice for his "character" shit, and then took up the same exact homophobic misogynist line of crap.
Bill Hicks sang a good song about Dice being "Republican Red Foxx" then used homophobic imagery to go after Rush Limbaugh.
GLAAD had been through some shit.
They were right to have a hair trigger after that.
Kevin Smith has since proven his gay-ally street cred before and after the kerfuffle.
The South Park assholes, not so much.
And they made the same exact excuses and pretenses to good-guy status before ripping their liberal masks off.
GLAAD had no way of knowing in 1999 who the goodies and baddies were yet, so they had to write a letter to everybody.
I'm sure the South Park guys got the same letter, and threw it in the trash without comment.
Smith ranted about it because he gave a shit.
One could argue maybe too much of a shit, but that someone would no longer be me.
2012-me was in some naivety bubble that racism and homophobia were...not cured, but driven down into a gutter.
Living under the streets with Denis Leary's character from "Demolition Man".
And let me just say again, fuck that movie now.
Well, I've learned the lesson if he hasn't.
FUCK EM!!
You can't make people in "action groups", happy.
it's heir ugly job to be pissed.
So, fuck 'em.
Ugly job?
No.
The Heritage Foundation is an ugly job.
Anti-defamation groups keep the noose away.
The Heritage Foundation ties the noose.
There's no "both sides tho!!" to this.
I was listening to libertarian assholes in 2012.
They've since exposed who they really were.
If you don't like humor, kill yourselves.
Libertarians don't like humor that doesn't involve hatred of women and minorities.
Their "unlimited free speech!!" shit only ever defends that, and nothing else.
You're never going to see them defend leftists protesting a crooked business.
You're never going to see them body shame, age shame, or makeup shame Trump.
Never, ever, ever.
Don't hold your breath for it.
So, "humor" in "if you don't like humor" doesn't include anything that punches up.
And punching down humor is just for sandbox bullies.
It's sandbox bullies that need to go kill themselves for the good of everyone else.
Again, I thought libertarian assholes really stood for the crap they spewed, and meant ALL speech, left or right, punching up, or punching down.
No. Flat out no.
They lied, and continue to lie. It's all shit.
I'm ashamed of myself for parroting their fucking hollow empty tripe.
Political correctness hasn't made the world better, it's made it worse, and if you can't see it, you're just stupid.
Left-wing political correctness made some blunders, but the right-wing has their own set of jargon-ese to stifle debate.
The righties got pretty damned PC themselves.
They just don't call it that.
And pointing out how full of shit they are is never gonna fall under their "unlimited free speech!!" tent.
Don't wait for that either.
In fact, good humor is for pissing people off that need pissing off.
If you're not getting bitchy letters, you ain't doing your job.
The people who need pissing off are always fascist, and it's always punching up, because fascism sides with capital.
When they're hiding the swastika, they use the dollar sign instead.
Never listen to the libertarian dodge of "punching down is punching up cuz of 'sacred cows' and 'protected groups' and argle blargle, blargle".
No, fuck that shit.
They just want the n-word and f-slur re-normalized.
Nothing else.
They don't give a fuck about your free speech to tell Trump or Elon to go eat a bag of shit.
It's never gonna happen.
Oh, right, and God has a vagina in this.
That probably pissed Catholics off more than anything.
Again, good.
Libertarians don't care whether God has a cock; they just want everyone with a (white!) cock to be treated as God.
They made that pretty damned clear.
Anyway! Whether it was Dice, Kinison, or Stern, the edge-lord era of comedy did not age well.
The internet trolls dumped a barrel full of mummy-dust on it to help age it faster.
As for the movie? "Dogma" has its cute moments, and some good points, but give me "Bedazzled" or "The Life Of Brian" any day.
Retro-linking this in comments to the old review.
7 comments:
I generally agree with the comments about libertarianism, a philosophy that I'm always going to hate, and I think they've simply turned "free speech" into a race to the bottom, because all you have to do is come up with the nastier insult, and you win. It's just sort of rewarding the biggest assholes.
There seems to be a philosophical bit at work with these people that all you have to do to be a hero of the First Amendment is to open your mouth *at all*, which would make kids who mouth off to their teachers First Amendment heroes. I don't know, I just sort of hate how wanting to stick up for freedom of speech means letting sociopathic assholes test you all the time.
On the other hand, I recall hating "Dogma" completely, and having Smith on a mental shit list for it. I didn't think any of it was funny or cool and that as any sort of statement about religion that it was really shallow and uninteresting. It was on my zero-star list right next to "What The Bleep Do We Know" and "Mars Attacks" and "The Boondock Saints" and all those others.
I'd have to rewatch it to really be sure, and it's possible that I worked myself up into a froth of hate over it that it didn't quite deserve, but I don't feel like rewatching it.
I saw it before seeing "Clerks," a film that I did actually end up liking, because of the way it trashed Generation X at the end of the film.
Smith seemed to grow very full of himself though, talking about his "Askewniverse" like it was something really genius rather than a bunch of nerdy crap and in-jokes involving his friends. I never liked any of the Jay and Silent Bob stuff.
I don't know who is really watching any of the old Smith movies besides "Clerks" anyway--have future generations dug up any of that stuff? I think that stuff had its day in the sun and has been forgotten.
Hahah!! News just dropped that Kevin Smith finally wrestled "Dogma" away from the Weinsteins, and is thinking of doing part 2! Nah, I'll pass. I saw Clerks 3, and it was depressing. "Dogma" feels a lot like Smith read a big stack of Sandman comics, and thought he could be Neil Gaiman. I never hated it as much as you did, but I don't love it either. When it was new, I probably talked myself into liking it more cuz George Carlin is in it. Like I said, check out "Bedazzled" and/or "Life Of Brian" instead. Or Hell, "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" if you haven't already. Speaking of George Carlin.
I'm not familiar with much of Gaiman's work because I've never made time for it, but I'd have to conclude he was a much deeper thinker than Kevin Smith.
I wonder if anyone watching it today will find any importance in the idea of God being played by Alanis Morrissette, whose fame level I can't really guess at anymore.
"Bedazzled" - I assume you mean the old one. Not the Brendan Fraser one? I did see that and thought it was pretty trite.
"Life Of Brian" is classic obviously. You just know that Judean Popular People's Front joke is going to get more and more relevant until the appearance of Cthulhu on Earth.
"Bill And Ted" was fun when I was a kid but I've never revisited or seen the new one. I did see Alex Winter's Frank Zappa documentary though, which wasn't too bad.
"
Re: Gaiman, yes, he's better.
He's surprisingly funny too. Comedy, drama, philosophy, Sandman's a stew of everything. Watch, you'll read all the volumes, and go "it turned me into spinach!! I envy the dead!! Damn you to Hell!!".
Re: Bedazzled. Rats that you didn't dig it. Ah, well.
Re: "Bill & Ted". The guy who wrote parts 2 & 3 wrote the book "The Story Of God" that tells the Bible form God's point of view, and the only way he could make logical sense of it is God has emotional problems. He toured all my atheist podcasts pimping it.
Maybe check that out.
Currently finishing all six Dune books (the fifth and sixth are even worse than I remember them...and I didn't remember anything about them, anyway), after that going to read the two remaining Neal Stephenson books on my list ("Fall" and "Termination Shock") and after that either a re-read of DeLillo's "White Noise" or maybe some Poe stories. After that maybe I'll have room for some Gaiman.
"Bedazzled" - I think I miscommunicated here--I mean I didn't care much for the *Brendan Fraser* movie. I've never seen the original. The original's the one you like, right?
"Late Night With The Devil" is fairly wavy-hand, if you were planning on seeing that. Some nice 1970s TV touches (some of it based off of Uri Geller vs. The Amazing Randi) and David Dastmalchian finally getting a lead role is pretty cool, and he's good....but it's not terribly scary, it steals EVERY shock moment (possessed girl, puking, head-turning, obscenities, "The power of Christ compels you!") from "The Exorcist" except the crucifix bit, which is too much stealing for me, and the revelation of why the horror stuff is happening at the end is pretty trite.
I'm finally going to watch "Sleepaway Camp" here, too. So there's that
Dune: Yeah, I don't remember much good about 5 and 6. There desperately needed to be 7 to wrap those loose threads up. But Herbert frigging died. Same thing with Douglas Adams and Steig Larson.
Herbert's son, Brian, milked 7 out into 7, 8, and 9, and forced you to also read his Butlerian Jihad (being the Dune-verse answer to the Terminator war) prequels to understand it. I spoiler-read the ending on Wikipedia. It's dumb.
Bedazzled: Yes, the original is the good one.
Dudley Moore and Peter Cook as a team were very Python-esque.
"Late Night..". I'll give it a pass.
The adds promised something more disturbing, but if you say it's just an "Exorcist" rehash, I've seen more than enough of those.
"Sleepaway Camp" is delightful 80's crazyness. Mostly. Its take on the LGBT community can be read in both a good and bad way depending how you tilt your head. I'll see what you think.
I didn't remember anything at all about "Heretics" or "Chapterhouse" from 10 years ago when I read all six books. And re-reading them right now I can already tell I'm not going to remember anything from them a second time, and that I might as well have not even read them the first time, except there's a seeming shot Herbert takes at "Star Wars," which would have just wrapped up--I can't remember the joke, but it involves a pun on "Three P-O." I *might* remember this for some time after this re-read, but don't double check me on it.
I'm blowing through the books at about 75 pages a day, and I'm not seeing any reason in the text why I shouldn't. How anyone could possibly keep track of how all these political factions are quarrelling with each other is beyond me. And I don't see nerds really obsessing over this thing like how there's people who could tell you the entire history of the LOTR Numenorians from memory, or whatever.
I already know what the ending of "Sleepaway Camp" is, and since it was 1983 I can't imagine that the reaction would have been anything but "eeeww, chicks with dicks!" Whenever I think "LGBT" mixed with "80s teen movie" what pops into my head is the awful Jim Carrey turd "Once Bitten" where someone yells "fags in the shower fags in the shower!!!"
I wonder if people would take offense to a joke I always laughed at, in the third "Naked Gun" movie when Anna Nicole Smith turns out to have a dick, we see her shadow and there's a "sproing!!!" rubbery noise when her dick pops out and it's the shape of Gonzo's nose from Sesame Street. Then Leslie Nielsen throws up and the music has a horrified reaction. Wonder if people would hate that nowadays.
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