2006 ROUND UP: JESUS CAMP (Ewing & Grady)
Man. This is seriously one of my favorite documentaries I've ever seen, especially in this post-Moore age of picking a point and hammering it home, again and again and again, never giving the audience a chance to make up their own minds. JESUS CAMP stands in direct opposition to the mold that people like Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore have created, as it is a shining example of simply giving people enough rope to hang themselves. Co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady do a beautiful job of allowing scenes to play out naturally. The result is much more damning than anything Moore could concoct with ironic music and hand-wringing liberalism.
JESUS CAMP is a terrifying glimpse into the world of midwestern Christian fundamentalism. The main players are Becky Fisher, the creator of the so-called "Jesus Camp", and Levi, an unfortunate looking boy of ten or so who is intensely devoted to Jesus. I had obviously heard a lot about this film, as it garnered a fair amount of press for a release of such small proportions. It is also a quiet little picture, featuring none of the doom-saying or name-calling that has lead to several blockbuster docs in the past couple of years. JESUS CAMP emerges as a staggering, sedated little picture that aims to the heavens - and hits its mark.
Fisher is downright evil, of this I have little doubt. Word is she approved of the documentary, which goes a long way towards revealing several things. First, it shows that the filmmakers were fair and impartial in their portrayal of her. Secondly, it demonstrates the degree to which she believes. This belief, far from the comforting sense of knowing that some claim, is actually a certain kind of blindness, a belief which shields against logical discourse and scientific fact.
The people who populate the film are smug, sure of themselves, and unwilling to even leave any sort of dissenting voice into their lives. The children are all home-schooled, and the parents are all more than willing to show them videos which mock science and evolution. Every summer, they send the kids off to Bible camp, where they sing, read scripture, and are brought to tears on a regular basis by mean-spirited adults who want to tell them they are flawed, they are evil, they are sinners, and they are fallen. This doesn't resemble my childhood memories of lounging by the Atlantic Ocean or going camping with friends. I myself was raised in a Christian household, which also acknowledged that a world existed outside of my church and our religion. When young Levi says that interacting with non-Christians makes him uncomfortable, you get the sense that he has not had this same chance to experience the larger world, a world which the children in the film tell us is corrupt, morally bankrupt, and sinful. Again, these are children. The words they use can come from no other source except for their parent's own mouths.
The parents, for their part, deny "forcing" religion on their children, but it's hard to imagine a ten year old saying that she needs to be aware of when "I'm dancing for the Lord and when I'm dancing for the flesh". Perhaps the film's greatest lesson is the way in which we guide our children to be who we want them to be, irregardless of the fact that they are small and easily-manipulated. A key scene sees Fisher ask "Who here thinks God can do anything?" We see a mother pull up her daughter's arm, and then her son's arm, when neither of them were raising their hands. The mother physically forces the children to profess their faith. It is telling and it is chilling.
Perhaps JESUS CAMP's greatest strength is the way in which it debunks the argument that the Moral Majority, or the Christian Right, or Christian Fundamentalists, or whatever, are simply religious people and are in no way politically-motivated. After a week filled with seven year olds speaking in tongues, of being told that if Harry Potter were a real person, he would be in hell, of not being allowed to tell ghost stories because they don't glorify the Lord (of being told, in short, that children are naturally bad and in need of the strictest of supervision in order to become good, Christian people), Fisher and her co-horts bring out a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush and the children pray for him, wildly, frantically, with fervor. They also weap openly and loudly against abortion and pray for a more Christian government. Fisher, at the film's end, has a talk with Air America commentator Mike Papantonio, and makes the claim that there is nothing political about the camp, that they are simple people who want to share their faith quietly. The gloating image of the publicly disgraced Ted Haggard, who at the time of filming obviously believes himself to be nearing the White House at some point in the future, is haunting and hilarious, a grim reminder of the fact that these people have much darker intentions than they let on. They want to control this country (they pledge allegiance to "the Christian flag", after all). Fisher ultimately denounces democracy itself, stating that it is doomed to fail because it demands freedom for all.
If I can resort to mud-slinging that the film never demeans itself with, Becky Fisher is shown as a distinctly lonely, embittered person who spends all of her time around children, hugging and screaming at them. She lives alone, seems to have no husband or children of her own, and is almost certainly a closeted lesbian. I, personally, can't wait for her to be caught freebasing with Brazilian transvestites, or some such career-killing scandal. The only thing more rewarding than Haggard's fall from grace will be her's.
This is a staggering, heart-breaking work that stands as one of 2006's absolute, undisputed best pictures, a crushing depiction of childhood being taken from children and of the ways in which adults will warp the young to meet their own goals. Amazing movie.
JESUS CAMP is a terrifying glimpse into the world of midwestern Christian fundamentalism. The main players are Becky Fisher, the creator of the so-called "Jesus Camp", and Levi, an unfortunate looking boy of ten or so who is intensely devoted to Jesus. I had obviously heard a lot about this film, as it garnered a fair amount of press for a release of such small proportions. It is also a quiet little picture, featuring none of the doom-saying or name-calling that has lead to several blockbuster docs in the past couple of years. JESUS CAMP emerges as a staggering, sedated little picture that aims to the heavens - and hits its mark.
Fisher is downright evil, of this I have little doubt. Word is she approved of the documentary, which goes a long way towards revealing several things. First, it shows that the filmmakers were fair and impartial in their portrayal of her. Secondly, it demonstrates the degree to which she believes. This belief, far from the comforting sense of knowing that some claim, is actually a certain kind of blindness, a belief which shields against logical discourse and scientific fact.
The people who populate the film are smug, sure of themselves, and unwilling to even leave any sort of dissenting voice into their lives. The children are all home-schooled, and the parents are all more than willing to show them videos which mock science and evolution. Every summer, they send the kids off to Bible camp, where they sing, read scripture, and are brought to tears on a regular basis by mean-spirited adults who want to tell them they are flawed, they are evil, they are sinners, and they are fallen. This doesn't resemble my childhood memories of lounging by the Atlantic Ocean or going camping with friends. I myself was raised in a Christian household, which also acknowledged that a world existed outside of my church and our religion. When young Levi says that interacting with non-Christians makes him uncomfortable, you get the sense that he has not had this same chance to experience the larger world, a world which the children in the film tell us is corrupt, morally bankrupt, and sinful. Again, these are children. The words they use can come from no other source except for their parent's own mouths.
The parents, for their part, deny "forcing" religion on their children, but it's hard to imagine a ten year old saying that she needs to be aware of when "I'm dancing for the Lord and when I'm dancing for the flesh". Perhaps the film's greatest lesson is the way in which we guide our children to be who we want them to be, irregardless of the fact that they are small and easily-manipulated. A key scene sees Fisher ask "Who here thinks God can do anything?" We see a mother pull up her daughter's arm, and then her son's arm, when neither of them were raising their hands. The mother physically forces the children to profess their faith. It is telling and it is chilling.
Perhaps JESUS CAMP's greatest strength is the way in which it debunks the argument that the Moral Majority, or the Christian Right, or Christian Fundamentalists, or whatever, are simply religious people and are in no way politically-motivated. After a week filled with seven year olds speaking in tongues, of being told that if Harry Potter were a real person, he would be in hell, of not being allowed to tell ghost stories because they don't glorify the Lord (of being told, in short, that children are naturally bad and in need of the strictest of supervision in order to become good, Christian people), Fisher and her co-horts bring out a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush and the children pray for him, wildly, frantically, with fervor. They also weap openly and loudly against abortion and pray for a more Christian government. Fisher, at the film's end, has a talk with Air America commentator Mike Papantonio, and makes the claim that there is nothing political about the camp, that they are simple people who want to share their faith quietly. The gloating image of the publicly disgraced Ted Haggard, who at the time of filming obviously believes himself to be nearing the White House at some point in the future, is haunting and hilarious, a grim reminder of the fact that these people have much darker intentions than they let on. They want to control this country (they pledge allegiance to "the Christian flag", after all). Fisher ultimately denounces democracy itself, stating that it is doomed to fail because it demands freedom for all.
If I can resort to mud-slinging that the film never demeans itself with, Becky Fisher is shown as a distinctly lonely, embittered person who spends all of her time around children, hugging and screaming at them. She lives alone, seems to have no husband or children of her own, and is almost certainly a closeted lesbian. I, personally, can't wait for her to be caught freebasing with Brazilian transvestites, or some such career-killing scandal. The only thing more rewarding than Haggard's fall from grace will be her's.
This is a staggering, heart-breaking work that stands as one of 2006's absolute, undisputed best pictures, a crushing depiction of childhood being taken from children and of the ways in which adults will warp the young to meet their own goals. Amazing movie.
Labels: 2006
posted by travis at 3:43 PM
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