Gods and Generals, Anyone?

Let’s worship rebellion.

Let’s watch the movie with the rich girl defying her parents and the upper class to dress in thrift store clothes and fall for a jobless chap with an honest face and an unquenchable contempt for upper-class morality. Or better yet, the one with the man who decides to hell with his job and leaves to work at a fast food place, smoke weed, and revel in his classic rock and roll attitude. Or the one with all the kids, the kids society frowns on, who do drugs and lie and steal but at least know the meaning of friendship and love, true love, real love that defies all laws and (of course) can be dropped in favor of new love at any time and still be beautiful and worthy of our admiration.

Let’s worship love, then.

Because of course love surpasses all things, especially if the couple is hot enough, charismatic enough, smile and kiss me and the troubles will fade away and we’ll get an apartment in NYC where we’ll never have kids and never grow old and always have mind-blowing sex just off the screen enough. Let’s watch the one where the guy and the girl are each engaged (though not to each other) and look! they run into each other and look! they’re a perfect match and look! they are kissing and to hell with who they were going to marry because this is true love, meant to be and that (of course) surpasses all things.

Or let’s worship violence.

Arnold or Vin or someone, can’t remember who; they all act badly, they all look sort of the same, and even if not, who can tell the difference in the midst of such massive explosions? He’s up against the Germans – wait, the Russians – wait, someone else with a semi-Russian accent from a country that didn’t exist a half century ago and won’t in another half century. But who cares? There are fast foreign cars and fast boats and helicopters and motorcycles, not to mention the oh-so-hot and oh-so-mysterious (whose side is she on?) blonde from wherever, and right now she’s pulling her shirt off and leading our hero into her bedroom. And now who cares about plot details? More explosions! More femme fatales!

So – boring. Let’s find something else now. How about morality? Let’s worship that.

Let’s show our heroine, some semi-famous pop star, as she wins some bad, bad boy over to Christianity, or at least a Christianity that can compromise if the guy is cute enough, which the father will hate at first but later – “I need to learn forgiveness and tolerance and come here and give me a hug, you my daughter and you her boyfriend and you the neighbors and you the rather bemused trash collector, all of you because as Christ taught we must never do things halfway.”

And oh, this is good, so next try the end times – certainly worthy of our attention, since they are certainly coming tomorrow or next week or sometime soon.

Here – the man bitter against God, but ignoring it by making good money at his job. Here – the girl bitter against her parents because, probably because they wouldn’t let her get a tattoo or pierce her navel or something. Here – a man committing adultery, his poor sweet pious wife ignorant of it. Here – well, if he doesn’t look like the Antichrist. Here – oh! here – all the Christians are suddenly gone and now, horrors, all of the cast above are left to figure it out for themselves and lead each other to salvation in tear-jerking scenes with the latest CCM, sappy as ever, playing in the background. And of course the point is salvation – so what if all the characters are flat? And so what if the actors can’t act, and should instead be fulfilling their true calling as gas station attendants, and if the plot would not hold up if exposed to anything more than candlelight? The good news transcends these things!

Or yawn at all this, sigh in frustration, and go look for something the opposite of all this, something worth watching.

I’m going to see Gods and Generals again.

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