Sometimes unintentional humor leads into unintentional ranting. Sorry.

The Economist is great at throwing sly little jokes into their articles from time to time. Their sense of humor (or is that humour?) as actually most obvious on most of their covers. For instance, see the recent Kim Jong Il "Rocketman" cover for a prime example of this. Every once in a while they do something that is unintentionally funny and underscores why I love The Economist for its political and world event coverage, but ten to take its cultural critiques with a grain of salt. A prime example of this is within this week's issue as they try to define the term "emo."

According to The Economist "emo kids" are "young people afflicted with melancholia"

Erm, so that makes everyone between the ages of 13 and 19 emo? Perhaps their understanding of the term is a tad to, shall we say, broad? Oh well, even our most trusted news sources reveal their faults from time to time, right?

Anyway.

Speaking of unintentional encounters, why did no one warn me away from The Exorcism Of Emily Rose? Why did no one tell me it wasn't a horror movie at all? Instead it's a thinly (incredibly thinly) veiled recruitment / propoganda piece for the Catholic church, in particular, and Western Christian religion, in general!

I find it incredibly interesting that when the movie reviewers discussed the movie during its original release they mentioned the fact that the long court room scenes held the movie back from building up any real spooky tension. I was okay with that, though, since even a few moments of pure creepiness are usually enough to keep me haappy. However what every review I read neglected to mention was that those courtroom scenes were basically recruitment pamphlets for a certain religion. And just in case the court scenes didn't maake that clear, the typed epilouge certainly helped hammer the (nine inch?) nails home.

Now, I don't mind the Catholic church supporting films, it is a free country built upon freedom of religion, right? What I do have a problem with is when their recruiting tactics are buried in popular entertainment in the form of a "if you don't follow our way you're going to be possessed or go to hell" sort of way. It's a little too Rovian a tactic for my taste.

Which brings me to comething else that popped up recently, and should also settle any complaint that I'm just attacking this flick out of a reactionary bias. I've grown up Catholic. Photogal and I have discussed bringing up our kids (whenever / if ever they come along) Catholic and whether or not we could become active members in a church ever again. Until my teenage years I swallowed the Catholic ideology hook, line, and sinker. To be honest, I still consider myself, at base, a Christian, and, in partular, a "lapsed Catholic" who still believes in The Golden Rule, but doubts much of the rest of the whole "organized religion" thing. But as far as modern Christain belief systems go, I think Catholicism, despite its flaws, is still probably the best.

But that doesn't mean that I think it's the only way. And I certainly don't agree with any sort of propoganda that tries to scare anyone into accepting one religion over another. So that's why I find The Exorcism Of Emily Rose to be particularly execreble, but have no problem with the Narnia flick. Both are based in Christian belief systems, but one just uses its structure to entertain, whilst the other employs the Hollywood system to baldly recruit through fear.

And don't even get me started on Mel Gibson's previously suspect, but now transparent, attack on Judaism in his own little film couched in outrage and fear.

Jeez, how did I get to this point? Honestly, I started off just wanting to share that little piece of humor with you from The Economist, and now I've drifted into an attack on religious propoganda. WTF? I'm not even sure if all that meandering above had a central point, aside from my apparently violent reaction to a certain style of marketing (religious or otherwise.)

Hmm, we need to end on a lighter note, so enjoy these Lollapalooza pictures I took for Chicagoist. They represent my favorite three shots of crowd reactions as viewed from the photo pit. The top picture was during The Raconteurs' set and the guy to the far right just has the most priceless expression. The bottom two perform a sort of action shot thing as the girl on the far right was jumping up and down and just absolutely losing her shit while watching The Shins. I have cooler looking crowd shots, but these three capture the unabashed excitement of true fans before an altar built on the ecstacy of the pure enjoyment of rock and/or roll.




To me those are terrific examples of a true religious experience.