The Master Plan will be coming out November 10, 2009. It’s “a feature film about Christian youth culture in suburban America, and a teen girl’s struggle with evangelical Christianity.” Here’s a new clip from it, about a girl trying to witness to a friend about Jesus.
the acting is atrocious
Can’t help thinking that the parents of evangelical kids should be arrested for child abuse. This crap just confirms it.
Um, no.
It works both ways. You can’t get arrested for teaching kids your ideals & beliefs, even if someone else thinks it’s crazy. Fundies think what we teach our kids is crazy and wrong, and we’d have a fit if they said they wanted to lock us up over it.
Fundies think what we teach our kids is crazy and wrong…
You forgot evil. It’s not just crazy and wrong but actively evil and destructive, according to them. The sort of stuff that, if they were right about it, you’d really want to lock up someone for.
Yes, the fundies have the right to teach that 2+2=5 (consequences be damned). The rest of us have the right to teach that 2+2=4.
I think Garret sums up my opinion on this one :-)
If it were as simple as first grade arithmetic, you might have a point.
My point is that I’m sick of the “I have my opinion and you have yours” mindset when it comes to scientific fact. It’s “we have the right to teach what we believe” vs. “we have the right to teach what we know to be factual.”
Teaching a child that myths are facts and that facts are myths is damaging to the child and society as a whole.
So, for the good of the many, let’s steamroll people with what we hold to be true. Uh-huh.
Steamroll is your word. We need to combat mythology that leads to an acceptance of war/slaughter, a hatred of homosexuals, etc.
Just as we need to make sure kids learn that 2 plus 2 does not equal 7, because I want to get the proper change back when I check out at the store.
Thought experiment:
The year is 1899. Classical physics has just solved every problem known to exist in the physical sciences. Scientists have arrived at THE TRUTH. Everyone who believes something different is obviously an idiot.
You see where this is going?
At every prior age it has been shown that pretty much everything that was believed was in error. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that our era will be any different than the many that passed before. (We…are not special.)
So yes, I use the word steamroll. Anyone who wishes to force others to learn “the Truth” is steamrolling. If you can persuade people, good. Otherwise, keep your paws off.
p.s. People hated and murdered various groups long before the mythologies we’re talking about were written and continue today under every other excuse under the sun. Blaming the mythology for the acts of human beings gives the mythology too much credit and the humans too little.
“The year is 1899. Classical physics has just solved every problem known to exist in the physical sciences. Scientists have arrived at THE TRUTH. Everyone who believes something different is obviously an idiot.”
Everyone who is justing making shite up because is doesn’t agree with their own brand of relgion is indeed an idiot.
Everyone who is just making shite up because is doesn’t agree with their own brand of religion is indeed an idiot.
I agree. But since a hundred years hence, chances are very good everything we’re teaching now outside of arithmetic will indeed be laughable shite, it is generally dangerous to use force to make people pick the currently popular shite over their own idiosyncratically idiotic shite.
Oh, Nope. How very post-modern of you.
“everything”
… are you sure that everything that is taught that the believers get up in arms about will be considered laughable in 100 years time or indeed just everything outside of maths.
Lets take a few biggies:
Evolution – well that seems to be remarkable resilient even though it’s over 100 years old.
Start of the Universe – no one really knows, yet we seem to be on the right track of how it all formed up.
Start of Life – some ideas but nothing concrete.
Maybe we actually have two hearts and only one kidney, how they will laugh in 100 years time?
We had solved every physical sciences problem in 1899? Psh, any real scientist from then would have said you were wrong, and the sayings of a patent office manager shouldn’t convince you otherwise. We knew we didn’t understand the workings of atoms, or the speed of light (Michelson/Morley was pre-1899), didn’t have a mechanism for the heritability of traits, etc etc.
But really I agree with you. I’d rather people be able to teach their kids whatever they want, rather than the state control it more rigidly.
I AGREE. IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
That acting was painful to watch, it’s like a bad porno, well…any porno with a plot.
Porno movies at least have something positive to distract you from the piss-poor acting.
Porn movies have plots?
http://www.babeland.com/sexinfo/features/womenguidetoporn
Porn movies, no plots, just a climax.
Speaking of porno, wouldn’t it be a better use of resources to put those two in a hot lesbian scene? I’d pay to see that.
It’s only a trailer and I don’t think “acting” was the point, may it’s a “mockumentary”.
Note all the juxtaposed images, expecially the flickering lamp and billowing smoke.
Daniel: is this serious (the bigots mean it) or is the film spoofing? I assumed the latter…
It’s filmed by an atheist, so it’s not serious in that regard.
If it were filmed by religious people, she wouldn’t hesitate to rattle off why Jesus loves her, etc. etc. Or, at least, she’d get over the apprehension she felt at the beginning to explain why jesus is god.
“Saved!” is better.
Seconded.
Thirded. But did you base your opinion of Saved on an out-of-context two-minute clip you saw on the internet, or did you actually watch the entire movie first?
The clip was too long “is it Johnnie, is it Bobbie……” I still think a film like that would be better if written by an ex-fundie. Brian Dannelly who wrote and directed “Saved!” attended the same fundie high school I did, Arlington Baptist in Baltimore, MD.
Thank you very much, sir!
You are welcome. Best of luck with your next screen play.
lol reminds me of when a very similar girl tried to witness to my girlfriend while we were sitting in a coffee shop. My girlfriend at the time was a goth Wiccan and claimed to have summoned Lucifer himself. Needless to say it was entertaining :)
I’m pretty sure this is…how do you say in America…SATIRE.
Some of you need to get your comedimometers adjusted ;)
You must have one of those fancy micro-comedimometers. Satire? Sure, I guess. Funny? ummm…
It’s “funny” in the same way David Lynch films are “funny”. That is, funny in its strangeness.
Wow, this is the lamest attempt at comedy I’ve ever seen in a movie.
This fails on so many levels. I understand it’s filmed by an atheist, and I’m not talking about the acting. I was waiting for the lamp to like fall on her while the other girl was trying to witness to her. Secondly, any girl that reacts to a guy liking her by laughing like a lunatic will never find a date to home coming. What was up with the smoke too…
-Billy
“Secondly, any girl that reacts to a guy liking her by laughing like a lunatic will never find a date to home coming”
This statement would be proof that you were never a teenage girl. This kind of reaction DID used to happen in high school, and it was in fact occasionally over boys. All though also occasional over New Kids on the Block (*gack!*). I believe I just dated myself as well with that.
If it makes you feel any better, I got that reaction from a girl when I wore my Shaun Cassidy necklace. I don’t know whatchacallit when it’s sort of a locket but there’s no other side so the picture always shows… cameo? Anyway, she reached out to pick it up from my neck to see it (it was that exciting) and it broke off the chain, and I never fixed it, and I don’t know where it is now. This reminds me of another girl whose favorite t-shirt had a nice big picture of Erik Estrada as Ponch on it. She wore it all the time.
Now don’t you feel so young?
What was up with the smoke too…
My guess is that it was filmed during the recent brush fires near L.A. (e.g. the “Station Fire” which threatened Mt. Wilson) and the smoke has nothing to do with the plot of the film.
After watching the four spiritual laws video on their website, it looks more like it’s bashing Christianity by making dad look crazy, maybe it has hope yet lol, just kidding.
It’s pretty obvious it’s a low budget indie arthouse film. Seriously, have none of you ever watched this type of film before? They often have stilted acting because they are using amateur or inexperienced actor. Then again, they might be intentionally having them act strangely due to something in the plot that is not apparent in the clip. It’s hard to tell since this is just a short out-of-context clip and nobody has any idea what comes before or after it. I imagine the screaming and smoke and such have something to do with the plot (disaster? armageddon?), or maybe it’s just some kind of artsy fartsy symbolism.
Also, I tend to start laughing hysterically when people attempt to witness to me, much like the girl in the movie.
That eating sound is from World of Warcraft.
Premise: Two teens. Best buddies. One is unaware that the other is a Christian and is about to be told for the first time.
Too big of a demand on my “reality suspension system”. Maybe in context the scene works better…?
It looks like an after-school special. Do they still have those?
I…hm. It was…well, not really funny. As a trailer, it doesn’t really pique my interest in finding out more. But hey, it could be an actually good movie–problem is, the trailer (if you could call this a trailer) doesn’t give the viewer much of a clue as to what he or she is watching.
That’s because it’s not a trailer. It’s a “clip”, as mentioned in the OP.
Even as a “clip,” it fails. It looks too disjointed–like an attempt to be “quirky.” I expected the lamppost to fall on the hysterically laughing girl–and the burning hills in the background? WTF? After a while, I went from WTF? to WTHC? (Who the Hell Cares?)
Basically, you just don’t get indie art house films. That’s what this is. That’s cool. It’s ok to admit it. You are the reason the people involved with the production of things such as 2012, and G.I. Joe – The Rise Of Cobra, and Saw VI can make a living. Those people have families and have to eat too. You should feel good about helping them.
Oh come on. As a guy who enjoys the occasional Hal Hartley or Olivier Assayas flick, I can say that being an art-house film means itself absolutely nothing as to quality. There are good and bad ones of those, too. And either way, this is an objectively bad trailer, insofar as a trailer is supposed to inform about the movie and entice the viewer (this does basically neither).
Oh, but Elemenope, it does neither spectacularly! ;-)
LOL. Artfully.
Oh, really, Durr? Because I don’t find this clip remotely interesting I’m all of a sudden the effective cause of the end of All Good Cinema? And, what, I’m supposed to reply by saying something like, “Oh, noes! I *do* watch ‘good’ cinema! I would never watch 2012 or Saw VI!!!11!”
Bull. If you could get your nose out of your ridiculous dichotomy between “high” and “low” culture for five seconds (oh, and maybe read some Stuart Hall or Raymond Williams), you might see that movies as dreadfully pedantic as 2012 also say something about our culture. But hey, why bother with that when you can watch some pathetic indie flick that plays at being meaningful and then come on a blog and act like it’s the be-all end-all of cinema verite.
So you take this clip and find it to be deep and artsy? And look at that awesome robe the emperor is wearing. His shoes even match! His tailors thought of every detail.
I mean, seriously, I looked over the site, read the plot summary, looked at all 4 clips. It doesn’t look just cheap (because it’s so indie and probably doesn’t have a great budget), it looks like something that should play after school like “Francesca, Baby” or Torn Between Two Fathers. It looks like maybe it should play on Lifetime Network or USA or TNT (not having cable, I don’t know if there’s a more appropriate repository for this “very special” dreck), where made-for-television adaptations such as We Were The Mulvaneys or The Burning Bed come from and are added to the rotation of things you end up watching while eating ice cream in your sweats because the remote is over there (you can’t see but I’m pointing across the room).
I don’t know what this magical indie art house film quality is supposed to look like, as opposed to a big-budget blockbuster, but I did not see what’s so artsy about it. I also did not see the point of, for example, Sex and the City being made into a movie. They tied up a few loose ends, which is what 2-hour made-for-tv reunion specials are for, and didn’t belong on the big screen either. If it was good enough for the Waltons and the Bradfords (Eight is Enough), then ok, now I’m just starting to ramble, but hey. This movie looks pretty cheap and very special.
I think I’ll join the others, and say that you’re a tool Durr.
It may well turn out to be a horrible movie but I bet it will never replace “Plan NIne from Outer Space” as the world’s worste!
I have “Bride of the Monster” sitting in my Netflix instant watch queue.
I plan to drink a lot of gin and tonics before venturing into the horror.
I have to disagree with you on this. I still think Attack of the Killer Tomatoes holds that honor.
Good grief, no! Attack of The Killer Tomatoes was *deliberately* schlock. That was the whole point of it – to rip shreds out of all those Ed Wood sci-fi b-movies of the 1950s. Plan 9 From Outer Space has actually reached legendary proportions and is a must-see movie for buffs simply because it’s hard to believe any film could be that bad! Sort of like the anti-Spielberg: Film buffs all over the world know just how crap a director he is (with maybe three filmic exceptions) and so don’t bother watching his work. He’s not bad enough to be classic bad :-)
*deliberately* schlock.
The best word for that is camp.
I once say Plan 9 From Outer Space at a “buck-back” special. Two dollars admission, but if you could sit through the entire thing you got one buck back.
You must not have seen Hitman.
Or anything by Uwe Boll.
Eyes Wide Shut: A movie that tells you the best way to watch the movie in the title.
I just like watching Durr Hurr run around frantically trying to defend the clip.
Sorry if I don’t get the “art” of random voice effects and flickering lamps, but I found it fairly mundane and rather boring. If this is representative of the rest of the movie, then count me out.
And that laughing went from “girlie excitement” to “manic lunatic.” I’ve seen girls freak over guys and other such things, but this was a bit much.
As usual, there is a trope for this.
I couldn’t agree more. My sister was a good artist (as in, she could paint things that made sense in a highly original way) until she went to the Academy of Fine Arts and became an ‘Artist’ (capital A, of course). Since then she’s been reduced to churning out heaps and heaps of pseudo-analytical nonsense. What a waste of talent!
Are the christians trying to shoot themselves in the foot here? If you didn’t know the actual premise for this shlock…and it’s probable point, that likely being how NOT to be a witness for Christ in this instance, I can ony see this clip hurting the cause not helping it. Granted I prefer it when those with faith hurt their own cause,but damn that is atrocious.
…if you had read the other comments, you would know this was made by an ATHEIST.
It’s too bad. Right up until she started cackling like an insane person, I found her very cute.
Wide set eyes and a lot of curly hair totally works on me.
The insane cackling, not so much.
I hope MST3K gets a hold of this. . .
Elemenope wrote, “People hated and murdered various groups long before the mythologies we’re talking about were written and continue today under every other excuse under the sun. Blaming the mythology for the acts of human beings gives the mythology too much credit and the humans too little.”
Yes, religion is one of numerous tools used to oppress. If we can dull each of those tools, we can make progress. I’m not claiming that religious mythology is the one and only source of destruction.
Me, I view them all as excuses.
It is not: if [religion, politics, morals, society, phebotinum], then evil.
It is: if evil, then [insert excuse].
I think there are those who use those tools to exploit hatred/fear/ignorance knowing full well what they’re doing. But there are those who genuinely buy the BS, and my hope is that some of them would cease to be customers if we dull the tools.
I tend to think that people want someone to validate their feelings and intuitions (and excuse their naughtiness) and feel better about receiving that excuse if it comes from a source that they invest with authority.
I don’t think it is possible to dull authority itself as a tool. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, so I agree with you there. But the methods, I think, should not include force (including enforced orthodoxy). If the truth is the truth, it should be demonstrable and hopefully thus invested with some measure of persuasiveness. You can lead a horse to water…
I’m not advocating force. I don’t think anyone here is. I’m pretty sure Custador was, at most, half-serious.
There have been some pretty fierce arguments here of late regarding education (esp. in re: homeschooling), and many have expressed opinions bordering on if not desiring outright the forbidding of education paradigms which do not teach what they deem to be the truth. It’s possible he was kidding, but the “religion as child-abuse” meme has been cropping up un-ironically quite a bit lately.
I wouldn’t be opposed to requiring homeschoolers to earn a teaching certificate, but I don’t think we can (or should) forbid homeschooling.
I’m not even opposed to teaching public school children about religious myths. In mythology courses, not science courses.
“Yes, religion is one of numerous tools used to oppress. If we can dull each of those tools, we can make progress. I’m not claiming that religious mythology is the one and only source of destruction.”
Now the problem you’re going to have here is that, depending on your point of view, relgion can be substited for a lot of other ideologies including probably your own.
Elemenope wrote, “The year is 1899. Classical physics has just solved every problem known to exist in the physical sciences. Scientists have arrived at THE TRUTH. Everyone who believes something different is obviously an idiot.
You see where this is going?
At every prior age it has been shown that pretty much everything that was believed was in error. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that our era will be any different than the many that passed before. (We…are not special.)”
We can both acknowledge that scientific theories (such as evolution theory) are not static *and* make it clear that various Biblical stories did not actually occur. It’s not an either-or situtation.
I think you’re underplaying a bit the absolutely tectonic shifts in understanding that underlay revolutions of paradigm in science. To say that “these theories change over time” is to suggest that prior theories had much to do with their successors, when usually that is not the case. The Ptolemaic theory of astronomy is as much a fairy tale as the Book of Joshua, but had we been standing in Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy, you would be insisting on teaching the Ptolemaic theory and making fun of the Joshuaic account of the sun stopping in the sky.
I insist on teaching scientific theories, such as evolution, with the caveat that theories do evolve and some are – in time – debunked. Yes, we need to be cautious about accepting the dominant paradigm/narrative as fact. But we also need to differentiate between theories and myths.
If I had children, I would insist they learn the scientific theories of the time (and, when older, the evolution of thought and paradigm shifts that led to the current understanding). But I do not insist on telling other people what their children must learn.
After studying the philosophy and history of science for a while, I’m not at all certain there is a solid distinction between myth (in the broad strokes) and theory.
Of course there is a difference. It involves evidence. How can you say otherwise??? A scientific theory is well supported by evidence. Myth is a story. There’s a huge difference.
And just for the record, relativity did not debunk Newtonian physics. It did not displace it or even show it flawed in some way. Newtonian physics still stands as valid and useful even as relativity is also valid and useful, so I don’t understand why you would use this as an example.
I think we’re working off of different definitions of myth. A myth is a story intended to place someone’s observations in a framework of explanation so that the explanation serves for others who observe the same phenomena. Nearly all ancient myths are stories about the genesis or production of observed phenomena (what are earthquakes, where does the wind come from, what makes a seed turn into a tree, etc.). Science’s *only* claim to difference is the rigor with which the observations are made and repeated, and on the actual practical level of observing scientists-in-action, even this difference is questionable.
And just for the record, relativity did not debunk Newtonian physics. It did not displace it or even show it flawed in some way. Newtonian physics still stands as valid and useful even as relativity is also valid and useful, so I don’t understand why you would use this as an example.
I wasn’t thinking about gravity so much as atomic theory, but now that you mention it, yes actually, Newtonian gravity is a structural theory almost completely at odds with how we think the universe actually works today (absolute space and absolute time to relative spacetime); it is useful insofar as its model still provides predictions that are useful for applications, but the notion we were discussing was truth, not usefulness.
Also, relativity was only half the shift, with quantum theory being the other half. When particles aren’t billiard balls or, heck, even particles anymore, it’s hard to sustain the “they were always right and this is just a clarification” line. Newtonian mechanics was based on assumptions that today seem unambiguously wrong, and it is quite a handwave to say “well, it still works for what it was used for, so it must still be right”.
Newtonian physics isn’t wrong (it isn’t “truth” either– science doesn’t deal in truths, it deals in facts). It’s a particular case of how things work given certain scales. And if you are referring to myth as etiological stories, then I say that’s all the credit they get. Science isn’t about etiological stories, it’s about carefully developing an understanding of how things work.
Err, Newtonian physics is most definitely not “unambiguously wrong”. For the leading edge of science today, Newton’s physics is a bit simplified, but it’s good enough for many professions. And most chemists and materials scientists today work with simplified models that are about as “incorrect”, only the incorrectness is not significantly large enough to matter. Getting an exact answer for much of this work would require solving Schrodinger’s equation.. but it just isn’t necessary.
There’s research scientist ‘correct’, and then there’s engineering ‘correct.’
And if you are referring to myth as etiological stories, then I say that’s all the credit they get. Science isn’t about etiological stories, it’s about carefully developing an understanding of how things work.
I think we’ve come to a basic disagreement, here. I think that’s *exactly* what science is, just an unusually pragmatically-effective one.
Newtonian physics isn’t wrong (it isn’t “truth” either– science doesn’t deal in truths, it deals in facts).
The hair you’re splitting here is extraordinarily thin, if not nonexistent; if truth is defined as correspondence with reality, then facts and truth are isomorphic.
It’s a particular case of how things work given certain scales.
Even the most rudimentary empirical theory will be correct within a certain level of error over a certain range of inputs. If this is the standard by which we are measuring a theory being “right”, it’s hard to see how a theory could ever be declared wrong.
Correspondence theory? C’mon Nope! You know I know more about philosophy than that. You and I have talked about truth before. I don’t think that we can ever get to the “truth” of a matter because we are limited beings. That being said, I do see us as having a web of knowledge/beliefs (a la Quine) in which some ideas are more solid/supported/less mutable than others. Scientific knowledge/facts are more solid than myth claims. Myth claims are often easily refuted and, quite frankly, don’t hang together between varying myth traditions or even within a particular myth tradition. To compare science to myths is just silly. At the same time, I understand your concern that science is culturally constructed. I think a Kuhnian approach to science is especially relevant in the social sciences and psychology. But I think Kuhn’s claims become harder and harder to support as you move to the harder sciences, especially with respect to physics.
I think Kuhn’s claims become harder and harder to support as you move to the harder sciences, especially with respect to physics.
I think Kuhn’s claims become more and more uncomfortable to support as you move to the harder sciences, especially with respect to physics, but no more difficult to defend.
Myth claims are often easily refuted and, quite frankly, don’t hang together between varying myth traditions or even within a particular myth tradition.
That science “hangs together” (to the extent that it does, which is pushing it, even in the field of physics :), simply serves to show how impressively dominant it is, in that its particular narrative is used to describe nearly every observational aspect of what we experience as reality. Its narrative coherence itself testifies to its truth no better or worse than the narrative coherence of the Lord of the Rings.
Your arguments about myth claims are only true if you exclude that which you are seeking to exclude from myths (namely, the scientific narrative) in the first place.
“Its narrative coherence itself testifies to its truth no better or worse than the narrative coherence of the Lord of the Rings.”
Didn’t I just say that? I don’t think humans can ever get to the truth of anything. I think we are limited beings.
Oh, and the scientific narrative is backed up by human reality (not reality in itself, for we cannot access that). To use Jabster’s example, if I claim that people generally have one heart and two kidneys, then I can cut open a cadaver to check if that is true. I can’t check whether or not Eve ate a piece of special fruit after being convinced by a talking snake to do so, resulting in the fall of mankind.
Oh, and the scientific narrative is backed up by human reality…
That standard kinda screws your point, since a Christian, say, could turn around and say that the Christian notion of sin comports with the human reality of ethics they have access to.
To use Jabster’s example, if I claim that people generally have one heart and two kidneys, then I can cut open a cadaver to check if that is true. I can’t check whether or not Eve ate a piece of special fruit after being convinced by a talking snake to do so, resulting in the fall of mankind.
Pics or it didn’t happen? Verifiability is a demand internal to the scientific narrative. If you try to justify it independently, you’re going to run into an epistemological brick wall, as you yourself have already partially elucidated. So, you end up arguing that science is justified by a scientific standard.
It doesn’t screw my point. A Christian would cut open a cadaver (or a bunch of cadavers) and see the same thing I would. A creationist would see the same evidence for evolution as I do if they’d bother to look at it (which they won’t because they are anti-intellectual). To compare facts with some Christian moral reasoning is comparing apples to oranges. I brought up the Eve example because the etiological story of Eve eating the apple was supposed to explain why people die, why people toil the earth, why women experience pain in childbirth, etc. Those claims can’t be verified to any extent, and so they are inferior to scientific facts.
“So, you end up arguing that science is justified by a scientific standard.”
I understand your concern with this (as it seems circular), but I would argue that verifiability is an epistemological component of science, not that it is necessarily “internal” to science, for verifiability functions similarly in other disciplines as well.
I’ve been reading a book by Barbara Herrnstein Smith (of Duke) called “Scandalous Knowledge”. In it she compares the classic realist approach to science with the constructivist approach:
realist/ positivist:
individual
interior, intellectual, mental
propositions, laws, models
representation, correspondence
discovery
reason, logic, experiment
unity, progress
truth
autonomy
objectivity
transhistorical, universal
constructivist/ pragmatist:
communal, social institutional
exhibited, embodied, enacted
activities, skills, practices
interaction, coordination
construction
negotiation, rhetoric, performance
multiplicity, transformation
effectivity
connection, interdependence
interests
historical, situated
While I’m not saying that positivistic approaches are great ones, I just see harder sciences as leaning more that way and social sciences as leaning more toward the constructivist camp. Is that wrong?
I think my IQ imploded.
The christian-witnessing tactic “if you can’t say something straight out and honestly, manipulate” rang true.
Barf.
Thanks for your comments on The Master Plan movie promo “Kristi’s First Witness” a while back… the whole movie is now available free online at our site, and here on Daniel’s blog.
Check it out and don’t forget to assassinate my character and/or attempt to destroy me. :]
Love,
Aron