A few months ago, when it was time for Christ and Pop Culture writers to lay claim to summer movies, I said something along the lines of, \u201cI should probably see Eat Pray Love<\/em>, but I already know I\u2019ll despise it and have to write a scathing review.\u201d Having now seen the movie, such a scathing review would be easy to write\u2014and there are already plenty of them out there. Yet, even though I found very little to applaud in the movie, I want to try to understand why Eat Pray Love<\/em> holds such appeal. It\u2019s far too easy to dismiss it as emotional porn; moreover, many of the diatribes against Eat Pray Love<\/em> and against woman-authored memoirs in general often seem to indulge in more than a hint of misogyny. I\u2019m no fan\u2014in less charitable moments, I\u2019ve referred to Eat Pray Love<\/em> as \u201cDivorce, Neocolonialism, Spiritual Tourism\u201d\u2014but merely retreating into scorn for its fans doesn\u2019t help me to love my neighbor.<\/p>\n What simultaneously disturbs and intrigues me about Eat Pray Love<\/em> is how often I see people citing it as inspiration for some life-changing decision\u2014from director Ryan Murphy\u2019s claim that the book gave three of his friends the \u201ccourage\u201d to leave their marriages<\/a> to star Julia Roberts\u2019s conversion to Hinduism<\/a> while filming the movie. Of course, from a Christian perspective, these particular major life changes probably aren\u2019t for the better. Still, when a book or a movie exercises such apparent cultural power, I want to know why. Writing off the movie as a \u201cchick flick\u201d won\u2019t help anyone discover what deep needs\u2014yes, particularly in women of a certain age\u2014Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s life story seems to be addressing.<\/p>\n That\u2019s one reason I went to see Eat Pray Love<\/em> in the theater (though, believe me, I would rather have gone to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World<\/em>). If you\u2019ve never been to a movie largely attended by middle-aged women, you may not be familiar with the collective \u201cmmm\u201ds that signal appreciation for particular moments in a film, usually a line that seems particularly true or emotionally resonant. These verbal clues helped me pin down the particular appeal in a way that I wouldn\u2019t have been able to do just watching the movie at home by my clueless self.<\/p>\n The aspect that most mystifies me about Eat Pray Love<\/em> is why \u201cLiz\u201d (Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s character) so precipitously decides she wants a divorce. This isn\u2019t even a mid-life crisis: Liz is in her early thirties. Her husband doesn\u2019t seem bad at all\u2014a bit flaky, with horrible taste in music, but these adjectives could equally well be applied to Liz, in my opinion. Yet, when he tells her he doesn\u2019t want to tag along on her work-sponsored trip to Aruba (an honest expression of his preferences), she responds, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be married anymore.\u201d Ooookay. That early moment in the film made it very difficult for me to feel any sympathy for Liz, though the movie clearly expects us to. It doesn\u2019t get any better as she throws herself into a rebound relationship with a young actor\/hippie (James Franco), while her husband is still hoping and believing that they can work things out. Yet, when Liz\u2019s lawyer calls her to tell her that the husband has finally agreed to a divorce, the affirming murmur of the theater audience said, \u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n To be fair, the reasons for Liz\u2019s desire for a divorce may be better explained in the book\u2014and if they aren\u2019t, there could be a good motivation for that, too, since Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s husband is a real person, still out there living in the world. I wish I could have tracked down those \u201cYes!\u201d voices in the theater and found out why they were so relieved. Was it because they had also gone through painful divorces and were seeing their own stories, their own relief, reflected in Liz\u2019s life? Was it simply because the movie could now progress to more exotic locales?<\/p>\n Speaking of travel, that to me seems a far less incomprehensible aspect of the movie\u2019s appeal. But what particularly struck me is how safe and structured Liz\u2019s travels are. She determines beforehand (and, in real life, she secured a substantial book project advance) that she will visit Italy to eat, India to pray (via yoga and devotion to a guru), and Indonesia (specifically, Bali) to find balance between the pleasure and asceticism represented by the two previous locations. She already knows what she\u2019s going to get out of each destination before she even arrives (\u201csurprises,\u201d such as her love affair with a Brazilian divorc\u00e9 in Bali, are integrated seamlessly into her predetermined framework). Never mind that all these aspects of life could be appreciated equally well in New York.<\/p>\n The \u201cfriends\u201d she encounters in each place are mirror images of the relationships she has back home, except that they don\u2019t demand long-term commitment. There\u2019s much talk of Liz learning to \u201clove the whole world,\u201d which mainly seems to mean thinking happy thoughts towards a young Indian woman forced into an arranged marriage and raising some money for a Balinese healer to buy her own home. These two incidents are supposed to indicate Liz\u2019s spiritual progress to us\u2014for which progress she can be rewarded with a hot Brazilian\u2014in reality, they indicate how the movie mistakes warm, fuzzy feelings for love.<\/p>\n I suspect that the predetermined nature of Liz\u2019s quest may be part of its appeal. Liz suffers from anxiety (in an early scene, a friend asks, \u201cDo you need a Xanax?\u201d, to which Liz immediately replies, \u201cAlways\u201d\u2014cue uproarious laughter from the theater audience), and the structure of her journey keeps it within safe, low-anxiety-inducing bounds. When Liz claims to want freedom from her old life, what she really wants is freedom from herself and her own mind. In this, Liz strikes me as representative of the contemporary epidemic of anxiety among American women, an epidemic for which the church has produced little response beyond \u201cBe like Mary, not Martha\u201d (a piece of advice to which a fair response is, \u201cIf I could, don\u2019t you think I would have by now?\u201d).<\/p>\n