I was not impressed by Saved!. It was all the usual high school cliches transported to the context of an Evangelical high school. Mandy Moore plays the pretty bitch that every high school movie must have, and while I acknowledge that such girls exist, one of these days I simply must analyze the patriarchal underpinnings of making them the inevitable target of scorn.
Anyway. Moore plays a self-satisfied, clique-running, all-powerful high school diva. Only in this movie, she’s a Jesus-freak diva. Now, a bitch diva like this girl will use whatever the prevailing social structure is to have, hold, and abuse power. That’s her nature. So, in her particular culture, she uses Jesus and salvation as her bludgeon.
I wonder if anyone within the Evangelical community has asked themselves if that is what they really want. They create social pressure to be Christian because social pressure is an effective tool. But the cost is that anyone who wants to abuse power can do so in Jesus’s name. Are any of them asking if that equation is worthwhile? If having a “Christian culture” is worth the price of turning salvation into just one more way for bitches to bitch and abusers to abuse? Because that price is inevitable as long as your salvation is a matter of public discussion.
Where religion and faith are private, there is no social coin in being voted Most Likely to Resurrect. Where religion and faith are public and necessary, some people will have them simply to get elected prom queen.
(By coincidence, while I was writing this post in my head, this article appeared at Pandagon.)
(Cross-posts R Us.)
well come on, when your whole theology is basically a popularity contest–God love mes, I’m saved, you’re not, loser! nyah nyah!–prom queen syndrome is inevitable. And when the criteria for salvation is how well you toe the line of the status quo, what you get is not so much a spiritual practice but a system of social control. I thought the movie illustrated that rather nicely. Plus, Jena Malone is, in my totally unbiased opinion, wonderful.
I went to Catholic schools, so the “Christian culture” was a bit different from the hyperventilating evangalism of the movie, but it did bring back a lot of memories of my time in youth groups…
Actually, I don’t think the whole theology IS the popularity contest; or at least it doesn’t have to be. There are certainly Christian sects where salvation is a private matter.
Good point. I overstated it a bit; I suppose what I meant is that the theology, generally speaking, is oversimplified to who’s saved and who ain’t; it’s so easy to boil it down to that dichotomy, and leaving out the rest.
Yes, it’s easy to create that dichotomy, and I think it extracts quite a cost. Imagine how much more highly people would think of Christianity if it wasn’t for behavior like that!
[…] Okay, I’m back on Saved! I want to talk about the way that this movie, supposedly a force for tolerance and acceptance, reinforces and supports looks-prejudice and fat-prejudice. […]