Spring Break
Religulus preposterous
John Bryant
Issue date: 10/29/08 Section: Entertainment
There should be a comfortable distance between my critic's eye and my religious heart. But while I watched Bill Maher's Religulous, a documentary that insists what I hold dear to be ridiculous, I found the two uncomfortably colliding. Now, I do not mind dissenting opinion. I cherish debate and discussion. If my worldview is worth keeping then it will not crumble under dispute and criticism. But what I find odious, positively putrid, is the outright dishonesty of this movie, the self-satisfied smugness that invades the film and eviscerates the possibility of true discussion among the opposed. Bill Maher's Religulous is the worst kind of documentary, posing itself as an inquiry and discussion of religion but inevitably betrays itself into the hands of stale rhetoric and distortion. But lest I fall into the same hole, I am bandaging up my wounded religiosity and will, calmly as I can, tell you why Religulous is not an assault on religion, but an assault on the viewer's intelligence.
Bill Maher's companions on his journey are rationality and doubt. They are the products he markets, weapons he totes with him. In a constantly looping chorus to the audience he calls his the religion of "I don't know." Now that is a noble goal, to disarm religion with rationality, doubt, and discussion, and if he had held to these precepts I would have been more open to the movie's message. But by the movie's end, these noble goals are revealed to be a dishonest charade, a thin of guise for the reality of Maher's belief that religion is stupid and that God does not exist. Such opinions are fine, but he should have made them apparent at the beginning, rather than having them bleed through in his smug, ironic disdain for everyone he talks to. The unique cadence of his interviews destroys his claim of "discussion" and "rationality." He begins his interviews with various religious leaders with a sickening innocence, saying "I just want to ask a few questions." The interviewees, unaware and unprepared for his deception, are baited by a few simple questions, and are caught off-guard and skewered by Maher's acrid wit. He preys upon the unprepared religious zealot's answers and, with the help of sneaky de-contextualized edits, reveals them to be fools. By disarming unprepared minds, he assumes that since they cannot give a reliable answer, a reliable answer must not exist. If he had really wanted the answers to the questions he would have sought those who could answer them, not the radicals and the uninformed he interviews. In choosing to interview these radicals operating on the periphery of mainstream religion, he assumes that in attacking religion's fringes, he has struck religion's heart.
But given the movie's serious theme, the tone is remarkably light-hearted. It is a comedy, made by the same people who gave us Borat. Yet the ending assumes too much of itself. It employs a jarring switch in tone (in which a sweeping montage of destruction to the background of some generic dirge suddenly plummets the movie into ultra-seriousness) and Maher begins a rant with a self-righteousness that is unearned. He has not really mounted an attack on religion, merely menaced and chided a few religious caricatures and assumed that the rest is as equally grotesque.
Bill Maher's companions on his journey are rationality and doubt. They are the products he markets, weapons he totes with him. In a constantly looping chorus to the audience he calls his the religion of "I don't know." Now that is a noble goal, to disarm religion with rationality, doubt, and discussion, and if he had held to these precepts I would have been more open to the movie's message. But by the movie's end, these noble goals are revealed to be a dishonest charade, a thin of guise for the reality of Maher's belief that religion is stupid and that God does not exist. Such opinions are fine, but he should have made them apparent at the beginning, rather than having them bleed through in his smug, ironic disdain for everyone he talks to. The unique cadence of his interviews destroys his claim of "discussion" and "rationality." He begins his interviews with various religious leaders with a sickening innocence, saying "I just want to ask a few questions." The interviewees, unaware and unprepared for his deception, are baited by a few simple questions, and are caught off-guard and skewered by Maher's acrid wit. He preys upon the unprepared religious zealot's answers and, with the help of sneaky de-contextualized edits, reveals them to be fools. By disarming unprepared minds, he assumes that since they cannot give a reliable answer, a reliable answer must not exist. If he had really wanted the answers to the questions he would have sought those who could answer them, not the radicals and the uninformed he interviews. In choosing to interview these radicals operating on the periphery of mainstream religion, he assumes that in attacking religion's fringes, he has struck religion's heart.
But given the movie's serious theme, the tone is remarkably light-hearted. It is a comedy, made by the same people who gave us Borat. Yet the ending assumes too much of itself. It employs a jarring switch in tone (in which a sweeping montage of destruction to the background of some generic dirge suddenly plummets the movie into ultra-seriousness) and Maher begins a rant with a self-righteousness that is unearned. He has not really mounted an attack on religion, merely menaced and chided a few religious caricatures and assumed that the rest is as equally grotesque.
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