Hell House
Aug. 9th, 2002 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccI went to see Hell House as part of the MIFF last night. It was interesting. Hell House is a "House of Horrors" run by a fundamentalist charismatic Christian church somewhere in a smallish town in Texas. The horrors include scenes about drugs, drink-driving, abortion, homosexuality, the occult.. basically it's a series of short morality plays about everything that they think will cause you to go to hell set in a halloween-style house. The whole thing is a bit of a fundraiser for the church - they've been running it 10 years and have had quite a large number of people through the doors at $7 each. Of course it's also a conversion attempt.
It was interesting to me because it showed that not a lot has changed in the fundamentalist world since I left the town I grew up in (which had quite a few charismatic and fundamentalist churches) in 1990. Metal music appears to have been replaced by raves (*grin* which at least gave me the chance to tell Dean that metal really is dead, even the church has given up on it!), but all the other old tunes are still being played. This particular group seemed to have a bit of an obsession with incest - at least 3 of the sketches mentioned it gratuitously. But they're still harping on about homosexuality as a lifestyle choice leading directly to AIDS and hell (and naturally some gratuitous incest - why else would you choose a gay lifestyle?), abortion ("You killed your baby Jan. You're a murderer!" and "they told me it was just a pill! It wasn't supposed to be this hard!"), role-playing games, the occult and adultery.
Some of the scenes I could just about see as being useful - the drink driving one for example - do you want to kill the other 4 people in the car with you? Do you want to get in a car with a drunk driver? If you do get in a car with a drunk driver, give your life to Christ first, at least that way you don't go to hell! - and possibly the "suicide at school" one (although their whole take was "don't suicide cos you'll go to hell. Give your life to Christ and you'll feel much better!") but a lot of it was very much your small town attempt at worldly wisdom (the most embarrassing example being the pentagram with 6 sides. *sigh*) and some extreme small mindedness.
[Honestly - how many people manage to go to raves, be given "the date rape drug" (no one in the film could remember the name of it) and take it by choice, be raped, come home, realise, decide it's all their fault because their father used to interfere with them (yup, more gratuitous incest), so commit suicide - and go to hell.]
I guess what really annoys me about the whole fundamentalist ethic is that it's all based on fear. You don't convert because you believe in something, you convert because you're scared you'll go to hell. In the same vein you don't go out and try and help damaged people or give aid. You go out and convert people, because that will help them. It might. But at the same time if you can't give help without evangelising it's not really charity, it's a marketing opportunity.
All the people featured in the film came across as quite nice people. Just very, very blinkered by an extreme take on Christianity and, as such intolerant. It would be interesting to go back in about 10 years time and see how many left the town and how many remained in the church. It was also interesting that the film-makers didn't interview any of the black members of the congregation, despite there being a fairly large number of them at the church services they showed.
It was a good film. And very funny, both unintentionally ("I could never have sex before marriage. It was drilled into me from an early age...") and because the film makers occasionally used longer shots to laugh at people. Which they didn't need to do.
I have to admit I'm curious as to what "Spanish for Christian schools" teaches though.
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It was interesting to me because it showed that not a lot has changed in the fundamentalist world since I left the town I grew up in (which had quite a few charismatic and fundamentalist churches) in 1990. Metal music appears to have been replaced by raves (*grin* which at least gave me the chance to tell Dean that metal really is dead, even the church has given up on it!), but all the other old tunes are still being played. This particular group seemed to have a bit of an obsession with incest - at least 3 of the sketches mentioned it gratuitously. But they're still harping on about homosexuality as a lifestyle choice leading directly to AIDS and hell (and naturally some gratuitous incest - why else would you choose a gay lifestyle?), abortion ("You killed your baby Jan. You're a murderer!" and "they told me it was just a pill! It wasn't supposed to be this hard!"), role-playing games, the occult and adultery.
Some of the scenes I could just about see as being useful - the drink driving one for example - do you want to kill the other 4 people in the car with you? Do you want to get in a car with a drunk driver? If you do get in a car with a drunk driver, give your life to Christ first, at least that way you don't go to hell! - and possibly the "suicide at school" one (although their whole take was "don't suicide cos you'll go to hell. Give your life to Christ and you'll feel much better!") but a lot of it was very much your small town attempt at worldly wisdom (the most embarrassing example being the pentagram with 6 sides. *sigh*) and some extreme small mindedness.
[Honestly - how many people manage to go to raves, be given "the date rape drug" (no one in the film could remember the name of it) and take it by choice, be raped, come home, realise, decide it's all their fault because their father used to interfere with them (yup, more gratuitous incest), so commit suicide - and go to hell.]
I guess what really annoys me about the whole fundamentalist ethic is that it's all based on fear. You don't convert because you believe in something, you convert because you're scared you'll go to hell. In the same vein you don't go out and try and help damaged people or give aid. You go out and convert people, because that will help them. It might. But at the same time if you can't give help without evangelising it's not really charity, it's a marketing opportunity.
All the people featured in the film came across as quite nice people. Just very, very blinkered by an extreme take on Christianity and, as such intolerant. It would be interesting to go back in about 10 years time and see how many left the town and how many remained in the church. It was also interesting that the film-makers didn't interview any of the black members of the congregation, despite there being a fairly large number of them at the church services they showed.
It was a good film. And very funny, both unintentionally ("I could never have sex before marriage. It was drilled into me from an early age...") and because the film makers occasionally used longer shots to laugh at people. Which they didn't need to do.
I have to admit I'm curious as to what "Spanish for Christian schools" teaches though.
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