Histriomastix

Jesus is Conan

Far as I can tell, this video is not in jest. It would not exist without centuries of Crusades, Beowulf, Tolkein, Conan the Barbarian, Carmina Burana, Jerry Bruckheimer and September 11. Oh, and the murderous, tribal, childlike stupidity that undergirds all religious thinking. It's funny, then scary, then funny again, then blood explodes out of your ass.

More here.

H/T: Matthew Freeman.

Catechism on a hot tin roof

Update: Joshua James, who has been following this fracas with insight and passion, makes similar points in brilliant fashion here.

In response to the righteous indignation that my posts and reviews have ignited here, here, here and here.

Let me see if I have this right…

It’s not okay for me to say that black people make better deep-sea divers, that Asian people make better mountaineers, or that white people are better at herding cattle.

It’s not okay for me to say that all women are slightly retarded but they make up for it by releasing a vaporous chemical from their tear ducts that causes slight amnesia in men. Or that women’s hair emits rays that compels men to rape them.

It’s not okay for me to say that men have nipples in the same way that batteries have two ends: positive, negative.

It’s not okay for me to say that homosexual men and women have halitosis and grow their toenails out to ridiculous lengths.

It’s not okay for me to say that Lithuanians raise their first born with kindness but ritually abort and cannibalize their second-born infants. Or that the Balinese would be rulers of the world, if not for their inability to metabolize coffee. Or that the British have a predisposition for lying. Or that Southern Californians are notorious, incurable premature ejaculators. Or that Spaniards are obsessed with cloud formations and indoor plumbing. Or that Ukrainians are actually a product of cross-breeding between medieval Frenchmen and Zimbabweans time-warped from the future, all engineered by a race of aliens who hoped to take over the Earth but grew bored and gave up their plans.

It’s not okay for me to say the world is shaped like a donut, with a lava river running up and down the middle for eternity.

It’s not okay to say that I control your mind and every thing you say and do is carefully orchestrated by my will.

It’s not okay for me to say that gravity is an illusion and we’re all actually whirling around and around each other, but a higher power makes us feel grounded and centered.

It’s not okay for me to say that I communicate with fairies, goblins and tree sprites who go forth and do my bidding at night while you sleep.

It’s not okay for me to father a child, lock her in a small dark room and psychologically abuse her for years.

It’s not okay for me to break into your home and kill your family because I say that God told me to.

But it is okay for me to say that I have a personal relationship with God, who speaks to me, that I am a member of a chosen people, God works His will in every molecule of the world, prayer heals, infidels deserve death and when I die a martyr my soul will pass the gates of Heaven and have sexual intercourse with winged pregnant virgins playing harps, while the souls of unbelievers like you will burn in Hell for eternity.

Or, on a softer note, it’s okay for me to say I think there may be a God…but who am I to say…and if you don’t believe that’s okay, I guess.

But that's less fun, isn't it?

To me, religious belief is just another prejudice. Not as vile perhaps as racism, sexism, nationalism or other bigotries, but still an abstract response to the world with absolutist claims to reality while having no basis in that reality. Religious belief usually incorporates a set of notions about how the world works and how people should behave that, to me, is only based on custom, historical conditioning and aesthetically pleasing or expedient rituals.

For some folks, belief is just in the head, a consoling philosophy that they would never press on another person. For others, belief is a sanction for murder and fascistic control. And I know that there are many, many, many gradations between. I believe in the evolution of morals, of which religion was a phase. But I think the future lies with rational secularism, human rights, environmentalism, economic equality and cultivation of the arts, among other things. I don't tell people they can’t believe, they can’t worship and they can’t try to convince other people of their beliefs. Much as I logically and ethically deplore religion, I don't do that. I may ridicule, cajole and make sweeping rhetorical gestures.

So I cannot take religion seriously. Disagree with me, prove me wrong, tell me I'm going to hell, but don't misrepresent my argument.

Spare me your wretched goddism.

The fundamentalist fallacy

Over at Scott Walters’ Theatre Ideas, I got into some snippy comment action with Scott and Nick of Rat Sass. At issue is the Daisey Affair: the mass exodus from Daisey’s Invincible Summer at ART in Boston, which some at first thought was a kind of Christian-right protest-disruption. It was a group of 87 spectators, most of whom were high-school students from Norco, CA. Now, it turns out that while there may have been persons in that party of a delicate Christian sensibility, it is inaccurate to tar the group evangelical or right-wing. Not fully recognizing the facts, I dashed off an anti-religious post here. Scott took me to task for my hasty judgment. He seems to imply that I hurt a bunch of teens and am an intolerant elitist snob. So herewith, if any teen who was in the group read my post and was insulted, offended, etc, then I am sorry to have misrepresented you. (I personally doubt that I could mortify them more than their teachers and chaperones already have.) As for being elitist or snobby, partially guilty! I’m a paid critic. Sometimes my job is to be a snob.

It’s their shrill charge of intolerance that’s supposed to stick.

Scott & Nick seem offended by my unwillingness to make some show of respect to people who worship gods and cling to supernatural beliefs impervious to verification by reason or science. My insistence on criticizing, ridiculing and generally disrespecting persons of faith is, they cry, fundamentalism. By that logic, if you were to tell me that a beautiful fairy came to you in a dream and said that I must wear a polka-dot unitard every day or I’ll burn in hellfire, and I laughed in your face, I could be accused of bigotry. Persecution, perhaps. People of faith (POFs) are therefore to be seen as a despised, embattled minority and they need our support and deferential respect.

Scott & Nick are staking out an interesting, somewhat paradoxical position: extremist moderation! Believers can't prove that God exists. I can't prove that God doesn't exist. So we're both wrong. The only thing that Scott & Nick can be sure of is: They know that we don't know, but also that we don't know that we don't know. Anyone who says he knows, actually doesn't really know, because, y'know, Scott & Nick know.

Thus there is no difference between me and a fundamentalist POF who believes that all unbelievers are hellbound. Actually, I would argue that the POFs already are in hell. To me, religious conviction in this day and age is a form of intellectual damnation.

But still: Am I fundamentalist?

I don’t believe in God. To me, the non-existence of God is a natural fact and I’ve never seen or heard or even sensed anything to sway me otherwise. It’s an easy default state. I go about my life—thinking, loving, eating, writing, enjoying art and sunny days—sans worry what an invisible, anthropomorphized omni-plenipotentiary thinks about that extra scoop of ice cream or that lustful fleeting fancy in my mind.

On the other hand, the anthropological, political and social usefulness of religion has been clear to me from childhood. It is extremely convenient, and has been for millennia, for a great many people to believe, and for a tiny number of clerics to direct the energies and actions of the flock. Religion is a form of social control by (mostly) men, a byproduct of adaptive processes in developing humans, and a historically fascinating form of social organization that has outlived its primary use: keeping your tribe alive while wiping out the other tribe.

Yes, there is a great deal of difference between a Western Unitarian model of worship, which says something like:

“I am sorry you don’t share my belief in a benevolent, loving Mother-Father Supreme Being who embraces the entire human race regardless of age, race, sex, creed, nationality or even whether you believe. But I love you and cherish your individuality--yet also your non-individuality--in that we are all points of light in the great luminous tapestry of Universal Oneness that Mother-Father-God created.”

And the plucky credo of the expunging zealot:

“By persisting in your infidel ways, you allow me to cut your throat, rape your wife and spit your babies on my sword over a raging fire that consumes your screaming parents.”

After a few close readings, you'll notice a difference in style. To lump those polite, modest POFs in with the fanatical killers—unfair, no? Well, sure, I lose less sleep over marauding Unitarian hordes. But I don’t take their claims any more seriously. And I’d still be loathe to vote them into office. Even for dogcatcher.

If I were a fundamentalist atheist, I would want to herd all POFs into a camp, to quarantine their insanity from the rest of the population. I would never do such a thing, even if I had a magic wand. But religion will never get a pass from me. To me, a fundamentalist is, among other things, an individual whose beliefs lead him to inhumane action, regardless of the harm they cause to others or how they contradict the tenets of his belief (“Thou shalt not kill…except...”) Terrorism is the extreme form. Speech acts and writing can sting, I know, but if your Word of God cannot protect you from the occasional barb or sneer on a blog, then heaven help you. Perhaps, like Brothers Scott & Nick, you want to shame staunch atheists into towing a morally bankrupt agnostic line in which it’s OK to believe in God ("...just please don’t bomb me...") They can go to hell.

Pushing up the Daisey

And then I forgive him. He is very quiet—he is obviously shocked. And I tell him, "I want you to remember that a liberal atheist has forgiven you today. I don't want you to ever forget that, as long as you live, do not forget what happened here. I don't have God behind me, but I speak for myself, and I forgive you for myself, and for you. Never forget this."—Mike Daisey, blog post 4/24/07

As a fellow liberal atheist and sworn enemy of ignorant, paranoid, wasteful, culturally desolate, ahistorically pious middleamerican boobies, I must say this climactic passage from Mike Daisey’s latest posting about the desecration of his art related to a mass exodus from a recent performance of his Invincible Summer at American Repertory Theatre in Boston (infamous video here) rocked my world. Read it.

As anyone who makes the theater blog rounds knows, I’m the last to be on this story. Excuses time! I don’t have much time… I didn’t have anything to add …and I was morbidly fascinated by the rapid-response pooh-poohing and blowback over at Playgoer. So already, there have been roughly 12 million words written about this incident, but I’ll give preference to Daisey’s passionate, hyperbolic, self-dramatizing account. Why? It's a better read. I’m pro-artist. I’m anti-booby. Sure, I want to know the facts, and wouldn’t mind hearing the high school folks’ version of events (wonder if it’ll make their school paper?). There’s been some reporting of the incident. But guess what? At the end of the day, artists need our protection (and support) more than a bunch of church-infantilized fools who can’t deal with Daisey’s salty language and lefty attitudes. I will say this: Can’t wait to see his next show. He certainly doesn’t lack for material now.

God's Theater

If, like me, you have The End of Faith, The God Delusion and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon side by side on your bookshelf, you may have eagerly read the cover story in this weekend's New York Times Magazine Magazine: "Darwin's God." Robin Marantz Henig's 8,000-word piece is a crackling good account of current theories among evolutionary scientists about the possible adaptive or anthropological origins of God. Or, to be more honest, the religious impulse in humans, the innate tendency toward belief in the supernatural. Teaser excerpts:

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist’s personal religious view does not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and surprising this debate has become.

As Histriomastix readers know, I'm an Angry Atheist. So this seems like a good time to post notes I feverishly jotted down a few months ago when I thought about how tough theater has it, when megachurches are spreading across the country like plaguesores. I hope to expand on them in the future.

Notes on religion, theater and primal needs

Cultural anthropologists and Darwinian scientists have studied the primitive human need for religion. It appears that—no matter where on earth—early humans felt the need to make sense of the inchoate menace that nature can sometimes represent. Thus early humans set up an idol and worshiped it, and through the idol interpreted the mysteries of nature—both exterior and interior. This primeval urge to worship these carved idols and to build systems of belief comes for a basic need to shape the material of the world into legible, man-made shapes: from chaos, icon; from icon, ritual; from ritual law, culture, civilization and all the rest.

Art too is the product of that desire. Are the cave paintings at Lascaux holy relics? To the anthropologist and aesthete, yes. To the evangelical Christian, not so much.

Religion, like art, thrives and survives to this day due to the same basic urge. But why do SO MANY MORE humans worship gods and hold fast to religious tenets than attend museums, theater and dance concerts?

I’m asking seriously. Why do more people get down on their knees for an invisible, punitive, repetitive concept than get up on their feet for an opera or a great play? There are lots of class assumptions underlying my question, I know. I may as well ask, Why do all those poor shoeless bastards in The Third World worship Islam so fervently when they could be enjoying a fine novel or play? Or, more locally, why do those poverty-line hicks in Iowa send their rent money to Jerry Falwell and home-school their spawn when they could be raising sensitive cultured children? They don’t have money. They don’t have access. They don’t have 21st-century urbanized culture handed to them on a plate. Or, circularly, their religion forbids it.

Still, my question remains: Why is religion so POPULAR and art so UN-POPULAR? Is it because religion engages the spectator’s (believer’s) imagination more? Since God doesn’t actually exist, the pious have to make it all up? There’s no actual artwork or aesthetics to grapple with, just one’s own psychological self-medication through a series of ritual actions or mantric phrases. Of course, there’s art in religion. Icons, architecture, paintings, pretty words. Without the work of cunning artists and artisans through the centuries, you could perhaps argue that religion would not have had quite the hold it has on people’s imaginations, and that science and art would replace religion as opiates.

But I think there are others reasons religion has an advantage, demographically speaking, over secular art: 1)Clerics and other religious authorities have historically co-opted artistic labor to keep the faithful in thrall through aesthetic suasion. 2) Religious ritual and theology are inherently conflict-based; they titillate believers with the incentive of God-licensed cruelty and violence.

The last point I’d like to expand on a bit. In the artistic experience, whether it happens to a person alone with a book or painting or piece of music, or communally in a large theater with everyone hushed (or laughing), the goal of the work of art is to unite things. Whether it’s the single spectator with the work of art or a whole body of spectators in a shared aesthetic experience, often the aim of the artist is to break down divisions, to unite. (I know that certain artistic experiences are intended to divide the audience against itself, to make them feel less part of some fuzzy notion of shared humanity, but that’s a different post.) Religion putatively unites people, the believers, to each other and to their deity, but it also, crucially, sets people against each other. A believer is nothing without constant, unremitting hatred of the infidel.

Religion incorporates a kind of third-rate drama in its mythological narratives, its rituals and, depending on the sect, aesthetic cookies (paintings, sculpture, architecture, goblets, rhythmic drumming and dances, hymns, clerical garments, glossolalia). These lures seduce and impress the art-ignorant faithful, giving the believer a broader drama, a struggle against the Enemy. Art is all imagination and make-pretend, but religion is deadly serious, literalistic. We’re talking about the fate of your soul and your responsibility to defend the faith against marauding unbelievers.

Basically, religion is the ultimate in AUDIENCE-PARTICIPATION PERFORMANCE ART. And there’s the added kick of blood-sport, or promise of violence. Either the death of Enemies at your hand, or in the Rapture or on Judgment Day. So take primitive human, with twin struggling urges: to create and to kill. Diminish the urge to kill and you have the artist. Diminish the urge to create and you have the priest.

Suffer the little children

Spent the weekend with the girlfriend (henceforward to be known as the Clarinatrix, Domestic Partner, DomPart or whatever strikes my fancy) in the Washington, D.C. area, the towns of Fairfield, Leesburg and Chantilly in Fairfax County. We went to celebrate her cousin's wedding. That part of the East Coast is unfamiliar to me, radically different from my Hell's Kitchen stomping grounds and the rural New Hampshire of my youth: Exurban sprawl, gated communities full of looming brick townhouses, multiple malls and chain stores everywhere. In short, the sort of rich, homogenized, faceless, culturally negligible whitebread wasteland that some people dare to call a "neighborhood" or "home." People really like the golf out there. I feel strangely conservative and old-fashioned when I go to such de-luxe enclaves. Give me a viewless, dark studio on a grungy city block or a sylvan nook embowering a clapboard shack that lists ever so gently. I can't have the in-between. As David Byrne once sang: "I wouldn't live there if they paid me to." This is partly my incomplete, belated response to A Poor Player's well-meaning invective against New York-centrist cultural cliques, in which he strenuously encouraged us NYC bloggers to move from the increasingly unafforable and arts-hostile city to cheaper places where locals might appreciate our talents. While I'm no longer an actor or director, believe you me I've started to feel like I could live somewhere else and practice journalism or get back into theater. Albuquerque or Sante Fe I could maybe relocate to. Seattle--there's a theater scene I'd enjoy shaking up. I'd give Portland a whirl. San Francisco is, I hear, quite adorable. But the D.C. area? From what I saw, no effin' way. Admittedly I didn't visit the actual D.C. metropolitan area. I'm aware of the many reputable theaters based in our nation's capital.

Anyway, I meant to post a little about religion, which has been on my mind ever since we attended the wedding at a Catholic Church and returned the next day and caught Jesus Camp at AMC on 42nd Street (disgusting tourist throngs, but thank the gods to be back in NYC).

On Saturday afternoon, we attended the wedding service at St. Timothy's. The church had been built, perhaps in the late '80s, in a kind of drab modern-gothic-Bauhaus style that gave the impression of a corporate compound for stunningly unimaginative but well-groomed monks. The interior was vast and oaky, although a decorator could have done wonders with the altar area (hint: lose the ferns and that tacky, overly literal crucifix!) The service itself was crushingly familiar. It brought me back to those thousands of hours I endured as boy in a crummy, cheap little church every Saturday night attending indistinguishable services by a droning priest, my ass clenched with boredom, praying fervently for the service to end. I served as an altar boy for about a year (no molestation to report which, as the fabulous Kiki DuRane might say, means I was an ugly kid). I think my venomous, kneejerk atheism is a product of the tortured boredom I experienced in church. It may also account for my love of theater, full of novelty, flash, surprise and ambiguity. Drama is the exact opposite of the inert, inculcating homogenity of ritual. Religion, as we all know, is bad theater. The more thriving religious sects--South American Catholicism, African-American gospel-driven congregations, megachurches--coopt theatrical artifice to impress the faithful. I consider that a heinous and contemptible cultural paradox or a kind of aesthetic hypocrisy. The way white metal, for example, exploits the pagan, adrenal rush of heavy metal, but grafts on Christianist lyrics. Either you sit in a cell alone with your damned Bible and believe, or you don't get God. Using the tools of the faithless to ensnare the faithful drives me into a puritanical rage. (Mind you, that's because I abominate God and clerics. But if you will insist on abasing yourself before a concept, I say to you, it shall be a severe and joyless God.)

Which brings us, finally, to Jesus Camp. Last night, as the Clarinatrix and I left the theater, we were fuming. I don't know what I can add to what reviewers have already said about this truly frightening documentary, which centers on a summer camp run by militant fundamentalist Christians, for the blatant purpose of indoctrinating kids in right-wing, creationist, anti-abortion, pro-Bush, extreme theocratic ideology. The obese, dead-eyed harpy who runs this brainwashing camp openly compares her methods to those of the madrassas, considering the warping of young mind and weaponizing of children to be a natural response to the training of Islamic youth. Which leads logically to...suicide bombing? Guess what? If Christians start strapping bombs to themselves and walking into mosques and synagogues, I think you'll see that they'll outpace even your most death-loving fanatic. It's heartbreaking to see these bright young kids--and they are extremely alert, intelligent children--being subjected to emotional manipulation. The kids are hectored, praised, bawled at and cajoled until they weep tears for aborted fetuses or genuflect before a life-size cardboard cutout of President Bush. While I'm all for kids being motivated and encouraged to express their emotions, this is despicable child abuse.

How depressing life looks out in North Dakota or Colorado Springs, the heartland where the megachurches and Jesus Camps thrive. And how the faithful seem to need to obsess over Jesus, repeating His name, invoking Him to butter their toast or roll a friggin' bowling ball, replacing the word "think" with "pray." As in, "Lemme pray about it." This is thought control at the most basic level: language. These poorly educated, self-deluded hypocrites, moreover, are reaping the fruits of science, liberalism and democracy even as they deny evolution and militate to demolish the wall separating church and state. For a secular, anti-religion atheist like myself, the view looks pretty damned scary. Ten, twenty years from now, will national elections be decided by such pious fools? These fascist boobies are organized, people. What can we do?