GCB is not as bad as I feared it would be

Jewish date:  20 Nisan 5772 (Parashath Shemini).

Today’s holidays:  Ḥol hamMo‘edh Pesaḥ (Judaism), Day 5 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Thursday in the Octave of Easter (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Print Olive (Church of the SubGenius), Feast of Mary d’Este Sturges (Thelema).

Greetings.

And now for another attempt at getting caught up blogging.  Today’s topic is the TV series GCB, which I have been watching on Hulu ever since Barry made me aware of the show’s religious nature.

The pilot episode struck me as something largely stereotyped and poorly thought out.  The main protagonist of the series is Amanda Vaughn, a woman whose husband Billy runs a scam, tries to flee with the money, and dies in a car crash with his mistress due to them doing something blatantly stupid and disgusting while driving.  Even though Amanda is not involved in the scam, the government seizes most of her and Billy’s property.  Nearly penniless, Amanda and her children, Laura and Will, return to a high-socioeconomic status section of Dallas to live with her (Amanda’s) mother Gigi.  This has two big downsides:

1) Gigi is crazy and acts in ways which drove Amanda to leave Dallas in the first place.  E.g., she dresses up Laura provocatively (and your humble blogger is strongly tempted to use much more derogatory language than that), teaches Will to mix (alcoholic) drinks, and fakes Amanda having a secret admirer in order to be able to give her expensive presents.

2) Amanda was a “meal girl” back in high school, and many of those people she was mean to still live in Dallas.  The list of regulars whom she offended is long enough to require a scorecard to keep track of:

• Carlene Cockburn:  Chief antagonist, formerly called “Kitten”, formerly very plain, now a plastic surgery addict and very vindictive.
• Sharon Peacham:  Ex-beauty queen, now food-obsessed housewife with self-esteem issues.  (The people making this show are trying to make it seem she is overweight, but one would never know it without the dialog.)
• Heather Cruz:  Realtor.
• Cricket Caruth-Reilly:  Business woman.  Formerly Bill’s girlfriend until Amanda stole him from her.
• Ripp Cockburn:  Carlene’s husband.
• Zack Peacham:  Sharon’s husband, car salesman.
• Blake Reilly:  Cricket’s husband and business partner, rancher.

These characters are all serious, church-attending Christians, but Amanda is on the receiving end of a lot of rather unpleasant payback.  Carlene, despite frequently citing the Christian Bible (giving book, chapter, and verse), is particularly vindictive and rationalizes immoral behavior (such as “borrowing” a gift card from Amanda in order to be able to determine who her secret admirer is), intimidating Sharon into helping her.  Heather lies to Amanda to keep her from getting a good home and away from Gigi’s bad influence.  Cricket makes backhanded deals to keep Amanda from getting a good job.  And if all this mean-spirited stereotyping of observant Christians was not bad enough, Zack tries putting his moves on Amanda, and it is strongly implied that Blake is homosexual and is having an affair with his head rancher.

To make things worse, despite deeply regretting what she did in high school, Amanda is something of a hypocrite herself.  Despite Cricket’s efforts, Amanda does land a job—at a Hooters clone called Boobylicious.  And considering that Amanda is downright shocked when Gigi dresses up Laura indecently, the cognitive dissonance should be so huge that even fairly unintelligent people should be able to notice it.  (Those who wonder what is wrong with using sexuality to sell food may wish to reread the Coyote Ugly Sermon.)  The dress which Amanda wears to the Longhorn Ball is also immodest and tasteless.  Clearly Amanda is not being a good role model for her children, especially her daughter.  Admittedly dressing immodestly is not as bad as stealing (according to most of us, so far as your humble blogger can tell), but being less bad is not the same thing as being good.

Add to this that it is revealed that Carlene and Ripp are the real owners of Boobylicious and that the name for the show was originally planned to be Good Christian Bitches, and the initial impression is that the writers are a bunch of mean-spirited hacks who hate Christians and think that compared to them even someone who regularly does something sleazy is better.  And that impression would be wrong.

The writers do carry over everything from the pilot into the succeeding episodes, but the characters are not simple, unchanging cardboard cutouts.  Heather reconciles with Amanda very quickly, and her other “enemies” slowly develop better relations with her, even though so far in the series there has been plenty of friction.  While Carlene is the slowest to improve, she can be moved by argument—preferably citing appropriate scriptural sources—and she does have a conscience and care about other people.  (Her reactions may not always be the most sensible, but she does try.)  Sharon, while the most passive of the main characters, has been on a self-improvement kick since doing some volunteer work at the church and is taking more initiative.

The lack of cardboardness is particularly prominent in romantic relationships.  “Bad guys” in GCB can and do have loving, committed relationships.  To be sure, they have problems, but they work to overcome their problems.  The aforementioned business of Zack hitting on Amanda turns out to be due to some inner turmoil stirred up by her arrival; he repents his mistake and constantly works with Sharon to improve their relationship.  Carlene and Ripp also have some rocky moments, but they remain committed to each other.  Notable is the relationship between Cricket and Blake.  Blake is indeed homosexual, while Cricket is heterosexual.  While they satisfy their sexual urges with other people and do not hide the fact from each other, they are emotionally very intimate.

Also breaking cliché:  So far in the series, Amanda has not been sexually active, despite being the central character, and the only man she has ever been with is her husband Bill.  Carlene has been a little worse, only having gone all the way with Ripp, but having done some things in high school which she is not proud of.  (No details are available; the writers seem to want the viewers to use their imaginations.)  Neither currently violates Christian sexual mores, despite how they dress.

GCB is not what your humble blogger would consider an ideal series, and the content is not for everyone.  But it certainly is not as bad as first impressions suggest it is.

Peace and happy Pesaḥ.

’Aharon/Aaron

The Coyote Ugly sermon

Jewish date:  22 Siwan 5771 (Parashath Qoraḥ).


Today’s holidays:  Birth of John the Baptist (Christianity); Feast Day of Elizabeth,  Mother of the Forerunner (Greek Orthodox Christianity); Feast of the Lesser Mysteries (Thelema); Feast Day of St. Anton LaVey (Church of the SubGenius).


Greetings.


Given that I recently posted a review of the utterly dreadful song “Judas” by the utterly tasteless performer Lady Gaga, one may now assume that anything which I can stand to read or watch without losing my lunch or going insane is now a legitimate target for review and commentary.  And so, after six years, I am going to finally publish what may be first and last sermon ever written on Coyote Ugly, here and now.  I have chosen this time because the sermon is directly relevant to this week’s Torah portion.


Peace and Shabbath shalom.


’Aharon/Aaron

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I have boasted that I give sermons stranger than anyone else’s, and to this end I will attempt to tie together Qoraḥ, the exoteric and esoteric meanings of Song of Songs, and (of all things) the movie Coyote Ugly.  (I know it sounds like a circus stunt, but please, bear with me.)

One evening at a joint CSEB-SER conference in Toronto (28 June 2005), the guy I was sharing a hotel room with decided to watch television, and after flipping through channels, he settled on Coyote Ugly.  From what I saw of the movie, it was mainly about conventionally beautiful, immodestly dressed women who dance on top of bars.  The point of this is to attract customers to the bar, and these have to purchase alcoholic beverages to stay there.  Though there were clear attempts at a plot and character development, my intuition insists these were not the point of this film or why anyone would deliberately see it; indeed, what little I can remember of how it was marketed was “women dancing on bars” and not “the struggles of an aspiring songwriter”.

Being a religious Jew, I naturally was soon mentally contrasting this tasteless movie with something vaguely similar in any respect out of the world of Judaism, namely the exoteric meaning of Song of Songs.  Song of Songs on the simple level also deals largely with sexuality, but in a vastly different manner than Coyote Ugly.  Sexuality in Song of Songs is all about love between a husband and wife, with the goal being that through appreciation of each other the lovers become closer.  This socially functional sexuality is private, shared by them alone and not with other people.  In contrast, the sexuality of Coyote Ugly is public and exploitative.  It is out there for anyone to see—as long as they are paying customers.  Sexuality is turned into a tool to hawk a product, perverting its whole point.  Sex evolved as a means for reproduction and was later adapted as a means to keep couples together for their mutual benefit for long periods of time.  In contrast with this, in Coyote Ugly men come to the bar, lured by sexuality, but they are never ever allowed to progress past looking.  Instead, they are coerced into buying drinks of questionable hygiene and a deleterious effect on judgement, and ultimately they leave alone, cheated of sexuality’s promise.  This exploitation occurs on a higher level, too.  Men go to see the movie, lured by sexuality, but it is a sham.  They see the pretty sights, but two hours later the movie is over.  There are no beautiful women—in fact, they never were any, so there is no chance of a relationship, and the movie-goers have to go home with nothing but ticket stubs and $5.50 less in each of their wallets.

The real fun happens when we move from the exoteric to the esoteric.  The esoteric meaning of Song of Songs is about the relationship between YHWH and Yisra’el; He loves us, and we love Him.  The practice of Judaism is how we express our love for YHWH.  If we apply this symbolism to Coyote Ugly, we end up with a situation straight out of the Torah, namely the story of Qoraḥ (Numbers 15:1-17:28).  Qoraḥ, like most evil people, depicted himself as righteous.  He stood in public for all to see, calling for everyone to gather around him and see how righteous he was; in fact, he claimed to be even more righteous that Mosheh.  In the text of the Torah alone he accuses Mosheh of ignoring that all of Yisra’el is holy and instead resorting to nepotism in appointing the priesthood.  In midhrash, he argues that Mosheh’s teachings are inconsistent and biased against the most vulnerable people in society.  Like sexuality in Coyote Ugly, Qoraḥ’s righteousness is a sham.  He puts on a big show, but it has nothing to do with expressing his love for YHWH; he is just trying to exploit people.  He promises the great religious concepts of holiness and equality, but he never intends to do anything but grab power and send his followers home no better off than they were previously.  In short, Qoraḥ is the esoteric meaning of Coyote Ugly.

I do realize that the connection between Qoraḥ and Coyote Ugly was almost certainly never intended by the creators of the latter, but the phenomenon of exploitative superficiality which underlies both of them has, so far as I know, been common throughout human history, and it is still common today, to the point where we often expect it.  In movies, we expect great special effects and sex rather than good plots or believable characters.  We expect overblown claims in advertising; if something is labeled “low-fat”, it is high in sugar, and if it is “low-sugar”, it is high in fat—and we expect this.  In the domain of religion, there are cults, the whole purpose of which is to let the clergy exploit the laity.  In science, there are “junk science” and “creationism/intelligent design”, the point of which is to create doubt where none exists and obscure truths rather than reveal them.  In politics, we expect politicians to lie whenever they open their mouths and make promises they never intend to keep, yet we still vote for them.  In short, the World is filled with Qoraḥs, and the question before us is whether we will continue to fall for their lies, thereby perpetuating exploitative superficiality.

Caprica teaches kids how to skip school, universal hypocrisy, and no basement

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s holiday:  Friday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Save Martin Grossman - The Petition Site” and “Keep Children Safe: Train Child Care Workers - The Petition Site”.

Topic 1:  The latest episode of Caprica, “Reins of a Waterfall”.  We get scraps of religious ideas in this episode:

• A young Tauron skips school and is told to make false claim of a Tauron day of devotion to Mars to excuse his absence.  Capricans for the most part are presumed not to know enough to tell this is a lie.  (His uncle is a criminal who is trying to bring him up “right”.)
• Sister Clarice tries to get Lacy to accept her as her confessor.  (An apparent borrowing from Roman Catholicism.)
• A comic mentions “the God of the Underworld” (Hades?), who is inferred to be very unpopular.
• Zoe II, still in a Cylon body, is supposed to have some purpose on Geminon which God wants.  She elicits Lacy’s help to in an effort to get to Geminon.  Zoe II still does not let Zoe I’s parents know she is not a stupid Cylon.
• Sister Claire has secret superiors who communicate with her in a creepy electronic voice.
• There is some vague talk of service of the Lord through apotheosis(!) in accordance with a prophecy.  Zoe is supposed to be beloved of God.
• Taurons have idols of Mars and Jupiter.  They seem to prefer Mars.  Considering there are 12 Colonies and 12 Olympians, intuition suggests each Colony is associated with a different Olympian.

Also:  I have noted that among the imagery in the opening credits there is a statue of a Christian cliché of an angel (a beautiful human with wings).  I also find myself asking why Greek gods are being referenced at all; 150,000 years later and without an bridging written record, they would surely be forgotten.  Then again, the people who made this show and its predecessor made almost everything possible look like turn-of-the-millennium Earth (= Terra = Sol III, not the other Earth); the level of coincidence is so astronomical that I hope the writers devise an explanation.  (Influence of angels, perhaps?)

Topic 2:  “Going to the Pictures”:  This is an short reflection by a Christian noting that serious Christians often try to avoid sex in movies yet do not flinch at other things which are offensive, such as violence, gore, and revenge.  I get the impression that most humans, regardless of religion, are like this.  (I am most certainly self-inconsistent.)  Having high moral standards is easy.  Living up to high moral standards is an entirely different matter; since we are prone to error, it is extremely easy for any of us to be a hypocrite.  The only way out is to have low or no moral standards.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “diz howse”:


Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron