context
i have been watching bad movies with my mother. i don't like watching normal movies with her or anything thought-provoking because i don't want to have hard conversations with her. i'd prefer we just stay pleasant and don't get in each other's business that much. we've been on a string of slightly cringey rom-coms recently and blockbuster-flavored netflix movies recently. last night we watched evan almighty 2007. as we're a filipino family practicing american christianity—
—i have elected to call it american christianity instead of protestant christianity. protestantism is a superset! that's everything stemming from martin luther's whole shit! i think saying american christianity really highlights what it actually is (imperialist and capitalist)—
as we're a filipino family practicing american christianity, i have of course watched the movie that's about what if noah's ark happened in modern-day america. i thought it was the kind of bible-adjacent comedy that my mother would like but not too biblical that i'd hate it.
the movie
i will try not to over-summarize.
- steve carell is a fresh congressman who is recruited by god to build an ark a la noah's ark.
- noah's ark is an established bible story,
- there are no changes made to the events of the christian bible.
- steve carell doesn't wanna.
- he doesn't wanna.
- god says that the suburb he resides in, that used to be a beautiful lake/wetland/wild place until people developed it and turned it into a suburb
- steve carell wants to cosponsor a bill that will allow development on protected national parks,
- why? so he can suck up to the villain, cong. long.
- other top-tier congressmen are like, fuck them environmental activists for getting in the way of progress
- martin freeman god forces him to be noah anyway.
- he builds the ark in his suburb
- god tells him it'll flood
- steve carell tells people it's gonna flood and they gotta get on his ark
- turns out it wasn't a good idea to cosponsor that bill anyway
- because cong. long is corrupt and builds things wherever whenever however for the sake of money
- this is presented like a big bad guy reveal as if he wasn't obviously corrupt from the start
- cong. long built the local dam near the suburb and he cut corners with it
- the cong. long dam ruptures and the water from it floods into the suburb
- everyone in the suburb gets on the ark
- the flood takes them to congress? house of reps.? wherever congressmen meet, and the ark lands at cong. long's feet
- steve carell exposes him for building a shitty dam and building developments wherever whenever however for money
- a rainbow appears over the suburb too afterwards.
i like some aspects of it.
i like how fast-paced it is and how much it packs in its 1.5 hr runtime. the exposition of steve carell's character is so so so fast and tight. it feels like a tiktok. i love it. i love how tight all the jokes are, they're not necessarily good but they're really cramped in there efficiently.
the fast pace is also helped by adhering to a lot of cheap tropes though.
nonreligious bad parts
the cong. long's corruption and fatness are supposed to be correlated.
the only two black characters in the movie fulfill the two black character tropes: the magical black guy (martin freeman god) and the mean snarky girl (carell's secretary) (oh my god there are multiple instances where it just cuts to her adding commentary to the hijinks of steve carell).
the real estate woman is so caricatured like god forbid women have a career so they can survive in this world.
the wife who begrudgingly goes along with the husband's adventure and then can't put up with it anymore. haha boys you gotta ask your mom first though haha.
men in suits screaming like little girls is funny.
america is falling into moral degeneracy
steve carell is really vain and he spends his mornings meticulously shaving his nose hair. at one point he uses a magazine article about "the metrosexual man" to style his hair. he speaks mantras to himself saying "i am handsome, i am powerful, i am confident" etc (paraphrased). he doesn't want dogs because they'll be dirty.
he's a soft weak-willed self-centered man. he can't be a self-sacrificial, properly patriachal family man. he can't turn his boys to be men.
cong. long isn't killing the environment for profit, because the representative democracy is failing under capitalism and is only empowering it. no he's corrupt because he's fat and therefore greedy and therefore selfish.
the news reporter covering the crazy congressman building the ark is also like this. he's a dandy. his hair is slicked back. when the pair of lions prohibit him from entering the ark-building site, he screams like a little girl.
steve carell screams like a girl when god starts showing up to recruit him and starts forcing him into being noah.
by the way when i say "forcing into being noah" i mean literally. he grows an unshavable beard. his hair grows out and he physically cannot keep it short. he turns into a bible-times man physically. he becomes unable to wear anything but vague abraham-y robes.
god literally physically shoves him into a "reject modernity embrace tradition" aesthetic.
sin is killing the environment
god floods a suburb and displaces the people living there as the solution to restoring the environment there. you know adam ate the apple and now we have original sin. now humans are such horrible creatures. we're being selfish and fat and greedy and degenerate and destroying the environment.
look at how slimy this real estate woman is! she's so vain! she's using make-up to hide how old she is! she's so self-centered she's so greedy!
look at how fat cong. long is!
steve carell thinks he's a metrosexual!
we're killing the environment!
god can make us men (and women) again
building the ark is essentially a teambuilding activity for the carell character's family. it allows him to be a real man (who wears robes) (who has a beard) (who has long rough hair) it allows him to teach his boys to be men (through manual labor) (through lugging around wood) it teaches his wife to be submissive (obey your husband even though he doesn't see you as his equal and expects you to just follow along with whatever hijinks he's up to)
god floods your suburb and forces you to evacuate on this ark. now you're a happy community again! you're all totally fine now because you're unified! the problem with your suburb is that it's so fake and modern!
all we gotta do is just excise the degenerate parts of our society and ourselves! nothing wrong with our society though!
the theology
if god can just redo the flood, even a mini-flood, even just a flood of a suburb, isn't that still violating his promise in genesis that he'll never flood the earth again? that's why american christians—
—here i am using the term "american christians" as in christians subscribed to american christianity. in this sentence i'm actually referencing a filipino pastor i used to be acquainted with—
that's why american christians are so angry over the rainbow lgbt flag. the rainbow is the symbol of god's promise to never flood the earth again! they stole it! they corrupted it!
the flood is the most drastic solution to human evil. god hates evil (not the sinner though) god can't be a good holy god if he also doesn't hate evil, that's why hell has to exist. punishment for evil has to exist for god to be a good god and a holy god.
the flood cannot ever happen again though. god promised. god doesn't break his promises.
but evil persists because of original sin. so god sends his holy begotten son so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish and have eternal life.
he can't do something as drastic as wiping out the human race with a flood, which is why sacrificing his son is such a big thing. it's his only option. he has to buy back your moral debt because he can't just flood the earth anymore.
so.
if god can just mini-flood an american suburb then why did he kill jesus. he could have just mini-flooded the gayest most degenerate locales of the earth instead. why did he have to kill jesus.
evan almighty kinda breaks the theology.
god says something like oh the flood isn't about my anger. it's about acts of random kindness. a.r.k. acts of random kindness. the ark is about bringing your family together (because you're a soft weak modern man) and bringing your community together (because it's an unnatural man-made suburb)
which makes it worse right? like ok let's say god didn't flood the suburb because original sin wrecked the environment and he needs to rewild it. so god caused a mini-flood to imprison one corrupt congressman?
but he promised!
you don't need a flood
steve carell is a fucking congressman. he wasn't noah. he wasn't a kinda rich guy with kids and a bit of property and people to build an ark with. steve carell is part of the government. his staff easily uncovered evidence that cong. long was corrupt. they only put that reveal in the end for dramatic effect.
he could just hold a hearing. he could just ally with the environmentalist congressmen and hold a hearing against cong. long's crimes. he coulda just sent some inspectors to the dam. it's so easy especially with god's help. he didn't need to flood.
so the whole gotta displace these people to restore the wild earth, my original plan, to their suburb. that's gotta be a major reason for the flooding. it can't just be the imprisoning the fat congressman thing.
you don't need original sin
listen i like bible lore, i like thinking about bible lore, but i like thinking about it as a text—
—by the way i've only been talking about the christian bible this whole time. like the hebrew bible and the christian old testament, they're two different things please stop talking about them like they're the same text! i don't get it! it's not about the different language! they're catered to different religions!!! one of them is antisemitic to another!!!!! stop saying that oh homosexuality isn't against the bible, this is what the verse actually meant—yeah but the christians reading it have read it this way for centuries!!!! what are you on!!! art is more than the physical thing!!!!!
i like to think of christianity and the christian bible as separate concepts. like yeah christians shaped the christian bible but i still think the Lore of the religion can be taken as its own thing apart from the Religion using it. i think you can analyze the text of it as a fiction, as a narrative.
so when i say you don't need original sin, i mean this for the religion of american christianity. i understand why original sin is important to the bible lore. i understand the themes. i understand the foreshadowing. i understand the prophecies. i get that jesus has to strike satan's heel because mommy eve ate the apple. i get the narrative.
but you personally as a person you don't need original sin to be happy. you don't need to be a christian. go follow the gay hedonist lifestyle, i'm serious. you don't have to believe in our collective individual moral failing that necessitates us to go to hell for goodness to exist in the world. that's so complex. that's so unnecessarily complex! you have to hate people! you have to hate people for being fat! for being slutty and wanting abortions! for being girly! for being gay! for not being the submissive property of their husbands! you have to become the property of your husband, of your boss, of your police state! you have to conform into this hierarchy lest you be cast into the degenerates!
so just be a gay anyway you're gonna spend the rest of your life scared of being gay!
the gay pascal's wager
this is the pascal's wager as people use it today. this isn't the original pascal's wager as possibly intended by the man. no matter. those can exist as two different things. the people's concept of the pascal's wager is just as worthy of use as whatever pascal's intention originally was. again with the actual bible that people wrote versus the christian bible.
this is the pascal's wager as my peers and my people use it:
God/hell exists and you believe in god:
- you go to heaven
God/hell exists and you don't believe in god:
- you go to hell
God/hell is fake and you believed in god:
- nothing happens, but you lived a good life!! supposedly!!
God/hell is fake and you didn't believe in god:
- nothing happens (and you probably had a shit life because you didn't follow god)
anyway this is my gay pascal's wager. it doesn't necessarily contradict the above, although it doesn't mean i take the above as truth. i am an atheist after all.
God/hell exists so you stay in the closet:
- you kill yourself because the closet kills people, so you go to hell for suicide
God/hell exists but you be gay anyway:
- you go to hell for being gay
God/hell is fake but you stayed in the closet in the name of god:
- you kill yourself because the closet kills people. nothing happens at the end of your life.
God/hell is fake but you be gay anyway:
- more likely that you didn't kill yourself and you died of another reason. nothing happens at the end of your life.
in conclusion
just be gay and fat and vain and loud and selfish and depraved and stand up for yourself and your community. for the love of god.