blacksundae

or, Journey to the Center of Eden

JESUS CHRIST, IT’S A JESUS LIZARD! GET IN THE CAR!

According to Walden Media’s Wikipedia entry, they deny that they are an overtly Christian production company. They have had to make this denial as they are owned by Philip Anschutz (noted conservative Christian and funder of the Discovery Institute), not to mention they produced the film adaptation of your favorite Feline Christ narrative and mine, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I’m actually inclined to go along with them. As I look at their filmography, it’s all family oriented stuff, but very few of their films have overtly Christian themes. Some of their output has been absolutely atrocious, but only Narnia is clearly Christian propaganda.

At least I thought so. That brings us to Eric Brevig’s 3-D Brendan Frasier vehicle, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Wait a minute, I can hear you asking, How can an adaptation of a Jules Verne novel be seen as Christian propaganda? Well, that’s the thing: it’s not an adaptation.

The premise of this theme park ride film is that Verne’s account in Journey to the Center of the Earth is literally true. Frasier’s older brother was a geologist with some kookie ideas about lava tubes thousands of miles deep, who went off to Iceland to investigate his theories and vanished. Ten years later, Frasier comes across an old, dog-eared copy of his brother’s favorite book (guess) that’s cryptically annotated¹ in ways that suggest what he was up to.

Frasier, being the sort of grossly irresponsible adult that keeps these types of movies clipping along, scoots off to Iceland with his annoyingly-surly-cum-annoyingly-eager teenage nephew (the lava-tube-kook’s son, of course). Yadda, yadda, yadda… Strained comedy happens. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

In short time, they find out from the leggy, blonde, Icelandic love interest that their brother/father was a “Vernian:” someone who believes that Jules Verne’s account of the lost world at the center of the Earth is literally true. Whether Vernians extend this to his other works is never addressed, although I’m rooting for Mysterious Island.

Through a series of unlikely events (lightning, mine cars), Frasier, the kid & the hottie end up falling down a lava tube and landing in Verne’s weird subterranean world. “He was right!” Frasier says of his dearly departed brother, “People ridiculed him for what he believed but he was right!”

This is the point in this post when I get a bit nervous, wondering if I’m reading way too much into what is otherwise simple escapist fare. “Overthinking a plate of beans,” as they say at MetaFilter. OK… is this aspect of the story speaking directly to the Creationists in the audience?

This guy takes a clearly fictional and ridiculous story and interprets it as true, all evidence to the contrary, and is ridiculed by the scientific establishment. But, get this: it turns out he was right!

I could have left this alone as a plot device, but that line of dialogue quoted above just won’t let me. In context, it seems shoehorned in, and it seems specially designed to cater to the persecution complex that most conservative Christians share these days. Especially Creationists.

Once that one line planted the seed in my mind, something else started bothering me. Despite the movie’s assertion that Verne’s novel is complete non-fiction, the reality of the underground world differs from the novel in a key way. From Wikipedia:

The living organisms they meet reflects the geological time; just as the rock layers become older and older the deeper one gets, the animals get more and more ancient the closer the characters come to the center. From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been proven wrong. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne’s own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters encounter. One of Verne’s main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers, and by placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he is able to show how the world looked like millions of years ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs.

This is an element of the story that is completely thrown out the window, in favor of a smattering of “prehistoric” creatures that pop in here and there, such as bioluminescent birds, predatory plants, and a giant carnosaur that appears to be twice as large as the biggest T. rex.² I find it surprising that this blatantly educational aspect of the story was thrown out, considering Walden’s emphasis on education. Wikipedia again, because I’m feeling lazy:

Walden Media is unique among film production companies in that it works with teachers, museums, and national organizations to develop supplemental educational programs and materials associated with its films and the original events and/or novels that inspire the films.

But you eliminate this one element, you also eliminate two Creationist pet peeves: discussion of an ancient earth and a narrative that also functions as metaphor. There’s no room for metaphor in this literal view of Verne.

Again, I realize that I may be reading way to much into this, but keep in mind that it kept me entertained when the movie did not. I had absolutely nothing else to think about! The movie is a chore to watch, in a way that has nothing to do with religion or politics. The writing is flat when it’s not sappy, the action scenes are dull and few in number³ and, as an advocate of digital filmmaking, I’m going to pretend this movie was never made. By that, I mean it displays all the staginess of a movie that was shot in a small green screen studio by someone who doesn’t know how to make that not matter. The characters always seem confined to small areas as their epic surroundings swirl around them. I didn’t see this in 3-D, mind you, but I doubt it would have helped too much. Poor Frasier… I usually enjoy him!

¹ Why bother with encoding your notes if you’re going to half-ass it? Frasier and the kid crack it during a plane ride.

² Seeing as how we never see any prey animals of any size, I have to wonder how this environment supports an alpha predator this big. /DORK

³ “The food here is terrible!” “I know! And such small portions!”

As if Louisiana didn’t have enough to worry about.

As we noted last month, a number of states have been considering laws that, under the guise of “academic freedom,” single out evolution for special criticism. Most of them haven’t made it out of the state legislatures, and one that did was promptly vetoed. But the last of these bills under consideration, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), was enacted by the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday. The bill would allow local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories, allowing poorly-informed board members to stick their communities with Dover-sized legal fees.

Read on.

The children and teachers of Louisiana are being used as pawns by the Louisiana Family Forum and, most likely, the Discovery Institute, about which I have written so extensively. These people will assuredly not be around to clean up the wreckage they will leave in their wake if we don’t stop them. We have to stop them.

Link!

Man… to think I used to enjoy “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” Now Mr. Stein says things like this:

When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.

And this:

Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

The upshot of this cartoonishly anti-intellectual bullshit is that it makes it even harder for Intelligent Design proponents to pretend that their snake oil is genuine science, seeing as how the Discovery Institute has hitched itself to Stein’s Expelled bandwagon. Link!

Well-known pro-science blogger PZ Myers of Pharyngula tried to attend a screening of Intelligent Design Creationist documentary, Expelled. He didn’t make it in. His buddy did, though:

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn’t notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn’t recognize him. My guest was …

Richard Dawkins.

He’s in the theater right now, watching their movie.

Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?

Read on.

7. Evolutionary Theory is Incomplete
Evolutionary science is a work in progress. Science is constantly making new discoveries with regard to it and explanations are always adjusted if necessary. Evolutionary theory is like all of the other sciences in this respect. Science is always trying to improve our knowledge. At present, evolution is the only well-supported explanation for all of life’s diversity.

Read the whole list. [via Reddit]