MARTIN'S TBN WATCHby Martin Wagner, your smilin' A.E. cohost
MARTIN'S TBN WATCH
by Martin Wagner, your smilin' A.E. cohost
Megiddo, TBN, and the Christian exploitation of tragedy
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"It was not God's breath that blew those planes off course and into those buildings, but when he knows that things like that are going to happen--because I believe God sees from the beginning to the end of all time--he positioned [Megiddo] to be the answer for a question we didn't even know would be asked." --Matthew Crouch interviewed in the Los Angeles Times |
In case you aren't exactly sure what it is Number One Son is saying in this quote included in an interview with the LA Times on September 18, I'll spell it out for you: God allowed the most horrible, unconscionable, and evil tragedy in the history of the modern world to take place in order to boost the box office receipts of a little Christian independent movie. Evidently the Big G works not only in mysterious ways, but in horrifyingly inhumane and disturbingly tasteless ones, too.
Hello, TBN Watch mavens, it's Martin again. I wish that I were my ordinary,
jocular self this month, but this column finds me truly sick at heart and
disgusted. Disgusted mostly at the atrocity that has befallen our nation,
to be sure (an atrocity which, I firmly believe, can be laid at the feet of religious fanaticism). But I am
also disgusted by the way in which the religious community in this country,
particularly those fundamentalist factions of it exemplified by Jerry Falwell,
Pat Robertson, and Trinity Broadcasting, have leapt upon it with all the
enthusiasm of a flock of vultures having stumbled upon the carcass of a
brontosaurus. The September 11th Horror is not the first instance in which
fundies have used a national tragedy as a springboard to promote their agenda
to win new converts; notable instances in the past include the adding of
the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 as
a reactionary Red Scare freakout, and, more recently, the all-out teen-oriented
proselytizing blitz that arose in the wake of the Columbine High School
massacre.
But the terror attacks are already seeing a rise in religious exploitation of fear that is nearly unprecedented. It is natural, I suppose, in a culture that has been thoroughly inundated by religious indoctrination, for people to seek solace in the faiths in which they were brought up. Naturally I take the view that any rational, not to mention sane, individual watching those ubiquitous videos of the planes plowing into the Twin Towers could only reach the conclusion that there obviously was no benevolent God watching over the proceedings, that there were no guardian angels protecting the 6000 innocent lives that were cruelly taken by theists on a holy rampage. But to most people, the fact that life is, in fact, a random affair in which, sometimes, shit just happens, is too disconcerting to think about. There simply must be some plan, some purpose behind even the most abominable acts. So far from providing the wake-up call it ought to, tragedy often finds people retreating into the very belief systems that the mere existence of the tragedy ought to disconfirm. What else have they got? Their ability to think critically was pounded into submission when they were still eating nothing that wasn't labelled "Gerber" and sleeping on bedsheets decorated with Disney characters.
Thus, in the wake of September 11th, even mainstream news programs like Fox News's Hannity & Colmes, two guys who flatter themselves that they play hardball with interviewees, are happy to kiss the Brooks Brothers-clad ass of Franklin Graham, the earnestly square-jawed son of Billy. Franklin, suprisingly, admitted to the two sycophantic pundits that it was a "puzzle" why God would allow the tragedy to have taken place at all, but immediately reassured them that "God loves us," whipping out John 3:16 like a lawyer at a funeral whipping out his business card. Neither Hannity (the arch-conservative, so I'm not surprised) nor Colmes (the "progressive liberal" who's only too happy to bend like Boy George in a football team's shower if he finds himself outnumbered in an argument) saw fit to back Graham against the wall with hard questions concerning the cognitive dissonance presented by the claims of Godly love conflicting hard with the realities of senseless mass murder. Maybe if we're lucky, Jeff Dee and I can get Franklin on our show someday, and give H&C a lesson in how to do their jobs.
Still, the focus of this column is TBN and its cast of characters, and so I was dismayed, if not exactly surprised, when it was announced that 8X Entertainment was going ahead with its release of the apocalyptic Megiddo a mere ten days after the disasters.
Prayer: the act of getting God to agree to whatever you've already decided
Fundamentalist Christians have always been first in line when it comes to excoriating the pit of Godless filth that is Hollywood for not merely not having any morals, but supposedly possessing morality measurable in negative integers. Strange it is then that, immediately on the heels of the tragedy, Hollywood studios, wihout any help from the likes of Joe Leiberman, rushed to pull certain high-profile releases from the marketplace, going overboard in the minds of many fans in an effort to show sensitivity towards the victims of 9/11.
High profile, highly anticipated fall releases were
felled as if by a scythe. Among the movies pulled indefinitely were the
new Arnold Schwarzenegger terrorism thriller Collateral Damage, and
the Tim Allen comedy Big Trouble, originally slated to open on September
21, the same day as Megiddo. A plot element involved a bomb in a
suitcase. Other movies pushed back to 2002 include John Woo's WWII epic
Windtalkers,
Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and Edward Burns' Streets of
New York--the latter two solely because they were set in New York. More
controversially, several completed films are being judiciously pruned of
shots that happened to feature the WTC in the distance, and Sony/Columbia
yanked both the excellent teaser trailer and the teaser poster for their
feverishly-anticipated Spider-Man, still slated for a May 3 release.
Now, it's arguable as to whether or not the public would actually be upset by violent movies in the wake of real life violence. Certainly some would, particularly those directly visited by the tragedy. But many others might not; in the week following the event, video stores around the nation reported big business in such movies as True Lies, Executive Decision, The Siege, or anything with terrorists getting their asses kicked. It isn't surprising that some folks, angry at the attacks and itching for their pound of flesh, would seek quick catharsis in a celluloid fantasy.
But how people might actually react wasn't the point. It was a gesture of sensitivity that was entirely correct and appropriate on Tinseltown's part. It's like buying flowers for a sick person; it does nothing to heal them, but at least it shows you give a damn.
So how did Matt Crouch and Co. treat America's sickness, now that the cinematic playing field was less crowded for the imminent release of their film? Well, according to the Megiddo web site, first, everybody prayed. This is a great thing for theists to do because, when they've already made up their minds to do something, the act of prayer gives the decision quick and easy divine approval, since God, when you get right down to it, has a remarkable ability to tell His followers exactly what they want to hear. Since Matt clearly wanted his movie out quickly, it comes as no surprise at all, then, that his God did too.
What was genuinely amazing, however, was the swiftness with which Matt convinced himself that Megiddo was nothing less than the reason the 9/11 atrocity happened. Gleeful remarks, oblivious to the enormity of their offensiveness, appeared on the Megiddo site, describing the movie as the event that was rallying the nation. Seriously! (Gee, I thought it was the tragedy that was bringing America together, but now I realize we were all just floundering around not knowing how to react until some Christians released a movie.) But beyond the herculean self-absorption of the statement, which is so stomach-churningly callous I can barely see properly when I think of it, how probable is it that God would have needed to use either the attacks or a dumb flick to get His message across? At times like these, Christians have a curious tendency to forget that their God is supposed to be an ominscient and omnipotent fellow, which would mean that, out of a literally infinite set of choices as to how to bring more people under the umbrella of His love and heavenly eternal bliss, arranging for a colossal terrorist atrocity in the hopes that millions of the unsaved might flock to see a cheesy movie for "answers" need not be one of them. Speaking as an atheist hardliner, I will readily confess that the sight of, say, a massive, glowing disembodied hand blocking the flight path of the planes while a booming voice resounded throughout the skies, "I don't think so, fellows," would have certainly given me a great deal of pause. When you consider all of the ways in which a supposedly all-powerful God could quite easily establish His existence and erase the world of atheism, you have to wonder why none of these more obvious events take place and why, instead, we're left to shake our heads at atrocities while the faithful tell us that the fact God sat on His posterior and did nothing whatsoever should be all the evidence we need of His existence and abiding love for us. If the events of September 11th don't conclusively prove that religious fanaticism is madness, I can't think what will.
That darn "mindset"!
Matt Crouch's delusions of grandeur notched themselves noticably upward as Megiddo opened, on what turned out to be the worst box office weekend of the year. But before TBN could fully celebrate, there was one more hurdle to cross. Originally scheduled to roll out on 400 screens nationally, that number dropped to 314 as a number of theatre chains took it upon themselves to display the couth 8X Entertainment lacked, and yanked Megiddo. Matthew belittled these ignorant heathen on an episode of TBN's Behind the Scenes which aired on October 4. Appearing at an LA church called the Faith Dome, Matt attacked the "mindset" of Leow's and other theatre chains who simply couldn't see that the terrorist attacks "made Megiddo more relevant than ever before." The cheering congregation seemed incapable of figuring out that this was a man who was just shamelessly pimping his movie. The intensity with which fundamentalist Christians believe that all events in the universe revolve around themselves is the only thing that could possibly make otherwise intelligent people fail to see what was obvious, at the very least, to me: that everything Matt has said about Megiddo in the wake of September 11th has been motivated by self-interest. It is easy to imagine Matt's daydreams: visions of Variety box office scorecards with Megiddo at the very top, a big headline on the front page blaring something like, "Christian film Megiddo surpasses Titanic for all-time #1 spot as domestic BO surges past $600 million!"
Megiddo did indeed perform decently well on its opening
weekend. Though it placed out of the top ten (at #13), it still managed
to draw in a strong per-screen average of around $4800, while the other
films in the top 25 could barely muster half that (but then those movies
were on thousands of screens). So of course, Matt and Co. have been enthusing
that the film was, like its predecessor The Omega Code, "#1,"
while not bothering to explain the distinction between per-screen averages
and overall gross.
What they also haven't explained is that Megiddo has been performing considerably less well than Omega Code did upon its release just under two years ago, despite the fact that TBN's on-air hype has been just as great, if not greater, than it was for Omega. Omega opened in October 1999 at #10, on fewer screens than Megiddo, and its box-office take for the weekend was a little over $2.5 million, with a per-screen average of about $7700. Megiddo's overall take for its opening weekend was around $1.6 million with a $4800 per-screen. And on its second weekend (9/28-9/30), Megiddo, although it gained about 40 more screens, fell to 14th place with only about a $1 million overall take and a per-screen of $2900. As of 10/1, Megiddo's cumulative box office was only around $2.8 million. The likelihood it will beat Omega's final take of $12 million at this rate is remote.
This is a bad thing, as Megiddo cost a reported $20 million to make. If the House of Crouch takes a Battlefield Earth-style bath on their epic masterwork, Matt Crouch's Hollywood dreams could be cut off at the knees. Clearly, in light of the September tragedies, many Christians, not as self-obsessed as Matt Crouch, didn't really feel the urge to load up church buses for a big movie night. Ministers were more inclined to spend their money by donating to relief efforts, rather than maxing out their Visas buying hundreds of Megiddo tickets for the congregation. Indeed, the majority of America's Christians, most of whom are not fundamentalists and therefore have at least a few toes in the real world and thus a conscience, simply didn't give a damn about TBN or its movie. This was a time for the whole nation to think about truly important things: our families, friends, loved ones, our own lives, justice against the perpetrators. It's not a time to think about movies or "love gifts" or filling the coffers of TBN. Many of the folks who flocked to see Omega Code just aren't flocking now. Perhaps we can look at that as, quite possibly, the silver lining on the horrible cloud that befell our nation on the 11th. If more Christians choose to respond to tragedies by taking an active interest in the real world rather than in the fantasies and the greed of their religious leaders and self-styled Christian celebrities like Matt Crouch, perhaps some change can begin in our society.
No, I haven't seen it yet...
Though I'd still quite like to see Megiddo, I simply haven't been able to bring myself to do so in the last few weeks because of, for one thing, my disgust at Crouch's showboating, and also because my mood in light of the attacks has been much more serious and less inclined to be receptive to cackling at a garish, overblown movie. But if I want to see it, I suppose I should go this coming week, as it looks like it won't be playing theatrically in Austin much longer (it's down to two screens here from its original five). On TBN, though they're keeping their brave face on, a sense of worry permeates the promotions at this point. As Matt and his wife Lori appeared on Behind the Scenes and gushed over the cheering crowds who were supposedly flocking to the film, scrolling text at the bottom of the screen implored, "If you haven't seen it, go today! If you have seen it, take five friends and go again before it leaves the theatres!" [Emphasis added.]
Anyway, if you'd like to read some reviews of the movie, my favorite is this hilarious and detailed deconstruction that appeared on Ain't It Cool News. You can also go to the film's page at Rotten Tomatoes, a great movie site that also coincidentally had a message board thread last week with the subject line "Shame on TBN." I couldn't have said it better myself.
OCTOBER 10 UPDATE: On its third weekend, Megiddo managed to climb back up to #13, but it was an unluckier 13 than two weekends ago; the movie took in around $800,000 on 338 screens for a $2400 per-screen (the ninth-best per-screen of the weekend) and a cume of $3.9 million. TBN's latest on-air promos have gotten almost pathetically desperate, with one of the latest featuring Jan Crouch literally begging viewers, with her hands clasped together, to "make a difference in your world, and see Megiddo today!"
OCTOBER 16 UPDATE: It gets worse. I caught Paul Crouch tonight on Praise the Lord essentially lying out his wazoo about the film's supposed "blockbuster" status. He claimed that, going into its fifth week, Megiddo was still the "#1 performing film in the country" and was actually "gaining." In fact, in its fourth weekend (10/12-10/14), Megiddo, as most films do, dropped yet again, losing 43 screens and 30% of its business from the previous weekend. The movie placed 15th, with only the 10th best per-screen average out of the Top 25 movies, bringing in only around $572,000 for a cume of about $4.6 million. So I guess Paul Crouch is following the lead of another famous Christian named Paul, who made it clear it's okay to misrepresent yourself to spread the gospel (2 Corinthians 9:20-22). Check the figures here for yourself.
Next month's column will be posted 11/4/01, so I'll see you all again then. And don't forget to watch Jeff Dee and myself on The Atheist Experience on TimeWarner Cable Channel 16 in Austin--and please note our time slot has changed yet again: we are now on channel 10, running from 4:30-6:00 PM Sundays. That's right--back to 90 minutes!
Go without gods,
Martin Wagner
© 2001
martinwagner66@excite.com
