Sometimes humor works to bring to the fore issues of serious proportions. When a comic book presentation of World War II was created many a potential publisher turned it down to their personal and financial regret So it isn't that I object to The Revenand Billy's approach to this serious problem of an out
of control hunger for things procured on credit just to "look good, but there wasn't sufficient reference to the severity of the problem.
Are we all mind controlled? Has the media won the battle over our intellegent integrity?
Is the economic system that keeps this consumer society afloat so powerful that the intervention of mindful efforts to assess, to understand where this desire for ever/more comes from can not be curbed? And maybe it isn't just Christmas, Maybe the mall is at the core of our evil empire.
Shopping, like gambling, has seconary gratifications not approached in this film and the consequences of decreasing the exercise of our indiviual splurges wasn't sufficiently touched upon.
Why does Rev. Billy have such a strong following? What do these people, who are singing with passion, risking arrest and potential bodily harm think, feel? What are they really doing and why?
These questions that threaten to give depth to this shopping malais on both a societal and indivual level are not approached.
Where would China, Japan, Korea be if Americans looked and did not buy the stuff they make? The entire Disney world of things, the New York City M&M store and its stuff and stuff, The Hallmark store of grossly non essential items, and the multiplicity of nail stores popping up even in my backyard. Oh Jesus, where are you, with your loin cloth, a stick and minimal intake of nurishment? Where are you when we need your teaching by example. Gone
Although this movie is entertaining, has a message that is so important and must be put out into the public realm for discussion, I found it boring at points, which is to be expected in a documentary, and superficial. Many documentaries are superficial but from a political movie I expected more depth, more meat to chew on.
Linda Z
AGORA: Dragged from her chariot by a mob of fanatical vigilante Christian monks, the revered astronomer was stripped naked, skinned to her bones with sharp oyster shells, stoned and burned alive as possibly the first executed witch in history. A kind of purge that was apparently big business back then.
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