January 24th, 2010:

Re:  Alex Remington: The Book of Eli: An Okay Post-Apocalyptic Movie Nearly Sunk by its Ambivalent Christianity, Alex Remington, Posted: January 24, 2010 03:31 AM

Denzel Washington in "The Book of Eli"

Denzel Washington plays Eli, a seemingly invincible warrior in possession of a sharp sword and the last Bible on earth, on a mission West to deliver and disseminate it widely. Quite a few people seek to take advantage of him on his way, but he’s able to kill them all quite easily. Then he runs into Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman, a small-time strongman who wants to use the book to manipulate people to worship him. Both Eli and Carnegie seem to believe that without the book, there can be no faith — either to manipulate or to worship — which is hard to swallow. Also, Denzel’s an awfully bloody killer for a man who believes that he is protected by God. (If he thinks his enemies can’t kill him, what’s the harm in turning the other cheek?) Oldman and Washington’s confrontation is enjoyable, because they’re good actors, but it feels forced.

Alex Remington has reviewed another movie, this time it’s the Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington. Remington did good until he got into telling us how religion behaves in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event like nuclear war. Does religion reinvent itself? Or does it vanish along with the rest of what we call society today?

Religion and apocalypse are inevitably linked — it takes Godlike power to destroy the world, and in any such situation, the ignorant few scavengers left behind would invariably form their own religion. Walter Miller’s classic post apocalyptic sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (rating: 90) is a beautiful, serious exploration of the formation and reformation of human faith amid the obliteration of collective memory; in its own way, so is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (rating: 92. In both books, inchoate organized religions form out of fear and desire to believe. In The Book of Eli, despite the passage of 30 years since the nuclear holocaust, religion has vanished from the world, along with literacy and almost all other vestiges of the old world. (We are told that immediately after the nuclear war, religion was blamed for everything, and all other copies of the Bible were burned in retaliation.) But in light of the sci-fi tradition, a total absence of religion after the war seems hard to believe.

He found two books that treat religion after an apocalypse as if it would naturally rise again out of the ashes because of humans’ desires to believe – and he called it “sci-fi tradition”. Bullshit. I could easily find as many sci-fi books that does not.

I say that if all the bibles were burned save one, then it is too bad that they missed that one, too.

Remington said, “Religion and apocalypse are inevitably linked — it takes Godlike power to destroy the world, and in any such situation, the ignorant few scavengers left behind would invariably form their own religion.” The ignorant few remaining might not be so ignorant as to recreate something as socially devastating as religion. History is testament to the effect religion has played on international relations. Remember all the wars? Humans are still killing each other in the name of their god.

Religion and the apocalypse are not linked. They are, fittingly, opposites. Those two things do not go hand in hand. The bible, even if you think it is a monumental waste of paper like I do, portrays the apocalypse as some vague and dreamy prophecy that Nostradamus would envy and could be interpreted any way you please. The bible does not explain what it all means. The only link between the two things is their origins. Humans created religion, and religion will help bring about the destruction of society.

The apocalypse will happen if our political will lets it happen. If we elect leaders who continue to deny global warming, ignore infrastructure repair, and force the middle class into poverty favoring the corporate state, then we will see the apocalypse as surely as if it came from an atomic bomb.

It does not take “godlike” power to destroy the world, it takes ignorance and right-wing ideological governance to destroy the world. In a right-wing dominated world, there is no social safety net, no help for those who will fall below the poverty line in vast numbers after corporations are given free reign in politics and the economy. The world will be destroyed by taking care of the wealth and leaving the vast majority to fight among themselves for ever-shrinking resources until that majority, desperate to survive, finally takes the wealth away. Policy will end this world, not some deity.

What the review should have included is that the movie hypes christianity as the last hope for mankind. Remington fails to say that christianity was around for over two millennia and still failed to save mankind. What makes you think it will now?

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