Когда у боженьки заглючил комп

As the image of God becomes ridiculous - the divine comedies of our time. Review of the movie "On the Almighty"

The religious boom in the era of the collapse of the USSR and the “rebellious” 90s was replaced in Russia by a process, which was called “outfit” on the Orthodox slang. So far, propaganda imposes “traditional values” involved in intolerance to the whole “alien” (however, no one knows their exact list), atheism or, at worst, occult esotericism.

The image and name of God is depreciated due to the vulgar, “instrumental” use of them for low -hearted purposes - to strengthen the monopoly on the earthly government and to justify ambitions and fantasies.

Propaganda and artificial “introducing God into the Constitution” led to immanentization, the “landing” of his image, which in the mass consciousness looks quite modest against the background of a truly infallible national leader.

The history of the relationship of Western secular culture with the image of God is different - one might say, dualistic. This image has both an incomprehensible, transcendental side, which it is better to respectly be silent and quite earthly, not without flaws, sometimes even caricature.

Such dualism goes back to the carnival culture of the Middle Ages and the rethinking of religion in the Renaissance. It is interesting to see how it is refracted in modern Western cinema, which mainly deals with the second side of the image, enriched in the XX -XI centuries. new socio-political and economic connotations.

Talking about the vices of society through the “irony over God” - in modern Russia, perhaps this would be fraught with Art. 148 of the Criminal Code. However, with a closer acquaintance, it turns out that this is not about the Creator of the sky and the earth, but about that philistine, household god, whom mass consciousness constructs in his image and likeness.

Does laughter destroy?

Let's start with the legendary Monty Python , the British comedian, whose participants in the 70s and early 80s were perhaps the most recognizable in their genre-thanks to the original and characteristic English humor. The impact on the absurd genre is comparable to the influence of The Beatles on popular music. Monty Python also anticipated the Fry and Lori show and the cult South Park that went down in the history of the show; Margaret Thatcher and Vyacheslav Polunin were recognized in love for them ...

In 1979, Monty Python released the full -length film "Brian Life" (director - Terry Jones). It seems to be ridicurating the holy gospel plot, this film is actually aiming at the stereotypes of “civil activism”.

PLOT
Simultaneously with Jesus, literally in a neighboring house, a certain Brian is born. Due to the astronomical miscalculation, the Magi are mistakenly present their gifts to this Brian. After that, his life goes according to the “divine” scenario: Brian is mistaken for the Messiah, he becomes the leader of the Judea Popular Front, who is fighting for liberation from the colonial “Roman yoke”.

In his previous film, Monty Pyuton and the Holy Grail, comedians made a way of the national mythology of the British Islands - a cycle of legends about King Arthur. Having survived on national myths and continuing with the quasi -howl plot, in their last film “The Meaning of Life by Monthi Pieton”, the comedians raised the bar as high as possible and encroached on general human values: family, childhood, sexuality, spirituality, xenophobia, etc.

The message of the Kinocritis Anton Dolin*team was remarkably formulated by the team: “Piets” were one of the first on television and in the cinema understood and embodied a very important thing.

In order to be truly ridiculous, you need to destroy the holy of holies, you need to destroy the foundations, you need to destroy the most indisputable things. Because it can make fun of the prime minister or queen. It's simple.

Or make fun of some kind of police supervision system in the UK. ”

God is looking for man. In America

If the creations of Monty Pyton can be attributed to Arthaus, then the film from the same era “Oh, God!” (1977; director Karl Rainer) became a classic of mass cinema. His plot today looks simple, but at one time it turned out to be so breakthrough that he was followed by two sequels - “Oh, God! Book II ”and“ Oh, God! You are the devil! ”

PLOT
The creator of the world (performed by the radio host and comedian George Burns) is the manager of the supermarket Jerry Landers, played by the popular musician and singer John Denver. More precisely, at first he is not even, but calls - on a regular phone, through the radio in the car. Of course, Jerry, like almost all the prophets known before him, dismisses the “new Messiah” destined for him from above. Nevertheless, God, by different truths and miracles, bends his line, and the manager gradually opens up to his wife, children and the religious editor of Los Angeles Times.

The revelation of the new prophet is perceived by someone in bayonets, and someone with a laugh, but in the end Lander becomes a laughing stock of a national scale. However, this does not stop God nor now Jerry himself, especially since God is finally personally his newly-made prophet-in the image of a sweet old man in a sailor cap. The skepticism of the bustle of this world, professional theologians and preachers of the-Tolstosums is growing, but Jerry successfully withstands all trials. The climax occurs in court, where the Prophet Jerry is trying to legislatively prove the possibility of God's presence in the world and His revelation - here and now.

The pathos of the film boils down to the parting phrase of God: "If it is difficult for you to believe in me, maybe you will help you know that I believe in you." In general, we must more believe in your heart and inner voice than uncles in suthanas and dead letters, the meaning of which is already emasculated and forgotten.

In the sequel "Oh, God! Book II ” (1980) God elects his envoy to a ten -year -old girl Trace, who has uttered such a commandment:“ Sometimes, even if you don’t see, you have to believe. ”

PLOT
God instructs Trace to come up with a project of an advertising campaign for himself, and the girl with the help of a friend comes up with several slogans (of course, in the style of American business culture: “Who will make us? God!”; “Play the increase with God!”; “When you are with God, you are in good hands”; “Let God give you guarantee!”; “God grant you!”; us "). Her classmates arrange a flash mob, chanting the slogan “Think of God!”. Almost like at a meeting of some charismatic "Church of Christ." Relatives of Trace, observing her conversations, as it were with herself (of course, he can be heard by them), begin to worry about her health and take the girl to a psychiatrist. At this time, classmates of Tracy rally with posters "Return Trace!" (a hint of trade union solidarity and civil consciousness). In the first lane of the local newspaper, her photo appears with the heading "there will be no Trace - there will be no lessons."

Step by step Flashmob "Think about God!" Coves the entire planet. In the final of the film, God is at a collection of psychiatrists of the city at which they decide to put Tracy in the clinic. He spreads the templates of positivist-materialistic worldview of the consultation participants.

In general, “if ... you will not like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18: 3).

"Oh, God, you are the devil!" (1984) - the final part of the ironic trilogy. Here, the devil, who is played by the same George Burns, is added to the main character.

PLOT
The basis of the plot is a classic idea of ​​selling the soul to the devil, which is found in many cultures. In the film, the devil seduces a person not with primitive wealth or power, but more sophisticatedly with success and recognition.

Bobby Shelton is a young talented singer who is undergoing a creative crisis. He cannot write a new song and feels that his career is moving. Here the devil is to him and offers a deal: he will help Bobby to become a successful singer, but for this Bobby will have to give the devil the soul. Bobby “without looking” waves a contract, and his career really begins to take off rapidly. He becomes one of the most popular singers in the world, but loses everything that is expensive for him: his family, friends and soul, that is, himself. At the end of the film, Bobby understands that he made a mistake, and asks God for forgiveness. And since, thanks to the intercessor prayer of the Father, God looked after Bobby all these years, he will annul the seemingly fatal deal with the devil without any problems.

Protestant narrative is well read: it is enough to repent, and God will do everything else ...

Deus Ex Machina

The ironic French-Belgian “Newest Testament” of 2015 (director Jaco Van Dormmel), in which Katrin Denev herself played, is remarkable. This is a satire already on a hypermoderized idea of ​​the god of the digital era, on the modern “Deus Ex Machina”.

PLOT
The film takes place in Brussels, which “God” (more like the evil demiurge Gnostikov here) created specifically for himself and his family. People in the rest of the world, this “God” is shed with each other for fun. Before us is a kind of (anti -) Theodicle - an explanation of world evil through the bad disposition of the demiurge.

In the film, a computer dependence is ridiculed that this “God” suffers. By means of a computer, he controls the world-but without a gadget it does not really go out. In it and his family you can find out a totalitarian dictator who imagines himself the master of nature and the master of the world. But in fact, this is a banal aging and graying, flabby and grumbling layman in a tank of an alcoholic, worn slippers, with a wicked and always silent wife in an old robe, constantly scolding the growing children.

The next -year -old daughter of the “god” Eya, brought to the limit of patience, is running away to people, and, of course, in a “supernatural” way - through a washing machine! Before the shoot, Eya vindictively guessed her father: all people on earth received the dates of their death on the mobile phones, and the old computer was fucked up.

Further - more. Eya collects the apostles; She needs six so that, together with the apostles of her brother - “the same Jesus” - it turned out eighteen. Why 18? And this is ... the favorite number of her mother Asher (a reference to the ancient Semetish image of the wife of God, associated with Astarta). The first Apostle of EI according to the law of both genres - both religious and cinematic - becomes a homeless person. Having gathered the team, Eya and the apostles write a new Gospel - the latest Testament.

An epic way is a lot of people by the sea, the life of which is about to expire. But the “god” is broken by the computer, and even the “laws of the worldly garbage”, created by him, pursue him. The woe-Demiurge falls out of a difficult fate: they are going to deport it to ... Uzbekistan! Having almost fallen to the beach with Aya, the apostles and the people waiting for their death, the plane with God, flying to Uzbekistan, accidentally saves Aheror's somnambulic state. Correcting the laws of the world on an accidentally earned computer, it resumes the dates of death of all people. The world begins to live according to new laws, and the evil “God” remains in Uzbekistan to work in a factory on the assembly of washing machines ...

Grow or die

The film “Believers” (2008; director Larry Charles) (this is the official Russian translation of the name, but the English original - “Relygulous” - is compiled from two words - “religious” (“Ridiculous”). Closer to the truth, there would be a translation of “religitism”).

PLOT
The famous comedian Bill Mar travels to the sacred places of various religions of the world and asks their adherents provocative questions. He also “interviews” the believing scientist (head of the “human genome” project) Francis Collins, the Franciscan monk, the former “Jew for Jesus”, the Senator-Gospel, neuroteologist Andrei Newberg, Rabbi Dovid Weiss, “Christ in the Second Coming” Jose De Heses Miranda, Muslims, Muslims Gay activists and many others.

The main claims of Mara against his interlocutors: the gurgle in the dogmas of his religions (although by “dogmas” the protagonist implies different mythological plots-accumulations, such as talking a snake, giants, immaculate conception, stay of ion in the womb of the whale), homophobia, nationalism and creationism. Dialogs are interspersed with the corresponding text with a satirical video. In the final, Mar in the spirit of time calls to get rid of a sense of religious exclusivity, fanaticism and terrorism with religious connotation, exclaiming: “That's all! Grow up or die! "

The film "Believers" caused an ambiguous reaction of critics and spectators. Some praised the satirical severity of the film, others considered it rude and offensive. Despite all the costs of the “professional deformation of the comedian”, this project is constructive - it helps to stir up the sleepy mind of a fanatic, to wake the soul of a gullible simpleton.

Faith as a business

Fresh (2022) comedy “Graying Jesus! Save your soul! " The director of Adamma Ebo is an open and even harsh ridicule of the most doubtful from the moral and theological point of view of religious figures - “professional believers”.

The plot must admit, especially relevant for Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church.

This is far from the first film of such a plan: the type of killer irony in modern American cinema is the type of popular and successful (primarily financially) preacher, as a rule, of an impermanent sense. For example, in "Oh, God!" One of the main (and shaved by God himself!) Opponents Jesse was Rev. Willie Williams. A few years ago, the remarkable mini-series “Righteous Dzamstones”-a parody and tragicomedic satire on a lively embodiment of an American Protestant ideal, Christianity in the style of Kitsch.

PLOT
In "Graying Jesus!" A couple of successful television studies of African American origin due to a sexual scandal is forced to close their church. The preacher Lee Curtis Childs suffers from Napoleon’s complex or at least megalomania. “God loves those who love him, both spiritually and physically. Take a look at me at least. Is it not clear that God loves me? " - Picturely waving the lapels of an expensive jacket, the preacher is pathetic. Trinity's wife is to match: “Not every woman is given the responsibilities of the first lady. And Lee Curtis and I are as stubborn as rats - we will reach the finals! We always reach! "

But the passion for luxury and comfort deprives characters of common sense, not to mention conscience, at least purely human, if not Christian, and the couple of information from religion plans a triumphal return. It is only necessary to re -open the church and convince several thousand conservative parishioners that even the stumbled pastors deserve a “second chance”. Now Trinity, painted in the style of the Japanese Kabuki Theater, is dancing on the side of the poster with the poster "Grace the Gazeli Jesus!" The final of the film is indicative: Lee Curtis receives a “couple of affectionate” in the face from the victim of his lust, which he unsuccessfully tried to atone with money ...

The Americans, and indeed people of Western culture, how gullible are so intolerant of deception. In 2021 , “Tammy Fey eyes” (director Michael Showolter) were released on the screens. If "Gilled Jesus!" - The film is rather satirical, then “Eyes ...” is a dramatic, in fact by Bayopic. But the heroes there are almost “one to one”: a couple of television producers, who once collected millions of listeners and money, at some point, at the peak of glory, which lost everything because of sexual and financial scandals

The preacher Jim Bekker, performed by Andrew Garfield, even got into prison for multimillion -dollar embezzlement embezzlement, and Jessica Chastain received an Oscar for the best female role - Tammy Fei Beakker. The good old American puritanism breathes this look at the necessity not so much with a word as with life to express their faith and loyalty to God.

... A lot of films of such a topic have been shot in more than the centenary history of cinema, the atheistic USSR and modern Russia inheriting it were no exception. In general, the topic implies the continuation.

* Included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents.