Moot Thoughts & Musings

In keeping with my mad dash to watch as many movies before MLKing Day as possible, last night we popped another DVD into the player. The fare? the dark Christian-school comedy, Saved! (2004). To us the previews looked funny. I don't really care if it's somebody's portrayal (not altogether flattering, I might add) of a slice of the evangelical community, but I could see how some would. I thought the movie would be funny and entertaining, and I thought I could laugh at the caricatures. At the end, though, I was so disturbed. I still am. It was just sad. It wasn't the portrayal that bothered me--I still laughed at some of the caricatures; what was sad was how real it was. So I guess my sadness is from a scenario outside the movie, rather than movie itself.

Because it's set in an evangelical Christian school, it's fairly close to home, but not too close, being that I'm Reformed, and this school was ultra-fundy probably of a non-denominational/Baptist ilk. What was sad and what was funny at the same time was how well the movie people got the whole trappings and lingo of that culture. These are the kind of the people that take the WWJD? and CCM stuff seriously. Chris asked me, "Did they exaggerate?" (I know more about broader, evangelical culture than he does; he so thoroughly Reformed, I had to explain who James Dobson was to him once.) My response was, "No, they did not exaggerate; in fact, there's probably thousands more people like them than there is like us." So we cringed and laughed at parts of it.

The sad part about it was here was a whole high school of young people deeply devoted to their faith and serving Christ, but none of them had any knowledge. The chapel time was empty cheers. Yelling "Jesus Rules!" doesn't get one very far in understanding the difficulty of daily walking with Christ. So when difficulties arrive, as they do in this film, the students are understandably left afraid and confused, and don't know where to turn (it doesn't seem to occur to anybody that reading their Bible might be a good start).

The main plot line follows a girl Mary, opening in the summer before her senior year. At the beginning of the summer, her boyfriends admits to her that he's gay. She's crushed, because he's "the perfect Christian boyfriend." She believes she sees Jesus in a vision telling her that she has to "cure" him. Overhearing something about "second virginity" she believes that is what Jesus wants her to do. And in all sincerity that she is obeying Christ, she and her boyfriend have sex (this is the first time for both). Well, the boyfriend's parents find out that he's gay and ship him off. Meanwhile, Mary is left alone, and you guessed it, pregnant. She is stunned. Getting pregnant was just something she hadn't considered; not that she didn't know where babies come from, but you get the impression that she was so naive that it didn't occur to her that that might happen, besides wasn't she doing what Jesus wanted her to?

Her faith is deeply challenged, and since it wasn't rooted in a very deep understanding of Scriptures, she's quickly awash from her beliefs. She's also immediately ostracized by her school community, who don't know that she's pregnant, but do know that she isn't "saved" anymore. The diva of the school, Hilary Faye, aka "the perfect Christian girl", even tries to exorcize her (what they thought they were exorcizing? I doubt they even knew), and in a particularly strong moment in the movie hurls her Bible at Mary screaming, "I'm filled with Christ's love!" It's disturbing.

Mary does find some friends, the "bad" kids (every Christian school has them). And she manages to hide that she is pregnant until almost the very end of the school year, when everything comes out in a dramatic scene at the prom, in which Hilary Faye realizes that even she isn't perfect. Everyone is standing there realizing that they're fallen creatures, and for all the Jesus stuff they've been spouting, they haven't a clue what to do. They ask themselves, smitten with fear, "Does Jesus still love me?" A few people make a few lame speeches about "faith in ourselves" and "Jesus loves everybody." And that's the conclusion of all the faith-angst the movie raises.

Some relationships are healed, and Mary has a baby girl and a new boyfriend (since her old boyfriend also has a new boyfriend). The movie doesn't leave one with much. But then, you can't expect that from Hollywood, anyway. And probably for a person who doesn't believe as I do, the ending was perfectly satisfactory. I just couldn't help just feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness. For all the jargon and the labels, these people weren't Christians. They hadn't a clue what that meant, and they thought they did! And this portrayal is probably accurate of thousands in the evangelical community. To see it en masse like that in the film was just staggering. Chris and I couldn't laugh by the end, it was too disturbing.

Judge for yourself whether or not to see it. I don't recommend it, but I don't not recommend it either. To leave you on not such a depressing note, probably the funniest line in the whole movie showed up in the deleted scenes. Mary and her mother are at an awards ceremony, where her mother wins a "best Christian decorater" award (I know. *cringe*). Through tears of excitement and joy her mother accepts the award and declares "Thank you, God!" "Thank you, Jesus!" (and turning to her daughter) "Thank you, Mary!" It's subtle, but the God, Jesus, Mary sequence thoroughly cracked me up.