HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THIS?!?!?!

Jack Chick's seminal 1984 anti-RPG masterpiece Dark Dungeons is finally realised in glorious Technicolor!



Well, ok, it's not that awesome but it's still better than anything Mel Gibson's done lately.

That's a spoof, though, innit?

Mazille wrote:That's a spoof, though, innit?

The best kind: totally deadpan. I wish they could use Chick's characters and dialogue, though of course copyright precludes it.

I love chick flicks!

Mazille wrote:That's a spoof, though, innit?

It is, my love, it is.

And shit acting too.

It never ceases to amuse me, how Teh ChristuynsTM in America seem to turn everything they touch into tack. Whatever they venture into - music, movies, and for that matter visual arts generally - they have a unique talent for generating what can only be described as dreck.

The moment you see the word "Christian" being pre-pended onto some form of entertainment, you know that the end result will be irredeemably bad, in a Battlefield Earth sort of way. More recently, the same trend has manifested itself in the world of video games. Whenever you see a title marketed as a "Christian video game", you know it's going to be a crock of shit from start to finish. Likewise, they can't even move into old media, without producing ninth-rate derivative crap - see, for example, Thomas Kinkaid and his paintings, which are hilariously tacky attempts to try and move into territory that was far better explored 150 years ago by William Holman Hunt.

It's almost as if, one of the first things that happens to American Christians, is the complete bludgeoning to death of any of the usual aesthetic senses. Every last neuron devoted to refinement and taste is ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed. As a consequence, the artefacts arising from this demographic are not merely cheesy, they're the Platonic ideal of aesthetic Velveeta, the apotheosis of sensory and conceptual Cheez Whiz.

In fact, one is sorely tempted to suggest that if their god does exist, he's taking American Christians for the mother of all schadenfreude rides. He's bestowing upon them all the attributes required to make their brand of religion as repulsive as possible, even to other supernaturalists in other parts of the world. It's as if their god is using them as a prime example of how not to "do" Christianity. Just compare, for example, the sort of artistic output arising from religion here in Europe, with what is on offer across the pond. Here in Europe, we have the Sistine Chapel, York Minster, Chartres Cathedral, paintings by artists of the calibre of Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, etc., and choral music by such exalted composers as Bach, Mozart, Handel and Beethoven (the latter's Missa Solemnis is universally regarded as a masterpiece). By contrast, the American output consists of "prosperity gospel" televangelist McMansions, sad attempts to try and take religious ownership of wholly inappropriate musical genres, and even sadder attempts to produce apocalyptic movies peddling Rapture Retard fantasies. It's truly telling, that an atheist film director has done far better with the Noah story (the casting of Emma Watson, I assure you, having nothing to do with this - see this post for an altogether better reason) than any American Christian has ever done (the most laughable version being that peddled in Ken Ham's "Creation Museum").

I imagine there is some difference between an artist who happens to be xian and a xian who does art to promote gawd.

In case anyone isn't aware, this movie was made by people who thought the best way to show how fucking ludicrous Chick's work is was to make it more widely accessible. The flick is (so I understand) pretty close to the Dark Dungeons plot. The film makers went on the record as saying that they were going to play it utterly straight.

It may be that there is no such thing as truly good art that is inspired by Christianity. Perhaps the bleak output of American (and other modern) evangelists whose artistic efforts are intended to serve the gospel is what you get with that sort of thing every time; and perhaps the more refined products of the European past are the work of true artists who had to beg the church for recognition and support.

Has anyone seen the Big Butter Jesus? It burned down, thank God.

Oh, jesus fucking christ on a d6. I just watched it.

It's perfect. It's a fucking gem.

It performs the action of satire utterly flawlessly. It mimics the seriousness with which Chick does his work - and Christian evangelists in general take themselves - wonderfully.

I'm a little surprised. I was cynical, expected it to be kinda crap.

It's fucking perfect.

Watched it myself - dying here.

"Those are the RPGers - we've been trying to get them thrown off campus for years, but they are just too popular!"

Weaver wrote:Watched it myself - dying here.

"Those are the RPGers - we've been trying to get them thrown off campus for years, but they are just too popular!"

Ayup.

I have never fought off unwanted poon because I chose to engage in group storytelling.

Goldenmane wrote:

Weaver wrote:Watched it myself - dying here.

"Those are the RPGers - we've been trying to get them thrown off campus for years, but they are just too popular!"

Ayup.

I have never fought off unwanted poon because I chose to engage in group storytelling.

I keep telling people charisma is not a dump stat, boost it and watch the group storytelling lead to other group things.


Like the group going to the orc cave and stabbing the shit out of them, they might drop poon as loot? Roll a D8 on the drop list.

pelfdaddy wrote:It may be that there is no such thing as truly good art that is inspired by Christianity.

Well I've already provided examples of European artists who, inspired by Christianity, still managed to produce masterpieces. Indeed, I'm on record as having stated in the past, that there is a refreshing warmth and humanity to the religious icons produced by the painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo, that you'll never see in any product of the warped "prosperity gospel" televangelist Christianity now running rampant in the USA. A particularly fine example hangs in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, a 30 minute train ride from my home, one which moreover may have been, quite dangerously during the Inquisition, painted as a memorial to his recently deceased wife. The somewhat febrile idealisations of some earlier representations of the Virgin Mary are refreshingly absent from this work. Instead, he depicted, again quite possibly at sever personal risk, the Virgin Mary as a remarkably human figure - indeed, it's precisely because his depiction is so manifestly human, that even an atheist such as myself can appreciate it for what it's worth.

Later on, we have the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt, whose rather clichéd, conventional Victorian brand of Christianity didn't stop him from producing some wonderful artworks. There are some, shall we say, idiosyncratic parts of his oeuvre, such as The Scapegoat (again hanging about 45 minutes from my home in the Lady Lever Art Gallery), which, whilst sincere, looks frankly bizarre to modern eyes, and even to religiously devout Victorians in England, was a difficult work to come to terms with. However, one cannot fault his remarkable sense of colour vision, which he brought to full effect in some of his landscapes, nor the fact that he too, could inject a warmth and humanity into some of his religious icons that make them stand out from the crowd. His masterpiece in this regard is The Light Of The World, a depiction of Christ that is again, refreshingly distant from the more febrile treatments of the subject. Holman Hunt's lifelong devotion to the principle of photographic realism in art, that was a central axiom of Pre-Raphaelitism, almost certainly helped here. A devotion to realism that led initially to the movement's founders being subject to withering invective in the critical art press, until Ruskin rushed to their defence.

But this points to one possible reason for the success of these works, namely, that the artists took risks to fulfil their vision. They went out on a limb, they dared to do something different, and possessed the technical skill to succeed in that endeavour. Both talent and audacity are resoundingly absent from across the pond.

pelfdaddy wrote:Perhaps the bleak output of American (and other modern) evangelists whose artistic efforts are intended to serve the gospel is what you get with that sort of thing every time;

The trouble is, if all you have is love of a doctrine, and no artistic vision of your own alongside that, you're going to fail dismally. What the artists of the past in Europe had in their favour, was that they possessed an artistic vision independently, one that they could press into religious service if they were so motivated. Murillo, for example, built a fine career outside of his church commissions painting secular works.

pelfdaddy wrote:and perhaps the more refined products of the European past are the work of true artists who had to beg the church for recognition and support.

Quite a few of the artists in question didn't have to beg the church for support. Murillo, as I've just expounded, being a case in point. Some of the artists of the past may be best known for their religious works, particularly those living in an era when the Catholic Church was a huge provider of expenditure, part of that expenditure arising because the blue parts of all those Madonnas were fashioned using lapis-lazuli, which in the day was more expensive than gold. At the time, the Catholic Church was practically the only source of funds capable of financing this sort of largesse, though some extremely wealthy kings might have been able to treat themselves to this sort of artistic luxury on an occasional basis. But it wasn't an exclusive source of artistic commissions, and there's a lot of secular artwork from the past by some of those artists to enjoy as well.

Likewise, Beethoven was well and truly established, and had enjoyed patronage from wealthy aristocrats for some time, when he wrote the Missa Solemnis. Indeed, although Beethoven did write the occasional religious piece of music, it was only a small part of his output, and secular works form the bulk of his output. Yet, when he wrote the Missa Solemnis, he produced a work acclaimed as a masterpiece.

pelfdaddy wrote:Has anyone seen the Big Butter Jesus? It burned down, thank God.

Exactly the sort of tat I'd expect from the Bible Belt.

Goldenmane wrote:Oh, jesus fucking christ on a d6. I just watched it.

It's perfect. It's a fucking gem.

It performs the action of satire utterly flawlessly. It mimics the seriousness with which Chick does his work - and Christian evangelists in general take themselves - wonderfully.

I'm a little surprised. I was cynical, expected it to be kinda crap.

It's fucking perfect.

Another case of Poe's Law in action again perchance? Only the moment the words "Jack Chick" were mentioned, my first thought was "kill it with fire!".

Calilasseia wrote:

Goldenmane wrote:Oh, jesus fucking christ on a d6. I just watched it.

It's perfect. It's a fucking gem.

It performs the action of satire utterly flawlessly. It mimics the seriousness with which Chick does his work - and Christian evangelists in general take themselves - wonderfully.

I'm a little surprised. I was cynical, expected it to be kinda crap.

It's fucking perfect.

Another case of Poe's Law in action again perchance? Only the moment the words "Jack Chick" were mentioned, my first thought was "kill it with fire!".

Frankly, it is utterly the best Poe I can recall seeing. It's so Poe it's meta.

bookmarked for later viewing.

Calilasseia wrote:It never ceases to amuse me, how Teh ChristuynsTM in America seem to turn everything they touch into tack. Whatever they venture into - music, movies, and for that matter visual arts generally - they have a unique talent for generating what can only be described as dreck.

C'mon ... are you saying Jack Chick isn't a great artist?

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1039/1039_01.asp

He doesn't even draw the cartoons himself. He's hired someone else to do that for years. He simply cooks up the farcical storylines.

Cali, I think you're putting the cart before the horse here.

It isn't that Christians cannot produce anything except shitty music and art - it's that people producing shitty music and art cannot make a go of it anywhere except the brain-dead Christian audience who will buy anything approved by Jebus.

They are shitty first, then turn to Christian themes when they cannot make it in the real market.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/ ... more-29699

Weaver wrote:Cali, I think you're putting the cart before the horse here.

It isn't that Christians cannot produce anything except shitty music and art - it's that people producing shitty music and art cannot make a go of it anywhere except the brain-dead Christian audience who will buy anything approved by Jebus.

They are shitty first, then turn to Christian themes when they cannot make it in the real market.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/ ... more-29699

Except that in answer thereto, all I have to ask is the following question.

Where are the American Christian equivalents of Michaelangelo,Botticelli and Murillo?

Where are the American Christian equivalents of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart?

If they existed, they would surely have come to public attention by now. Artistic genius has a habit of being recognised when it emerges.

For that matter, there isn't even an equivalent of Antonio Gaudi, and his idiosyncratic Sagrada Familia. Yet, idiosyncratic as the Sagrada Familia is, it's still the most visited monument in Spain. It's still regarded as something truly special. Indeed, a leading American architectural critic, Paul Goldberger, described the Sagrada Familia as "The most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages". I'm not normally a particularly big fan of religious buildings, but the Sagrada Familia stands out as something unique, a personal vision pursued non-stop until the artist's death, and even if it drives a tank battalion through the usual architectural canons, many still love that building precisely because it's so different, so manifestly a galactic gamble taken with the sensibilities of its likely users. If I have to live with a church building on my doorstep, then I'd rather have something like the Sagrada Familia looming over my house, than some of the hideous American megachurches in existence. Not least because, to me, the Sagrada Familia strikes me as a sort of cryptic joke on Gaudi's part, hinting at the madness needed to be religious.