Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Kerblam!”

Go, organics!

That line alone is the cleverest line that I can remember from this episode but unfortunately, the rest of the episode left much to be desired.

Part of the problem is that the show's writer took an excellent opportunity to satirize a popular corporation and how it contributed to the current trend toward dehumanization -- and then dropped the ball by bringing up yet another target whose presence, unfortunately, encouraged the audience to miss the writer's original point. I could readily understand the writer's desire to resist the temptation to write "The Robots of Death II" but unfortunately, his idea for a substitute was not much of an improvement. If anything, the writer's decision to sacrifice a sympathetic character in order to teach the bad guy a lesson made for a point point far more dubious than anything that happened in "The Robots of Death". As a result, it's hard to watch the resolution of this episde without getting a bad taste in one's mouth -- a very bad taste.

Trailer of the Week: The Hunt

It's the movie that President Donald Trump doesn't want you to see. And that's supposed to be a bad thing?

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

I’m human. Do you think I’m not?
--Deirdre in C.L. Moore's “No Woman Born”

Voight-Kampff Test Questions

Speaking of the famous Blade Runner turtle test, here is a list of questions from that movie -- questions that are used to tell the difference between a human being and a replicant. Of course, the scariest thing about this test is the way I can't help but wonder how many people today would gladly take pride in flunking it.

It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet.

You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar.

You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm.

You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?

Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.

You're reading a magazine. You come across a full-page nude photo of a girl. You show it to your husband. He likes it so much, he hangs it on your bedroom wall.

You become pregnant by a man who runs off with your best friend, and you decide to get an abortion.

One more question: You're watching a stage play - a banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetizer of raw oysters. The entree consists of boiled dog.

What a Revelation!

If nothing else, the 1991 movie The Rapture deserves credit for being the one of the few films critical of Fundamentalist Christianity that dares to ask the question: if such a religion is so bad, why are so many people attracted to it?

It promptly gives at least one answer in the opening sequence in which we view Sharon (played by Mimi Rogers) doing a customer service job that requires her to mechanically give the same information over and over again to different customers. In other words, Sharon works in a dehumanizing environment.

Every so often, Sharon goes off with Vic, a male friend, to blow off some steam by picking up strangers for casual sex. But even this doesn't satisfy her.

Then one day Sharon witnesses a group of people in the company cafeteria who appear to have a special bond. She soon finds out that they are in a special church and she finds herself being drawn to them more and more even though she doesn't consider herself a religious person.

Sharon hears talk of a mysterious black pearl but she is not allowed to join the group until she has seen the pearl herself. Soon afterwards, she goes into a near-suicidal depression and just when she is at the darkest part of her dark night of the soul, she sees a pearl.

She joins the group soon afterwards and becomes so enthusiastic about it that she converts her latest boyfriend, Randy (played by Fox Mulder himself, David Duchovny), into the group as well and eventually marries him.

For a while, life goes better for her. Her husband gets a better job. She quits her job to become a stay-at-home mom. She leads her family in daily prayer sessions. In short, religion seems to work for her.

Then one day a disgruntled office worker kills Randy in a tragic scene which unfortunately includes some of the worst acting in the movie. (For what it's worth, Duchovny is quite adequate but the actor who plays the homicidal maniac is just awful.) Sharon is heartbroken and eventually turns her back on her church when none of the religious people prove up to the task of consoling her.

Instead, Sharon becomes obsessed with seeking her own means of salvation by going off into the desert to make a Kate Bushian deal with God. Unfortunately, it is never quite clear whether such a deal actually exists or whether Sharon merely imagines one in her mind. Ultimately, she makes the Supreme Being an offer she thinks he can't refuse -- only to find...

Ah. But that would be telling. But surely it's not much of a spoiler to note that the movie does not exactly end on a happy note.

It says something about how well The Rapture works -- apart from the one scene I mentioned above -- that both religious people and confirmed atheists can draw lessons from it. Indeed, despite a quite literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations toward the end, the movie remains quite ambiguous as to who actually is to blame for Sharon's final situation. If you're an atheist, you wish to believe it was God. But if so, why weren't all the pearl-worshippers out there in the desert imitating Sharon? If you're a religious person, you wish to believe that it was Sharon. But you can't help but wonder whether it was a cruel joke for Sharon to find more senseless cruelty pursuing what she believes to be the path of religious virtue than she ever did pursuing the path of secular vice. Either way, the answer to Sharon's dilemma is up to the individual viewer. And, of course, the most obvious lesson of the movie is not to go out and do likewise.