Extra Ordinary Ideas

Saved!

I’m trying to figure out why I love this movie so much. I saw it with my brother last summer, rented the DVD last month, and bought the thing last night.

Mary Cummings is a good Christian girl in a tight-knight, born-again suburban community somewhere warm enough that everyone has a swimming pool and the leaves never fall off the trees. She has a fluffy pink room and a fluffy pink life, khaki school uniforms and an uncious Christian girl band.

When her boyfriend confides that he is gay, she courageously surrenders her maidenhead to save him from his fate (it’s what Jesus would do), only to see him sent away to a religious reform school for the rest of the year.

A month or two later, she learns she is pregnant, which leads her to question everything she believes in. She eventually finds new faith in her formerly self-absorbed mother, a couple of raucous high-school outcasts (“Don’t you have a church to desecrate or something?”), and the minister’s perfect son (“Most of the boys at our school look like NASA employees. Not Patrick!”).

So why can’t let go of this film? It could certainly be the stunning screenplay:
Roland: Is that Mary? What is she doing downtown?
Cassandra: There’s only one reason a good Christian girl goes to the Planned Parenthood.
Roland: She’s planting a pipe bomb?!

And then there is the acting. Macaulay Culkin alone, as the pitilessly cynical paraplegic horn dog (“She’s going to show her boobs! Thank you, Jesus!”) justifies the movie.

Possibly it’s because I’ve had two friends exactly like the sweetly vicious, domineering and hypocritical Hilary Faye (“She actually tried to exorcise you? That was nice of her, I guess.”)

Or maybe it’s the frothy sweet romance between Mary and Patrick. It’s wonderful to imagine that no matter how messed up your life is, a soul mate with floppy hair will notice that you’re managing with grace and courage.

It’s also appealing that the film is about a close community of imperfect people. They’ve known each other long enough and well enough that, while they don’t necessarily like each other, they do love each other. Possibly I’m homesick, having few such keepers in Cambridge.

But I think it’s the laser fine, sharp but painlessly delivered theme that carries the day. The characters in Saved! are imperfect, often shallow and sometimes ridiculous (“So, like, which country has the worst heathens?”). But the film manages to condemn hypocrisy without creating villains. In Christian fashion, it hates the sin and not the sinner, allowing the viewer to imagine the camera’s unflinching lens turned on him or herself.

Alternative Graduation Strategy

In my email this morning:

Rory's Jump

Logan: "Some people live a hundred years without really living a day. Climp up there now and that's one minute less you haven't lived."

Rory: "Let's go."

Logan: "Let's go."

Rory: "I hate ladders."

Logan: "Yeah, they scare the crap out of me too."

Hope In A News Conference

The President has a record of concentrating on one thing at once, and sticking to it like a terrier with his teeth firmly embedded in the ankle of his opponent. Which is why I’m delighted that this year’s issue is apparently going to be Social Security reform.

Here is my personal pledge: If there is a substantial privatization-based reform that allows us to look ahead 50 years and see families with nest-eggs instead of a nation of elderly serfs, I will quit complaining about the WMD mishap.

Selling the President Short

Bush’s chances of reelection, as measured by the gamers on Tradesports, have just fallen below 50 percent.

Update: Wow! Bush is falling through the floor now. Tradesports participants now rate his chances of reelection at 28.5%, based last sale of a Bush future contact at 6:15 pm. Maybe we won’t be up all night after all (though a quick wrap-up would be a little disappointing — I’ve been looking forward to the mandate-killing quality of another messy tie). Of course, several thousand lawyers ought to collectively be capable of keeping things a unclear for a few days, or they aren’t worth their billables. I’m going to try to work on Kant for a couple of hours, then head over to a friend’s election night shindig.

Red and Blue

As many of my classmates are too young to have noticed, the networks traditionally switch the political parties’ assigned colors on presidential election nights every four years. For all the talk of media bias, this is an effort at fairness. After all, red has negative associations in our country, from Spielberg’s Evil Empire to Reagan’s.

But four years of “red state, blue state” commentary has generated a dilemma: will it be too confusing to switch this time? Anyone know what the networks plan this year? Will the Republicans be annoyed if they miss their turn to be the Blue Team?