I was not impressed by Saved!. It was all the usual high school cliches transported to the context of an Evangelical high school. Mandy Moore plays the pretty bitch that every high school movie must have, and while I acknowledge that such girls exist, one of these days I simply must analyze the patriarchal underpinnings of making them the inevitable target of scorn.
Anyway. Moore plays a self-satisfied, clique-running, all-powerful high school diva. Only in this movie, she’s a Jesus-freak diva. Now, a bitch diva like this girl will use whatever the prevailing social structure is to have, hold, and abuse power. That’s her nature. So, in her particular culture, she uses Jesus and salvation as her bludgeon.
I wonder if anyone within the Evangelical community has asked themselves if that is what they really want. They create social pressure to be Christian because social pressure is an effective tool. But the cost is that anyone who wants to abuse power can do so in Jesus’s name. Are any of them asking if that equation is worthwhile? If having a “Christian culture” is worth the price of turning salvation into just one more way for bitches to bitch and abusers to abuse? Because that price is inevitable as long as your salvation is a matter of public discussion.
Where religion and faith are private, there is no social coin in being voted Most Likely to Resurrect. Where religion and faith are public and necessary, some people will have them simply to get elected prom queen.
(By coincidence, while I was writing this post in my head, this article appeared at Pandagon.)
(Cross-posts R Us.)
