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OK, so in the letters column of a TMCM magazine I saw a debate going on about “Christian porn”. Now, such a term intreagued me, and being the popular internet pundit that I am, I have decided to research it for the benefit of you - our viewing public.

What my googlings lead me to was not, as one might suspect, a flavour of simple pornography with church related accoutrements(WARNING: link offensive), but a movement within Christianity to fight the evils of pornography, it being a terrible temptation for the young folk, and the clergy. After visiting a popular site at the forefront of this fight, and reading an associated news article, the whole thing started to strike me as rather unintentionally funny.

Firstly, there are a couple of guys who have started essentially acting as missionaries in the porn industry itself - to the point of hanging out on porno sets and the like, preaching the wrongness of it all. I don’t know if they have had much in the way of converts, but apparently one of the porno directors made them an ad for free, just for the hell of it. What gets me, though, is how much like something you might read on the back of a video in the adult section of your local vid-store (were you to chance to stray in that direction purely unintentionally) this all sounds. Two christians go to preach the gospel on the set of a porno… it’s pure shitty porno plot.

Secondly, a representative for the movement is quoted in the CBN article making reference to casting seeds on infertile ground in terms of their numbers of converts. Is this a tongue-in-cheek reference to onanism, or just one of those cryptoparanomasia things again?

Lastly, some of the dialogue from the anti-porn-league is in the article, and I reproduce it here;

“Have you come across a bunch of magazines in your dad’s closet that show pictures of lots of naked mommies? Did it make you feel kind of yucky?”

Now I’m no proponent of supplying minors with pornography, and there’s a whole porn vs. literature debate to be considered here, but I can’t help but be a bit worried by ‘educational’ materials that prime a kid to associate sexuality with feeling “kind of yucky”. Not that pornography is likely to promote particularly realistic or educational (except in the purely mechanical sense) concepts of sexuality, especially in terms of any emotive element, but still.

The xxxchurch site is designed (as the name suggests) to lure porn searching types so that they might accidentally stumble upon the Word while looking for something rather different. To help push this false impression on to search engines, every second news article is simply a collection of likely porn search terms. Judging from the relative obscurity of some of them, it appears to be a well-researched list.

It’s an interesting tactic, though. Not unlike the ‘honeypot‘ concept of doing security research by leaving easy target computers around connected to the ‘net, and studying the attacks when they occur.  I don’t know how many people who hit an anti-porn site while trawling for porn are going to be moved by it, but it’s a bit more savvy than just preaching the evils of porn to people in an environment where they are unlikely to even admit to viewing it.

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Aisle Rage - The rising urge to punch fellow shoppers in the back of the head when their only crime is to step backward into one’s path without looking, or stop in the centre of the aisle as something occurs to them, thus impeding one’s progress.

DisURLientation -  The realisation that one has no idea what possible series of links could have lead one to be viewing a particular website, and that the original reason for going online has been entirely forgotten.

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_{Posted by BonusWavePilot}

Let’s be brutally honest, this movie is okay, but it does leave a little something to be desired. Rather than provide a detailed review of the pros and cons, the camerawork and the sound (topics about which I am ignorant) I’m going to provide a survey of things that amused me or bugged me.

1. Child actors: man-oh-man, where to start? I guess it’s always a bit of a risk. It doesn’t help that the four children-Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy-each have one characteristic feature-Bastard, Naysayer, Snitch, Optimist- that they ham up for most of the film… until, of course, the second phase of character development, when they become heroes, learn the true value of family, etc. etc.
2. Lucy: she greets everything with a bug-eyed, gormless charm…
3. Misappropriating various legends:there have been some serious manipulations of fantasy legends. The fauns, particularly, have been cleaned up and given a family-friendly gloss (in Australia, a PG rating). Given that fauns in the original legends were nothing more than Neanderthal rapists, I don’t see how it could be otherwise, really… but I’m not sure that Saint Nick originally wore leather armour. He does in this movie. And he provides gifts for the kiddies: Lucy gets a cure serious wounds potion, Peter gets a sword +2 / +5 versus magic-users, and so on.
4. Queen Susan, the Gentle: as Aslan calls her, during the ‘crowning and triumphing’ scene. In the scene prior to this, Susan shoots a gnome through the chest from about fifteen feet.
5. Accents: “Aw-roit, guv’nor, aye? Yew seen that Aslan fella, he’s been down Stone Table lark, summ-nin’ armies. That Whart Witch, she’s won evil bird, eh, don’t go messin with the likesofver, luv.”
6. The wolves: a cool idea to have the wolves as secret police, but a little unbelievable… I didn’t see a wolf lick its nuts even once! They’re canines, aren’t they? I live with two dogs. And the wolf captain jumps straight onto Peter’s sword. Dumb.
7. Jadis, the White Witch: is a ninja (I was quite surprised). Two swords, hard-arsed. Though the way that she fought with her rod of petrification is pretty cool.

And the stuff I liked…

1. The fox: cool.
2. The battle: there’s a brief scene when we see minotaurs, ogres, and giants lumbering across the battlefield. I’ve always wondered how that would look.
3. Aslan’s death: Aslan’s death is well done-the monsters looking like monsters, the lion with a look of melancholy resolve. (But the subsequent resurrection scene leaves a little to be desired.) HIs voice was okay, but I picked Patrick Stewart rather than Liam Neeson, and so I was always hoping he’d order “Tea, Earl Grey, hot,” or tell Mr. Riker that he had the bridge, or something. Let down.
4. The beavers: despite their accents and their relentless married couple schtick, I thought they were quite cool. I could imagine them working as part of the Narnia Underground. Mr. Beaver laying dynamite charges to destroy a bridge, Mrs. Beaver finding and eliminating a traitor: “This ‘ere’s what we do to turncoats, dux.” It would take Camus as inspiration, both because he fought (I mean, wrote) for the French Resistance, and because he said, quite appropriately, “Au milieu de l’hiver, j’ai découvert en moi un invincible été.” I think this subject would make a cool fan-film, and would probably violate copyright.

Apparently, the next in the series might be Prince Caspian, which would make sense (it was released after LW&W, but is nonetheless a bit of a shame- I always preferred The Horse and His Boy.

- Posted by Rabbit Zero