The documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church has been broken into seven parts - all of which are all available on YouTube. Sadly, between the time I typed this - about a week ago - and the time I'm posting it, the videos have been removed. At the end of this post, I will offer a list of videos that are still on YouTube about and from the church.
The church is known around much of the US as the church whose members have been picketing soldiers' funerals around much of the nation on the basis that any milatry death is a result of the sins of the people in our nation. The group has come to Ohio and made headlines when their right to picket a funeral in Northeast Ohio.
The documentary is interesting because it does allow us a glimpse into the lives of one family of the church, but on the whole the documentary was a little disappointing to me. The documentary filmmaker comes to the project with the goal not of simply explaining to us what the church members are like but rather of hoping to get one of the church members to either convert or to at least show some crack in their faith.
He takes the Michael-Moore-esque steps of giving us confrontational scenes rather than allowing room for any sort of true revelations. An example of this is the two meetings he holds with the church's patriarch. Instead of giving us any background on the patriarch or coming with any prepared questions, the filmmaker simply begins talking to the man and is quickly cut off, revealing less about the church than about his unwillingness to provide any sort of unbiased coverage of the story.
I do wish that the documentary - interesting enough as it is - could have been better because the exploration of religious dogmatism has so much room to teach us about our own beliefs. The most telling moments are near the end of the film when the filmmaker speaks to a male member of the church out on a protest. The filmmaker asks a number of questions but never allows the church member to give full answers. Instead, the filmmaker continues to speak over those answers, projecting his beliefs almost as unrelentingly as do the church members.
And the links that do work - at least for today:
I warn you, these videos do contain language that certainly is inappropriate for school viewing (even if you do happen to be able to get to YouTube from school.
2 comments:
Wow. Those are sad and very telling. I love the creep smile at the end of the it's too late to pray clip. Almost seemed like a "gotcha smile". Freaked me out.
I've been disappointed with most of the docs I've seen lately. SO MUCH M. Moore-esque unbalanced crap. I get bored.
Keep it up!
The unbalanced perspective is the biggest problem I have with a lot of documentarians.
I understand that some degree of editorial commenting is inherent in the editing process, but at least keep your overt opinions out of the thing. I've noticed that a lot more, agreed. Grizzly Man, for example, could've been much better without the overt commenting.
Moore's best work so far has been Bowling for Columbine where he was clearly conflicted on the subject of gun control, so the film was not nearly as one-sided as most of his other works.
And I plan to keep it up for at least a while longer...thanks...
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