It's pictures she took from a kind of Chick Tracts alternative promoting Halloween themed Christianity*. The art is kind of incredible, and actually, though I hate to pay McEwan a compliment, improved by her photography; the angles and colors and distortion and so on all add up to create a legitimately bizarre aesthetic that I respond to pretty strongly.
McEwan, of course, is too busy being a liberal to appreciate any of this, which is why I recommend that you look at the pictures and skip the text. Her need for outrage (or "contemptuousness" as she generally prefers we pretend it to be) does not allow her to say "The message is a bit silly, but the execution is beautiful." Everything, for a liberal, is goodthinkful or ungoodthinkful, with no other possibilities admissable (with the exception of occasional bouts of excruciating self-righteous ambivalence, as with the soul-wrenching experience of watching movies featuring actors who signed the Free Polanski petition, say).
The nice thing about realizing that all this "culture war" nonsense is just such a crock is that you gain some distance. Look, liberals. This booklet thing is goofy. No child who gets it in their Halloween sack is gonna be convinced by it. They won't even be interested in it except insofar as they'll be pissed off that they can't eat it. So it's in your hands. Sure, make fun of the message. But can't you just stop being terrified of the evil Christianists for long enough to realize that the thing is kind of cool?
After all, if it isn't, why did you take so many pictures of it?
*I'm behind on my internet life, so I'm only getting to Halloween now. Sometime around January I may write something about election day.
8 comments:
why did you take so many pictures of it?
TO DOCUMENT THE OMNIPRESENT THREAT OF CHRISTOFASCISM, THAT'S WHY!
Don't tell the liberals I like to stroll into cathedrals and take pictures of stained glass and such.
If this was turned into a movie, I'd probably plop down five bucks to see it. Comic book apocalypse? Fuck yeah, pass the popcorn.
Melissa is so original! No one has ever thought of making fun of Jack Chick tracts.
unless...http://www.weirdcrap.com/chick/
When I was a kid, getting something like this in your treat bag was grounds for egging the house where it came from.
I always liked the art in Chick tracts... if not the raving message :D
All: exactly.
When I was a kid, getting something like this in your treat bag was grounds for egging the house where it came from.
There was one house in my neighborhood that used to hand out Chick Tracts and a bag of pretzels at Halloween. Handing out "Mary, Queen of Death" backfired in our predominantly Catholic area, and we used to look forward to the new crazy every year.
I should take this opportunity to link to Joe McCulloch's appreciation of Jack Chick here and here - it's good stuff, and includes a review of his short-lived anti-Mormon, anti-Catholic conspiracy thriller underground comic "The Crusaders."
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