For many families, at least one holiday tradition revolves around a classic movie or TV show. It’s just not Christmas without a viewing of “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Miracle on 34th Street.” Personally, I’m fond of those animated puppet specials from the 60’s (love that “I’m Mr. Heat Miser” number).
Unlikely to make the short list of popular family traditions is the upcoming movie “Black Christmas.” An obscure remake of an even more forgettable 1974 film, this little gem is about a psychotic killer who chops up some unfortunate sorority co-eds over Christmas break. The tagline is: This Holiday season, the slay ride begins.
I love a good pun, but I’ll pass on the film.
It’s not that I have a problem with “Black Christmas” (although I was a little disappointed in Mickey Rooney’s turn in “Silent Night, Deadly Night 4”). It does raise an interesting double standard, though.
In our hypersensitive, multicultural world, we bend over backwards to avoid offending other faiths. Christianity, however, is a prime target for pop culture parody and mockery that can border on blasphemous to its believers. When baited with deliberately irritating material, Christians generally have to suck it up and deal with it. And, perhaps, rightfully so: if one’s faith can’t handle a little shock to the system from the secular corners of society, it questions the depth of the faith to begin with.
But when was the last time we heard about such a crass take on a Muslim or Jewish holiday? Would anyone dare to make ”The Manischewitz Massacre” (This Passover, the blood on the door will be yours!) or ”Ramadan Vampire 2: Feast on the Fasting”?
Of course not. Anyone who even thought about making the second would wind up like Theo Van Gogh, whose vignette critical of Islam left him bleeding to death on an Amsterdam street.
Which speaks a good deal to the moral equivalency crowd, who insist that right-wing Christianity is just as dangerous as militant Islam. The ever-sensitive Rosie “Ching Chang Chong” O’Donnell best summarized this line of thinking when she opined that, ”Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state."
Horsepucky. An oft-repeated canard of the left, that brand of moral relativism just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Please. I follow the Milwaukee Brewers, but I would never say that they, with one World Series appearance in franchise history, have been “just as successful” as the New York Yankees. For the relativist, however, Timothy McVeigh or the random abortion clinic bomber is a sufficient comeback to thirty years of terrorist attacks by Muslim men, age 18-34, of Middle Eastern descent.
Back in January, Danish cartoons republished from the Jyllands-Posten whipped the Muslim Street into an absolute frenzy. One of the inflammatory sketches featured Mohammed with dynamite and a timer in his turban. In reaction to this portrayal of Allah and his prophet Mohammed as bombers, radical Muslims threatened to, and in some cases did, bomb Western targets…in the name of Allah and his prophet Mohammed.
Apparently, the Muslim Street appreciates irony about as much as they did the cartoons.
Along a similar vein, did Christians tear at their clothes and demand that the streets run red with the blood of the infidel when “The Last Temptation of Christ” hit theaters? No. Nor will they when “Black Christmas” opens. There may be protests or calls for a boycott, of course, but those things will happen in an open society. There will be, however, a conspicuous lack of the firebombs, riots, and shattered storefronts that the Danish cartoons spawned.
And yet the moral equivalency crowd would have us believe that it’s all the same – religious fervor is religious fervor. The grim scorecard, however, doesn’t support that snide and simplistic conclusion. When it comes to religious indignation, radical Islam has the only amps that “go to eleven.” The relativists can go pound sand.
So, feel free to catch “Black Christmas” if you must – there won’t be any zealots waiting to throw rocks at your head while you stand in line. And don’t worry if you missed “Miracle on 34th Street” the first time around.
You’ll have about 167 opportunities to catch it before the end of next week.