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Atheists Get Their "Brokeback Mountain" Moment in the New Sundance Film, "The Ledge&q
Shanadeus
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The Ledge
Trailer for the movie:
http://youtu.be/IZFX7C1a94U
I was quite taken by the trailer, I don't think I've ever seen an Atheist painted in such positive light in a big film.
Write-up from the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science:
What are your thoughts?
Do you think that the U.S.A is on the verge of a drastic change when it comes to the public's perception of Atheists as has happened before (and is happening) with african-americans and homosexual americans?
Trailer for the movie:
http://youtu.be/IZFX7C1a94U
After embarking on a passionate affair with his evangelical neighbor's wife (Liv Tyler), Gavin (Charlie Hunnam) soon finds himself in a battle of wills that will have life-or-death consequences. As an atheist, Gavin is lured by his lover's husband (Patrick Wilson) to the ledge of a high rise and told he has one hour to make a choice between his life or the one he loves. Without belief in an afterlife, will he be able to make a decision? It's up to police officer Hollis (Terrence Howard) to save both their lives, but the clock is ticking.
I was quite taken by the trailer, I don't think I've ever seen an Atheist painted in such positive light in a big film.
Write-up from the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science:
New York (NY) (May 16, 2011) - Social progress is defined by wakeup moments, when a book or film draws such attention to a cause that it can no longer be crushed or ignored. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner changed the way people thought about interracial marriage. Brokeback Mountain woke a mainstream audience to the cruel consequences of homophobia. The Ledge, the first film to feature an openly atheist hero in a Hollywood production, hopes to achieve similar advances for atheists.
In communities across America where churches are socially and politically dominant, many atheists and agnostics stay in the closet to avoid hatred and isolation. Americans dislike atheists even more than gays and lesbians. According to a Gallup poll, 55% of Americans would vote for a President who was gay or lesbian, while only 45% would vote for an atheist. The Ledge, with A-list stars including Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Patrick Wilson (Watchmen, Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe nominee), Liv Tyler (The Lord of the Rings), and Terrence Howard (Crash, Academy Award nominee), provides an antidote: an imperfect but heroic atheist who is not afraid to say what he believes - even if it leads to his death.
"As we learn more about the universe and ourselves, religion will inevitably give way to atheism," says Matthew Chapman, writer and director of The Ledge. Census figures back him up. Non-belief is the fastest growing "religion" in America. People - particularly the young - are embracing atheism in spite of the risk of being ostracized by religious families, friends, and neighbors. Best-selling books like "The God Delusion" and "God Is Not Great" show that public interest in atheism is high.
Chapman has a personal connection to the atheist cause. He is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, who discovered evolution and set science on a collision course with religion in the most heated way since Galileo. "Like many people, I am fed up with fundamentalism attacking science, dominating politics, and persecuting gays. To believe in a God who tosses almost all his creations into a lake of fire for eternity is to approve of a kind of cruelty that is unimaginable to me. It's time to grow up, reject Bronze Age superstition, and replace it with simple compassion and reason."
Nominated for Best US Drama at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, The Ledge opens on the rooftop of a city skyscraper, as Detective Hollis (Terrance Howard) pleads with Gavin (Charlie Hunnam) not to jump. Hollis soons learns that Gavin's reasons for jumping involve Shana (Liv Tyler) and Joe (Patrick Wilson), her fundamentalist husband. These relationships are seen in flashbacks as Gavin explains his situation to Hollis. Tension escalates from verbal shots to a lethal game in a race against time that neither God nor the police can stop.
"I want Christians and other believers to watch The Ledge and see that atheists have a valid point of view," says Chapman. "There are a lot of us, we are thinking people, we care about many of the same issues as believers, and yet we are rarely heard and widely hated. I hope atheists who are still in the closet will take heart from the film and think, 'I am not alone.'"
What are your thoughts?
Do you think that the U.S.A is on the verge of a drastic change when it comes to the public's perception of Atheists as has happened before (and is happening) with african-americans and homosexual americans?
Shanadeus on
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Maybe if the movie is any good, but the trailer isn't, and it's not getting good reviews (at least not according to RT).
I feel so out of the loop. I didn't know atheism needed a "Brokeback Mountain" moment.
Whats the big atheist catch here?
There's just a common belief that atheists are amoral creatures because of their lack of belief in God, and thus his holy laws. What the director wishes for is that this movie would work as an eye opener when it comes to atheism, and contribute to it's acceptance - just as Brokeback Mountain did in a way.
If this director is openly trying to make a movie that will cause atheist to be more accepted then he's probably failing from the start. And judging by the little of the product we can see, he did fail. It looks uninteresting, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to see it on its own merits.
If I were more cynical I'd say this is a canny marketing ploy to get a bunch of free advertising and ticket sales for a ho-hum film that would get zero attention otherwise.
Oh yeah, this is going to go over really well.
no
Coming from that point of view, I don't see any indication American views on atheism are beginning to shift and I doubt this film will bring about or contribute to such a shift in any meaningful way.
I can't believe that americans like atheists less than muslims. And that half of american's wouldn't vote for an athiest president? I feel like I live on a different planet sometimes.
Sadly no, probably not. The concept of atheism is so profoundly misunderstood by the majority of people in the general public that we are probably a fair amount of time away from increased acceptance of atheists.
If they really wanted to be as smart as they're pretending they could maybe not make the movie's villain a crazy strawman religious person.
Maybe "cartoonish"? I mean for fucks sake the movie revolves around him putting the guy in a terrible death trap or else he'll kill his own wife? Why not just put her in a giant fucking tube like Riddler in Batman Forever
Brokeback Mountain was a lousy movie of one-dimensional characters obsessing over their sexuality and being rather dumb. The Ledge appears to be a lousy movie featuring one-dimensional characters obsessing over religion while ignoring the fact that there is a reason you do not make deals with terrorists and hostage-takers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_2jsE-ywA
I would agree with Bama, strawman might not be the best comparison. I have had conversations with religious people that hit on many, if not all of these same arguments. Some delivered pretty much word for word.
If you've heard anything in that scene repeated word for word you need to fire your life's writers
I don't think it's quite that suprising. Religious people hear an argument against atheism that they feel is convincing and it gets repeated. Of course my conversations have not gone exactly the same way as that entire scene did, but I can guarantee that I have been presented with those same arguments/defenses at one point or another during a discussion.
Atheism is, on a very basic (and understandable, but to that we come later..) level, alien and possibly scary to many religious people.
I will try to explain why I think this might be the case:
First, I will now make a few simplifications, because obviously people are motivated by a complex set of incentives laid down by their upbringing, environment, social circles, biology, original thought and many other things, but for the sake of this argument, let's just look at some basic motivators, as I will call them.
First, you have the process of thought which leads to a person calling and considering themselves religious.
The groundwork is often laid in the early childhood, but it doesn't have to;
You have the feelings nagging all of us, the fears:
of being alone, of your surroundings behaving in unexplainable, influenceable way, of death (or not? maybe not? hopefully not?), of loss.
Then, to contrast this, you have the happy:
Love (for your parents, your partner, your children, your friends, your community, your city, your country, or even for every thing there is), Success, Luck, and many happy.
For a reason unknown to me (and this is not in any way meant to be derogatory, I will explain), these things cause chaos in people, and religion is a way out of this. I'm not saying it's an "easy way out", because there really is no easy way out to any of us, but it is a way to lead a life without constant distress caused by these contrasts.
So now, what I wanted to explain what I meant by the reason unknown to me, personally; Since I was a young child, I didn't accept the notion of a higher being. It was, as far back as I can remember, never a real possibility to me, personally, and it was only when I was older that I could start to accept, even love existence on its very own, as it is a thing of almost imaginable beauty.
But I can very well see how to someone whose mind lead them to religion instead, it's a hard thing to accept that someone can navigate through the turmoils of our momentary existences without it, even without touching on anything else this can turn into, just on the very basic level.
Now, how can we understand each other? I think, how hippie this might sound, that love is the way, and many religions have a core of this in them. Once we love every fellow man and thing, you will only want their best and they will want your best. Is this possible?
there are no gay atheists?
Hell, most of the conversations *I* get hit with are WORSE. Halfway in the fightin' fundy starts making straw-men and assumptions about how I must "hate god". That clip? That's just the nice, cleaned-up, friendly arguments. The "most logical" of religious defenses.
Side note, the atheist seems to be a dirty foreigner with a weird foreign accent. I'm not sure how that helps dispel the illusion that atheists are a dirty and hated "other" in need of destruction.
Portmanteaus are awesome.
I won't argue that atheism and specific religion are (probably) mostly defined through your surroundings (because obviously, how to believe in a holy book if there is none?), but I think this line of thinking is too easy.
The human brain has a highly complex and powerful pattern recognition system, add curiosity and self-reflection to that and something is bound to happen.
Christians, for the most part, will recognize that another Christian, even one of a different denomination, will have relatively the same values. More progressive Christians will see that Islamic and Jewish people will have similar morals too.
Many Christians, seeing God as the ultimate source of all values, won't understand where an atheist's morals come from. They might not even see how an atheist has morals. The atheist can be as slippery and frightening as a sociopath.
Of course, what a lot of people fail to see - atheists included - is that except for extremists, most people's morals are vaguely similar regardless of religious affiliation. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, don't murder. We all put our pants on one leg at a time and take the same roads and trains to the same jobs and eat the same meals - so an atheist like Muse Among Men might say "I don't know many religious people" without knowing that there are religious people in the same workplace or classes or neighborhood. Meanwhile there's some Christian somewhere making an equal but opposite statement "I don't know many atheists" having no idea that the nice guy living next door is an atheist.
Why does that matter? Either way, you're practicing a lifestyle that your family might despise. Lifting the veil of secrecy has the potential to be very stressful.
I didn't "choose" to stop believing in Jesus when I stopped believing in Santa Claus, it just kinda happened. I'm still part of a marginalized group that is repeatedly told I should just sit down, shut up, and get with their program. I still find it somewhat dangerous to admit what I do and do not believe in certain surroundings and circumstances.
However if you are offended by the use of the term "[strike]marriage[/strike]coming out" because it is "your term" and others aren't ALLOWED to use it take heart that I do not, for the most part, nor do I call it "coming out as a democrat" here in lovely Texas despite having to hide THAT from certain concerned parties as well.
Was that over-the-top? I can never tell...
1. The atheist since birth.
2. The atheist that arrived to that truth over time.
3. The reactionary atheist that had an unfavorable experience in a religious setting (i.e. the ex-Catholic atheist).
Rarely do we see atheists in America that rail against Buddhism or Sikhism or Hinduism. They focus their energies on the massive Christian machine (and this is for good reason), but this focus clearly highlights the socialcultural undercurrent that runs through atheistic thought.
These can be further coupled with bad religious experiences as a queer person, and then you get the gaytheists. Either way, my criticism is solely on the use of deeply personal queer inclusive language at atheist meetings when people talk about how they came out to their coworker about not going to church. I do recognize that atheism is deeply personal to people and very serious business, but no one is getting dragged from trucks for not lovin' up some God every sunday. Perhaps this will change as Atheism becomes more visible, or louder in its message, but I can't help but be annoyed when I go to atheist meetings and hear people sit in a circle and highlight how their coworkers are sheeple and that as "brights" they have to constantly "come out" and "fight the good fight".
Is that sarcastic? I honestly can't tell.
This is the second Batman Forever Riddler reference in this thread. That is two too many.
Anyway, I've hit the point where I have nothing to offer this thread! I came here because I saw a crappy movie trying to get cheap heat by pretending to be socially relevant which always gets my hackles up but now we have actual debate going on!
Better debate than will be in this movie, most likely!
Brokeback Mountain is a really good movie. I have no idea what you're talking about.
When the director bends the work around his agenda (political, social, or otherwise) it tends to produce a crappy, one-sided, condescending piece of crap.
See: Rapa nui, The Postman, Apocalypto, Glee, Bibleman, Left Behind, etc
I cannot remember the social message in The Postman
Likely because I fell asleep halfway through it