#burningbothends

I was JUST talking about this with my GF!

It was the part where it painted the entire Egyptian pantheon as charlatanism perpetrated by con men.

ADDED TO WHICH that entire song was wildly mismatched with the entire rest of the movie to the point that it was painful.  I mean, you have fricking Ofra Haza lighting it up in Deliver Us, breaking my heart and moving me nearly to tears, and then you have … Playing With the Big Boys.  Fricking yikes.

So, like, I 100% get why, narratively, they had to show the viewer “Look, nothing else is real, this One True God thing?  This is absolutely it.”  Because that’s arguably a fundamental part of the story here and you really can’t get away with saying “Only not really!” and still be telling the story of Moses from Moses’s point of view.  

The movie is not a historical thing.  It is a religious story.  It is coming from a place of genuine belief and makes zero claims at any point to be objective, and I think that is part of what makes it really interesting and valuable, but in order to be that you must address the elephant in the room, you must deal not just with a conflict of faith, but with a conflict of faith in which one side – your viewpoint side – is monotheistic and utterly denies the validity of other gods, and the other side has enormous spiritual weight behind it.

I get that, and so the fact that the gods of the Egyptians were treated as not-real by the story doesn’t bother me as much as it might.

What bothers me is how it was handled in that sequence, which is badly.  I’m sure they could have come up with a better way.  Even if it was just “Look, your gods are silent and don’t do anything to answer anyone’s prayers because they are not real, but my God creates wonders, miracles, and horrors that are VERY REAL.”  But they went down the con men and cheap tricks route and I feel like that really failed the core conflict between faiths by treating it as so ridiculous and corrupt there is no contest.

You really can’t give short shrift like that to a religion that was ancient at the time and which had tremendous weight and power both religiously and politically because the two were inherently and inextricably intertwined.  You can’t get away with painting it as foolery perpetrated over literal millennia.  You just can’t call that many believers over that much time stupid, foolish, credulous, or whatever.  It was more meaningful than that, more important than that, and it was a very genuine thing, not a hoax perpetrated by priests.

So like, I get that to tell the tale of the exodus from Egypt from the standpoint of “this is not just true, but True” you need to go there.  But I think they did it in a really disingenuous way when they could have dealt with it on a deeper level and come out of it much better.

The thing that struck me most about the movie is just how increasingly terrifying it was for Moses to have to watch what was happening, just how scary they allowed what was depicted as God’s very real power to be.  The Death of the Firstborn sequence was terrifying.  And no apologies are made for that, which I found astonishing, and which I really appreciated.  You could see Moses’s dread and his sorrow, and you could see that he didn’t want this, that his service was not weightless and didn’t absolve him of his feelings of responsibility to other human beings and didn’t, to him, make everything okay and make it painless to do what had to be done.  It was painful for him.  And that is not depicted as a bad thing.  His doubt and fear and pain is not depicted as disobedience, disloyalty, or any of that.  It’s just allowed to be.  God is allowed to be terrible, you are allowed to be afraid, and no apologies need to be made for either of those things.  And I was so, so surprised by that.

Given that they dealt with what is one of the most viscerally disturbing parts of the whole story on such a direct and straightforward level, I feel like they could have handled the conflict of religions in a better and more honest way, and had a better movie.

vampire - Immortality seems like after awhile things would get monotonous and boring as fuck... I would have to say no.

werewolf -  My significant other! Because I would love to have both a best friend and a lover.

faerie - I would get away with stealing a car... because honestly I need one right now...

banshee - I would do whatever they wanted! Ice cream would definitely have to be involved in some way though...

I'm not judging you for eating a whole pack of wagon wheels xox

This is evil, do you know how much scrolling I needed to do for this? :'(

3) Eye color

Green!

25) One thing I used to do but don't do any more

Read, I keep trying to get back into it but I just don't have the attention span for it anymore :(

33) Worst personality trait

I have next to no self discipline, which you know at university is a fucking grand thing to have! Also means I will always eat a full pack of Wagon Wheels in one sitting

48) 5 favorite celebrities

This a really hard one bc I don't really follow them

Zach Braff

Simon Pegg

Nick Frost

David Mitchell 

56) Play any instrument

I used to pretend I could play guitar when I was like 14 and I was fucking baller at it, but I can't actually play anything besides the electric triangle =/

67) Do I believe in unexplained phenomena

3. When’s the last time you were aggravated and happy at the same time? Probably a couple days ago when i was super happy about my paper subject but its a lot of work

17. When was the last time you cried? I cried today on the phone with my mom talking about how i lost my grandmother's necklace. it was the last thing she gave me before she died when i was 8 years old and i feel super bad i lost it on campus.

45. Do you have any pictures on your Facebook? yessss too many!

56. Do you think you like someone? I think so, but it might just be physical feelings. I've definitely had something for him for several months. but i just have crushes on everyone on campus.... everyone is so pretty.

78. Anyone you’re giving up on? yes. the person i think i might have feelings for. i am giving up on having an emotional thing with them.

79. Currently wanting to see anyone? I am planning on asking this guy from a team i'm on. he's so sweet and attractive.