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Respect

Entry 281, on 2006-02-08 at 15:04:47 (Rating 5, Comments)

After the excitement of the Muslim cartoons fiasco I started thinking about how other groups might react to disrespectful material aimed at them. The first suspects of course, were the Christians. I wondered whether there had been much material insulting to them, and if there had been any, how had they reacted.

A recent controversy seemed to center around the "Bloody Mary" episode of South Park. The plot involves a statue of the Virgin Mary which begins to bleed - out of her ass (sounds a bit disrespectful, wouldn't you say?). So in the program people begin to flock around it to find a cure for their diseases. Randy (a South Park character) believes it can heal him of his alcoholism. So he is drenched in the holy blood, and declares he will not drink anymore. Then things get bizarre. Pope Benedict XVI comes to investigate, and discovers that the blood is not actually coming from the Holy Mother's ass - but her vagina. Since "chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time," this is no miracle, and Randy realizes God did not heal him.

It goes on to point out that he healed himself because he believed he would be healed. It all sounds very distasteful and nasty, but is it? Personally, I think it is perfectly legitimate satire. Catholics don't like it, of course. OK, if you are a Catholic, don't watch it. Just because someone believes in something totally crazy (like many Christian beliefs including the virgin birth, creation, etc) and says its religious doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't lampoon it! Religion should be open to the same criticism as politics, science (there's plenty of anti-Darwin satire), social issues, etc.

There was pressure brought from Catholics to ban the program, and it was dropped from a series of re-runs of South Park. But they say it will be included in future DVD releases. So the pressure was partly successful.

In my opinion, this was much more insulting than the Mohammed cartoons, but there have been no buildings burned, or people killed in protests. The response was in proportion to the "crime". Fair enough - well done the Christians.

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