...save me
...these were the words which concluded the movie 8MM except for the epilogue. It wasn't what I would call an enjoyable movie, in fact in places it was quite sickening, but it was a good movie. The story follows a young PI (Nicholas Cage) who has been hired to find out whether what appears to be a snuff film is real (for those of you who don't know a snuff film is a film in which someone is actually being murdered, generally with S&M overtones). It takes Cage into the underworld of pornography led by a sleazy adult bookstore attendant (Jaoquin Phoenix).
These closing words were so ept for in the course of the movie Cage was taken into the depths of earthly hell. People are reduced to objects and degraded and humilated and engage in this willingly. He sees the underside of the pornography industry and is disgusted by what he sees. He cannot understand why people do this why they do these things to one another. He cannot believe that people do this because they can and because they enjoy it.
By not respecting themselves people degrade themselves. By not viewing ourselves as immortal and by not seeing the intimate, inseparable unity of the human being mind, body, and soul we do horrible things to ourselves believing that it has no effect upon us. Also, when we allow or worse encourage people to abuse themselves in this way for our titilation we are taking their humanity and reducing to mere objects for our pleasure. Both are sinning as I defined it in the last post where sin rather than being a breaking of some law is a lack of wholeness, a failure to be all that we were meant to be. Also there is the sin of failing to grant others their wholeness. We can steal the wholeness of others and we are guilty whether or not they offer it up freely.
-random postscript: this is the problem with the Prostitution Law reform in NZ. I agree that it is just and right that it was unfair that the client was not prosecuted while the provider was, because both are equally culpable. For without one there could not be the other. And the argument that a woman seeking to support her children by the means she can is valid. However, that is just the point: what is wrong with society where the only way that some women can support themselves is by selling themselves to anyone? Should not the government not be looking at ways to provide for all of its citizens in ways that builds them all up and increases the wholeness and shalom of everyone.
These closing words were so ept for in the course of the movie Cage was taken into the depths of earthly hell. People are reduced to objects and degraded and humilated and engage in this willingly. He sees the underside of the pornography industry and is disgusted by what he sees. He cannot understand why people do this why they do these things to one another. He cannot believe that people do this because they can and because they enjoy it.
By not respecting themselves people degrade themselves. By not viewing ourselves as immortal and by not seeing the intimate, inseparable unity of the human being mind, body, and soul we do horrible things to ourselves believing that it has no effect upon us. Also, when we allow or worse encourage people to abuse themselves in this way for our titilation we are taking their humanity and reducing to mere objects for our pleasure. Both are sinning as I defined it in the last post where sin rather than being a breaking of some law is a lack of wholeness, a failure to be all that we were meant to be. Also there is the sin of failing to grant others their wholeness. We can steal the wholeness of others and we are guilty whether or not they offer it up freely.
-random postscript: this is the problem with the Prostitution Law reform in NZ. I agree that it is just and right that it was unfair that the client was not prosecuted while the provider was, because both are equally culpable. For without one there could not be the other. And the argument that a woman seeking to support her children by the means she can is valid. However, that is just the point: what is wrong with society where the only way that some women can support themselves is by selling themselves to anyone? Should not the government not be looking at ways to provide for all of its citizens in ways that builds them all up and increases the wholeness and shalom of everyone.
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