Sunday, September 4, 2011

180: an Atheist review of the propaganda film.

FROM TWITTER:
"180Movie Please go and write a review for #180movie if you have seen the Trailer or have been given opportunity to watch the entire film....
"

Well if you've been reading this blog, you know that we have been in possession of a copy of 180, through the sheer incompetence of Living Waters Publications.

And since they have requested a review, I will give a review all right, a godless one!!


The propaganda film done by the same people who have have such brilliant ideas that the banana is proof of the existence of God, thought they would tackle the hot-button topic of abortion.

Of course, Ray Comfort being the master of clumsy argumentation, and with his tendencies to want to shock people, almost like an evangelical Howard Stern, thought it would be brilliant to compare the medical procedure of abortion to the holocaust.

The movie starts up with footage of young people who seem to not know who Adolf Hitler is. This rip-off of Rick Mercer's "Talking To Americans" pretty sets up the tone of the entire video, making you wonder how many interviews that Ray Comfort did go through to find absolutely gullible people.

Then we break into dramatic music with public domain footage of Hitler being himself. While Comfort begins with his flim-flamery, only to intersect it with footage of people who are about as delusional as he is, most noteworthy is a "Nazi punk" who obviously with his out of decade looks obviously never heard of one particular song by the Dead Kennedys.

Then after MORE footage of the mustached uni-testicular despot (Not Ray), We witness one of Ray Comfort's specialties, the bait-and-switch, where you see footage of young people, mostly young women, who are tricked into answering one question;

"It is ok to kill a baby in the womb, When..."

Of course, anyone who is savvy enough will tell you that in the womb and at the time most abortions are done it is referred to as a fetus and not a "child". But Ray is careful in picking those who aren't wise to his carnival-barker tactics and soon enough he gets them into changing their minds on camera.

Then we find ourselves subjugated to the patented method of evangelism created by Ray Comfort, the good person test, his famous rail-roaded form of dialog in which only one answer can be given since;

A) Ray won't allow other answers.
B) Ray will ignore any answers that don't fit in his script.

The only use I have for this movie, since it fails in convincing me of anything other that Ray is a scumbag, is to demonstrate Godwin's Law or show film students how NOT to make a documentary. Seeing Ray's performance and attempts at sounding competent reminds me of Shakespeare Macbeth famous quote;

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

And that is indeed the nature of 180. It is a cacophony that will do a 180 upon it's authors, akin to throwing up in a hurricane.

2 comments:

  1. You say he has clumsy argumentation. Please give your argument in response to what he has said.

    Either life is precious or it is not?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Life is neither precious or without worth. It's just life. To lend it any characteristics other than the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, falls into wishful thinking.

      Delete