Infidel strategies

In the Kevin Smith movie Clerks II (2006) the main entrepreneurs are working in a fast food empire chain restaurant which is called Mooby the Calf. At the first glance is seems to be completely indifferent if what company they are working for apart from the fact that is resembles McDonald’s heavily, and no-one ever, even explicitly says a single line about the possible origins of the companies name. Neither do they in another of the directors movie the Dogma (1999) in which the company was first portrayed, also as a successful fast food chain restaurant.

The audience has to put together the picture themselves on this strange element of the movie: they have to figure out, mostly form Dogma, that Mooby in fact is not an average cow or calf, and her identity in not as a simple calf, but a golden one, hence she is the biblical golden calf the idol which was worshiped by the tribes of Israel during the events known as "Chet ha'Egel" (חטא העגל) or "The Sin of the Calf". It is first mentioned in Exodus 32:4 (Taha 20:83 in the Quran).



On 9/11 2001, right after the second plane hit the twin towers, I remember people all over the world becoming horrified by realizing that an organized attack if happening against New York and maybe Washington, an immediately started to figure out where the supposed other planes (whose number in the resulting communication chaos were 0 to 12, dependent on all different resources) shall strike down. Apart from the convenient Empire State Building, Capitol Hill, White House (which is just to small to be hit) one of the possible targets in people mind become the Statue of Liberty close to the twin towers.
With the Twin Towers, the places of ‘commerce and liberal world economy’ down, should “they” attack the remaining symbols of the Big Apple? Empire State Building is indeed a large building, but never held the same status as the Towers, being some kind of cordial center, the embodiment of western liberal economy, it rather belonged to a prewar, old colonialist era. Empire State Building was ever associated with King Kong, the ‘natural’ beast who would ‘use’ the building than topple it down. We must not have to forget that WTC was target of attacks even before 9/11, amongst which the most notable was the 1993 bombing of Tower 1. And never the less, Twin towers were taller than the Empire…

Why would anyone hit a statue, an idol of United States with a plane? There was some wicked symbolism in the act of hitting the WTC too, as those radicals was looking up to those buildings as “Towers of Satan”, but the sheer magnitude of destruction and the number of lives taken seemed to make the twin towers a more appealing target for the terrorists. Still, when we suspected a least half dozen more “plane-bomb” coming, some of our first thought was that the Liberty Statue could be hit.Never ever any of the characters in the movie say it openly, apart form Loki when he states that god will be pleased with his work at Moody’s because those people were committing idolatry. Leaving one of the most gruesome scene of the movie unresolved morally. There is a certain element of protest in the notion of leaving this fact in the shadows, allowing the audience to discover them later on, yet, we does not have to forget, that Dogma was attacked on every possible ground by Christian religious organizations as being a blasphemous movie. None the less, we might say that Dogma is one of the most notable and intellectual atheist parody on belief and organized religion up until now.

It seems not to be hard to state that Dogma is an essential secular movie, conveying the feelings and thoughts of young generation of East Coast (and any other we likes the movie) intellectuals towards the religious zeal they encounter in their daily life in the states and elsewhere.
Kevin Smith, the director, who later received at least serious death threats among the 300,000 hate mail he received because of this movie, said: ‘You gotta find the line, and then cross it.’
A very few movie caused such a controversy as this one, a satirical comedy on the Christian belief, and the movie become a much acclaimed portray of contemporary religion, referred by many as a perfect movie on the dogmatic, nonsecular practices of United States religious fundamentalism.
Why a comedy? Is being satirical seems to be the ultimate way to oppose non-secular religious fundamentalism? The obvious success of Dogma as an ironic gesture seems to strengthen this notion, yet, in another interview Smith states: Ever since 9/11, I have been thinking about a sequel of sorts. I mean, the worst terrorist attack on American soil was religiously bent. In the wake of said attack, the leader of the "Free World" outed himself as pretty damned Christian.(…)
This quote underlines the position of the filmmaker, so do his fans, including myself, a position which considers “being satirical” as the most adequate way of speaking on issues of organized religion. Could the notion of “being satirical” stems from some kind of late modernist attitude, which tries to understand religious belief in a strictly secular context, and try to not include it in a face to face debate ? By admitting to argue on a non obscured , non-satirical level, we might revoke our position, our very notion of secular state?

Being satirical is clearly an intellectual stance, or even an intellectual weapon. Most of the controversial artworks of the past years, which produced a large amount of furor among extremist fundamental religious groups were meant to be satirical: let’s take the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons as an example.

Why is there a notion of not to say something open in being satirical, as do Kevin Smith with Mooby in his understanding satire is an intellectual task.
What is the difference of being satirical and being straight up to?
Swift, Dickens, Dafoe, Huxley, Orwell, Aristophanes,

How to lose being satirical? Non-satirical responses to satirical acts.


On a possible sequel he says in the same interview full text: http://www.viewaskew.com/theboard/viewtopic.php?t=41221
Scary thing is this: the film would have to touch on Islam. And unlike the Catholic League, when those cats don't like what you do, they issue a death warrant on yer ass (see Rushdie). And now that I've got a family, I'm not as free to stir the shit-pot as I was when I was single, back when I made "Dogma". I mean, now I've gotta think about more than my own safety and well-being.

Secular strategy seems to stop at a certain point, as we might expect.