By David Ross. I’ve always considered myself on Kevin Smith’s side. I love salty and unguarded talk. As a spigot of quotable material, Kevin Smith (see here) rivals John Mayer and Tarantino, whose brains likewise seem not to have evolved the internal p.c. censors the rest of us are equipped with. Though it may involve the lowest kind of potty humor, such talk is always close to literature in its impulse to amuse itself and flout any interfering proprieties. At the same time, I could bear only a few minutes of Smith’s stand-up film Too Fat for Forty (2010). I didn’t mind the anti-Bush jabs in concept, but I very much minded their pandering obviousness and staleness. When Red State came along soon after, I girded myself for the worst. I expected a muddle of hysterical smears: a Garafalo-meets-Tarantino gorefest.
As advertised, Red State tears into both evangelicalism and the post-9/11 security apparatus. The Reverend Abin Cooper is the leader of a small Branch Davidian-like flock whose services incorporate ritual murder of kidnapped sinners. The ATF and FBI careerists who raid his compound on trumped up terrorist charges are little better. Arguably they’re worse. Their own brand of murder is bureaucratic and amoral. They murder on behalf of their resumes and pensions. No surprises so far. Evangelicals – evil. Patriot Act and its enforcers – equally evil.
The weird swerve involves Smith’s sneaking admiration for Cooper, who’s suavely played by Tarantino veteran Michael Parks. Smith rejects the trustiest cliché in the anti-evangelical arsenal by declining to portray Cooper as a hypocrite. I was sure Cooper was going to be unveiled in an unsurprising ‘surprise’ ending as a homosexual, child molester, cross-dresser, or sex-crazed bigamist. But no! He practices what he preaches. Nor is Cooper a coward, a fool, or a monster, though of course he commits terrible crimes in the name of God. Against all odds and expectations, he emerges as a seductive anti-hero who recalls no less a figure than Francis Marion Tarwater, the backwoods prophet of Flannery O’Connor’s masterpiece The Violent Bear it Away. Cooper is impossible not to like, even as he’s impossible not to abhor.
Furthermore, the movie to some extent credits Cooper’s critique of the secular circus tent, allowing him ample and genuine lease to rail against its sex saturation, spiritual bankruptcy, and consumerism. Unlike the articulate and intelligent pastor, the three teenage sex trawlers lured into the reverend’s trap are fetid weaklings: wan from their hours of X-rated screen time, trapped in an animal condition of arrested adolescence. This critique of the secular teenager snaps into focus after we meet Cheyenne, the lovely young evangelical who attempts to evacuate the flock’s children as government forces initiate their Gotterdammerung. Cheyenne is the film’s only uncompromised figure. We can only infer that the reverend has in some manner succeeded where the apathetic parents and sanctimoniously liberal high school teacher we meet at the start of the film have failed. He has at least one courageous and fully formed adult to show for his efforts; they have nothing whatsoever to show for theirs.
This subliminal identification with Cooper is logical in its way. The comic book punk and the backwoods preacher will dispute which orifices are meant to accommodate the male member, but they share a penchant for robust language, a paranoid mistrust of the government-corporate axis of evil, a thorough contempt for the complacency of the suburban consumer and the celebrity hypocrite. Each rebels against modern sterility and torpor. Each would gladly piss in Susan Sarandon’s pool or tattoo something horrible on Charlie Rose’s forehead.
Red State will offend evangelicals and conservatives. Whatever its fascinating ambivalences, it remains an assault. Even so, it does not merely spew anti-Red State bile. Smith has tried to create a nuanced and intricate social parable – somewhat failing, but not for lack of serious intent. Certainly Red State far surpasses the ambitions of Smith’s earlier films. I begin to understand Smith’s ‘implosion’ (see here) after Hollywood sniffed at his film for a variety of reasons not unrelated to what I’ve said above. He was so particularly stung because this time he had tried – really tried – to be more than a smart-ass.
Posted on November 15th, 2011 at 12:25am.
Like everything in the life of the true believers for the left or right, We’re still fighting the last war. My reaction to this movie ultimately was “whatever”(yes I’m one of the one percent that watched this movie) and so now Kevin you’re telling us We ALL have a point. I guess the sequel was going to be “Now can’t We all get along with the leftest wolf in sheep’s clothing that currently occupies the White House” because it’s good of the country. No thank you Kevin. I listen to what people say and more importantly I watch what they do. A variation on Ronald Reagan’s “Trust but verify”. Since 2006, I’ve watched what they’ve been doing and it’s not been pretty and it probably can’t be undone.(maybe in June 2012 and prayerfully in November 2012)
Wow … I would’ve never thought this film was any more than a “muddle of hysterical smears: a Garafalo-meets-Tarantino gorefest” as David said.
I think I’ll actually give this a shot.
If only TV would start catching on to the push towards serious intent; honest critiques of the faithful are always welcome. I took Blue Bloods off the DVR after its latest offering: a prostitute was killed. Guess who did it, her blond Christian mother or a local crazy?
Feh!