Children in tears with convulsions and some of them even looking possessed: this would be the perfect plot for a new horror movie. Sadly, we are talking about a documentary, named "Jesus Camp", about an authentic evangelical summer camp for kids and their families.
Talking about "Jesus camp" and being impartial doing it is really difficult. Actually, it's almost impossible for me.
A good thing about this movie is that the directors realized a very balanced product, in which the attention to the protagonists never becomes derision, nor they try to show us just the most interesting parts of the protagonists' personality.
The things that got me really upset about this camp are not the ideas that they are trying to teach to these kids, such as abortion as a murder or the non existence of the global warming. I don't agree with them, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The problem is how they teach them these ideas, turning them into acts of violence. They practice this indoctrination to kids that are four, five year old using brain-washing methods, also used by the best marketing experts. Their final goal, as one of the protagonists says, is to create an army of God. What can we understand from this declaration if not an obvious desire of religious war?
It's also true, as Becky Fisher, one of the directors of the camp, says, that in the Middle East exist camps like that one, just for muslims. But, since I hate every kind of fundamentalism, it being religious or atheist or whatever, I think that this Bible camp is just scaring.
They treat topics like abortion or president Bush in a very superficial way, without using irony or any boundary that are always necessary when you talk to really little kids.
The three kids that are followed by the documentary crew are really interesting not just for their strong faith but also for their optimism. They really want to change the world and spread the ideas they believe in.
I don't doubt that these kids, as grown-ups, could really use their belonging to God's army as a way to make the world better, but I can't help myself thinking of them as strong opponents of the civil rights or as the next invaders of an helpless country.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
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