When we turn on a television set, we get a range of channels to keep us informed and entertained for all the 7 days of a week. When we browse the internet, an ocean of information floods at a click of a mouse. I guess we are just way to lucky to live in this era of advanced technology. These media plays a very crucial role in our day to day life in shaping our beliefs, perceptions, ideas, values and our behaviour in the society. It is a powerful medium of education and entertainment in numerous ways. But did we ever stop for a while and think what impact exactly is the media leaving on you, me, our family, on the coming generation and the society?

Our society is rampant with corruption, crime, etc. and many a times media plays the role of adding fuel to aggressive behaviour, violence, sex, obscenity etc. however more over in the younger generation.

The following two posts will deal with such issues. It is to be noted that the following posts are analysis of five research papers each post. The first post will be a brief analysis on the effects of violence in media and the second on the sexual content in media. Each post has a bibliography of the research papers followed for this project.

20 October 2012

Religulous: Movie Review


Religulous is a 2008 American comic documentry film written by and starring comedian Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles. The title of the film is derived from the words "religion" and "ridiculous". The documentary examines and mocks organized religion and religious beliefs. 
A range of views on various world religions is explored as Bill Maher travels to numerous religious destinations including Jerusalem, the Vatican, interviewing believers from a variety of backgrounds and groups.
Religulous begins with Bill Maher, standing alone in Israel a worthless pile of rubble where many of the planet’s religions believe the end of the world will begin. From there, Maher pushes us into an intense, honest, and brutally funny discussion of blind belief, presenting the possibility that maybe we should all consider doubt instead. He makes us follow him around the world, as he travels from place to place talking to religious people of different faiths on different continents. The surprising thing here is that even though Maher definitely has an agenda, his movie never distort into the territory of misinformation.

He talks to truckers in a roadside chapel, he chats with random, middle-class tourists at a Christian-themed amusement park. He talks to religious shop owners, small town preachers, Jews for Jesus, U.S. Senators, Vatican priests, religious scientists, gay Muslims, people in America, Europe, and even in Jerusalem. These are for the most part sane, rational, even intelligent people who believe something which Maher believes is insane.


The first half of the film is mostly focused on Christians, how they believe in things like a 5,000-year-old earth, etc. Ever the equal-opportunity atheist, Maher spends the second half of the film undermining religions and cults of every shape and size and even gets high with a leader of a religion based around marijuana. He goes to the Vatican and interviews some crazy Catholic priest, and Jerusalem to deconstruct Judaism and Islam. Maher is particularly hard on Islam, offering somewhat surprising pronouncements about the inherent violence and of that most touchy of all world religions.


All along the journey, Maher and Charles jazz up the images with mocking voiceovers and music, and some very clever quick-cut editing. It's stylishly presented, to be sure, but for all its showiness, Religulous is ultimately a very unpredictable movie.
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