More on The Wrestler

Here is another take on the religious symbols in The Wrestler via The Revealer. Thanks to Bene for the suggestion.

The Wrestler is a movie all about redemptive suffering, as we see the central role that dramatized violence plays in the Ram's life. At a couple points this is made perhaps too clear, as in an early scene where Randy shows Cassidy the scars his career has left him with. She responds by quoting Isaiah 53:5 by way of The Passion of the Christ's opening epigraph: "He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by His wounds we are healed." She makes the connection even more clear moments later, dubbing Randy "the sacrificial Ram," and later in the film we see a tattoo in the center of his back of Jesus crowned with thorns. Clearly, the film wants us to view wrestling as a spectacle of redemptive suffering.

Read the rest here.

Reading the Religious in The Wrestler

I just discovered this on-line journal Religion Dispatches and what I've read so far is neat. You have to love a journal with the by-line "exhilarating the breakfast table since 2008."

There is a fascinating review of the movie The Wrestler looking at the religious symbolism and the religious ideas published yesterday. Here is a little taste of it.

Cassidy and Randy each work double lives, between their bodies as commodities and their bodies that have to pay the rent and support their children. Somewhere in all the meat are identities, struggling for birth. Each carries multiple names: Cassidy is “Pam,” while Randy “The Ram” Robinson is actually “Robin Raminski”—his character’s complexity unveils at least three names, as The Ram, Randy, and Robin. Yet, as with religion itself, and multitudes of other social structures, the crux of the matter of identity is the human body in all its aged protuberances, its scarified flesh, its rotund, risqué, and otherwise resolute features.

Read the rest here.

Reprieves

So the city has decided that trying to put a new line in might cause more problems than it solves so they aren't going to do it unless we have problems. Yeah! And the deadline for the piece I'm writing that I thought was this weekend has been extended to the middle of August. Yeah! And the toothache I've had for two days is gone this morning. Yeah!

The push to bring order to the chaos in my house is still on, however, and to that end I've been cleaning while watching Battlestar Galactica. It is a fascinating show and as I get closer to the end of it I'm beginning to have grief issues. I guess I will have to start rewatching the Sopranos when this is done. And then I'll look forward to September 18th when the 3rd season of Boston Legal is released. Already have it pre-ordered!

BG touches on all sorts of really interesting issues including whether or not is ethical to torture cylon prisoners since they aren't human. The show also has many religious symbols/themes running through it. The cylons return after a 40 year absence, the humans are searching for the promised land, they are led by the stars. Yet, I've decided that at its heart it is anti-Christian. The cylons are the ones who worship the One True God. It seems they aren't able to reproduce successfully and since their god has commanded them to be fruitful and multiply they capture and rape women and put them in baby farms in order to fulfil the commandments. The humans are either atheists or worship many gods like Zeus and Athena. The only human who worships the god of the cylons is the traitor in their midst who is collaborating with the cylons. I guess you could argue that this is a rejection of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Watching this is a bit like reading Philip Pullman's novels. You know they don't like your faith tradition but they are such good story-tellers you get sucked in anyway. Only two disks more and I'm done. Let's hope the house is in order by then!