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Ever wondered where this meme image came from? Well, sit back, relax, and I’ll spin you the yarn.
Buddy Christ here is from a 1999 satirical comedy (think Good Omens meets The DaVinci Code meets Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) by the name of Dogma, written and directed by Kevin Smith, that I had the pleasure to have as the first movie on my 52 Movies in 2018 List. Dogma is the story of a Catholic abortion clinic worker called upon by the powers of God him…her…themselves to stop two fallen angels from exploiting a loophole to get back into Heaven and erasing all of existence in the process.
At first glance, this movie seems the sort that was made purely to mock religious institutions, and it does do that, but in rare form, it does something more as well. Throughout Dogma there is a pervading sense of faith: faith lost, faith found, faith in oneself, faith in others, and faith in a higher power. While this is present, however, the movie never shies away from questioning it. Often in comedic, downright bizarre ways, though there are a handful of scenes – particularly one where Bethany (played by lovely Linda Fiorentino) and Metatron (played by the late yet eternally badass Alan Rickman) talk about Jesus and how fucked up it was to burden a 12 year old with the knowledge of the divine, or the moment when Loki (played by a young blond Matt Damon) and Bartleby (played by Ben Affleck) switch characteristics, Loki becoming the silent sympathetic watcher while Bartleby becomes the justice-hungry genocidal maniac, to name but a couple – that go completely, balls-to-the-wall serious, and they do it awesomely.
But enough about how this movie surprises! Let’s delve deep into it, shall we?
We should start with the man that brought it all together: Kevin Smith.
I have a particular fondness for this man, reserved only for those that simultaneously don’t give a fuck and yet inexplicably manage to care. This can be showcased perfectly in two instances:
Kevin Smith joins a group of protesters against his own movie because he thinks it would be funny.
Kevin Smith not only renounces Weinstein, but donates residuals from Weinstein-made movies to women in film.
This is the type of guy, and possibly the only type of guy, that could make a movie like this work, and he does. Questions about gender and racial bias in the Bible, as well as the commercialization of religion go hand-in-hand with an inherent respect for faith. Dogma isn’t about learning to hate religion or belief – it’s about retaining the ability to question that belief, or else risk losing what makes faith important in the first place: the idea that, while eternal, it can change and grow.
It’s also always important to point out music. HOWARD SHORE. Yep! Howard Shore created the score for this movie, and you can feel it, too. Shore scores know how to pull off the epic journey feel, whether it be a journey to Mount Doom or a small church in New Jersey.
So we have the writer/director, we have the composer, now the last yet most important part: the Cast. The Main Ones, at least.
There’s Bethany Sloane, the unfortunately heterosexual (really, it’s very unfortunate) questioning Catholic main character, and the great-great-great-etc-etc-great grandniece of Jesus Christ.
There’s Jay (played by a very 90s Jason Mewes), a constantly high, talkative, bisexual-why-won’t-he-just-admit-it, sex-crazed Prophet, and his, as he so wonderfully puts it, ‘Hetero Life Mate’, Silent Bob (played by none other than Kevin Smith himself), another Prophet that manages to endear despite only having a handful of words throughout the entire movie.
There’s Rufus (played by Chris Rock), the 13th Apostle left out of the Bible because he’s black who comes back to Earth to help Bethany in her quest.
And there’s Serendipity (played by the always lovely Selma Hayek), a muse with writer’s block and quite a lot of wonderful things to say about how women are treated in the Bible, much like how Rufus has quite a lot of wonderful things to say about how anyone that isn’t white is treated. If you couldn’t tell by my constant use of ‘wonderful’, I love these two.
Together, this group has to stop a pair of renegade angels from getting back into Heaven, Loki (no, not that Loki. This one was the Angel of Death and, no, they never explain it) and Bartleby (once a Watcher, he was the one that convinced his boyfrie–cough, uh, friend to give up being an Angel of Death, and because of this they were both kicked out of Paradise and into Wisconsin for all eternity).
NOW would be a good time to explain how two Fallen Angels plan to get back into Heaven, I think. It’s really quite simple: due to greed and a need to be ‘relevant’ again, a small Catholic church in New Jersey starts a campaign called Catholicism WOW!, which is where Buddy Christ comes from, as a way to convince people that the Catholic Church is friendly and more than deserving of their patronage. To cement this fact, that small Catholic church in Red Bank, New Jersey holds a re-dedication ceremony, and anyone that enters the church during the re-dedication festivities will receive a plenary indulgence, pardoning all sins and permitting direct entry into Heaven.
Essentially, this loophole is their ticket home, as well as obvious proof that God is fallible, and if God is fallible? All creation is, too.
Which brings us to why the Hell this all begins.
(Pledge a dollar on my Patreon to read the rest!)
Also the bishop of Catholicism WOW is the late George Carlin. Which is about the most perfect casting imaginable.
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