PROVO — The two men sit across a desk from each other, one wearing a suit and a slight scowl and the other clad in the robes of a clergyman.
"The church owns 25 percent of a large corporation," says mafia head Don Michael Corleone. "You know the one I mean."
"The Corleones are prepared to deposit $500 million in the Vatican bank at such time as Mr. Corleone receives majority control," an assistant tells the Catholic archbishop. The man of the church considers this for a moment then responds, "Six hundred million."
"The Godfather Part III's" blatant portrayal of Catholic leadership as deal-making, money-hungry, mafia affiliates is just one of the many jabs from Hollywood against Catholicism. But Catholics aren't alone.
Nearly every faith — even the idea of religion in general — has been painted in an unflattering or erroneous light by producers and directors who are admittedly less religious than the general population, Brett H. Latimer pointed out during BYU's recent Campus Education Week.
Even when a specific faith isn't mentioned, the religious character often turns out to be the bad guy, said Latimer, who teaches American Heritage at the BYU Salt Lake Center.
In "A Few Good Men," Kiefer Sutherland's character proclaims a belief in God, yet is involved in a murder. In the "Flight of Black Angel," a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot is seen reading a Bible, yet later tries to drop a nuclear bomb on Las Vegas to punish the wicked city. Even John Goodman, the eye-patch-wearing-Cyclops-parodying bad guy in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is a Bible salesman.
Hollywood also steps the other way by choosing to ignore religion entirely, like in "Cast Away," a movie that parallels Robinson Crusoe — an "emphatically religious" book, Latimer said.
"He's desperately lonely but he never looks up," he said of Tom Hanks' character who has been marooned on an island. "For those of us who think about film and religion and what would be natural to do, that's not natural."
Along with "The Godfather," more Catholic-specific jabs have come from movies like "The Pope Must Die," "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Three Musketeers," which show church leaders and nuns as incompetent, unattractive and even sexually unrestrained.
Born-again Christians are often pegged by Hollywood as "simple-minded dupes," manipulated by thieving "faith healers" like Steve Martin in "Leap of Faith."
Mormons have often been portrayed as odd or dangerous fanatics — yet even if religion isn't specifically mentioned, merely linking a character to Utah — like the religious suicidal bomber in "Contact" — is enough to convince some viewers the person is LDS. read more...
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