Holy Pepsi
1999 was a busy year. I'm just now catching up with news stories from early that year.
Evidently the RC Archdiocese of Mexico City set itself up as a corporate whore, in order to obtain widespread advertising for the Pope's arrival in the city. (read brief story here: Daily Catholic Monday January 11, 1999 or a short commentary here: Detroit Free Press January 22, 1999)
I'm not so much concerned with this appalling marketing campaign as I am wanting to share a short film that I really enjoyed, using the Pope's Potatoes as its context.
Las Papas del Papa
(all of this came to my attention via a Dr. Leithart post)
1999 was a busy year. I'm just now catching up with news stories from early that year.
Evidently the RC Archdiocese of Mexico City set itself up as a corporate whore, in order to obtain widespread advertising for the Pope's arrival in the city. (read brief story here: Daily Catholic Monday January 11, 1999 or a short commentary here: Detroit Free Press January 22, 1999)
I'm not so much concerned with this appalling marketing campaign as I am wanting to share a short film that I really enjoyed, using the Pope's Potatoes as its context.
Las Papas del Papa
(all of this came to my attention via a Dr. Leithart post)
posted by trawlerman at 6:54 AM
6 Comments:
o.m.g(osh) that's hilarious. oh, and i love that black bird dancin. is that a gif? did you make it?
Interesting flick. The scene with the potato chip offered as if it was the Eucharist made me want to puke. Criticism of corporate sponsorship aside, it says a great deal about how those who made the film view the Catholic Faith.
James,
The bird (crow) is an animated gif. I didn't make it, I took it from here...
Mini Gifs
...and you can take one, too!
Pete,
"...it says a great deal about how those who made the film view the Catholic Faith."
What does it say? I think that you're implying that there is a strong negative attack on the "Faith" which I'm not so sure is there. I can easily imagine that the director is a devout young Mexican Catholic who is outraged by certain popular distortions of Catholic doctrine that are aggravated by the Church's complicity in a thoroughly disgusting ad campaign. The scene with the "potato chip offered as if it was the Eucharist," perhaps was supposed to make you want to puke, make you so incredibly disgusted at the use of potato chips to propagate the faith. The main character in the film attempts to earn his salvation through consumerism (or in his case a consumerism without paying [through theft] which is really what most Americans experience too through credit cards.) This is a contemporary problem in the Church, whether you accept it or not. It is easier to collect all of the Pope's trading cards than it is to walk the narrow path. And it is made much worse when leaders in the Church encourage such behavior.
Then again, maybe the creator of the film hates the Church and wants it destroyed.
You wrote, "Criticism of corporate sponsorship aside, it says a great deal about how those who made the film view the Catholic Faith."
What does this mean? How do you think that those who made the film view the "Catholic Faith?" And why?
>>>"This is a contemporary problem in the Church, whether you accept it or not. It is easier to collect all of the Pope's trading cards than it is to walk the narrow path. And it is made much worse when leaders in the Church encourage such behavior."
Several such instances of corporate sponsorship related to the Catholic Church probably could be dug up (which would be several too many), but I hardly see it as a significant or widespread problem that the Church is struggling with. The Catholic Church is currently struggling with much greater and graver problems internally (and externally) than this (as I am sure you are no doubt aware).
>>>What does this mean? How do you think that those who made the film view the "Catholic Faith?" And why?
I doubt a devout young Catholic would ever use the Holy Eucharist to make such a point. Some matters of the Faith are incredibly sacred, and it is hard to very exactly put into words what I felt when I saw that portion of the film. Perhaps you can understand, perhaps you can't.
It seems more likely Rivera was profoundly ignorant of the Catholic Faith, rather than that he meant it to be overtly offensive.
Pete,
As far as your first response, I'm not sure if you understood me. When I use the term "Church" without a qualifier I am speaking of more than those churches in communion with the see of Rome. I don't wish for this to turn into a debate over ecclesiology at this moment, but I wanted to make that clear. The problem (consumerism) that I mentioned (although perhaps I was unclear and you thought that I was writing specifically of church advertising or some nonsense) is one that has infected The Church, not just those individual churches in communion with Rome. But then again, maybe you did understand me and were only responding in terms of what that means for the Roman Catholic Church. You think that there are much greater and graver concerns in the Church. I'm not so sure that I do. Consumerism/Materialism is one of the gravest, greatest dangers that the Church has faced in the past century and still faces today, a problem of which Mexico City's corporate sponsorship was only a symptom. I believe that this mentality is at the root of many of those things that I think that you are thinking of as more dangerous.
On to the second part of your response...
You write...
"I doubt a devout young Catholic would ever use the Holy Eucharist to make such a point."
Maybe you didn't watch the same movie I did. The Holy Eucharist was nowhere seen in this film.
There is a scene in which the boy receives a potato chip, placed in his mouth by a hand with a white-robed arm.
That said, of course the scene was meant to depict a perversion of the Eucharist. The image that you found offensive was a very effective, non-verbal symbol that more powerfully conveyed the essence of the materialistic heresy in question than a stack of theological treatises could ever do.
I'm not certain that it was the trifling with holy things that you think it is.
If someone has a consumer mentality, fixated on material goods as means of satisfaction/redemption (of course usually not consciously), then they might as well be partaking of the altar of the potato chip (in fact they probably already are, and as such have no place at the Eucharist). Rivera was not depicting the true Eucharist. He was depicting a false and dangerous alternative to the Eucharist.
Rivera, far from being “profoundly ignorant of the Catholic Faith,” appears to understand it well enough to strike at its very heart, not to kill it, but to wound it toward repentance.
“What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.”
-1 Corinthians 10:19-21
Anyhow, I’m probably wrong and Rivera is a flaming atheist. All I’m arguing is that the film possibly could have been made by a Concerned Catholic (hereafter referred to as CC)
>>>Consumerism/Materialism is one of the gravest, greatest dangers that the Church has faced in the past century and still faces today ... this mentality is at the root of many of those things that I think that you are thinking of as more dangerous.
I see this similarly, although I don't see Consumerism/Materialism as a root cause, but as a symptom of a much more fundamental root cause. When the natural is emphasized over against the supernatural, (or more commonly when the supernatural is practically *denied althogether*), man will look to the material for satisfaction, for that is all that is left, to what else are they to satisfy their longings with? I heartily agree that materialism is a huge problem the Church is faced with, regardless of ecclesiology. (I did think you were speaking as narrowly as corporate sponsorship).
>>>Rivera was not depicting the true Eucharist. He was depicting a false and dangerous alternative to the Eucharist.
I like your take on it, perhaps mine was too much a knee-jerk reaction.
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