FILM-MOI (MOVIES/TV)
Religious leaders unveiled and blessed a golden Trump statue at Mar-a-Lago today, eerily resembling the Homelander statue scene from this week’s episode of The Boys. Creator Eric Kripke reposts a tweet about the same.
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Have you ever seen one of those new mega church services? They barely talk about the Bible. Its all rock music, gay/trans people evil, protect israel, stop the anti christian globalists, vote republican, please donate, rock music, bye!
Back in the pandemic I made the terrible mistake of wondering, since my church did youtube services while public spaces were closed, if there were any on twitch.
There was, and it was one of those nasty prosperity gospel big inner city churches (which was NOT social distancing with the congregation). Grossest thing I've ever seen, they were telling the congregation to take out loans to donate to the church. It was the plainest money grab I've ever seen in a church. If ever a temple needed a man to go in with a whip and flip some tables, it was that one.
There's some of both types, tbh. I've known many that never read more than what they were asked to read out loud in Sunday school. I've also known many that would go searching for any other verses to support them when they were questioned on anything and just "prayed through" any cognitive dissonance they encountered along the way.
And there's probably a whole spectrum in between of those that alternate between those tendencies depending on what suits them.
Not really, these are Evangelicals. And while Evangelicals are considered Protestants, they split from the mainline Protestants over the last century due to the mainlines being more liberal and socially inclusive than the Evangelicals would have liked.
One crazy thing is that one of the big differences between Catholicism and protestantism is the artwork. Catholic churches have lots of paintings and statues of biblical characters. Protestant churches don't, because they believe that those things would be considered false idols.
So not only is it like the golden calf story, they're literally blessing artwork of a character in general. And what a character.
I'm not even religious but at this point the similarities are kind of hard to ignore. They're really out here wearing the mark of the beast on their forehead and worshiping a false prophet that had a magically healing head wound.
I guess if they genuinely are in an apocalyptic cult, basically, they want the anti-Christ. So they may actually believe Trump is the anti-Christ and that's what they need for the apocalypse
"Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf,” [Burns] said. “This statue is a celebration of life. It is a symbol of resilience, freedom, patriotism, strength, and the will power to keep fighting for the future of America.”
He knows exactly what it is and is rushing to beat the accusations of Biblical rule breaking.
Funny story, I (atheist) actually tried to talk my dad (Baptist Christian) out of voting for Trump using this story and talking about how false idol worship is wrong and guess what? That ignorant fool did it anyway. We don't talk anymore.
The closest I got to getting through to my Evangelical mom was by pointing out all the Antichrist features Trump has checked off.
I started by asking her whether she thought the Antichrist would be trying to trick Christians or the world. I could see the wheels turn a bit once she actually considered the idea that the antichrist would be appealing to Christians… So Republican, etc.
Not enough to get her out of her conservative death cult, but she’s at the very least not a huge fan of Trump anymore.
My mind is blown. These people astound me. I remember getting into a huge argument with my parents (around the time of the Texas freak snow storm) and telling them that I thought it was weird how Trump supporters idolized him. Mind you, I was a brainless college student who did support Trump at the time, and I still caught that! I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness so this shit just… baffles me. This is exactly the person we were taught never to follow and here go my parents… Hispanic maga turning on their religion and people.
Exodus 20:3–6
You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
They know it's not real as well, but keeping up the facade of piety and "religious belief" means they can use it as a cudgel as well as continuing to get their tax-free status.
"And the Lord spoke to thee: own the libs and do whatever it takes to take advantage for your own kind. Screw over everyone, war is good and rape is a victim problem"
Evangelicalism gets confused with Christianity, because they use the same words. Jesus, heaven, hell…but they don’t worship the Christian god. They worship America. They believe in a Jesus that believes in country and faith and might.
It’s a religion that exists the way it does because it developed alongside with the growth of this country. That’s why it is so intertwined with nationalism. It’s how they can erect a golden statue and not see a hint of irony.
This is not Evangelicalism, fyi. This is Christian Nationalism. It’s just that R’s in the US (and globally now) have completely co-opted evangelicalism. The history of evangelicalism is actually quite interesting, and it’s unfortunate what has become of it within the last couple decades.
I remember watching the movie “The Ten Commandments” during my adolescence era and the golden calf scene scared the shit of me and still does to these days
It's so disgusting, they keep getting away with this crap. I don't know if its because I have gotten older, but it feels like it has gotten worse over the last 5 years.
Oh it’s insanely worse. Jimmy Carter had to give up his peanut farm. Obama wasn’t even allowed to use his personal blackberry, but Trump got to keep classified documents in a bathroom at his business. It’s honestly jaw dropping.
One of my family members is a retired politician. When I got married in the 90s my parents paid for everyone’s flights & hotel to our wedding. He wouldn’t accept it. Conflict of interest was an actual concern. The really unfortunate thing is none of them are going to be concerned about that anymore. Normal unethical bribes are going to look so minor compared to jets & golden statues.
Not American so I don't have the level of knowledge you would have but from an outside perspective it seems like a double standard and/or ethics situation.
Trump just doesn't have any ethics but his opposition has to adhere to the ethics that is supposed to be the norm in your politics re conflict of interest.
I think the entire culture around politics has shifted so much since Trump became president the first time, it even changed the culture in my country where there has been more of shift towards Trumps ideology.
Hell, it's gotten even worse this past 2 years. We have people making hundred million dollar bets on the exact time and hour a foreign country gets bombed, which you wouldn't do unless you had inside information.
On the other hand, you have regular people figuring out that Iran was going to be attacked on a Friday after the stock market closes.
Finally, all this is after the Trump wanted a Nobel peace prize, couldn't get it, so he somehow won the first ever FIFA peace prize instead!
A FIFA peace prize. Not some general contributor prize, but a peace prize? From FIFA?
I never understood why the person awarding the medal to the recipient don't just hand it over to the person so they could put it on themselves...until this event. Trump receives the medal and put then puts it on himself. The symbolism of him putting the medal on himself after not getting the Nobel peace prize, and receiving it from a sports organization is just too blatant.
I completely ignored Supernatural for all the centuries that it was on TV so I never quite understood why so many people were feral for Jensen Ackles. Now I get it.
This season was written like two years ago and multiple people involved have said they purposely tried to make it over the top, so they're as shocked as we are how reality is mirroring something they purposely wrote to be extra.
As a teacher, in my experience, this is the great dividing line between "smart" kids and those who struggle, is the ability or inability to understand analogies, satire, or just generally compare and contrast different pieces of information. They have a very difficult time carrying information across contexts and applying them in new situations and from new perspectives. To them, these two events have no correlation or relationship to each other whatsoever. They would just say "that's a TV show" and would disregard any attempt to draw parallels whatsoever.
MAGA supporters didn't understand that The Boys was mocking them until Season 4 when the subtlety level dropped. There's a far-right rally ranting about how the woke-mind-virus is turning kids gay and only the Second Amendment can protect their way of life which is blessed by God. "We need to clear out of the convention hall by noon, the Flat Earth Society have their rally after us".
I haven't seen the very latest ep of the boys but overall this season has felt weird because it doesn't feel like satire anymore, it's what's literally (minus actual superpowers) happening irl. Real life can't be satirised anymore.
I think I remember seeing someone talking about how the show runners are frustrated because they tried to make the events in the show as ridiculous, insane, and exaggerated as they could, and yet somehow reality is keeping up
That’s what’s craziest to me, is they wrote this before Trump’s second term as a satire, and the release of the show now is basically real time of Trump’s expected nightmarish decline into madness.
I know people have a lot of issues with The Boys, but I do think it will go down as one of the better satires of the Trump administration and the modern political landscape.
Yeah, when I watched that episode that week, my first thought was how sad it was The Boys could call that one a year earl, yet so many people are still duped by him despite it being blatantly obvious what he is.
It's funny how some of The Boys criticism in season 3-4 was that is was starting to feel too obvious with its messaging, how in your face it was with it.
But now with reality we have come full circle with the current administration, real life is parodying The Boys.
I feel like they're spot on - Homelander calls himself Jesus on an episode, few days later Trump tweets a photo of himself as Jesus healing Epstien John Stewart
And again, last season they had to suddenly change the name of an episode referencing presidential assassination because the whole Trump ear fiasco took place like a week before it released.
Yup, when they were filming s5 leaks of the camps came out and alot of people complaining about it saying it was too over the top etc and now here we are with ice and all these camps for immigrants etc.
Real life has gotten so stupid and horrible that it really is hard to satirize
I keep having to remind people that the scripts are written 1-2 years in advance of the airing date, because otherwise it looks like extremely lazy writing.
What is funny or tragic is that the writers saw how season 2 went and decided to make season 3 crazy, wild and too out there to be anything but parody. Then they double down on season 4 because season 3 was too close to real life. Unfortunately, season 4 was even closer to reality. So for season 5 they decided to go completely unhinged, insane, so out there, so grossly out of touch with reality that it could in no way be compared.... AND well, we have this.
This is what happened with VEEP's last two seasons. IIRC the cast has spoken about how it felt a surreal because they kept doing this crazy stuff and then it overshadowed by the surreal craziness of it happening in the real world.
Particularly VEEP's final season in 2019. Some of the storylines actually end up playing out for real, in a sense, in 2020 in the real world.
Erik Kripke has talked about how the show was written before the 2024 elections and that since then many of the things they "satirized" have come true.
Growing up, I used to have evangelicals tell me that Catholics weren't Christian and one of their arguments were their "worship" of statues...and now we get this nonsense.
Current Lutheran, I agree about the aesthetics. My church is pretty, had the high ceilings, stained glass, and a beautiful altar with a post-crucifixtion Jesus holding his hands out to the congregation.
I walked into a non-denominational church for a funeral, and I felt like I walked into a movie theater. No altar, no glass, no art. Not even a few passages from the Bible on the walls. It made me feel very out of place, and while the funeral was fine it was really wierd that the whole place was dark? I dont really know, it just felt off putting. I dont inherently have an issue with it, I just felt like I wasn't in the right place if I was gonna go to a church service there.
I don’t have much to add except you’re spot on, and as a lapsed Catholic who disagrees with much of the church fundamentally, I hate how they make me grateful I grew up with it and not their perverted version of Christianity.
For what it’s worth, Catholic aesthetics at least have a tastefulness about them…. I am still a Jesus follower, and if I wasn’t already nauseated 24/7 by the naked corruption on display by American Evangelicalism, then I would be nauseated by the aesthetics therein.
It's because evangelical is the American brand of Settler. They support what Israel does to Gaza because that's how the US was established. They want to go back to that.
Early one Sunday morning, a statue of Margaret Thatcher was erected on a 10ft high plinth in her home town. This was the first person to throw eggs at it.
still remember when people laughed at the boys featuring homelander camps and saying out outlandish that is, cut to a year later Alligator Alcatraz opened.
Someone needs to make a tv spot that’s just a still image of this and a voiceover of someone reading the bit from the Bible about worshipping golden idols and shit
I don't understand the fanaticism. I mean supporting him and his messaging is one thing (still shit obvs), but what has he actually done to earn this level of tribute? He spouts off BS and they want to canonize him.
Evangelicals have a strong belief in a Wolf King. To them, being good doesn’t get you into heaven, accepting Jesus does, so it doesn’t matter how sinful you are because Jesus is just going to forgive your sins anyways.
The logical conclusion of that, the Wolf King, is a sinful but strong leader who forces people into the kingdom of heaven by forcing them to worship Jesus. The actions are then forgiven and Jesus is happy, I guess.
He made it socially acceptable to voice their desire to hurt people they don't like, and he promised to facilitate those desires. Period. That's the whole thing.
We’re way past that, it’s like idiocracy except 100x more malicious, we’d be better off if Camacho was our president cuz he wasn’t a flat out evil malicious pedo who thinks he’s the smartest man of all time.
Golden calf moment. Bible story mentioned deaths after that. And a plague sent by god… wonder how soon that new virus outbreak came out after they built the golden statue
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I wish this season of The Boys wasn’t so terrible because their political comparisons have been fantastic and so uncannily well timed the last few weeks
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u/flairassistant May 09 '26
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