Dogma (1999)

Mommy Update:  No baby yet.  I had an ultrasound on Monday and baby is 100% healthy and happy right where he is.  I’m trying to feel the same.

Writer/Director:  Kevin Smith

The Quote I Quote Most Often:   “Snoogins.”  ~ Jay, the prophet

Favorite Quote This Time Around:  “When are you people going to learn?

 It’s not about who’s right or wrong.  No demonination’s nailed it yet, and

they never will because they’re all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn’t

matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith.  Your hearts are in the

right place, but your brains need to wake up.”  ~Serendipity, the muse

Blake’s Favorite Quote:  “Did I know Jesus?  Brotha owes me twelve bucks!” ~ Rufus, the 13^th apostle

Character I Most Identify With:  Silent Bob, the prophet

Nod to John Hughes:  Jay has a great tirade about why he and Silent Bob are traveling.  They are looking for Shermer, Illinois where all of Hughes’ movies take place.  The best line is, “Breakfast Club, where all these stupid kids actually show up for detention.”

Disclaimer:  I’m not going to provide a disclaimer this time.  The movie comes with its own at the beginning of the flick, along with a definition of “disclaimer,” which is pretty handy.

Two angels, Bartleby and Loki (Affleck and Damon), who were banished from heaven and sent to Wisconsin for time and all eternity, find a way to get back into heaven through a loophole in Catholic dogma.  An entourage made up of prophets, an apostle, an angel, a muse, and the Last Zion must stop them, lest they negate all of human existence.  I think of it as Kevin Smith’s love letter to God.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding this movie when it first came out and Kevin Smith insisted that you can’t take it too seriously because “it has a rubber poop monster in it.”  But rubber poop monster or not, stories are serious stuff.

It’s pretty clear that Kevin Smith tells this story as a way to express his own take on religion and spirituality and God and that’s exactly what all stories should do.  In my opinion, stories should always work on two levels: they should entertain and pull us away from everyday lives, while saying something to us about our everyday lives.  Dogma is pretty heavy-handed in its commentary about our real lives with lines like, “The people that held the pens added their own perspectives and the pen holders were men,” but it’s also funny and slap sticky with clever dialogue.

I find it very difficult to strike that balance between saying something about what you believe about the world without getting too preachy.  Especially in my genre, young adult literature, the last thing you want to do is get “preachy.”  No one likes to be preached to, but least of all teenagers.  But teenagers don’t merely want to be entertained either.  Well, maybe sometimes they do, but they also look to stories to help them make sense of what they believe and who they are.  

The best stories, in my humble opinion, make us laugh and cry and think.  Dogma delivers on all levels.  There is a lot to think about; it’s very funny, and when God shows up in the final scene, the pain in her face makes me cry every time.

Also, this is one of my favorite explanations of God:

Rufus:  “She’s not really a woman.  She’s not really anything.”

Bethany:  “She’s something, alright.”