"Creation, the movie that opened the Toronto Film Festival, must show Charles Darwin performing experiments on live children, snorting coke off the taut bellies of slaves, and engaging in homosexual acts. The movie can’t get a U.S. distributor, so it must show some pretty wretched stuff. Stuff much worse than typical Hollywood fare. Charles Darwin’s great crime, the reason he can’t be shown in the United States is. . . science. SCIENCE!...." - WoH: Professor MOTHRA

Or maybe the movie just sucks. - Akiva

I've been hearing about this but I wasn't sure about it being anything other than hype. However, that's the reputation that America has these days. Marketroids play off of whatever sentiments they can in order to make a buck. Why not? - Lucas Parker

Otto, I'm just wondering where this money thing keeps coming up, I've seen it come up multiple times in comments on this film, but I read the articles and there is "NOTHING IN THE ARTICLE" about not wanting to purchase it, because of money. - OCoG of FF, Jimminy

Eh, the movie just reeks of something created purely to push buttons and appeal to folks who pride themselves on only seeing counter programming to movies about giant fighting robots, etc. My guess is when it does get released in the United States, no one will bother seeing it anyhow. - Noah Belson

Otto: It's not a totally mistaken sentiment. Just going by the topic of the movie, notwithstanding anything else, it would end up being contraversial or offensive to about 45 percent of the US population according to the Gallup poll cited here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publ... (although it doesn't show numbers beyond 2004, so I don't know how these figures have moved in the last few years). Still not a reason for a US distributor not to pick up the movie, so I'm pretty much in agreement there, but I disagree that the opinion of America held by the Brits is entirely a fabrication. - Lucas Parker

My guess is it's not so much the Brits themselves as the British press. They do enjoy reporting on crrrrrrrrrrazy old America and our religious zealots and gun toting teenagers, etc. - Noah Belson

I might be butthurt about it if they were entirely wrong. - Lucas Parker

They print what they think will sell papers and they report what will get people to turn on their TVs. Right or wrong really has nothing to do with it, as far as I can tell. If it bleeds, it leads and if it doesn't bleed- well a few jolly stabs with me trusty pen knife can take care of that. - Noah Belson

I might put in parenthetically that America is no different when it comes to the media. It's just we don't suffer from the UK's inferiority complex and take no real pleasure in slamming them, the way they do us. But mark my words, our reporting is every bit as slanted as theirs, albeit in different directions. - Noah Belson

I don't see this having wide distribution anyway, but I'd be surprised if it didn't even arrive at art house theaters. Or it plain sucks and will go straight to video. - Rodfather

Otto, you're sure about that? I think that article pretty well substantiates my argument and I think that the question being asked by the survey is pretty clear. There's a big difference between biblical literalism, theistic evolution and nontheistic evolution. They're not asking about church attendance, they're asking about personal belief about the nature of the diversity of species. If you think that most people who believe in the literal Genesis account are apathetic, you might be right, but have you checked up on the "intelligent design" movement lately? It's got some pretty good momentum and vocal young earth creationists are becoming more prevalent. Not everybody is an activist, certainly, but people who are not activists still give their money to activists and activist organizations such as evangelical fundamentalist biblical literalist churches. I know what your gut feeling tells you about "most people," but I think you're incorrect. - Lucas Parker

Otto, I might grant you the improbability of biblical literalists showing up in droves to picket movie theaters, although I ask you to note that I made no such argument. I did say that it would be "contraversial or offensive," contraversial really being the lesser of the two responses. I also grant that the British media and presumably the producers of the film would like Brits to believe that Americans would in fact be coming out in droves to turn any theater who dared to show this film into rubble. What I'm arguing is that the numbers indicate that whatever our gut tells us about how opinions on the subject of science and religion break down, a very large segment of the population appears to maintain a superstitious belief in the literal account of creation as written in Genesis, despite the tremendous amount of scientific evidence to the contrary. This is anomalous throughout pretty much all of modern Western civilization. Proponents of this literalist approach are very vocal in the US and have a great amount of popular support, so even if "most" people who profess a belief in literal creationism live ideologically moderate lifestyles, the trend of militant creationism is easy pickings for foreign media and whether we like it or not, their sentiments are backed by poll numbers. - Lucas Parker

Otto, I actually agree with you (meaning I suspect your estimates are probably accurate), but the way you're arguing invites disagreement, because your assertion isn't falsifiable. No matter what statistic someone presents to you, you'll say, "Ah, but that's just what people say when they answer polls, it's not what they really believe." How do you prove or disprove what people "really" believe, unless you poll them? - Stephen Mack

Please, explain to me why you think those numbers are wrong. If you can cite better answers than "here's this 7-10% number I pulled out of my ass," I'm all ears. But from over here, all I can figure is that it sounds like you've got an awful lot of hostility against Gallup. That or you're a True Believer, since you clearly and quite defensively refuse to admit any evidence contrary to whatever your opinion on the matter is. However, the numbers I posted are the only numbers I've seen on the issue so far. They are the evidence that I've got and I'm basing my conclusion on them. Got other research to cite? Post it. But get your head out of your ass or at least cop to whatever childhood trauma has your panties in such a bunch. - Lucas Parker

I hereby dub this thread the "Otto & Lucas Show". This week's episode, "Religion and Polling: Real Sentiment or Cooked-Up Statistics?" - George S.

Lucas gets so fussy when he talks to people who don't agree with him. It's cute. - Akiva

Otto, I don't blame you for not finding polls entirely trustworthy, but as far as I know, they're the best option we have for gathering public opinion. I agree with you that we can never be certain about the results of a poll (although statisticians would have us believe that we can be 98.2% certain or whatever the magic number is). However, going way back to the original point, the poll numbers that I cited are not just the only depiction that we ourselves have, but also the only depiction that people in other countries have of where American sentiments lie and what American beliefs typically are. I've been getting pretty heavily bombarded lately with news about the American stereotype and there seem to be a whole lot of folks out there who think we're all a bunch of religious wingnuts. Then, the polls seem to substantiate that claim. What can I say? Are they wrong? Maybe. Can I prove it? Not really. Believe me, I find the implications of the poll (if it is in fact accurate) very disturbing. - Lucas Parker

Then what do you propose in their place? The reality is that they _are_ used and people _do_ believe them and act upon them. In their favor, I'll grant them that marketing people use surveys to determine how the market will respond to their products, and people still seem to be consuming products, so apparently some polling is working the way that it's supposed to. - Lucas Parker

In response to your conclusion (that you ninja edited in while I was typing), I don't agree with you but I don't 100% disagree with you either. I think that polling leaves a whole lot of latitude for bullshit, but I don't think it's entirely useless and sometimes it appears to just flat-out work. So I guess that's my conclusion regarding polling and I'm happy to stand in disagreement with you on this particular point. - Lucas Parker

... - WoH: Professor MOTHRA