LIHU’E — Question: What does it take to get a group of nuns and church goers out to stand in front of a movie theater at midnight in the pouring rain? On Kaua’i? Answer: “Dogma,” the controversial satire about Catholic
LIHU’E — Question: What does it take to get a group of nuns and church goers
out to stand in front of a movie theater at midnight in the pouring rain? On
Kaua’i?
Answer: “Dogma,” the controversial satire about Catholic doctrine
and two fallen angels trying to get back in Heaven.
The protestors aren’t
saying whether they’ll be there again tonight, but the R-rated film has been
held over and will play at 12:05 a.m. tonight and Saturday at the Kukui Grove
Cinema.
“Come see what all the fuss is about,” the theater’s recorded
telephone message teases.
Cinema manager Matthew Blair says this is the
first movie he knows of that has been picketed at the theater, which is owned
by Hawai’i Cinema Properties.
So what’s the problem?
“‘Dogma’
blasphemes God, Our Lady, and the Catholic Church,” said Anne Noguchi, protest
organizer. “The only way to stop blasphemy is to express our just outrage
against it.”
Blair said he was aware of the potential controversy the film
may have caused so he flew to Honolulu to see the movie for himself before
bringing it in.
“I felt it could offend certain people, but there are a ton
of movies out there that can offend anybody if you really want to nitpick,” he
said.
Just in case, he scheduled the film for a midnight showing so those
who really wanted to see it could come see it “and not have to worry about
church groups or any other groups being upset.”
He said since he was
playing it two months late, he thought nobody would have remembered what it
was.
But Noguchi, who belongs to St. Catherine’s Parish and is a member of
the American Society for the Defense of Tradition and Property (TFP), was
instructed by her organization to keep a sharp eye out for the film.
“We
had been alerted back in August that the movie would be coming to us sometime
in the fall. Well, it didn’t reach us then. It kind of just snuck in,” she
said.
Although Noguchi said she had a protest kit with possible slogans
ready, “Dogma” ran a weekend before she found out about it showing on
island.
Within a day, Noguchi had organized a group of 30 parishioners and
nuns from St. Catherine’s.
They held signs with slogans, “‘Dogma’
blasphemes God,” and staged a prayer-in and rally in front of the theater.
Noguchi said that the protesters didn’t interfere with anyone going to see
the movie, many of whom, she said were young adults.
The one thing Noguchi
found out was that many of the young movie-goers, had no idea what the word
“blasphemy” meant.
“So the next night we changed our signs to say “‘Dogma’
is an insult against God.”
Noguchi is not sure that the group will be out
again this weekend, due to a prior commitment early Saturday morning.
“Even
if we are unable to organize, we feel our message of education about the movie
has been successful,” she said.
Blair, himself a Catholic, said that the
movie was intended to be a satire for the 17 to 30-year-old male audience and
not an attack on the church.
“I can see being Catholic that it could offend
a lot of people if you take it personally, take it the wrong way, but you got
to have a sense of humor about a lot of things.”
Blair said that the movie
might be construed as offensive to Catholics because it “talks about a
thirteenth apostle who is black and talks about God being a woman. Outside of
the language, it shouldn’t really affect anybody.”
Although Noguchi has not
seen the movie, she said she doesn’t have to to know it’s
blasphemous.
“Today you don’t have to see anything, because you have access
to the script, downloaded from the Internet.” What’s more, Noguchi said “Dogma”
received the worst rating from the Catholic Communication Campaign movie review
hotline: An “O” for “Morally Offensive.”
“Satire is one thing. Blasphemy
is another,” she said.
So just how is the movie blasphemous?
“They
compared the Catholic mass to sexual intercourse. It glorified sex, violence,
euthanasia, abortion, drugs — everything that we are against and most people
of any faith are against,” she said.
Noguchi said that “Dogma” is an
example of a trend in today’s society that encourages people to take former
heroes — and saviors — dig up dirt on them and knock them down.
“This
is how we are teaching our children to be,” Noguchi, a former school teacher,
said.
Blair had told the group when they called to inform him of the
protest that it would have been better to let sleeping Dogmas lie.
“I said
if you go out and picket, people leaving the theater are going to see this and
they’re going to want to know what the big controversy is, plus the fact if it
hits the newspaper or if it gets out that people are getting out (and
picketing) then it will make them more aware of the film,” Blair said.
He
said that if the group had not been protesting, the film “probably wouldn’t be
playing this week.”
But Noguchi says that the TFP campaign, called America
Needs Fatima, has stopped certain plays and movies from further distribution,
rather than making them popular.
“We were aware our protest would give
‘Dogma’ free publicity, but it is negative publicity.”
In the face of moral
outcry, the film’s producers, Miramax, which is affiliated with Disney, dropped
“Dogma.”
It was then picked up by Lion’s Gate Film, and went on to make
$8.8 million in its opening weekend alone.
