After a couple of weeks of unsubstantiated rumors, it has been confirmed that the forthcoming film The Invention of Lying is indeed intended to satirize religion and religious believers.
New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and describes it as "a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros."
Although the commercials and theatrical trailers have presented the film as a cute comedy and made no allusion at all to any religious angle, much less a concerted case for atheism, Smith reports that the basis of the film is its attack on religion:
Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.
Smith’s description of the film makes it clear that the protagonist’s behavior represents a simpleminded atheist’s idea of the meaning of religion:
There is a “Man in the Sky,” he says, who is looking down at all of us and is responsible for everything that happens. Yes, he explains to one woman, he gave your mom cancer — but he’s also responsible for curing her. The people aren’t happy that “The Man in the Sky” is behind all human suffering. “F— The Man in the Sky!” cries one citizen, and the crowd begins to get angry. A magazine cover exclaims, “Man in the Sky Kills 40,000 in Tsunami!” But Gervais’s character insists that whatever damage the Man in the Sky causes, he eventually makes up for it all in the end by providing a beautiful mansion for everyone after they die, at least for those who don’t commit three or more immoral acts, and by making it so that everyone can reunite with their loved ones in the next life.
Smith concludes by stating that the film is mean-spirited overall and that audiences are unlikely to be pleased by Gervais’s attack on their basic beliefs while critics will enjoy this latest attempt to epater la bourgeousie:
Gervais is an atheist, which is fine, but his mean-spiritedness (even before the atheism theme enters the movie, it’s sour and misanthropic) and the film’s reduction of all religion to an episode of crowd hysteria are not going to be warmly received. Except maybe by critics.
In a comment on Smith’s article, a reader quotes from Gervais’s long, poorly written, and unapologetic but highly defensive and spectacularly cliched response to the building controversy on the film, published on the actor’s blog. Here’s Gervais’s post, with some responses of my own in brackets:
A couple more web sites have picked up on a few Christians (not all – most Christians have a sense of humour) saying that The Invention of Lying is blasphemous.
Here are my seven deadly sins of jumping to conclusions:
1. No one has seen the film. [False–SK]
2. Even if the film suggests there is no God, it is a fictional world.[a truly pathetic evasion.] One of my favourite films is ‘It’s a wonderful life’ and at no time am I offended by the suggestion in this wonderful work of fiction that there is a God.[Nice but irrelevant.]
3. If the film was not set in a fictional world and suggested there is no God then that’s fine too, as it is anyone’s right not to believe in God.[and it’s other people’s right to criticize a filmmaker for what he chooses to put in his movies.]
4. By suggesting there is no God you are not singling out Christianity.[but you certainly are including Christianity, so Christians have a right to answer back.]
5. Not believing in God cannot be blasphemous. Blasphemy is acknowledging a God to insult or offend etc.[Gervais’s atheism is not the complaint: characterizing God as Gervais allegedly does in the film is what people are concerned about, and it is definitely a case of blasphemy if the film is at all as described.]
6. Even if it was blasphemous, which it isn’[false]t, then that’s OK too due to a little god I like called "freedom of speech."[freedom of speech is not at issue. Blasphemy and contempt for other people’s beliefs are the topic of discussion.] That said, I am not trying to offend anyone[but offending them all the same, while hiding behind a fig leaf of good intentions.]. That would be a waste of such a privilege.
7. I am an atheist, but this is not atheist propaganda[Well, if it looks like atheist propaganda, and it walks like atheist propaganda, and it quacks like atheist propaganda…]. When creating an imaginary world you have to make certain decisions. We decided also that there would be no surrealist art, no racism, no flattery, no fiction, no metaphor, and no supernatural. However, we decided that apart from that one "lying gene", humans evolved with everything else as we have it today. Joy, hope, ambition, ruthlessness, greed, lust, anger, jealousy, sadness, and grief. It’s just a film[another pathetic evasion]. If any of the themes in it offend you or bore you, or just don’t make sense to you, you should put everything right when you make a film[How revoltingly arrogant and elitist. As if the only way to answer a person were to go back in time, pursue the same career they have taken up, and answer them in the same form. This is a truly astonishing insult to his potential audience.].
I really hope everyone enjoys the film[Even though he lives in the relatively unchurched UK, it’s quite amazing that he can be so grotesquely ignorant as to have imagined that the great majority of his potential American audience would not find this movie idea offensive.].’ and keeps an open mind[regarding whether they like blasphemy? That is even more arrogant than the last sentence of his deadly sin number seven.]. I believe in peace on Earth, and good will to all men.[Not all harmful things are done with ill will. Gross negligence can be just as destructive, and merits an equal response.] I do as I would be done by, and believe that forgiveness is one of the greatest virtues[but of course he claims to have nothing in his film that requires forgiving.]. I just don’t believe I will be rewarded for it in heaven[It seems likely he’s right about that much.]. That’s all.
It will be interesting to see whether audiences take to the film as more people find out what The Invention of Lying is all about. Telling your audience that their most profound beliefs are stupid and wrong seems a fine plan for eliciting positive reviews from elitist movie critics but a very bad way to lure people into movie theaters.
–S. T. Karnick
I loved the movie. I’m more agnostic than Atheist (as atheism’s main premise is that there is no proof to accept the existence of a “God.” This is a logical fallacy as the lack of evidence to the contrary does not make a view or belief false. This is, however, not a question of logic. It’s a matter of aesthetics), Gervais’s movie was amusing because it made fun of everything in our society. Everything we do as a deception, along with things we disagree upon. Being Christian claims that Islam is a lie, and being following the Islamic faith is claiming that Christianity is wrong. All religions contradict each other and I tend to view Atheism as just another view that is not rooted in any real logic. All belief systems assume that they are correct. Atheism is no different. If a movie came out that blatantly assumed the truth of Christianity, I suspect you’d praise that just because it agrees with you. If one came out the blatantly assumed Islam’s correctness, you’d attack that. Give it a rest. No one can prove anything, and consensus gentium is NOT a valid reason for believing ANYTHING.
Remember, “god” is nothing more than a nonsense word created by man to explain away all of the things we can’t yet understand.
Religion is a disease of the mind, born of fear, which has done nothing but bring untold misery down upon the human race.
it was really nice movie and superb movie i have watched. i hate goofy comedy movies . but truly this was really nice movie which made my bone tickling with load of laughs
Thanks for your comment, Whitney. However, I see no evidence that people in this comment section have called for anyone to be silenced. Many criticisms of the film have been expressed here, but there have been no suggestions that Gervais and his collaborators should have been prevented from making the film.
I think the frustrating thing in all this is reading the comments – it’s a shame that so many feel that artistic freedom should be silenced, simply because you don’t agree with a film’s message. If you don’t agree with it, don’t see the film- it’s as simple as that. People should be allowed to create the films they make, and the public should be allowed to decide what they will see and won’t. However, to imply that a company should specifically cater to the Christian community’s desires, simply because you assume that all Christians would not want to see a film that might provoke thought on the way that religion is discussed and seen by others? That’s truly sad.
Rather than taking a defensive posture, and striking back at the atheists who applaud the film’s attack on religion, I thought I’d put atheists in the hot seat and see what this movie has to say about those who know that there is no “man in the sky.” I’m not so sure The Invention of Lying makes atheists look very good.
Everyone in the film is forthright and honest. Everyone tells the truth and accepts what they are told as the truth. Everyone, that is, except Gervais’ character. Furthermore, Gervais’ character knows there is no “man in the sky,” which is the atheist’s position. But goes on telling everyone this being exists for his own selfish reasons. In other words, in the world created for the film, the lone atheist lies to everyone around him in order to get laid and become rich.
Gervais intent may have been to paint theists as gullible fools who will accept anything. But who in the film is lying, stealing, and manipulating everyone around him? The one person who knows that the “man in the sky” is a fiction, on other words, the atheist.
So how does that make the atheist the noble individual leading everyone to the pure light of truth and reason?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve not seen the film (and probably won’t in the theater, but will likely see the DVD), so I don’t know if Gervais character has some kind of epiphany at the end and attempts to come clean.
I may be stretching a bit to turn The Invention of Lying’s critical lens back on the atheists, but it is just a movie. Riiight?
This movie is not offensive unless you believe that Atheism is inherently offensive, which is isn’t. It does not attack Christians, it just says that Christianity isn’t true, something that the majority of the Earth’s population agree with.
It does not attack the followers of religion. In the movie everyone believes everything without question because they do not know of lying. It isnt calling them stupid.
Peter, I think your comment here is very pertinent. It holds the concept of the film up to serious analysis and suggests that what people take it to mean–even Gervais himself, perhaps–might not be a valid understanding of the assumptions behind the world presented in the film.
This creates a further irony suggested both by your note and Charles’s: that either side–theism or atheism, or for that matter agnosticism–is based on assumptions about the degree to which human perceptions can apprehend all of the cosmos.
That is really the center of the debate and always has been: what Peter describes as the very possibility that something could exist and be true without people knowing about it.
Atheists claim that it is not possible, but there is no logical basis on which to make that assumption. It’s just an assumption, and by definition there can be no more evidence for it than the opposite assumption, and thus by definition it is not scientific.
Now, atheists have every right to hold that assumption and argue for it, and theists have the exact same right to hold the opposite assumption and argue for it. What neither side has the right to do, however, is to claim that the other side does not reason rightly or is uniquely disposed to believe falsehoods. On the contrary, each can reason perfectly logically from its own basic premise, and has a perfect right to do so and to state their thoughts publicly.
And each side should be expected to defend its reasoning and show that it does not contradict the evidence of our senses.
The latter is a claim that atheists make about theism (that belief in the existence of God is irrational and that the evidence of nature shows that there is not a God). That claim is entirely false and cannot be justified.
Theists, for their part, cannot take offense at people who freely choose to have a different assumption about the nature of the cosmos.
In sum, each side of the debate must recognize that their entire worldview is based on a fundamental unprovable assumption, and that this assumption colors everything they see and think. There is thus no room for triumphalism on either side.
There is no war between faith and reason, and there never has been. There is only a war in which reason is adduced by both sides, with continually varying levels of wisdom and grace displayed by the partisans of both sides. Those who would mock the other side as uniquely irrational only show themselves to be arrogant and unreasonable.
That is the one thing about The Invention of Lying on which we should all be able to agree.
I am so happy that so many religious people are so offended by this film! The message of the film is that all religious faith is based upon lies and delusion.? Unfortunately, the deluded are far too weak-minded to ever face up to the reality of their delusions, and therefore will attack the film, rather than listen to its message and face up to their own insecurities and weakness of mind. Very clever film – a must see!!
The funny thing about so called atheists is how so many of you bozos love to carry on about religion so.
Especially when too many of you mostly resort to lame arguments based in theodicy (“too much” suffering = no God – as Gervais apparently does) or attack “fundamentalist” boogeymen by resorting to scriptural exegesis in favor of “science” that shows most of you all to be just as much raving fundamentalists without any sense of myth or poetry as the “Christian” boogeymen you joust in your fetidly fervid “rationalist” imaginations.
It’s bloody pathetic, and way too tiresome.
Reality check: absent transcendence you don’t even exist.
You need resurrection (not reincarnation) to even be you.
Your attacks on religion are acts of faith, faith that there are other “persons” out here to read your idiocy.
Every word you type is a mystical act, mofos.
‘Cause in the Beginning was the Word. And by the Word we are saved.
I haven’t seen the film, but I’m not sure how it can be considered an attack on religion.
It seems to me that a society that tells only the truth can by definition only the truth that it knows. Atheism, like religion, is a belief. It may be a correct belief, but it is still a belief. It requires speculation about the existence or nature of a deity. A society with no fiction would not in the first place have presumed to speculate on such things – all their statements would be bounded by what they know. Effectively, such a society could have no beliefs.
We do not live in such a society. We have lies because we have beliefs and vice versa. How material in its critique of can a society be which functions so fundamentally differently from ours? However religion started in this alternate society, it didn’t start that way here. Indeed, the primarily similarity between the two worlds would seem to be the very possibility that something could exist and be true without people knowing about it.
Finally, the concept of this movie seems deeply flawed. Apparently corporate product labels are present in this world. What truth does a Pizza Hut label express? A Pepsi can? Pepsi isn’t red, white or blue – it’s brown.
Christians love to feel victimized. Get over it. Nobody felt victimized by “Expelled,” which was just an awful piece of pure propaganda from biblical literalists that basically called atheists immoral people on par with Hitler with NO satire or comedy.
What did atheists do? Laughed at it. Listen, if this movie is really getting under your skin, maybe you’re not comfortable with your faith. Don’t see it, mock it, just don’t pretend like this is some systematic propaganda (like “Expelled” and the rejection of the movie about Darwin is).
I think the “sky man” lie speaks alot about the power that man had to gain by inventing a God. I think it’s funny, I think it’s smart, and, most of all, it’s pretty accurate. You guys really, literally believe that a Cosmic Jewish Zombie saved all of humanity, and as long as you do, you are subject to a great level of satire. If you’re that butthurt about it, go pray. Talking to yourself will help you calm down.
If Ricky G. (who I also think is brilliant, at least much of the time) wants to make a movie satirizing either the whole notion of religion or aspects of it, more power to him. No good Christian is going to be truly shocked or offended by the reminder that there are people out there that don’t share their beliefs. They just may have no desire to see the film on that basis. I was a very principled agnostic for almost my entire life and even now as a Christian who clings to rationality I realize that it is impossible to “get” what it’s about without making a sincere effort to see how religious faith and reason can reconcile.
What I find telling is the lack of faith (if you will forgive me) of the American distributors in honestly presenting the film’s content as opposed to doing a bait and switch to basically steal people’s money on a false premise of what the film actually is. You certainly didn’t see Monty Python pulling punches about films that were humanist in philosophy and critical of organized religion. And they did very well. I still enjoy them myself.
Looking forward to seeing the movie 🙂
I won’t try to argue any points here. Believers are immune to logic.
I find it revealing that the authors of this film thought that fiction was lying, and that they apparently thought they kept metaphor out of the movie.
Um, dudes. There really aren’t any words in existence that aren’t fossilized metaphors. Even onomatopoeia isn’t the sound itself, but a metaphorical description of the sound. So unless this is a silent, wordless movie, there’s metaphor in your little fictional world.
I’m insulted that any writers so irrational as not to realize this, or such liars as to claim “no metaphor” with a straight face, would dare to insult the rationality or truth of religion — or anything else, frankly.
Despite the many flaws that Christianity’s pastors have made over the years, I still believe because despite all the setbacks that I have in my life, I’m still here and my faith is one of the reasons for that. They keep attacking religion, particularly Christianity. If these guys are so progressive, let’s if they have the guts to attack other religions like Islam and even Hinduism. As I recall, they don’t take to people insulting their reiligion.
Jason: I think I’ve seen most of Gervais’ work, at least since hitting big with “The Office.” His latest stand-up, or at least the latest I saw a few months ago online, is hilarious. He is a gifted artist, as I noted.
As I believe Mr. Karnick noted, Britain is largely today “unchurched” and it appears Gervais is a product of that culture. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily. But Gervais is no dummy, and he certainly should not feign surprise when a largely believing culture (America) recoils at his gratuitous insult of their beliefs. That’s the beef Mr. Karnick was expounding upon here.
Yes, by all means: Live and let live. And like or don’t like. And spend or not spend money on a movie that insults believers. Gervais might have noticed before writing his film that movies “bashing religion” — especially gratuitously — don’t tend to do very well at the box office. Oh, well. Live and learn, I suppose.
Steve writes:
You’re offended. That’s cool. Keep your money in your pocket, then, if you don’t like supporting (I suppose) some all-consuming Christian Industrial Complex in America. If you moved to Europe, though, you might find it less morally objectionable to relieve your wallet of its extending girth.
Keith and Peter–I’m glad that you have learned more about the film here. My goal is to help make people aware of what this movie and other cultural items are really about so that they can make informed choices.
Excellent!
I wasn’t going to see the movie but if it generates this much buzz from theists, then I’m all for it.
And for the record, the biggest lie IS that there is a god.
Giles — “Blasphemy. Truly a victimless crime.”
Unless there is a God; then the blasphemer has victimized himself.
I did not want to see this move. It did not look funny. After reading this i do.
Wonderful! Finally a major film that satirizes irrational thinking. Religion is far too protected in this country. The believers claim this film is offensive. Well I’m “offended” daily whenever I spend money in the United States. In god, a full 16% of us certainly don’t trust!
Atheist propaganda? Well religion has used plenty of propaganda for centuries – I don’t think a few atheist books / movies here and there can really compare.
Gervais may be pushing buttons, but that’s usually what his comedy does. If you think that Gervais’ prior comedic works haven’t hinted or outright stated his atheism (as one poster does), then you clearly haven’t seen much of his stand up specials.
Americans have to keep in mind that as Gervais is British, he’s grown up with atheism not being such a big issue for people.
Live and let live, plenty of movies have been made supporting and bashing religion. Guess what – the world keeps turning.
Blasphemy. Truly a victimless crime.
I am sorely disappointed to hear this movie is not as advertised. I think Gervais is a gifted comedian … and, yes, a gifted artist. His creation of “The Office” was brillant, and laid the groundwork for an American version that started (literally) with his template and became its own often-excruciating but hilarious show. For killing the “live studio audience or laugh-track prompting the giggles” template of American sit-coms for good, he deserves much credit. (People forget in the wake of the current critical and popular success of Steve Carrell’s “Office” that giving the viewers credit to absorb what happens before them on their own terms was a big risk at the time.)
Anyway, it is impossible to improve on your bracketed comments to Gervais’ blog post, but I’ll make some observations nonetheless:
I don’t want to come off like some cartoon-condemning jihadi, and I don’t even want to use the term “blasphemous.” But just because you don’t believe in a Supreme Being doesn’t mean you can’t blaspheme. Let’s reconstruct that sentence using the language Gervais should have used if he had the capacity to be intellectually honest: “Not believing in God means you cannot insult Him or the beliefs of those who worship Him.” Gervais is simply wrong, and he gets no points. He cannot play the “but I’m an atheist card” on this one. It’s akin to believing that homosexuality is a “choice,” so it’s acceptable to insult them in the most cruel and existential ways because those strange people to have chosen a belief system that differs from yours. Try that in Hollywood.
Gervais also says:
Nice Hollywood liberal check-off list there. Did he leave anything off? Oh yeah. The “don’t gratuitously insult believers” of every mainstream religion, from Christianity, to Judiasim, to Islam. That, of course, is totally acceptable … except for the offending Islam part. No way even an atheist in Hollywood does that.
I can respect atheist views and love and respect my atheist friends. We have wonderful conversations, but I always lament that they don’t have a more positive outlook on life. Even if Gervais is right and we all turn to worm food when it’s over, belief in a higher power begets better behavior (for one’s self and toward others) than the cynical, dark outlook that seems to eventually consume most atheists.
At the very least, an “open-minded” person like Gervais should at least be able to recognize how his film might turn off many Christians. It is patently absurd that Gervais thinks presenting his religion-mocking movie to an 70 or 80 percent Christian-American audience would not come across as “singling out” Christians. What are they to think? He’s chiefly mocking Hindus? Those who worship Gaia? (Again, perish the thought in Hollywood?)
Again, I’m more saddened and disappointed than offended. I was primed to see this movie based on Gervais’ great body of work and the funny previews on TV — which give not the slightest hint about its true agenda. That deception is quite damning, even in the atheist sense of the word. Gervais and the studio are trying to pull a fast one. Thank God (gasp!) for the Internet, which quickly revealed the real plot and agenda of this movie. Saved me and my wife 30 bucks.
Good points, Daniel. The economics of it are fairly simple: As long as they release a big enough slate of sufficiently varied films, the Hollywood studios are guaranteed to make money over time.
As a result, the studios can freely indulge their “creative” people’s fantasies, passions, and hatreds with very little risk to their bottom line, as long as they release enough somewhat appealing genre films to sustain a sufficiently plentiful overall revenue stream to keep their distant corporate overseers from spotting any dangerous financial weaknesses.
What happens quite naturally as a result of this guaranteed revenue stream is that over time it enables people possessing values far out of the mainstream to rise to power in the studios. They will then greenlight seriously mad ventures such as The Golden Compass, resulting in perfectly predictable financial catastrophes.
However, lower-budget fare such as Gervais’s film poses virtually no noticeable financial risk to the studios, so they can and do indulge their weird little creative people to their hearts’ content.
Dozens and dozens of people spent God knows how many hours and millions of dollars producing this movie, and not one person said at any point during its creation, “You know this is going to offend a lot of people.”
On the other hand, if someone did raise a concern, about the reaction the movie clearly intends to elicit, then the response was either a hearty, “Who gives a damn what those religious wackos think?!?” Or, “Thank you for your time, you’re fired.”
And how is it that no one at Warner Bros. was aware of the reaction to Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass? Hollywood’s institutional memory is so bad that an atheist inspired film can spectacularly fail, literally resulting in New Line Cinema’s closure as an independent producer, and a mere 2 years later the studio now distributing films under the New Line logo goes back to that same well. Incredible.