Some Short Notes

11/24/98: This afternoon, I saw American History X with Edward Norton and Edward Furlong. Marvelous performances and direction. About California white supremacists. The hero learns his lesson, but not soon enough to avoid tragic consequences. Trouble is that intellectually I found the white power arguments more cogent than those on the other side. What converted the hero was that in prison (1) his white power buddies were inconsistent (one dealt with the Mexicans to sell drugs to his “own people”), and they turned on him when he objected, and (2) in jail his only friend was a black man, who protected him after his white protectors turned against him. Moving story, but not much of an argument.

My conclusion is that apart from God’s Word, it is hard to argue against racists. Why shouldn’t each race contend against the others for their own interests? Scripture tells us that God made us all of one blood, and that he sends his people across racial and national barriers with the love of Christ. Hollywood’s answer to racism, on the contrary, seems to be sheer sentimentality.

7. 12/19/98: “Prince of Egypt,” an animated feature from DreamWorks, took pains not to conflict with what Scripture actually says, but its focus was on a story that is not found in the Bible, the relationship of Pharaoh Rameses to his step-brother Moses. Meredith Kline taught us years ago that Rameses was not the pharaoh of the Exodus and that Moses lived about a hundred years before him. But most critical scholars still accept a later date for the Exodus, if they believe in the Exodus at all.

God was much involved in the film, but only as a mysterious presence who pops in and out from time to time. The moral thrust of it (as with the de Mille versions of The Ten Commandments) was that slavery is bad, and rescuing people from slavery is a great thing, the chief movement of history. But in Romans 9, Paul says that God raised up Pharaoh to glorify Himself. And in this movie there isn’t much glorifying of God. Moses makes many appeals in seeking to save his people: the cruelty of Rameses’ father Sethi in killing the Hebrew babies, the ties of friendship with Rameses, the burdens of his enslaved people. But he says little or nothing about God’s promise to Abraham or God’s honor in the situation.

The story ends with the crossing of the sea, though the final scene is of Moses in the mountain with the tables of the law. No reference to the golden calf worship which he meets on his descent, or of the tabernacle-temple-priesthood, the wilderness wanderings, or the death of M.

The movie is somewhat non-committal on the politically correct thesis that the Egyptians were black. They have heavy tans, and they could be described as African, but that is somewhat less than obvious. Songs are pretty good.