My wife and I just finished watching a new movie called The Box starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden and the only word that I can find to describe this movie is pathetic. The Box is a thinly veiled attempt to foist old world spirituality and dogma on unsuspecting viewers. It starts interestingly enough with a gentlemen (a.k.a the serpent, we later realize) who delivers a box with a red button (the apple) to a couple (Adam and Eve) with an offer (a temptation). The offer is simple. Press the button and somebody you don’t know is going to die. The temptation? If you press the button, you get a million dollars.

So what happens?

Well in an absolutely horrid take on old world indoctrination Cameron pushes the button (i.e. eats the apple, gives into temptation) and then watches her life spiral out of control. Her husband is shown three doorways and must choose the right one or suffer eternal damnation, her son is abducted and his ability to see and hear is cruelly and heartlessly taken from him by the “higher powers” in the film. Then, in one of the most pathetically executed endings I’ve ever seen, the serpent returns and tells Cameron she must be shot in the heart and killed by her loving husband if her son is ever going to be whole again.

And why?

Well, it is a test of our horrible, weak, stupid, human  moral fiber and because we failed, now we must bear the horrible consequences!

I suppose that the masons or whatever little boys network is behind this film expect us to be nodding our heads in agreement with the old world theology that oozes out of the pours of this film like a cancerous plague. All the shit and abuse that this  family endures, all the moralistic judgment and forced choices, the death, the suffering, the child abduction, the mental control, the abuse of power, is all OK. Heck, it’s all their fault (or rather the female’s fault) for pushing the button and giving into temptation. After a decade or two of subtle, and not so subtle indoctrination, we are expected to accept the horseshit. And of course, many of us do, no doubt nodding our heads in amused agreement with the dogmatic morality and justifications of the film.It is OK for some stranger to offer a struggling family a million dollars and then engage in moralistic judgment when they, surprise surprise, take the money. It is OK to kidnap somebody’s son, or manipulate a husband into killing his wife and leaving his son without a mother. It is OK to engage in ongoing “testing” in some “I-can’t-even-think-to-describe-the-stupidity-of-it” moral experiment where the women always fails “the test” and pushes the button (i.e. gives into temptation) and then always suffers a horrible and heartless (literally) end, shot in in the heart by their loving husbands (and ya, in the movie, it is the women we see pushing the button and leading their family into ruin).

But you know what, we don’t buy it. In fact, we’re going to come out and say it. It is $%#^& awful. In fact, the message of the film sucks at so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. How dare the producers, and the actors send us and our children this message? How dare they justify kidnapping and abuse? How dare they excuse manipulation and murder? How dare they suggest that a morally superior [alien] race (a “higher power”) has the right to experiment on us, and judge us, and condemn us.

How dare they?

Are they trying to scare us away from first contact by suggesting our friends “up there” are really our judge, jury, and executioner.

Are they trying to reinforce the self-esteem crushing morality of the Catholic church?

Is there some kind of closest Nazism going on here because frankly, experimenting on people without their consent is just wrong, wrong, wrong and anybody, any director or writer, that suggests otherwise, or that (worse still), provides a spiritual justification for that kind of abuse is, if you ask me, blowing it out their arses, or worse.

I mean I ask you, how sick and twisted is it to force a father and husband to make a choice between shooting his wife in the heart, and seeing his son healthy and whole? How sick is it to blind an innocent child? How pathetic to engage in mind control. There is no moral ambiguity here. It is an abuse of power pure and simple–distorted and psychopathic. Honestly, there is nothing cool about that shit and frankly it is sick to present such a thing as if it is “divinely cool” as they did in the film.

Sigh.

You know, it is going to be a while for Hollywood stops blowing this putrid crap out of their glitzy mind control orifices but maybe we can reach the actors on this. Maybe our earth bound blue bloods, the Cameron Diaz’s and James Marsden’s and Frank Langella’s of the world, who clearly don’t need the money, can consult with their conscience (as the serpent said in the film) and instead of pushing the red button, abducting and mutilating the children, and absconding with the cash, can do the right thing for once and say no to crap like this.

I mean, it’s not rocket science.

Even a Hollywood actor should know.

It’s not OK to experiment on people.

It’s not OK to threaten them with damnation.

It’s not OK to kidnap and blind their children.

It’s not OK to get people who love each other to shoot each other.

I mean, if you want to talk in terms of old world spirituality, good and evil, right and wrong, it is these things that are clearly evil.Just because you wrap the perpetrators of these crimes in mystical, technological garb and pretend they are better than us doesn’t make it OK. In fact, exactly the opposite. If they are superior to the morally bankrupt and weak human females, then they should know better. Rather than justifying their Machiavellian experimentation and sick voyeurism, they should lead by example. That’s what the evolved and enlightened ones do, don’t ya know.

Finally, I think it is important to highlight one final aspect of this film and that is the a subtle and terrifying undercurrent of misogyny (i.e. women hating).You watch the movie with eyes wide open you’ll see it. The message of the film is very clear. It is the females of the species who are weak. It is the females who are confronted by the serpent and temptation and it is the weak females who are the cause of all the bad things that happen. By their weakness and failure, they ruin the lives of everybody and, in the end, may even be responsible for the destruction of the human race! When you think about it, that’s some pretty heavy negativity directed towards females but what is most terrifying about all this is what we do to the females who give into temptation. The consequences of their moral failure is clear, and even divinely sanctioned! Shot in the heart and cast out into the darkness. By the hands of the ones they love they shall be murdered for their sins.

ms