Here’s an interesting thing: Disney are having trouble pitching the new Narnia film’s soundtrack/s because of the religious content of the movie. They’ve released a Christian soundtrack, but they may release another one too, to try and not put off whole sections of the market.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis are roughly based on Christian stories and morality, and Disney has been trying its hardest to capitalise on the religious market that did so well for Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ. They’ve been marketing hard at Christians, showing trailers at Christian conventions and suchlike, and have released a soundtrack album for the film of songs ‘inspired by’ the story, all by Christian performers and treating the material from a Christian perspective. The problem that they’re facing is that they don’t want to turn off the secular (non-religous) parts of society from buying the music and watching the film. Equally they’re scared that Disney might become seen as a Christian-film maker (although after The Lion King I’m amazed they’re not already). Disney is hoping to release a non-Christian soundtrack album too, but currently isn’t sure if it’s going to manage this because music for the film hasn’t been fully settled on yet.

I find this a little weird. I don’t think I’ve heard of a soundtrack album being released targetted specifically at a group based on its religion before. Is this something we’re going to see more of in the future: I’d love to see the ‘Blade 4: The Christian Rock Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’, featuring songs about the Christian metaphor of a man with supernatural powers, born from death and to deliver humanity from evil. How about having whole different soundtrack options on films, so you’d have one version of the film with the secular soundtrack, and another one with Christian folk singers chirping uplifting ballads between actors’ lines?

But why stop there? ‘Lord of the Rings: The Bollywood Edition’ would be great. You could do a George Lucas style remake of the film’s special effects, having Gollum dance on, twirling his wrists, and sing in Hindi about the need for understanding of the balance between the physical incarnation of the body and spiritual fulfillment.

Should Christians be insulted that their religion is now just a marketing tool? Or are they expected to simply enjoy the idea of celebrating Christ through their consumer choices? It all smacks of buying redemption to me. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that people have tried to buy their way into heaven (the medieval church became massively rich selling pardons) but it’s certainly an interesting manifestation of late-stage capitalism’s interpretation of religion’s position in society.

More (in a slightly more serious tone) here.

The black helicopters are circling!

There’s a chap on my forums who believes that he has alien-technology implants in his neck. He believes that they were put there 35 years ago by the Australian Navy. He also claims to be part of a cover-up of the murder of the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, who, mainstream reports say, drowned. His website can be seen here.

We’ve been as polite as possible to this chap and his one defender (a conveniently timed new forum member), but without medical training we’re just working on logic and observation, so I need your help:

Do you or a friend know how to read X-rays or CT scans?

On this page there are scans that the person claims to show alien-technology implants in his neck. To me they look remarkably like organic structures, possibly scar tissue, or maybe a hardening of ligaments from some damage to the neck. I think my favourite bit on that page is the third page of the letter which talks about the need to ‘expose the TRUTH’ about the operation on his neck. I’ve seen the Truth, the truth, but rarely do I see the TRUTH. I love this kind of stuff!

I would like to hear from anyone with experience in the field who can make a judgement on the pictures, either way. It would be especially useful if they are currently working in a verifiable position in a hospital – this is all about checkable evidence, so being able to confirm that the person saying it does have a medical background would be useful! Surely someone or a friend must be able to help with this?

I would really love for it all to be true. I think it would be great if some massive governmental/corporate/alien conspiracy were to be behind all this, but I just don’t think it is, which is a shame. Still, I’d like to find someone with medical experience of looking at scans who can say that the shadows on the scans are seen on thousands of other ones every day (or that they aren’t).

The thing that I find the strangest out of all of this is that this man claims to have been involved in an internationally mandated assassination of his country’s prime minister but then he waffles on about alien-technology neck implants and almost completely forgets the initial claim. Such an assassination is far more believable than the implant story, but he doesn’t give any details about it.

You can see the full forum thread here. It’s quite entertaining!