Priest School

Posted by: spacecog

Well this is odd. In place of a review of the Amityville Horror, the Reader seems to have accidently run some guy’s Cultural Studies term paper on 70s horror movies, feminism, and the Catholic Church.

According to Benjamin Strong, the author of the mini-dissertation, the original Amityville Horror, with its hero priest, totally rocked because when it came out in 1979 "Catholicism was a perfect placeholder for [anxieties about family values] because it was then facing its own choice between adhering to tradition and keeping pace with a rapidly secularizing society." Uh, yeah, I guess. In the remake, though, it’s apparently hard to look at the not-so-heroic priest without wondering if he’s going to wander off and diddle young boys. Which I gather detracts somewhat from the flick, which gets one little star from visiting scholar Strong.

I keed, but despite Strong’s dully academic prose, his review is still about a zillion times more interesting than anything Rosey ever writes. I give it a B. (As for the headline the Reader attached to the story, "Secular’s Not as Scary," I give it a D-.)

We at The Reader Sucks are willing to engage with moderate elements in the Reader camp – that is, those who write moderately engaging articles, rather than the radically terrible ones that are the Reader’s mainstay. Mr. Strong gives us grounds for cautious optimism, if he can ever learn to write a lead.