more on orphan

jamie wrote this in response to comment #3 on the last post. he then found out the comment was written by someone who didn't know about the movie and didn't intend to be offensive. but we figured we might as well re-state our position, as we have found out more about the movie orphan and continue to be dismayed by its portrayal of adopted children and people with disabilities.

All right, I'll give you a cleverness point for the commentary on G-Force. However, this comment really isn't funny. Lauren has a tendency to get impassioned and over state her position, so let me restate it a little more pragmatically.The truth is, the movie "Orphan" is the proverbial punch in the groin to the person who has already been knocked down and left defenseless.

There are millions, yes literally millions, of children in orphanages and on the streets around the world who will never be adopted because so many "civilized" people fear that any orphaned child above the age of 3 is too broken to be worth saving. The fates of children who are not adopted is the stuff of true horror, not the contrived Hollywood variety. If you want to see some really scary movies with orphans, check out "Invisible Children" or "The Dying Rooms." Both are available free online. They tell the stories of the real terrors of orphanages and abandoned children. Boys become child soldiers, pumped full of drugs and trained to hack one another to death with machetes or to blow themselves up as suicide bombers. Little girls are forced into prostitution before they've hit puberty as street corner prostitutes and sexual slaves in high dollar brothels. Both genders face slavery in many countries, while some are simply left to die of disease and starvation. Most of these children would thrive if brought into loving homes, but they will never have that opportunity, and in its own small way, Orphan is making sure of it.

The long and short of it is that this movie just adds fuel to a fire that already keeps kids from finding families. Orphaned children need every advantage they can get, they do not need their image defamed for the sake of entertainment. Further, how would you have liked sitting in your living room one night with your adopted child, like my friends the Jacks or the Todds who both adopted older children from Eastern Europe, when suddenly the words "Orphan... It must be difficult to love an adopted child as much as your own" scrolled across your TV screen during the commercials. Have fun explaining that one to kids who already struggle with attachment issues and post traumatic stress disorder. By the way, the new, "less offensive" tag line that replaced the aforementioned original tag line was "I don't think mommy likes me very much." That was supposed to be an improvement?

And for anyone who argues, like the movie executives did, that there is a "saving twist" to Orphan that negates any abuse of the image of real orphaned children, I have two points:
1. As a high school teacher of mine used to say, "A little feces ruins a whole cake." In other words, you can't exploit the stereotype of orphans and then throw in a twist at the end that most people will never see and act like everything's ok.
2. According to the blogosphere and movie message boards, the twist only makes the movie sound worse. Evil child Esther is not an orphan at all, she's an adult with acute dwarfism. So, in other words, they've simply shifted from picking on orphans to picking on people with disabilities. That's like saying "Hey, I know I shouldn't pick on the black kid, but it's ok, he also has down's syndrome."

One last point: throughout history people have gotten their kicks by mocking and abusing those weaker and less fortunate than themselves. More often than not, we're all guilty of standing back and watching,whether out of our own sense of morbid humor or just relief that we are not the object of the abuse. However, I see a distinct lack of sarcasm, cynicism, and belittlement in Jesus' tone when dealing with the disadvantaged and needy. The only people He ever spoke harshly to were those who needed to be brought down to earth, not those who needed to be lifted off it. In short, if you want to make a movie called "Movie Executive" or"Celebrity" or "President" and make fun of someone with the resources and confidence to defend himself, that's fine; but I don't think it is the place of Christians to be or aid the tools of oppression. Movies like Orphan deserve our righteous indignation and should not be laughed off. Maybe if the kids you plan on taking to see G-Force were pulled out of an overcrowded, under resourced orphanage, you would think so too.