We Ain’t Come From No Monkeys

I’m getting a little peeved at the number of articles I’ve read in the last week arguing that the film Darwin failing to secure a distributor at the Toronto Film Festival is proof in the puddin’ that Americans are all incurably sick with a case of teh spooky backwards stoopids. Not one of those articles have even entertained another possibility that might explain the lack of interest: the movie is a boring, crappy period drama that nobody anticipates people paying money to watch in theaters.

I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say either way. If it were a good movie otherwise and fear of the Christian right was the reason distributors were wary of picking up the film, surely there would be, at the very least, interest in limited releases in godless urban centers like New York and Los Angeles. Controversial films about religion come out in the US all the time. Sure, there are always a pack of morons who show up with picket signs and moan about it, but all that generally amounts to is a load of free publicity. Distributors like controversy. They court it. If anything, the potential for it would encourage the investment.

I’ve spent most of my life on “the left coast,” so it’s not like I’ve got my finger on the pulse of middle America and could guess how folks there would react to a movie about Charles Darwin. I do, however, doubt the reason that distributors are passing on a film about his life and work is because they worry armies of staunch Christian creationists will show up outside their doors with torches and pitchforks in the dark of night.

I do have to say, there’s something wildly amusing about foreigners decrying Americans as superstitious and backwardly religious to an ignorant fault, while basing their arguments on ignorance of their own that relies on little more than false, bigotted assumptions and stereotypes. Then again, what do I know? I’m an American. I don’t get irony, or so I’ve been told.