One of my Halloween traditions over the past few years has been to see the latest installment in the Saw franchise. This year was no exception. With very little in the way of promotion, Saw VI made its way into theaters this past weekend. After the abyssmal and ultimately pointless Saw V, my excitement about the sixth film was greatly diminished and my expectations were very low though the handful of reviews I perused were positive. I didn’t do any of my typical film research prior to seeing it. After watching it, I wanted to raise my hands in victory. The series is back on track, and this movie is just a damn good one!

In this latest installment, the games revolve around the hot button topic of health care. Prior to his death, John (Jigsaw) had discovered a promising experimental treatment and had been declared an ideal candidate by the doctor conducting the research. However, the insurance company threatened to revoke John’s coverage if he participated in the treatment. The glib delivery of what is essentially a death sentence doesn’t sit well with John, and he is all too well aware that countless others have received the same dismissive treatment. The executive to whom John spoke, who also developed the formula which determines whether or not a person receives coverage, finds himself thrust into a series of games in which he must choose who lives and who dies. And he must watch the results of his choices with his own eyes.

Kevin Greutert, who has edited all of the previous Saw films, makes his directorial debut less about stylish camerawork and frenetic flash-cuts and more about telling a story. The themes involved and the techniques employed make this movie feel much less like a music video than previous installments. The colors in the insurance company scenes are cold and muted, while the trap scenes are deeply contrasted and hot. The sound design is excellent and Charlie Clouser’s musical score is brilliant as always. Clouser’s easily-recognizable theme for the series brings a wry smile to my face whenever I hear it.

Slasher flicks don’t scare me. Gore doesn’t bother me. In fact, if relied upon as the principal means of conveying shock and fear, it annoys the hell out of me. The mental and emotional elements are what get to me. When a person is dehumanized and becomes a nameless expense item on a budget or a faceless factor in an equation, bad things can and do happen. Most often, they happen to those who least deserve them. And while it can be said that revenge is a common theme throughout the Saw series, VI puts some really sharp teeth on it. This is not torture porn. Hostel is torture porn. This, in my opinion, is a revenge movie. It was great to see Jigsaw take a bit of leave from his detached objectivity and infuse this film’s games with some good ol’ fashioned “dammit you’ve pissed me off”.

In response to some alarmist objections I have heard, let me say that this is not a serial killer training video any more than a broom store is a recruiting station for witches. The elements that make up the fabric of the story would be impossible to carry out. It’s a damn movie! The beauty of it being a work of pure fiction means that the writer has absolute control of every element in the universe they create. Not to mention that real people just aren’t built like the character of Jigsaw. If a real person got that pissed off, they would either get really drunk and cuss someone out over the phone, key someone’s car, or just be a passive-aggressive asshole. And forget about designing and constructing lethal traps and devices which require a great deal of engineering skill and ingenuity. Real people buy perishable food in bulk, find reality TV shows entertaining, and blow their balls off making homemade fireworks. The human gene pool is several thousand years away from being able to produce a living, breathing combination of MacGyver and Professor X.

Even though it’s the sixth film in the series, this movie isn’t dependent upon familiarity for its most critical elements. Of course, fans of the franchise will get the most out of it. But you won’t be totally lost if Saw VI is your first foray into Jigsaw’s world. Just do a little background reading on the series and you’ll be able to stay afloat. If you have a strong stomach and enjoy seeing people get their come-uppance, you’ll be thoroughly satisfied. And if you’re an insurance adjustor, you’ll be wishing for a career change and a dry pair of pants.

A recent decision by the Catoosa County school board regarding the use of biblical text on football banners has resulted in a community-wide uproar. Every issue is going to have people on either side of the argument, but hot buttons like religion polarize people to the extreme and foster an “Us vs. Them” mentality. The groups are framed in a number of ways: ”Christians” versus “Atheists”, “Oppressive religious zealots” versus “Free-thinking individuals”, “Lefties” versus “Righties”, etc. This is a false dichotomy. We are susceptible to such erroneous thinking because we are too busy trying to win the argument to realize how unreasonable we are being.

It seems to me that, if this were a purely religious issue, the religious crowd would have quite a dilemma to wrestle with. On the one hand, they feel threatened by “them God-hatin’ atheists” who object to public displays of biblical text. On the other hand, they must question their support of a biblical text being held up on a banner and then vigorously destroyed while the crowd cheers and the band plays. I find this absolutely hilarious, and I would really push the envelope here were it not for my wanting to avoid being a dick about a sensitive subject. Especially one about which very few people allow humor.

The objectors to the scriptural display must also examine their position. They are certainly free to disagree with anyone and everyone with whom they choose to differ, but their position loses strength when it is couched in the language of political correctness. This amounts to nothing more than pissy whining. The claim that one is “offended” has been batted about so recklessly that it has lost all meaning and value. Being offended has come to mean “not liking the fact that someone disagrees with me”. They end up exhibiting the very behavior they decry, and then have the foolish audacity to call others “hypocrites”. Here’s a tip for ya, Sparky. Screaming and bitching every time someone mentions the word “God” or cites a biblical text doesn’t do anything to make anyone truly question the validity of a theistic worldview. It just makes you sound like an asshole.

The Catoosa County school board, in a classic demonstration of their complete lack of backbone and/or balls, kowtowed to the objection and forced the elimination of biblical references from future banners. Anyone who is thinking that the school board did this because they are a tool of Satan or because they hate God needs to smack themselves in the face with a golf cleat until they pass out. This was done simply to avoid a lawsuit. It was a dick move, sure. But the school board has their hands full trying to juggle the pants-crappingly abyssmal No Child Left Behind regulations. And the last thing they need is some whining opportunistic jerk-off trying to grab fistfuls of free money from empty coffers and an already-strained budget.

The reason given was that the texts violated the “separation of church and state”. This is weak sauce. If the school board was truly concerned about that, they would have put a stop to the use of biblical texts when the LFO cheerleaders first started using them. Granted, the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” appears in no founding document but rather in a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. Hardly a firm base for legislation. But let’s examine the Freedom of Religion clause of the First Amendment which is so often appealed to in such matters. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or inhibiting the free exercise thereof;…” This is the given basis for the Catoosa County school board’s decision. They are not Congress and they are not making laws. Whether or not they are inhibiting the free exercise of religion is a moot point. Their decision cannot reasonably be based upon the stated grounds. It is not applicable to them. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I call bullshit.

The school board is well within its rights to decide either to continue to allow the public display of biblical texts or to ban their future use. I personally don’t care which they choose to do so long as they are honest about their reasons for it (which I DO NOT feel that they were). In the grand scheme, it will take far more than permitting or prohibiting biblical texts on a football banner to make anyone truly and objectively examine themselves or their belief systems. Perhaps a good place to start is for both staunchly outspoken sides of the debate to sit down together and share a tall, frosty mug of Shut The Hell Up. Learn the lost arts of listening and respectful discourse or be forever doomed to shouting at each other in a vacuum because you have made yourselves inaccessible and irrelevant to those for whom you purport to speak.

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