Kevin Smith is an independent filmmaker. He follows no mold except for the one he creates. Audiences and critics have pegged him and his films as comedic, stoner, and outcast fare. A good director knows better than to become predictable. At the Wizard World Chicago 2006 convention, Smith announced that his next project, Red State, would be a serious, straight-laced horror film. His focus turned to the church and state, both with their collective debate and strife.
Red State was inspired by three sources. First was the Waco siege, an event steeped in religious and militia extremism. Second was the homophobic pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, and his unwavering hate group of devotees. Third was the black comedy Vulgar, in which a birthday clown is emotionally abused by his mother and sexually abused by other men. Red State starred notable actors Michael Parks as radical believer and torturer Pastor Abin Cooper, and John Goodman as ATF Special Agent Joe Keenan. The film underperformed at the box office, most panning it as a rushed and scattered message. Others praised the film's denouncement of bigotry and extremism. On paper, Red State is a film out of Smith's wheelhouse, but dealing with taboo subjects through a horror lens is clever and remarkable filmmaking.
Religious Politics and Political Religion
Upon the film's release, Smith decided to self-distribute his film, to have creative control over how his film would be marketed. Potential distributors as well as the media felt it was dishonest and selfish of him to hold an auction ultimately for himself. Smith argued that the business has been dishonest and selfish to him. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but Smith's actions may just be an act of irony and sincerity. By distributing the film himself, Smith demonstrated the "radical extremist" point of view that his film was precious and belonged to him alone and any true supportive fans, much like Pastor Abin Cooper.
A risky financial move turned into life imitating art and art imitating life. The fact that Smith had the awareness of America's pulse and had a film to share his or the national discourse through is fundamental storytelling. Conflict can be confusing, on both sides, and Smith has shown the collateral damage and divisiveness that obstructs our better nature. Red State highlights how choosing one-party, group, or ideology stops you from thinking, outwardly, locally, globally, responsibly, empathetically. That choice is a horror for the other person, as is that other person's choice a horror for the first.
Their Rights Aren't Right
Rights are made up, as the nonconformist comedian George Carlin would say. The right to self-expression is fair enough, but what if it encroaches on another's rights? Fighting fire with fire is counterproductive. What people need is a bonfire to look into, to see what burns each of us deep inside. Red State uses hellfire, fire and brimstone, a firing squad, friendly fire, and unfriendly fire. American culture and society has suffered its ills, self-inflicted and imposed at great length.
A little over a decade prior, in 1999, the Columbine High School massacre took place. The events led to "Columbine" becoming a byword for school shootings, and the phrase "Columbine effect" was adopted soon after. A tragic event entered the vernacular, and with it, a string of tragedies that should've never happened. Shootings at churches or places of worship have also occurred and accrued a wide debate over firearm regulations under heavy moral panic and sensationalism that undercuts the severity of the reality and truth of the situation. The problem being, no one accepts the reality or truth of their actions and words, long enough to see and understand the error of their ways. Warring sides instead, to paraphrase Adam from MythBusters, rejected the other's reality, and substituted their own.
Hysteria and Enlightenment
The medium is the message, one news station differs from the next, one podcast differs from the next, one social media influencer differs from the next. There is a slew of proselytizing in any outlet you digest, secular and religious. What goes on between your ears is the deciding factor. You can entertain a thought without accepting it or attacking it. You can consciously see the other's point of view and vice versa. You can share with them the consequences or misgivings without handing out impending consequences and misgivings.
The ending of Red State understood the importance of discernment. A trumpet interrupts the shootout between the congregation and ATF enforcement, sounding off the voice of reason. It is discovered that the noise came from college students who were annoyed by Cooper. Smith intended for the trumpet to be the sign of the Rapture and the introduction of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Either way, the scene condemns ignorance on all accounts, from the wise and unwise, the unassuming and overbearing, the honest and hypocritical. Next to Dogma, Red State is Kevin Smith's greatest film for its observations of judgmental participants, religious and political, subjected to groupthink and single-minded agendas that hurt more than they help.