Jesus Camp [2006]
Director: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
I was looking forward to seeing this documentary, after I saw a bit of it on Real Time with Bill Maher, but I must admit that I’m a little disappointed. While I was as disgusted at the content of the documentary (more on that in a sec), I was disappointed at the form in which they presented it.
The documentary is about a summer-camp organised by the fundamentalist Christians in the United States, where children learn how to be better “soldiers of God.” The camp was introduced by the organiser, a woman who specialises in preaching to children, as the Christian alternative to Muslim fundamentalism, a society in which, according to the woman, children are being groomed to be martyrs and soldiers of faith. She, too, believes she should put her effort into “educating” the children on the word of God.
Of course, anyone who doesn’t believe that this is correct, or any non-fundamentalist (Christian or otherwise), will consider that education as indoctrination and brain-washing. The kids who are followed certainly do posses all the qualities of little brain-washed munchkins. They talk about things like “wanting more out of life” and “giving up [their] life to God” at a time in their life where I don’t think anyone is capable of having made up their mind about things like spirituality.
There is no narrator, and context has to be generated by the words and images of the documentary itself, which can be a bit annoying. Nowhere near as good as Michael Moore’s documentaries, but it does have a more sober feel to it, and it feels less of a pre-masticated cup of broth than most of Michael Moore’s sensationalistic documentaries feel like.
