| Two movies at the top of box office charts, each of them teen-themed, share more than their target audience in common. Both Save the Last Dance and Sugar and Spice also feature overtly Christian characters-and neither is treated too kindly. Dance's Christian high-schooler is in very few scenes, and is only mildly mocked: She's portrayed as oblivious to the world around her and vaguely racist. In Sugar, however, Christianity doesn't get off so easily. The film is about five cheerleading friends who stage a bank robbery. One of the cheerleaders is a fundamentalist Christian, and this provides fodder for recurring jokes that-sometimes viciously-mock her, her Bible-believing parents, her church, and, more often than not, her faith itself. More than just gentle pokes at evangelical Christians often found in the products of pop culture today, the jokes in Sugar are crude and blasphemous, giving a sexual connotation to pictures of Christ on the cross and painting church-goers as a cruel breed who refer to all unwed mothers as whores. Perhaps it's too soon to declare a trend, but Hollywood seems to be noticing the very real presence of outspoken Christians in public high schools, and so far it's not responding favorably. |
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