Here’s how the Google homeschool news blurb read:
This weekend filming started outside the Rhea County Courthouse of yet another movie version of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925…. Bryan College secured the rights to the movie…
It will be called “Inherit the Truth” and will be shot in black and white.
Many residents who’ve been re-enacting the trial for 20 years will be the actors and extras in the movie… After filming is complete, the college plans to market the film to home school groups, law schools and libraries.
But wait a sec, hmmm.. Homeschool groups are the primary market? Maybe this “news” of a “college” remaking the “truth” isn’t the whole story then. Creationism called “truth” is too often the most profitable product pushed to that market. . .
Yep, the local Tennessee tv news guys weren’t well-educated themselves, apparently. They missed everything truthful and important I would want to know. Start with this “college” and its approach to “Truth” for a quite different story:
Here, our Biblical worldview not only infuses the curriculum, but it also influences the way we choose to live, work, and play together each and every moment.
and then read state newspaper coverage with that context in mind:
The film will be called “Inherit the Truth” and will act as a counterpoint to “Inherit the Wind,” a drama based upon the 1925 trial, said Dr. Stephen Livesay, president of Bryan College.
” ‘Inherit the Wind’ is very much fictionalized,” Dr. Livesay said. “Our version is based upon the original transcript and is the truth.”
Dr. Livesay said the college secured the rights to “Inherit the Truth” from Dayton playwright Gale Johnson and found an anonymous donor to fund the project. Filming starts July 14 outside the historic courthouse and continues on July 17, he said.
He said he thinks the new film will show William Jennings Bryan, the attorney who argued for biblical creation, in a more positive light.
Oh, and the black-and-white isn’t for art’s sake, or as a nod to the original film with Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly. It is calculated, says the good doctor heading this college, to give his Michael Moore-rivaling ideology film a “documentary feel.”
“I’m hoping that we get the authenticity of the play in it,” he said.
Talk about oxymoronic — truth with a documentary FEEL, about an authentic PLAY?
Well, now I’m “feeling” too good not to “play” with it.
Favorite Daughter and I have read this play, seen and analyzed the film and the legit remake with Jack Lemmon several times, along with provocative academic commentary about it all, and most educationally valuable I think, the scholarly history of the real trial and its cultural contexts, Edward J. Larson’s “Summer for the Gods” (awarded the 1998 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY.)
Even world-class prize-winning scholarship is seldom the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But it comes closer than anything else in this story!
Maybe the Bible College president seeking truth and authenticity and real education, should shoot Larson’s book in black-and-white instead:
The court sensed that there is a problem when the government advances the doctrine that God created the universe, but it failed to perceive or address the problem of mandating a curriculum that advances mechanistic determinism as though that were value-neutral.
. . .In an open democratic society that cherishes rigorous debate, it will not do to cast aside the convictions of so sizable a majority, at least not with a smugness that assumes that there is nothing to debate at all (because, of course, the terms of the debate are defined in such a way as to manipulate the outcome). The terms of what Larson calls “America’s continuing debate over science and religion” must be clarified.
The tone of the discourse also needs to be more civilized on both sides, lest we be torn asunder in the dubious battle of our current “culture wars.”
For its insight into the ongoing significance of the Scopes trial as a “trial of the century,” Larson’s Summer for the Gods is a historical and scientific masterpiece.
Oh, DUH!
Bryan College.
This has got to be William Jennings Bryan College, right?
UPDATE -
HISTORY: Founded in 1930, Bryan College is named after William Jennings Bryan: statesman, orator, and renowned prosecuting attorney in the famous Scopes Evolution Trial.
More direct a connection than I thought. The college was founded specifically about this.
Excerpt describing Summer for the Gods as education:
That would be the same Phillip Johnson who defines Larson’s book as “truth” over the “play” or movie versions:
“Edward Larson tells the true story of the Scopes trial brilliantly, and the truth is a lot more interesting than the myth that was presented to the public in Inherit the Wind.”
- Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial
“. . .the play Inherit the Wind, which appeared in 1960 and which, as Larson demonstrates, was intended not so much as a representation of the trial but as a morality tale about McCarthyism.”
–1998, The Journal of Southern Religion Reviews by Randall Balmer, Columbia University.
Because everything was in black and white back then??
Nance
This all made me think about the Crucible too, as another play also exposing the dangers of McCarthyism by setting itself in a different place and time, and dealing with false religious truth rather than true political lies.
Which made me wonder if the Salem Witch trials and the Scopes Monkey Trial have ever been overtly linked, in a film or book or play?
Nance and all, speaking of black and white times and how threatening full-color can be–
The movie Pleasantville was no documentary, but it was culture, art, and truth.
Btw, the title “inherit the wind” was a Bible quote in the first place, right? (Googling — yes, from proverbs 11-29)
So should a Bible college film mess with that? Even if that’s no problem for for literalists to change holy words around to suit their own worldly purposes, changing it to “inherit the truth” reverses the whole point of the proverb, which translates as “he that troubleth his own house shall inherit (only) the wind” — do the Bryan believers really mean to say instead that if you troubleth your own house, you’ll inherit the truth?
Wow, suppose they do — that could be an provocative clue as to what’s really going on in the culture wars and it might help explain NCLB too. . .
“Because everything was in black and white back then??”
Of course it was. Haven’t you read Calvin and Hobbes?
Favorite Daughter just enshrined you in her Hall of Fame for this, Valerie.
Calvin, my hero.
I do love the idea of making it black and white to seem more real. LOL!
I am honored to be in the Hobbesian Hall of Fame.
We have all the Calvin collections and the kids used the comic strip as a manual for how to live one’s life.
Our youngest (25) still buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurps and then announces that there must be a barge coming through. I’d say she does it only to get a reaction out of me, but she’s amused at least a couple of boyfriends with the talent.
When she was about 11, I also framed the one Sunday strip where Calvin is supposed to clean his room and says something to his mom like, “Yeah, I know. Looks like a tornado just came through.” One of Youngest’s aliases is Tornado Elly.
Btw, in Germany, Spaceman Spiff is Raumfahrer Spiff. Just in case you were wondering.
Raumfahrer Spiff — well, now we know. And it’s good to know Calvin’s wisdom is enjoyed far and wide.
Nance
I’m in the film you’re talking about and am a resident of Dayton, TN and a 2005 graduate of Bryan College. If you’d like to know more about how we daily pray for the mass fleecing of the home educational system, please contact me.
I had a Clayton GA-native cousin who was an extra in Deliverance, very much part of the authentic vernacular. He was glad the movie was being made there, even though the actual story wasn’t exactly, um, flattering.
So I totally get the idea of regional heroes and local pride in certain historic events.
I’m glad you took the time to comment even if you’re cross with me for the post, because I would love to hear your sincere answers to some things about this film.
What do you think the power of this story (the trial of religion in school science classes) is? Is the new film more about Bryan the Man and redeeming his image than well, redemption from sin — or the Bible as some sort of scientific Truth?
If so, it would make sense, at least to me . . .
[...] that wasn’t as astounding as the billions of years of evolution that vanished along with it — apparently we’re not holding that harmless either. Reason [...]
As a recent graduate of Bryan College, may I say that Bryan’s professors do their best to get Bryan college students to wrestle with their faith and with issues such as the billions of years mentioned above.The Bible is the lens through which many students and professors see the world, but that does not mean that there is an absence of reason.
Having said that, I have not seen the film, but have seen excerpts from the “play” from which the film was based. To the best of my understanding, the play is actually merely a re-enacting of a segment of the trial transcript with blocking.
The title “Inherit the Truth” I believe is not a commentary on the Bible verse from Proverbs, but a reaction to the fact that people do gather misconceptions about Bryan from the play and film “Inherit the Wind” and other sources.
In my opinion “Inherit the Wind” (the play at least — I have not seen the film) does portray Bryan as a bit of a buffoon rather than a man who almost became president.
There is to, the misconception that the trial came ab
E Jackson: “Inherit the Wind” .. . does portray Bryan as a bit of a buffoon rather than a man who almost became president. . .”
LOL – but you say that as if it’s a binary choice; these two things aren’t mutually exclusive! We’ve had buffoons who DID become president!
As a recent graduate of Bryan College, may I say that Bryan’s professors do their best to get Bryan college students to wrestle with their faith and with issues important to the contemporary world as well as our faith.The Bible is the lens through which many students and professors see the world, but that does not mean that there is an absence of reason.
Having said that, I have not seen the film, but have seen excerpts from the “play” from which the film was based. To the best of my understanding, the play is actually merely a re-enacting of a segment of the trial transcript with blocking.
The title “Inherit the Truth” I believe is not a commentary on the Bible verse from Proverbs, but a reaction to the fact that some people do gather misconceptions about Bryan from the play and film “Inherit the Wind” and other sources.
In my opinion “Inherit the Wind” (the play at least — I have not seen the film) does portray Bryan as a bit of a buffoon rather than a man who almost became president.
There is to, the misconception (one found even in homeschools, I believe) that the trial came about because of conflicts over evolution in the town of Dayton, TN. Apparently, it actually came about because Dayton’s importance as a coal and railroad town was waining, and the town fathers wanted to do something about it. Upon hearing that the ACLU wanted a test case for TN’s policy of NO evolution being taught in school, they decided that they wanted to be the test case, hoping it would put Dayton on the map. Since Scopes was courting one of their daughters, they asked him to volunteer to “teach” evolution, promising no harm would come to him. The ACLU was then invited in, and then the ideas came of asking first Bryan and then Darrow to be lawyers.
The reason I put teach in quotes is that there is controversy over whether or not he actually did teach the questionable section of biology. I’ve not been able to find out what the truth concerning the matter actually is.
Evolution was not forbidden to be taught, merely the descent of Man from monkeys. If I remember right, even Bryan himself believed somewhat in evolution.
I think potentially why the film title and marketing to home schoolers is that these too, what ever they believe, have a lot of misconceptions about the trial, seeing it mainly as a Creationism vs. Evolution trial, and Bryan as a staunch Creationist. I know I did, until I learned more.
I hope this helps a little bit in providing a little more insight, despite my not having seen the film
sincerely,
Elizabeth Jackson
Sorry about posting twice. I think I must have accidently hit something I didn’t want to.
LOL I do agree with you on buffoons becoming president. I’m actually more impressed with Bryan having resigned Secretary of State when Woodrow Wilson went to War, because Bryan believed the US should stay out of it. I don’t know enough to know if I agree with him, but I appreciate his acting on his beliefs.
Welcome Elizabeth, don’t worry about the comment posting hiccup, no problem.
I was wondering if, since you graduated from Bryan College, you (and/or the students generally) were exposed there to the history I linked in my post? Have you by any chance read this, or would you be interested in it?
The name sounds vaguely familiar, so I probably have come across it somewhere. I would be interested in reading it, since it is a subject I am curious about.
To my knowledge it is not required reading for any class.
I’m not sure I should have been so quick to agree with you in laughter. While I was laughing more at the irony, as I assume you were, I’m not so sure about using the term “buffoon” for fellow human beings, no matter how incompetent I think they were in office.