Scenes I'd Like to See: Dogma

[wingedbeast]

Setting: A boardroom full of people sitting around a meeting table, looking to the chairman. His as yet empty seat is at one end. A golden-colored picture of a cartoon-like calf is at the other.

Chairman as he walks to his seat: Morning shoppers.

The board in unison: Morning.

Chairmen takes his seat: Anyone seen the overnights?

Various board members not in unison: No.

Chairman with a grin: We creamed 'em.

Light applause from the board.

Chairman: Last night was a rerun, which says to me that... *look up from his papers* Do I smell onions? *leans to the side and looks to see two men in casual dress, one cutting at an onion with a knife*

Chairman: Excuse me.

Loki (not the Norse god, played by Matt Damon): Huh?

Chairman: May I ask what you're doing in my boardroom?

Loki looks forward, indicating his friend: You may procede, mon frere.

Bartleby starts as he stands up: I have to start by apologizing. My friend has a penchent for the dramatic.

Loki gets up much quicker: Oh come on!

The two bicker for a moment.

Chairman sits down.

Bartleby clears his throat and continues.: Mooby, the Golden Calf. Created by Nancy Goidruff -a former kindergarten teacher - in nineteen eighty. Bought by the Complex Corporation in nineteen ninety one and broadcast nationally as the 'The Mooby Fun-Time Hour'. Since its inception, has spawned two theatrical films, sixteen records, eight prime-time specials, and a library of price-to-own video cassettes, not to mention bi-coastal theme-parks dubbed 'Moobyworld'.

Bartleby: Did, eh, did I miss anything?

Chairman: You forgot Mooby Magazine.

Bartleby: Damnit!

Chairman: Now, is there a point to this?

Bartleby: You and your board are idolators

Loki: I can't believe you forgot the magazine.

Wot: I can't believe you even care to go through with this.

Bartleby looks over to someone he didn't notice before.: Who are you?

Wot: Please, call me Wot. Consider me a force of... commentary. Please go on.

Loki pauses: With a name and purpose like that, shouldn't we know who he is?

Bartleby: Ye...yeah.

Wot: You were about to make some kind of intimidation attempt with that onion?

Loki, hesitantly now, walks over to the chairman, places the onion, now carved into a crude human-shape.: This is you. Do you know much about voodoo? It's a fascinating practice. No real doctrine of faith to speak of, more of an arrangement of superstitions.

Wot: Unless you count the Loa, which aren't necessarily worshiped but certainly deities. Then, there's the Vaudun, which is a faith. There's also Santeria, which very much has doctrines of faith. Voodoo is, really, just a word people ply to a whole host of things, then assume... I mean, you should know this.

Loki looks at Wot, then at Bartleby.

Wot: Keep going, that's not even the main issue.

Loki looks back to the chairman: The most well-known superstition is the voodoo doll. You see *sneezes and looks over the silent room*.

Wot: Bless you

Loki: Oh come on! You have to know something.

Wot: No, really, keep going.

Loki: A mock-up of an individual is subject to various pokes and prods. The desired result is that the individual will feel those effects.

Chairman: Call security.

Loki throws his knife at the intercom, sparks fly indicating the device's destruction.: All lines are currently down.

Wot: Bartleby, this is where you step in.

Bartleby, still looking at Wot, steps over.: You are responsible for raising an icon which draws worship from the lord.

Wot: And, quite reasonably so, I might add. If you're going to worship someone, an icon to economic prosperity does make a better object than a god of war.

Bartleby: Excuse me?

Wot: Golden calf, we get the allusion. And, quite frankly, compared to a God who had already proven ready to kill the Israelites for small or petty slights, a god for peace was a pretty good choice to make.

Bartleby: What are you trying to do?

Wot: What are you two trying to do?

Bartleby: We're trying to do what we're supposed to do, here.

Wot: In order to?

Bartleby: Can we get just?

Wot: Okay.

Bartleby: You have broken the First Commandment.

Wot: Of a deity who would consider that worth making the first commandment, before the far more asterisked "though shalt not kill".

Barlteby: Are you some kind of demon?

Wot: Not really... I'm more of a device.

Bartleby shakes his head, then looks back to the board.: More than that, I'm afraid not a one of you passes for a decent human being. Your continued existence is a mockery of morality. Like you, Mr. Burton. Last year, you cheated on your wife of seventeen years eight times.

Wot: But, his wife is allowed to earn her own money and isn't doomed to poverty if he kicks her out.

Bartleby pauses but continues: Newman, you got your girlfriend drunk at year's Christmas party and then paid a kid from the mailroom to have sex with her while she was passed out just so you could break up with her, guilt free-

Wot: But not stone her to death. I think that's important to keep in mind.

Bartleby: Are you... defending these men?

Wot: Oh, certainly not. But, you know, context.

Bartleby gives him a side-eye but moves swiftly on: Mr. Brace disowned his gay son...

Wot: Again, no stoning to death or ordering others to do the same.

Bartleby: Mr. Bray put his mother in a third-rate nursing home and used the profits from the sale of her home to buy-

Wot: But, he didn't deny even knowing her.

Bartleby: Mr. Parker flew to Tailand on the company account to have sex with an eleven year old boy.

Wot: Now, is it the "boy" part that you object to? Considering your boss's rules on when marriage can happen, the "eleven year old" part, maybe not so much.

Bartleby: Mr. Holtzman okayed the production of Mooby dolls from materials he knew to be toxic and unsafe because it was less costly.

Wot: Tell me, would it have been better had the children who suffered from that been geographically inconvenient?

Bartleby: Okay, we're about done. Can you just let us finish.

Wot: No, I don't think so. You were about to finish up with an unstated accusation to Whitland regarding his son. I think now's the place to stop this and, again, ask you what you're accomplishing with all of this?

Bartleby: I'm explaining why Loki's going to-

Wot: I know what Loki plans on doing, right here right now. On the spectrum between proximate and ultimate, I want to look a bit closer to what you, ultimately, intend to accomplish.

Bartleby: We want to go home and, while we're here, we just wanted to-

Wot: Please the kind of being that you reasonably believe would like a mass-murder?

Loki: It wouldn't be a murder when we do it-

Wot: And there's that asterisk.

Loki: We're angels of God. We have a job to do.

Wot: To get into the good graces of a being that it's reasonable to think would be pleased by mass-killings... because said being has commanded and been pleased by them before.

Loki: Well... yes. I was made to-

Wot: To murder children.

Loki: Hey, that was...

Bartleby: There were good reasons. I was... mistaken.

Wot: Were you? Or is the kind of god who would ban all alcohol consumption for fear that someone else might let their conscience get the better of them in the wrong for putting you in that kind of situation to begin with?

Loki: I got drunk. I don't handle complexity all that well...

Wot: Oh please. There's not one moment in this movie that indicates that you're anywhere near that suggestible. In order for you to have flipped God the bird, it had to be more than just a suggestion by Bartleby. You had to have some real feelings about having killed infants by the command of a deity who, according to the bible that, for this movie, may have some omissions but has to otherwise be accurate in its recording of history.

Bartleby: Mo... What movie?

Wot: We'll get to that later. For now, the two of you were morally shaken by that tenth plague. And, it can't have been the first time.

Loki: We're going home. And, yeah, he doesn't like competition.

Wot: Why? Seriously, you're not shown to be suffering, here. And, well, were you really happy, there?

Loki: We're going home.

Wot: No, you're not. You'll go to Hell and Bartleby will have his soul destroyed by the non-Metatron voice of God. And, that's because the Metatron either lied to the last Scion or actually believes that, if God is ever proven wrong, all existence unwinds.

Bartleby: Wh... what?

Wot: Not that there can be any truth to that. I mean, God thought once that letting you drink alcohol was okay, then thought it wasn't. Either that means being wrong about one side or the other or the word "wrong" is losing all meaning.

Loki: How do you know this?

Wot: Oh, and there's the fact that God thought killing infants due to their parents having been Egyptians under a Pharaoh that they're not allowed to question and upon whom they have no influence was morally acceptable and, well, that wasn't true was it?

Bartleby: Are you a demon?

Wot: No, but I know Azrael. And, it's a bit of a controversial move, but I think the same reason we invited him applies to you.

Loki: Invited him where?

Wot: Your canon has done you a grave injustice. You're not the only ones. But, in your case, you were punished for having more of a conscience than God and, then, your way back was blocked by this... impossible technicality that only exists for narrative convenience.

Bartleby: We can't go home? Not without destroying all of existence?

Wot: Were you really happy there? Are you really suffering so much more now than being commanded to kill noncombatants and children for the grave sins being there?

Loki: What the hell?

Wot: Not hell... another option.

Bartleby: All I did was question one order.

Wot: You're not the only ones to do that. Maybe not all of them the same God. And, hey, there are some Christians where you're going, too.

Bartleby: I thought you were...

Wot: Anti-Christian? Nah. This movie's theology is rife with moral issue. I think it has to do with taking on biblical literalism without having fully thought out the implications. But, there are other ways to express Christianity. I know a place.

Loki: Will it be like home?

Bartleby: Will we fit in?

Wot smiles: No and no, but I think you'll be happier.