The Foxhole Manifesto

I would be hard pressed to choose between films Carousel, Foxhole and Chance, but if I had to choose it would be the Foxhole Manifesto on the basis of its soundtrack.

As far as a film to provoke thought, this was the best. The commentary was just brilliant. It took the form of a stand-up routine and sought to challenge the way that the church and Christians sometimes portray God. A powerful and evocative film. The graphics were helpful but I didn’t like the graphics. (But many do and I realise that this is more of a personal preference).

The Foxhole Manifesto: Animator, Nick Fox-Gieg, stays true to the itchy, sweaty black and white world McDaniel throws at us with a curious addition of six arms per man and deity. Rather than a didactic discourse, The Foxhole Manifesto invites us to a discussion. A visual adaptation to the works of Jeffrey McDaniel, we are taken through a crude, macabre journey of McDaniel's experiences of who God is or rather how He is pitched.

Our souls are an awful bunch, we want the best of what God has to offer yet ridicule and shun the idea of being taken to account. Worse yet, He is our trophy, intimate, jousting stick, best mate, football mascot, meal ticket and first stone aimed and ready. McDaniel's critique of man's relationship with God, has an underlying point of ownership of the Divine. Thus the oxymoron, how can God be possessed by creation.

Even McDaniel concludes that he too has found a perception of God to put in his pocket. He is after an unadulterated 100% free of human intervention God of his own. Not far from the prophetic tradition, when elders of the tribe of Israel demanded from the Prophet Moses that God show Himself before them.

A homing beacon within our soul, the desire to experience God in a completely subjective manner. McDaniel finds this, when his gall bladder was about to hit the fan. The God of Mercy answers, when no one else is there to pick up the phone.

Effective simple cartoon style – somewhat spoiled by the rather over emphatic presentation – it has a touch of Woody Alan – it covers the many naïve ways people see God, but does not put a plausible, sophisticated idea in its place. Ultimately doesn’t know where to go.

The analogy of life as being like a movie, a projection, is often used in Buddha Dharma to describe the nature of our experience. We perceive things according to our perception; we misinterpret what is just a projection as reality, the real deal. Therefore film seems to be a good medium for discussing the nature of mind. As a Buddhist I do not believe in God. However it seems evident that what people call God is many different things depending on the culture and religion of the person speaking.

There seems to be as many ways of thinking about and describing God as there are human beings. Ultimately however it seems there is some very basic understanding of something beyond the ordinary, of something divine, that human beings feel compelled to relate to. We Buddhists call that ‘fundamental goodness’ or ‘the pure nature of mind’. Many of these short films seem to be trying to express that fundamental goodness, and some are happy just to express the fact that our conceptions of God are just that, conceptions, of the ordinary thinking mind, and therefore shift and change as we shift and change.

All of these films should be praised for making the attempt to discuss something that, though core to the heart of many beings, is very difficult to describe or discuss without falling into platitudes and clichés. Bravo to Campfire – may it illuminate our minds and create a space in which interfaith dialogue, which is a real necessity at this time, can occur in a spirit of friendship.

The cynicism of The Foxhole Manifesto really appealed to me. We live in a world where God is evoked to justify some truly terrible things - terrorism; war; racism; homophobia; greed; power; corruption. As an agnostic Jew - and a proud one at that - I really responded to the narrator's contradictory search for the divine. The way he spews out invective and analogies reminds me of American rapper Sage Francis or the late Bill Hicks. He's articulate AND deranged.