The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 18th to April 29th. Jeff Hart and Jeremiah White are there and will be seeing a shitload of movies.
Helmed by first-timer Scott Thurman, The Revisionaries plays like dispatches from the bloody frontline of the culture war. Documenting the once-a-decade meeting of the Texas Board of Education to decide on K-12 text book standards (should alternatives to evolution be discussed? should a passing reference to hip-hop in a social studies text be omitted?), it?s a film whose primary purpose is to make us feel like our entire country is doomed.
Unless you?re a New Earth Creationist that believes man walked with dinosaurs and Noah?s Ark is more than just a cute fable. Or, if you?re a ?lawyer? from Liberty University whose life goal is to breed armies of vacant-eyed Texan children that believe the entire Bible should be adopted as an amendment. If you fit one of those cases then congratulations, The Revisionaries probably plays like a highlight reel.
The Revisionaries is like a 90 minute Daily Show correspondence piece without the snarky reporter there to question the dumb mother fuckers rambling about how we ain?t come from no monkeys. Sure, when cherubic local dentist, creationist, and chairman of the Texas Board of Education Don McLeroy bumbles through a stammering explanation of stasis, Thurman includes a cut-away to a college professor quietly face-palming. But, for the most part, Thurman avoids editorializing through his editing. He doesn?t need to; McLeroy and the other conservative Christians on the BOE are hilarious enough on their own.
Except, it isn?t all that funny that education is being politicized and corrupted by people who rally around the slogan ?we need to stand up to all these experts!? It?s terrifying. The Revisionaries leaves us with a few scant rays of hope, but ultimately there won?t be another text books review until 2020 and, until then, kids in Texas will be learning that John Calvin was a great contributor to Enlightenment thinking.
Documentaries like The Revisionaries often strike me as preaching to the converted. It isn?t like some creationist is going to stumble across this and suddenly realize that his entire way of thinking is detrimental to human progress. However, if you?re like me, a firm believer in trying to keep America from becoming a Mike Judge vision but also really really lazy, then The Revisionaries is just the thing to get you paying at least a little attention to those down ballot elections.
VERDICT:? See it.
Praying to the dinosaurs.
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