Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Invention of Laughing

Imagine a world where no one lied.  No one sinned in that fashion.  It would be perfect, right?  At least from the Christian perspective because the easiest sin would be gone.  But have you really given any thought to what this world would be like?

Ricky Geravis has. 

And thus we have The Invention of Lying.


No one in this world lies.  They remain brutally honest with one other.  It's highly amusing, but at the same time, it's highly offensive.  If these people were not used to the honesty, any one of them would be offended.

Mark, played by Ricky Geravis, hates his life and, honestly, most people hate him.  He loses his job, loses his prospective girl-friend, and is about to be evicted from his house when something occurs to him.  What would happen if he didn't tell the truth?

Everyone believes his lies because they are used to living in a world of only truth.

And, thus, a movie is born.

Sure, it's hilarious and hysterical, but at the same time it makes you wonder.  The world of honesty is harsh and cruel, yet when Mark starts to lie, things get better.  Not just for Mark, but for everyone around him as well.  He uses lying to make others' lifes better: he stops his neighbor from killing himself; he gets a homeless guy enough money to not be homeless; and he, more or less, invents the afterlife in comforting his dying mom, thus giving hope to the doctors, nurses, and other people in the nursing home.

After watching it, you have to ask yourself: is lying really that bad?  Sure some lies are, but what if you lie to make another person happy or better off?  Is that still sinning when you're lying to help someone out?

1 comment:

  1. From Prof. Haley - I like your template, especially that you used the space beneath your title to give a little preview of what your blog is about. This is helpful for first-time visitors. You have graphics occurring often which is exactly what we want. You have ads! (a sure sign of a more professional approach to blogging). You use “puny” headlines to get reader attention. Your writing is at its best when it’s at its most abrasive. Throughout your style is well suited to blogging. You come up with short sentences that move along and put them in short paragraphs. You say a lot with a little. That’s the idea! The Twilight films seem to really to push you into phrasing that’s both funny and creative. I also should say that I appreciate that you went beyond the “three minimum” requirement. I’m glad you did. Your review of Up in the Air was especially useful to me. I’ve read many glowing reviews of the film and I saw it and thought it deserved them; however, you are the only reviewer who compared the film to the book. Wait a minute, I said to myself, you mean the little corporate Ivy League girl sidekick introduced halfway through the film wasn’t in the book? You mean Ryan really was alone in the book instead of enmeshed in a struggle not to fall in love with Alex at which he eventually fails? All this made me think: I want to read the book. It sounds like it could be even better than the movie. As far as a critique, the middle image for HS Musical is showing up as just a blank square (?). There are a number of typos. Some of them would have been caught by spell check. Others just needed to be found during a close proofreading.Prof. Haley -

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