Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed. —G.K. Chesterton. “So, What’s the Deal with the Anti-Christ?” That’s the question I was asked one night in Walters House, a boarding school dormitory in a respected private school where I was working as an assistant housemaster. It…
(All comments below are focused on Gene Wilder’s character from the 1971 film, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.) The man in the orange felt hat has a secret. Though he is known for his extraordinary confectionary delights, the secret I am going to discuss isn’t concerning his formula for making the world’s best chocolate or for his jaw-breaking Everlasting-Gobstopper.…
Why are people so impressed with evil? Does it really take a brilliant mind to create perversity? Do you remember Sid Phillips from the Pixar movie, Toy Story? His pleasure in life was terrorizing his little sister by taking her toys and using them to perform perverse operations on. He would tear off baby heads and attach them to steel…
“Say Jim, that’s a bad outfit!” The audience in the crowded theater went wild. I will never forget it, the first time I saw Superman: The Movie it captured my young imagination like nothing else. I was a twelve-year-old boy when my dad took me to an urban movie theater near Downtown Cleveland to watch Christopher Reeves soar across the…