Virigina E.W. Lieutenant Governor Candidate E.W. Jackson, Yoga, and our Jack Chick Tract Parody

Troy Davis writes:

The decontextualized page of CultJam Productions' Chick tract parody went viral last summer when people seeing the page thought it was a serious work put out by fundamentalists listing the "components of Satan's Spiritual Structure"; this list included yoga, Scientology, Rosicruscianism, Astrology, Tarot cards, Ouija boards, remote viewing, and other activities.  Most of the things on the list have been the focus of warnings by fundamentalists as doorways to satanic possession (I got most of the things on the list from Chick tracts and from books by former Chick Publications author Dr. Rebecca Brown), so it didn't surprise me that it came out that Virigina E.W. Lieutenant Governor Candidate E.W. Jackson suggested that yoga could lead one to "serve Satan."  This is fundie boilerplate.

It's true in a way: whenever I'm in a yoga class and hot chicks are doing downward facing dog, I get a demon of lust!

New Promotional Jack Chick Tract Parody for Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story

Troy Davis writes:

Last summer when CultJam Productions launched Ivy League Exorcist online, we had to rush the parody Chick tract promotional comic book in time to distribute it at Comic-Con 2012 in July.  The hurried result was "A Demon-Hunting Veep?"   which speculated that a demon-hunter could be picked as Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate.  The title was a big success with comix and Jack Chick fans and received attention from The Huffington Post and Boing Boing.

The only problem was that the content of the tract became outdated on August 11, 2012when Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate.  Accordingly, in my spare time, I created a new tract, "Ivy League Exorcist," that plays upon speculation that Governor Jindal is mulling a presidential run in 2016.  I enhanced the art and added some gags; the new tract has a more overt satirical message while "A Demon-Hunting Veep?" played it straight.  Chick fans will probably appreciate the additional cameos by characters from Chick tracts. Click on a panel for a larger view.  Enjoy. 

Bobby Jindal Hoist with his own Petard

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program has been the butt of jokes when some of the questionable claims from textbooks recently came to light.   Recently, Nick Wing of the Huffington Post reported that a textbook from a Louisiana voucher school teaches that hippies filthy, ragged devotees of rock musicians who “belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.”

It was precisely this kind of conflation that led to the satanic scare that caused Jindal and the Christian student groups (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ) to perform the exorcism on Susan in 1990.  One of the major influences that led to hysteria about the alleged rise of Satanism was a bestselling book that unceremoniously lumped together the activities of the youth movement with devil worship.  In 1970, Hal Lindsey wrote The Late Great Planet Earth, a book with apocalyptic end-times themes.  In the book, Lindsey’s (flimsy) evidence that Satan was marshaling his forces in preparation for The Battle of Armageddon was the fact that many young bohemians were expressing an interest in the occult (e.g., tarot cards and horoscopes) and Eastern mysticism. 

Although The Late Great Planet Earth is pure schlock, the book became a huge bestseller (over 30 million copies have been sold).   Lindsey's book, along with other discredited books like Mike Warnke’s The Satan Seller and Michelle Smith’s Michelle Remembers, helped create the satanic scare that festered throughout the 1980’s and certainly influenced the Brown University students who performed an exorcism on Susan when she experienced convulsions and a sudden personality change (for future reference, call an ambulance, for fuck's sake!).  It’s rather amusing that Christianists are repeating the claims that contributed in part to the atmosphere that led to bizarre behavior at Brown University in 1990.

IMDb Page for Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story

Check out the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page for Ivy League Exorcist: the Bobby Jindal Story. That's http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2330536/ Also, check the IMDb pages for the principle filmmakers: director and producer Mario Glaviano, cinematographer and producer Francesca Stonum,screenwriter and executive producer Troy Davis, associate producer Mark Schwab, associate producer and actor Michael Rulfs, and cinematographer Sean Meng.

New Ivy League Exorcist Poster

Troy Davis writes: Behold the new official poster for Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story. I did the the original poster, a hasty job done on MS Paint. We needed a better poster that could be blown up (for use as a prop in CultJam Production's next film) so we enlisted the aid of Bryan Gasaway, a graphic design major at West Liberty University. Great job, Bryan! The post is on the IMDb page for Ivy League Exorcist.

Public Policy Polling Poll: Most Republicans believe in demonic possession

Read about the poll in this article by Laura Gottesdiener in Salon.com; the article discusses Bobby Jindal's Brown University exorcism as well as Delaware GOP Senate candidate and alleged former witch Christine O’Donnell.

CultJam Productions is working on a new short film

I just wanted to let fans of Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story know that we aren't a one-trick pony. We are hard at work creating another short film. More details soon.

Decontextualization, Memetics, Semiotics, and The Ivy League Exorcist Chick Tract Parody

JUNE 2013 UPDATE:  We have a new blog post of E.W. Jackson and yoga here (and right below it is our new Chick tract parody).  Also, watch the online film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story.  Like Bluto said, "Don't cost nothin'."


Troy Davis writes:

In July, members of CultJam Productions passed out the promotional Chick tract parody titled "A Demon-Hunting Veep" (read it here), at Comic-Con. The tract looks like a Chick Publications creation and has a message that might lead many readers to believe it is the work of fundamentalists; our intention was to evoke curiousity so that the reader would be motivated to watch our film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story.

We didn't realize until a few days ago that the tract--or at least a decontextualized segment of the tract--became viral online during Comic-Con. On July 17, someone with the handle "DJ" posted a page of the tract along with ample breasts to the online image board MyBroadband (the image to the right). DJ apparently thought our tract was on the level and juxtaposed the boobs to show his contempt for our facetous list of satanic activities. Unfortunately, DJ didn't list the name of the tract or the name of the film so readers were led to believe it was a real fundy tract (though we made the list from activities that fundies often link to the devil). In essense, the meme lacked what Richard Dawkins calls copying-fidelity; a fragment of our work was recontextualized in a way that led to confusion. The image was quickly picked up by some major blogs (the Huffington Post's Andres Jauregui did a post on it as did Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder).

When I found out about this a few days ago, I emailed bloggers about the confusion and many updated their posts to acknowledge the true context and motives of the creators of the work (e.g., Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder's post is here). This caused the properly contextualized and complete meme-set to go viral again. What a long, strange trip it's been. The List: This is the list of components of Satan's Spiritual Structure: Eastern religions, yoga, Freemasonry, Illuminati groups, New Age religions, Church of Satan, Scientology, Rosicruscianism, Astrology, Tarot cards, Ouija boards, Remote viewing, Palmistry, Voodoo, Earth Worship, Wicca, Cyberpunk culture, Divination, Meditation, Vegetariansim, Lycanthropy, Postmodernism, Backmasking, Astral-projection, Necromancy, Rebirthing, Kabbalah, LOTR, Fire walking, Levitation, alt 'comix,' Vampirism, Trilateralism, Marihuana & Pot parties, LSD/shrooms, Video games, Harry Potter, Dungeons & Dragons, Halloween, Fornication, Skull & Bones, Rock music, Heavy metal, Burning man, Twilight films, Raves & XTC, and Goth culture.

Intertexuality in Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story

Troy Davis writes: I'm a big fan of recontextualization, the taking of symbols from other realms and placing them into other contexts When I wrote Ivy League Exorcist, I kept this in mind and sought to decontextualize cultural symbols and reintroduce them into cinematic form. For instance, I had the possessed Susan character scream at the assembled Christian group, "For fuck's sake, you're the lamest bunch of whiny-ass titty-babies." The term "whiny-ass titty-baby" (WATB) was developed in the left-of-center blogosphere in the earlier 2000's; it is used to refer "to right-wingers who routinely bully others but whine vociferously at the mildest criticism directed their way." Of course, Susan's use is anarchronistic (the film takes place a decade before the term was coined and even before the blogosphere existed) but the point was to take a multi-media approach to art.

Ivy League Exorcist Receives Mashup Treatment on YouTube Doubler

A DJ with the handle "meahwahwah" mashed up Ivy League Exorcist with "An ancient fire burns" by Northern Ireland folk metal band Darkest Era.

Ivy League Exorcist in the Media

Troy Davis writes: Ivy League Exorcist: the Bobby Jindal Story has online been online for a little over two weeks and it has received a great deal of media coverage:

• Gannett reporter Mike Hasten reported on the film
• Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollen got the priceless comment from Governor Jindal's communications director Kyle Plotkin: “That movie is insane. It’s just plain absurd.”
• WGNO, New Orleans' ABC affiliate did a news story on Ivy League Exorcist. Watch it here.
• Richard von Busack, the film review of the San Jose weekly newspaper Metroactive has a thoughtful review, calling the film, "a sharp, shocker of a movie...worthy of John Waters." An abbreviated review appears in the North Bay Bohemian.
• Associated Press reporter Melinda Deslatte wrote that "the story Jindal wrote nearly 20 years ago has inspired more than one YouTube video."
• The New Orleans Times-Picayune John Maginnis wrote, "'Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare,' which Jindal wrote for New Oxford Review in 1994, has spawned scores of news stories, columns, radio and TV commentaries, even a few YouTube videos (the governor's press secretary called one 'insane')."
• The New Orleans Defender had a small article on the controversy: ". . . a California team called CultJam Productions recreated the [exorcism] episode, and took the liberty of inserting foul language and fart jokes."
  
  Update: The Huffington Post's Andres Jauregui and Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder, who originally wrote posts about a page photographed from our promotional tract, cite our film. More on this phenomenon here.

Blogs have had some interesting coverage of the film's debut:

• Rebecca Schoenkopf, writer for the influential Washington DC blog Wonkette, was amused by the film.
• The humor blog Jesus' General liked the film.
• Peter Jacobs of IvyGate, the Ivy League blog, has kind words for the film: "Add a fantastic little article Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review detailing the exorcism titled “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare,” and you have something that has little to do with politics, but everything to do with how people view this rising Republican. . .Take for example, Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story, probably the best 11-minute film you will watch all day. Trust us. It is a “comedic” adaptation of Jindal’s article made for $300 by a group of filmmakers in California. Again, trust us."
• BayouBuzz picked up the story.
• Unreasonable Faith picked up the story.
• An Atheistic blog from the Czech Republic has a story.
• BobbyJindalSucks.com wrote about the film.
• VN Made has a story.

My So-Called Radio Interview by Troy Davis

This morning I was a "guest" on the Denny Schaffer's morning drive radio show on WRNO 99.5 FM in New Orleans.  Before my ten minute talk with Schaffer, I didn't hold any illusions that it was going to be a serious attempt to have a serious discussion with me about the film. WRNO's nickname is "Rush Radio" (referring to Rush Limbaugh).  I figured he would try to bait me and I was right.  You can listen to the interview here (starts at 17:20).  I wanted to discuss cinematic elements of the film but had a hard time getting past his badgering and interupting (e.g., when I mentioned mumblecore, Schaffer's response was,  "does that mean low budget piece of crap?").  My hopes of discussing pastiche, irony, and intertextuality went unfulfilled.

Ivy League Exorcist featured in Metroactive, the Silicon Valley's weekly alternative newspaper

The article is by Richard von Busack.

Jack Chick Parody Tract Used to Promote Ivy League Exorcist at Comic-Con International

JUNE 2013 UPDATE: Welcome Boing Boing readers; Cory Doctorow mentioned us in his post!  Read the entire Chick tract parody below as well as our updated Chick tract parody.  Watch our mumblecore-style deadpan comedy film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story.  Read a theoretical discussion of memetics and semiotics regarding the way that the decontextualized portion of the tract became a meme. Check out our cool movie poster (it's a mashup of the movie posters for The Exorcist and Danger: Diabolik).  Also, if you like the film, could you give us a rating on our IMDb page because Jindal partisans slammed the film with the IMDb ratings.  Thanks.

AUGUST 2012 UPDATE: Welcome Boing Boing readers! Read the Chick comic tract parody below and watch the short film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story on YouTube. Also, check out our production company web site. The site has a cool Ivy League Exorcist movie poster. We at CultJam Productions have some other film projects in the pipeline, so if you would like e-mail notifications of future flm releases or if you want to give CultJam Productions your feedback, contact us at cultjampro@gmail.com Also, to go to the front page of the blog, click here.

Here is the parody of a Jack T. Chick tract that we gave out at Comic-Con last week. Click on a page to enlarge. AUGUST UPDATE: Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate so the tract is a little dated now but still enjoyable.

UPDATE 3:  CultJam Productions created a new Chick tract parody called "Ivy League Exorcist."  This new tract takes the basic idea of the tract below and adds new gags and the kind of things that Chick tract fans love.


What was funny about the whole thing was that some real fundamentalists showed up and we passed out our comix tracts near them. The fundies thought we were on their team! Model Jessie Hail has a YouTube video where she flouts the fundies; I am behind the guys with signs passing out faux Chick tracts to unsuspecting Comic-Con attendees:

UPDATE:  A DERIVATIVE TRACT. 

Some readers have noticed that the Chick parody tract “A Demon-Hunting Veep” has elements of various Chick tracts.  Chick tract enthusiasts know that the cover and premise of the tract are derived from “A Demon’s Nightmare” (one of the demons is based on the demon in “A Demon’s Nightmare?” and the other demon is based on the protagonist of the eponymous “Stinky”).  Page one has the title characters from “Gladys” and “That Crazy Guy!” burning in the fire and brimstone of Hell.  Page three has silhouettes based on images from “The Story Teller,” “Fire Starter?” “Party Girl,” “Fallen,” “The Great Escape,” and “Last Rites.”  Page four has Don (the band member from “Angels” who was into vampirism) and the pompous professor from “Big Daddy?” experiencing the eternal fires of damnation.  Page five has supposedly satanic symbols from various Chick tracts and comic books—notably “The Last Generation.”  Also on page five, the note that it isn’t necessary to burn the tract is a paraphrase of a line from “Spellbound.” The reference to “Satan’s Spiritual Structure” is taken from “Angel of Light.” 

Watch Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story Online

You can watch it on the CultJam Productions page .