CAMELOT Theatrical Special Effects

There've been some rumblings within the Catholic Church about "fast-tracking" the late Pope John Paul on the road to sainthood. As I understand the rules, part of the process involves proving that praying to the saint-to-be in question has resulted in two miracles.

I imagine that becoming a new saint is kind of like beginning a job on the internet help desk; you've got to learn the policies and procedures before they actually let you take calls. I hope the people who pray to Pope John Paul for help are smarter than the people who pray to the Virgin Mary. You would think by now that they'd start asking for some sensible miracles: please eliminate cancer, please give us world peace, please let me win the Lotto, please save Michael Jackson... miracle stuff, y'know? But instead, here's the kind of spam that Mary has had to put up with in the last couple years:

Please make an oilstain appear on a hospital window in Boston, Mass.

Granted! Now, how about the people inside the hospital?

Please make some glass discolor on a church in Clearwater, Florida.

Too easy! And your Lotto numbers are 10-57-43-18-24-6 but you'll need to buy a ticket.

Please make a picture of Greta Garbo appear on a grilled cheese sandwich in Miami.

It's toast! Would you like world peace with that?

Please make a water leak in a Chicago tunnel look like an oilstained window in Boston.

Ta da! Now, about Michael's nose...

Now, there are some people (like tens of thousands) who rush right out to see these things and buy bouquets of flowers and teddy bears to dump in front of them because they say "they look like the Virgin Mary." Let's get something straight: these things do not look like the Virgin Mary. Nothing looks like the Virgin Mary because nobody knows what the Virgin Mary looked like! It's not that she was camera-shy, it's just that photography hadn't been invented yet. Nobody who knew her painted her picture because she wasn't important yet and she hung out with a bunch of fishermen who weren't into portraiture. So knock it off with the teddy bears, okay?

What we're seeing here are some cool psychological special effects. Tell an audience that something that is nothing is really something that looks like something else that nobody has ever seen and they'll buy the gag. It worked for Steven Spielberg and E.T. and hey, it'll work for you, especially if you sell flowers or teddy bears.

posted by C. J. # 6:18 PM