One of the more successful indie movies of the last couple of years is The Whale, now playing in theaters across the country.  The film recently crossed the $10-million mark at the box office.  For those who aren't familiar with it, it's another film by Darren Aronofsky, who's known for directing edgy films like Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, and Mother!  Like The Whale, the first two portray various kind of addictions — addiction to perfection in Black Swan; drug addiction in Requiem for a Dream; and food addiction in The Whale, where Brendan Fraser plays a morbidly obese man, Charlie, a professor who teaches college writing courses online. 

The other primary characters are his daughter Ellie; his nurse Liz; and a young Christian missionary, Thomas, who wants to save Charlie spiritually in order to save his earthly life, since he's basically committing slow suicide with his eating compulsion.

To summarize as best as possible, his eating disorder started when his gay lover, the brother of Liz, committed suicide over the extreme guilt put upon him by the head of the ministry that Thomas is a part of.  Ellie is extremely angry with her father, Charlie, since he left the family for a relationship with a man.  A sub-narrative involves Ellie exposing Thomas as once a pothead and a thief before turning to religion to straighten himself out.

So, once again, you have a film that wants to make Christianity look bad because of its "homophobia" and its hypocrisy on other moral issues.  The problem with this is how superficial and shallow this kind movie and other works of art can be, including literature, since this movie is based on a play.  Digging deeper into the movie, as well as Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, is to ask what's causing the various kinds of addictions that in turn cause so many other social pathologies that are so destructive. 

One work backward, all the way to liberal permissiveness, which is a slippery slope to bad behavior because liberalism doesn't recognize any limits to virtually anything.  Once bad behavior becomes acceptable on a large scale, whether it's alcohol, recreational drugs, gambling, porn, or homosexuality, you're always going to have bad outcomes that negatively impact many people other than the individual.  In the case of Charlie, he apparently couldn't restrain his gay impulses and selfishly left a loving wife and daughter. 

In the movie, the primary narrative is how Ellie is devastated and confused by her father's behavior and why he left her.  So liberalism and progressivism always rail against Christianity being oppressive, but they don't provide the guardrails against excess in any form.  Liberalism also doesn't provide meaning in order for many people to live in constructive ways.  For Charlie, he found his meaning in eating excessive amounts of food.

The left just doesn't like to be told "no" to bad behavior.  Leftists are the hypocrites because they're always pointing fingers at the religious right for being oppressive when in fact they have no foundational morality that can reasonably provide any kinds of guideposts and limitations to prevent personal destruction and family breakdown.

Image: A24 Films.