Thread by @StardustArtemis

Watching The Shack out of curiosity to see how bad it is

I read the book like 15 years ago or so and didn’t realize it was made into a film

Oof Mack tells a whole story to his kids referring to indigenous people as “Indians” and using other problematic terms, and says the princess’ hair was the same color as his blonde daughter 😬

“Is ‘the great spirit’ another name for Papa?” The child asks (Papa is what they call god). This term oversimplifies the rich variety of indigenous cultures that colonizers tried to wipe out.

“Don’t you think it’s mean that god made Jesus die on the cross?” The dad doesn’t have an answer.

The child who gets murdered by a serial killer asks the night before she dies if she’ll have to die because the stories of Jesus and the sacrificial “Indian princess” worry her. That wasn’t in the book.

The whole point of this story was to do something truly horrific to the main character and show that god could redeem anything. It’s really fucked up, like a Christian version of a crime story.

My parents loved this book. So did I, when I was a teenage Christian. A LOT of Christians HATED it. It was called heresy because god could never show up as a Black woman. We lost friends over it.

Christian films have improved over the years, this production and direction is far more tolerable than a lot of Christian-made films I’ve seen

Octavia Spencer is introduced as someone in Mack’s childhood before she appears as Papa. Whether she’s a maid of some kind is unclear but she’s in the house and offers him pie. This choice to make her play an earlier character brings a different tone, using a racist trope.

Honestly pretty weird that the FBI/cops show Mack the crime scene where his daughter was killed. That’s true to the book but it doesn’t make sense for it to actually happen.

I don’t believe in god but it’s pretty fucked up for the god of this story to re-traumatize the character by inviting him to meet up at the location where his daughter was killed

Mack finds the shack empty and has a breakdown, then leaves, saying “some papa you are.” Then Jesus leads him back and winter turns to summer, the Shack is repaired and furnished. This god is so mean

Mack then meets the trinity as a Black woman (god the father), an Arabic man (Jesus/god the son), and an Asian woman (the Holy Spirit). This is why the story was seen as heretical by so many Christians - sexism and racism in their views of who/what their god is.

Oh the main character is played by the guy from Avatar lmaoooo of course this is racist against indigenous people

There are so many ways to interpret the Christian myth. This book alienated so many and also brought a lot of people back to their own version of Christianity. To me, it indicates that there’s no right or wrong way to be a “real” Christian.

I’m about halfway through but my attention span is up for now. I’ll pick this up again another time.