A few years ago a group of us decided that we were going to do a bouffon tent revival. The subject of our mockery was mainly going to be huckster preachers that were putting on these events and bilking poor people out of their money. To prepare for it I rented a 70s documentary called Marjoe. It was about Marjoe Gortner a child prodigy preacher who left to become a B Hollywood star and then went back to the circuit to debunk the whole trade. I was primed to be shown exactly what I was expecting. Now in the documentary he does exactly that. He shows that the whole thing was staged and faked and how he pumped people up into states of euphoria. The only problem I found was that he was really good at it. I would have paid money to watch him. Repeatedly. What impressed me even more was the music they had. Fantastic performances of gospel music in between the preaching. People were coming up and putting $5 and $10 bills in the bucket. I would have too. Amazing stuff. After watching it my fervor for making fun of these people and the people who gave them money was gone. Sometimes your beliefs get challenged by reality. My preconceived notions about all this were right and wrong all at the same time. I had the same experience recently seeing wrestling live for the first time. I think Im finally starting to catch up to american low brow entertainment from the 70s. Im now waiting to see if country music will make sense to me soon. Here is an excerpt from the documentary that shows a bit of the power of the music. https://youtube/watch?v=06qQpFgewJI
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 05:36:47 +0000
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