{{previous post in sequence}}

---

straighttohelvetica:

Easily the most horrifying line of dialogue I’ve ever heard in an animated movie.

 

castielsunderpants:

NO BUT THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN MOVIE LIKE THE MUSIC IS FUN AND SUPERB THE CHARACTERS WERE REAL PEOPLE EVEN THE ANTAGONISTS THE WOMEN WERE GREAT IT WAS ALL GREAT. IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOURE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, ATHEIST, WHATEVER ELSE IT DOESNT MATTER ITS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE AND ITS LITERALLY ONLY 90 MINUTES OF YOUR DAY AND EXPERIENCE THIS HERE JUST CLICK IT LITERALLY IT WILL OPEN IN A NEW TAB GO WATCH. 

 

fifty-shadesofgay:

also can we point out that none of the characters were white? like damn accurate depictions of Biblical characters

 

riskpig:

I reblog every time Prince of Egypt comes up because holy fuck this movie is so good.

 

theparadoxymoron:

first movie i ever saw in theaters

 

comparativelysuperlative:

First movie I ever saw in theaters too! That’s probably not coincidence!

But, like, this line is part of why I grew up thinking utilitarians are monsters. And I mean that in the “check under the bed” sense—there are people who will do literally anything (depending on the circumstances) and not care if the Bible says it’s evil! And they might be coming for you!

And now of course I’m a utilitarian, and so are a lot of the people I think of as doing the most good. Turns out that genocide against a bunch of babies? Not actually a fair portrayal of people doing things for the greater good.

 

brin-bellway:

Also, I recognised this gifset as being from Prince of Egypt (through cultural osmosis; haven’t actually seen the movie), but skimmed the context, so up until “they were only slaves” I thought it was Moses talking about murdering every non-Jewish firstborn in Egypt. And I was glad that apparently somebody in the film had tried to call them out on that tactic. But no, it’s just the same-old-same-old.

See, you have no idea how much that incident scarred me as a child. You’re supposed to hear that story and empathise with the oh-poor-Jewish-slaves-who-just-want-to-be-free, but I empathised with the Egyptian peasants. My fellow firstborns, slaughtered en masse for being born to the wrong families at the wrong time. Innocent, unknowing people, who happened to meet a totally arbitrary qualification that I met.

(My parents, in a desperate attempt to console me, tried to tell me I didn’t meet the qualifications. That in their place, I’d have been one of the ones with goat’s blood painted on the doorway. Thing is, being firstborn is more important to me than being Jewish 10.5 months out of the year, and even during Christmas season, it’s not so much “Jewish” that’s important as much as “not Christian”. (The Egyptians weren’t Christian either.))

That damned story was what made me really aware, on a visceral level, of my mortality. Learning how not to be viscerally aware of mortality (apparently some people do manage to function while aware of it, but I can’t imagine how) was an extremely long, painful process. By the time I’d more or less finished, it had taken me something like a third of my lifetime-at-that-point. (Then Five for Fighting released “100 Years” and started getting it played on all the radios and even a TV commercial, and I had to spend another few months re-doing some of the painstakingly crafted mental blocks. I swear, if I ever meet the one man who comprises Five for Fighting, I’ll…well, I probably couldn’t get away with punching him. I suppose I’d tell him about how he rubbed salt in a traumatised child’s wound, and let his own guilt punish him appropriately.)

Occasionally I hear of people who laugh at the idea that the Bible isn’t suitable for children. I’m not laughing.

 

comparativelysuperlative:

Yeah, people who say that presumably haven’t actually read it.

I always thought about this from the Egyptians’ perspective, too. Except I have an older sister, and I wasn’t sure if “firstborn” here meant “firstborn son” like it sometimes does, and was I required to hope it did because I’m supposed to treat others as more important than myself.

The Prince of Egypt gets credit for portraying the mass killing as a terrible thing. The other plagues are all exciting moves in a game between God/Moses and Pharaoh, and the viewer isn’t supposed to think about the collateral damage from, say, destroying all the crops in Egypt. But in the last one the musical number ends, it shows kids dying (and parents screaming? I don’t remember) and you’re supposed to notice that this is really, really horrible. But then Pharaoh says to leave, there is much rejoicing, and the movie forgets all about it.

Also, uh, “they were only slaves” is a pretty fair paraphrase of what I learned as the Biblical justification for what God did. (The “my son” part is earlier in the chapter. New Testament quote, but it’s pretty heavily supported in the Old.) I would like to think the Prince of Egypt people did that on purpose, but they didn’t.

(And now I’m picturing Rational Draco Malfoy killing a sheep and putting blood on his door, because if the people who were immune to the last nine plagues are doing it, you don’t need to know why to copy them.)

 

responsible-reanimation:

Also, about five minutes after the events of the movie, Moses lays out the rules for owning slaves.

 

ilzolende:

Reblogged for what comparativelysuperlative​ and the people after him (including him again) said.

Especially

I’m picturing Rational Draco Malfoy killing a sheep and putting blood on
his door, because if the people who were immune to the last nine
plagues are doing it, you don’t need to know why to copy them.

(emphasis mine)

That was just great.

(Also, not that the rationalists will say this, but to anyone thinking “this is why the Abrahamic deity was way worse in the Torah than in Christian religious texts”: Judaism doesn’t seem to have a concept of hell. Genocide bad, generation of infinite disutility infinitely worse.)

…when I saw this gifset was going around again, I did not expect it to be a branch with me in it.

(I’m glad to see my contribution was a positive factor in your decision to reblog it.)

---

Tags:

#Prince of Egypt #death tw #I’m going to file this under #my past self has good taste #though that tag is primarily for things that I merely liked during the previous sighting and am now reblogging for the first time