Boondock Speculation
Apr. 23rd, 2006 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedibuttercupWas doing a bit of research on "Boondock Saints" to write one of the drabbles, and came across some interesting information.
You know that phrase that reads out in Il Duce's voice when the MacManus boys wake up from their joint vision in the holding cell? This is how it goes:
"Whosoever shed man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man".
It's actually a Bible verse: Genesis 9:6. (I can't find an exact translation match, but it's closest to the KJV). It made me curious, so I looked up a sermon or two on "The Use of Force" on the Internet, and came across another that could equally well have been used: "Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it." (Numbers 35:33, NIV).
Come to find out, these verses-- and several others-- are used in support of the death penalty all the time. The same sources where I found these verses linked together, also suggest that the "Thou Shalt Not Murder" commandment speaks specifically to the shedding of innocent blood, a connotation that gets lost in translation to English, and which would exclude the sort of violence the MacManus brothers participate in.
Something else interesting: that scene where they go into the armory to trade what they found on the Russian mobsters for other weaponry? There's an Irish flag painted on the wall, and above it the following phrase:
"While the wicked stand confounded,
call me, with they saints surrounded."
A quick google turned up this page on all soul's day mass. That quote is a pair of lines from the Dies Irae sequence.
Stuff to make you go Hmm. "Boondock Saints", I think, is a lot like "V for Vendetta" in a few respects; it's aimed to make you think about the justification, or lack thereof, for the use of force in certain circumstances, though this movie packs a religious angle and the other is aimed more at political revolution.
I'm a big fan of that (the making-you-think thing); what good is it to believe blindly in something? If you never question, if you are never forced to look at the "why's" of your stance on something and either make it more firm on that basis or change it to another, then when something comes along that seriously challenges that belief, what will you be left with?
~
You know that phrase that reads out in Il Duce's voice when the MacManus boys wake up from their joint vision in the holding cell? This is how it goes:
"Whosoever shed man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man".
It's actually a Bible verse: Genesis 9:6. (I can't find an exact translation match, but it's closest to the KJV). It made me curious, so I looked up a sermon or two on "The Use of Force" on the Internet, and came across another that could equally well have been used: "Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it." (Numbers 35:33, NIV).
Come to find out, these verses-- and several others-- are used in support of the death penalty all the time. The same sources where I found these verses linked together, also suggest that the "Thou Shalt Not Murder" commandment speaks specifically to the shedding of innocent blood, a connotation that gets lost in translation to English, and which would exclude the sort of violence the MacManus brothers participate in.
Something else interesting: that scene where they go into the armory to trade what they found on the Russian mobsters for other weaponry? There's an Irish flag painted on the wall, and above it the following phrase:
"While the wicked stand confounded,
call me, with they saints surrounded."
A quick google turned up this page on all soul's day mass. That quote is a pair of lines from the Dies Irae sequence.
Stuff to make you go Hmm. "Boondock Saints", I think, is a lot like "V for Vendetta" in a few respects; it's aimed to make you think about the justification, or lack thereof, for the use of force in certain circumstances, though this movie packs a religious angle and the other is aimed more at political revolution.
I'm a big fan of that (the making-you-think thing); what good is it to believe blindly in something? If you never question, if you are never forced to look at the "why's" of your stance on something and either make it more firm on that basis or change it to another, then when something comes along that seriously challenges that belief, what will you be left with?
~
