Russell instances appropriation as an anti-creative act, one that defeats imagination and relies on the efforts of others. Although Russell clearly has a great deal of energy, he relies here on others for that energy. This is a pity, because an expropriative strategy restrains the potential for originality in Evangelists Exposed , and displaces possibilities for much more powerful first-hand video footage. Imagination is its own offense, in several senses of the word. Copyright violation as a deliberate political strategy is not going too far.
Evangelists Exposed , progresses with fair rapidity from documentation of the pathetic into boredom.
A predictability sets in after the first several dozen faithful have collapsed onstage, fully cured, into the waiting hands of attendants. Cotton Mather wrestled with mentally disturbed men in eighteenth-century Boston and recorded how he witnessed evil spirits fly out of their bodies. An enormous gap of faith separates the pair. Where Mather was utterly convinced of the metaphysics of his exorcisms, Larson possesses complete faith that aggressive shock jock demands for the audience s money will make him a millionaire. Larson s arrogant, ugly, sneering contempt towards his public has indeed made him a rich man.