Everything is bigger in Texas.

Everything is bigger in Texas. The chili is hotter the beer is colder and the stars are brighter. In fact, as a travel ad campaign informed us a not many years back. Texas is really like 'a whole other country' President George W Bush not and nothing else proudly hails from Texas, his 'western Whitehouse' is located in Crawford, Texas, just a stone's dart from Waco, once the dwelling of the Branch Davidians worship As 'Dubya' clears brush and consolidates power all vigilances national and international, are frequently on Texas. Yes, things do have the appearance to be bigger there.

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Seven Years in East Jesus, a late video by filmmaker and university professor Mary Slaughter, casts an outsider's gaze onward Waco, Texas. A transplanted Californian, Slaughter wearied seven years in Waco while teaching at Baylor University, and her deep but critical eye has followed in a piece that attempts to dig beneath the easy stereotypes that TV stranges soundbytes often relay of Texans. However, what is ultimately revealed does not comfort the viewer. Behind shirtsleeve patriotism and "howdy ma'am" vernacular Slaughter reveals an uncomfortable and sometimes frightening relationship between religion, violence, and intolerance.

Seven Years in East Jesus is structur as a trilogy with each of the three sections delineated at a title. Beginning in an impressionistic space, each succeeding section becomes more visually and philosophically congeal as the filmmaker moves within space, place, and ideology in an attempt to 'understand' this 'foreign country' she has landed in. Slaughter uses the constituent principles of air, earth, water, and fire as organizing devices within and between the three sections.

Section single in kind "Where Grackles Swarm" is an impressionistic rendering of the Texas landscape. As companys of black birds swoop and tend to the same point a parade of Texas icons marches across the protection Manipulated shots of rodeo facts cowgirls, and midway rides depict an unsettling celebration in the making. A cryptic chorus of hardy accompanies these series of visions while a swirling and undulating oppressive air balloon figure slowly inflates subject to the night sky. As in a waking dream, the viewer is initiated into a nocturnal world where formerly familiar things induce apprehension in the viewer, offering a premonition of the unsettling facts to come.

The title "East Jesus" appears signaling the start of section 2 of the trilogy as the night visions give way to daylight. East Jesus is a local nickname for Waco and a Christian-themed message pretends to meet inhabitants at each turn in the form of billboards, house of god signs, and media communications. The earth/air dichotomy is more concretely bring to maturityed here as earth bound humans be in agony to be worthy of a heaven jump Christ figure depicted as an enormous touchy air balloon. Flames and gas belch, suggesting fire and brimstone, as a nylon Jesus, arms spread wide in admonition, inflates and ascends forward a cloud of air. With Pentecostal zeal a male voice unfolds on the Rapture, the Christian rendering of the period of the world, but his words of fear and judgement bring no consolation. In a time of simplistic patriotism and unexamined jingoism, the rhetoric of this section suspends viewers in a place between heaven and earth while the ever-present flames of hell lick at their heels.

The final section of the trilogy, titled "Super Jumbo Colossal", brings the previous impressionistic glimpses of Texas iconography into clearer focus. From air to earth and now below soil viewers find themselves traversing an underwater space where swaying greenery mixes with iconic types For the first time the 'voice' of the filmmaker is heard. Enlivening confessional statements with a good-natured tone, the filmmaker strikes an ironic dumfound as her thoughts and observations juxtapose with disturbing footage like as a Nazi memorabilia sale and a Ku Klux Klan demonstration. The culmination of her transformation take rises as the filmmaker is heard in a telephone conversation egging forward a friend to start a 'bar fight' with her. With this revelation of her wish to explain up a can of Texas-styled "whoop-ass," the filmmaker demonstrates the alarming power her time in East Jesus has had in succession her. In the final consequences as a home-town parade draws to a shut the filmmaker becomes part of the spectacle, marching along as vulgar herds of spectators wave toward the camera.

The final irony of the piece flows as the concluding soundtrack features a fatherland tune titled "Catch Em Young", a sexist bit of musical advice concerning the care and training of women As the male singer advises the viewer to "don't hoot let 'em sigh, don't you acknowledge 'em nothin'", it is clear what is really being indicateed is a strategy of "education". While the filmmaker speaks of challenging an imaginary cowboy to a bar brawl, she is actually challenging her viewers to possess a more thoughtful stance in the face of in every one's mouth political realities. In these times of stifled opposition to the political status quo "Seven Years in East Jesus" is an important just discovered piece, challenging viewers to pointed self-examination. As we maneuver [i]or[/i] part of to the other this trilogy it seems we have traveled with the filmmaker between the walls of hell and back but the labor for self-realization continues. In the final imports as the camera slowly ascends from the inlet bed to the world above, we can be impressed certain that Slaughter, like us, will live to fight another day.