Review of Southern Baptist Sissies (2013) by Dixon M — 25 Jun 2014

Southern Baptist Sissies takes on a tricky subject and handles it nicely.

The play is very well written, never making the easy choice of parody. Instead, Southern Baptist Sissies is populated by real characters: people I have known. The church pastor and members are sincere. They are, perhaps, attached to dogma that could be examined more thoroughly, but they are not hypocrites.

The pastor's polemics are real. The sermon fragments in the play are words I heard frequently as a Southern Baptist youth. There are dialogs in the play that illustrate how Southern Baptists emphasize Bible verses that condemn homosexuality while ignoring adjacent scriptures on other subjects, but this is done artfully.

The film does not come across as preachy. This is accomplished in part by using two long-lapsed Southern Baptists, Peanut (Leslie Jordan) and Odette (Dale Dickey), to provide comic relief when things start to get serious. It's a great technique.

The film uses a laugh track to tell the audience where the jokes are. I wish this had not been the choice. I think the audience is more intelligent than this indicates, and the laughs in the laugh track sometimes didn't fit the humor (guffaws for a joke that deserved a chuckle).

The film also sometimes used disturbing imagery to illustrate the intersection of religion and sexuality. While these images had shock value, they will offend many. I think this may lessen the film's effectiveness.

All-in-all, this was a very good film, and well worth my time. It is a pity that it is unlikely to reach an audience of active Southern Baptists. I have never seen a film that more effectively portrays someone like me: a former Southern Baptist who bears the denomination no ill will but who can never go there again.