Hell's Angel (documentary)
| Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Jenny Morgan |
| Produced by | Tariq Ali |
| Written by |
Christopher Hitchens, Tariq Ali |
| Narrated by | Christopher Hitchens |
| Distributed by | Channel 4 |
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Release date
|
1994 |
|
Running time
|
24 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Hell's Angel is a 1994 Channel 4 television documentary about Mother Teresa hosted by Christopher Hitchens, directed by Jenny Morgan, and produced by journalist Tariq Ali. Hitchens and Ali co-wrote the programme's script.
A precursor to Hitchens' book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995), the film argues that Mother Teresa urged the poor to accept their fate as their destiny and for the poor and sick in particular to submit to the substandard and unsafe nontherapeutic medical care provided by her clinics while she endorsed and accepted money from a variety of rich and powerful people who had stunning ethical lapses.
Hell's Angel stands as an opposition voice to what its creators perceived as the largely fawning and unquestioning press coverage of Mother Teresa at the time. Of the prior and contemporary press coverage, it states: "This profane marriage between tawdry media hype and medieval superstition gave birth to an icon which few have since had the poor taste to question."Aroup Chatterjee's criticisms of Mother Teresa inspired the creation of the film.
Christopher Hitchens narrates the documentary on camera, introducing and explaining a series of video clips to make a case against Mother Teresa and her enterprise. The documentary's key claims and points are:
Some key quotations from Hitchens in the documentary are:
The documentary "sparked an international debate" on Mother Teresa's work as its reporting contradicted the feel-good Mother Teresa narrative promulgated by the media. Hitchens reported that it led to "venomous and irrational attacks."
Christopher Hitchens' 1995 book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, detailed and expanded on many of the same points made in the film.
Mother Teresa "forgave" the documentary's creators for making it. Christopher Hitchens found this
odd, since we had not sought forgiveness from her or from anyone else. Odder still if you have any inclination to ask by what right she assumes the power to forgive. There are even some conscientious Christians who would say that forgiveness, like the astringent of revenge, is reserved to a higher power.
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