When people hand out coupons in the Quad for “The 99,” students are bound to take interest.
And when these coupons only say to go to “whatisthe99.com,” the vagueness is bound to lure them in.
It seems many University students are being targeted as a potential audience by employees of “The 99” who, since the beginning of October, have been generously passing out coupons for their productions in the Quad and Middleton Library.
I was handed one of the coupons earlier in the month, and after searching the website, I found “The 99” is “a walkthrough theater that graphically reenacts the five leading causes of death in teenagers and young adults,” which has made its way to Baton Rouge until the end of October.
Such a production seems appropriate during the Halloween season and in light of the recent college suicides in the last few weeks.
I attended the production with an open mind, awaiting whatever message “The 99” had to get across to me.
As I waited in line with what seemed to be an endless amount of high school kids, screams emanated from the tent in front of me.
Once inside, my group was led through a handful of rooms. One was a car crash, another a drug overdose and then a gang fight and then a suicide. Each room seemed relatively realistic, and when I figured the message of the production was something like “all actions have consequences,” my group entered the last 4 rooms: Hell, the scourging of Jesus, the crucifixion and a nice group prayer session.
I was deeply confused — nowhere did I read “The 99” had an agenda to scare teenagers into religious conversion. The website even states, “the production is not based on fear or scare tactics.”
And even before we were allowed to leave, we had to navigate through a minefield of intolerant religious zealots. Just for laughs, I sat down with one.
When I told my newly found “brother in Christ” I didn’t agree with their tactic of using religion in the production, he told me hell is real and all bad actions lead there. I proceeded to ask how he knew such information. He said he knew because he loved Jesus with all his heart — sheer brilliance, I must admit.
He went on to tell me I wasn’t going to be saved if I refused to go on the religious retreat he was advertising — which was downright creepy.
In the end, I wasn’t disappointed because I was apparently going to hell — I was disappointed that such a high-quality production would pull such a ballsy move.
The idea I was getting from The 99 before the religious turn made me believe the production could open up teenagers’ eyes to what can happen if they make poor decisions.
But making them believe a poor decision will lead to hell is just absurd.
Religious or not, all people make stupid choices once in a while. Telling people they’re damned to hell (At “The 99,” hell was a dark room with screaming sex slaves) may scare some people into actually believing it, thus causing them to live in fear.
“The 99” also seemed to prey on a younger crowd, feeling undoubtedly lost and plauged with insecurities.
And if these kids began to believe they had to make excellent choices 24/7 and worship Jesus, “The 99” has achieved its goal: to impose fear of hell to influence good decisions.
If “The 99” depicted the leading causes of death in teenagers by realistically portraying them for an audience, then simply leaving them with the idea of “some actions may have bad consequences” or “if you do stupid things, you could die,” the production could have been vastly more effective.
Instead, the idea left in my mind was that I should make good choices based on my fear of a sex-slave hell.
Then again, religion and scare tactics have always gone hand-in-hand.
Chris Grillot is a 19-year-old mass communication and English sophomore from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_cgrillot.
 
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Contact Chris Grillot at [email protected]