Professor and screenwriter Thom Parham has written a great analysis of why heathens make the best Christian films and why Christians themselves often fall down on that job.
"Secular filmmakers tend to observe life more objectively than Christians. They see the world the way it really is, warts and all. Christian filmmakers, on the other hand, tend to see the world the way they want it to be. Ignoring life’s complexities, they paint a simplistic, unrealistic portrait of the world."
I wouldn’t quite say that Christians do not see the warts or ignore the complexities. Many Christians are also quite objective in their analysis of the world. Rather, I’d say that many Christians in various artistic disciplines sometimes fear showing the warts or delving too deeply into the complexities, perhaps out of a misplaced scrupulosity that doing so is somehow "un-Christian."
"’If you want to send a message, try Western Union,’ said Frank Capra, a Christian who made hugely popular mainstream films."
This I do think is a huge problem for Christian artists. I can’t tell you how many defenses of The Message I’ve seen by Christian artists, whatever their medium. They tend to think of their art as a ministry and nurture romantic dreams of converting the world through a well-crafted apologetic. While I wouldn’t say that art and apologetics are mutually exclusive, I would say that the artist must be an artist first. The reason The Passion of the Christ worked so well as art and evangelization was because Mel Gibson is a Christian artist who has spent thirty years in the industry working as an artist on secular films. He knows how to make a great film and knows how to incorporate theme without sacrificing art. Until you’re as successful as an artist as is Mel Gibson, don’t try to do what he did.
"The idea that Christians will go see films targeted at them has not been borne out by the marketplace. Christians, it turns out, see the same films as everyone else."
And are as discerning about what constitutes a great movie as secular theater-goers. Christian artists must learn that they are not going to win a Christian audience by pandering to them. And Christian artists also are not going to win a secular audience by preaching to them.
(Nod to Relapsed Catholic for the link.)
BTW, the book from which this essay was taken, Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, And Culture, edited by Spencer Lewerenz and St. Blog parishioner Barbara Nicolosi, sounds great.
I think the biggest issue in any distinctively Christian work is the fear of anyone to say that something is truly awful. Actually I should broaden the criticism to any passionate advocate. This is improving in many respects.
A good example of this is SDG’s work as a film critic. He gives himself room in the evaluation process to say that something may be edifying, but totally lacking in cinematic value.
Rather, I’d say that many Christians in various artistic disciplines sometimes fear showing the warts or delving too deeply into the complexities, perhaps out of a misplaced scrupulosity that doing so is somehow “un-Christian.”
I agree, and I also think that it is very difficult to really get into a problem’s complexity and expose some of the warts along the way, without fearing that someone will get the wrong message from seeing the part with the warts. People tend to see any warts as being passed off as “acceptable”. So when you make a film, you want to make very sure that no one will mistake a wart for condoned and acceptable ideology/behavior. In eradicating the warts, the stories sometimes must develop in such a complex way that you lose the audience. Some complex problems require some theological principles and those are things that aren’t easily translated onto the screen.
That’s why you have stories about abortion that go like this:
Stressed out pregnant mom wants an abortion. She convinces herself with highly emotional rhetoric and maybe regurgitates some intellectual-sounding defenses. Audience feels sympathy.
Moviemaker does not go into theology.
Rather, the moviemaker gives the woman some kind of emotional epiphany and the woman decides not to have the abortion.
The pro-abortion audience leaves, once again dismissing anti-abortionists as emotional and not as rational as they are. Some people paid more attention to the warts part, and see the reasoning of the woman, while she wanted the abortion, as valid reasoning. They may even think that the choice to be anti-abortion is an emotional decision that precludes the use of reason. You can’t really avoid such conclusions without getting into some heavy theology. (That I can see, anyway.)
Kind of like that rapper video posted about here, a while ago. I think it does some good, but it’s probably not going to sway a lot of proud, pro-abortion intellectual types.
Probably the best statement of the secular pro-life position I’ve seen is in George Orwell’s “Keep the Aphidistra Flying”, which gets real cerebral real fast, but starts with him having a visceral reaction to the fetus as a living human being while doing purely medical research on the realities of pregnancy. Sounds like a chance for a good montage to me-maybe cutting backward from already-born baby through the cycle of its prenatal development.
Film is primarily a visceral medium, whatever the critics and the French may claim to the contrary; most of its pseudo-intellectual content is to designed to make the viewers feel like they’ve done some heavy thinking when they haven’t. So the correct reaction by a prolife person making a thematically prolife movie (as distinct from someone making a commercially viable chick flick who has to pay lip service to the rightness of abortion while still not letting his heroine go through with that), to claims that the prolife position is largely emotional is to say: no, it’s not, but the film medium is, and that’s what I’m working in.
“‘If you want to send a message, try Western Union,’ said Frank Capra, a Christian who made hugely popular mainstream films.”
Truer words are rarely spoken.
While I wouldn’t say that art and apologetics are mutually exclusive, I would say that the artist must be an artist first.
A well crafted story teaches, but it is never didactic or preachy. It teaches simply by being a good story.
(This is one of the reasons Philip Pullman’s anti-Christian children’s books fall so flat. Too preachy. Way too much message.)
This is true for books, but it is even more true for movies. Film is a visual medium. If your story doesn’t move and you don’t tell the story visually, the art suffers.
Jimmy –
Thanks so much for the links and positive words! Please keep our work here in Hollywood in your prayers. God bless –
Hey, Barb. Thanks for dropping by!
That was actually Michelle Arnold’s post. She, myself (Tim Jones), and Steven Greydanus all take part in Jimmy’s blog from time to time, though Michelle is much more reliable in posting regularly.
We do appreciate what you all are doing out there on the left coast. As an artist, I REALLY applaud your efforts at drawing attention to art in all it’s forms, as well as the role it should play in evangelism.
Drop by my website at http://www.timothyjonesfineart.net
You be careful out among them English!
Tim, is this your official announcement that you have your website up and running or did I miss it? I’ve been waiting. Heading over now.
Weird, Jimmy. Similar conversation started over at LIBERTAS blog:
http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/index.php?p=1119
The secularists can be blinkered as the Christians. For one thing, they may have their own faith — such as Communism — that makes them overlook different warts.
For a second thing, they may have a blind infautation with their own abilities to see warts which leads to leaving everything else out, and even make up warts that aren’t there.
For a third thing, nothing in art can include all of life. If a story has a good and faithful priest, and another has an evil and apostate priest, both of them are including some of life and leaving some of it out.
Three tenets of Catholicism informed their craft and equipped them to excel. First, an intuitive understanding of iconography gave them a strong foundation for crafting visual images. Next, they seemed to grasp the incarnational function of art, which allowed them to give tangible form to intangible concepts. Finally, their understanding of the sacramental nature of life helped them relate divine patterns through everyday minutiae.
These are three points that I would really to see expanded on.
One can see a progression of God’s gentleness: First is the word, then a person, then a piece of bread and finally a movie. It also follows a logical progression back from adulthood to the ‘womb’ of the movie theater. God speaking ever more gently to us. Movies were always intended to become the faith in the end times, or rather, movies are an externalization of our faith… or something like that.
But the battle has already been fought and won; the ringbearer has already succeeded in casting the ring (of the pride of words over the Word) into the fire at the center of every heart. We have been driven to the face at the end of the highway of all thought. David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is Our Lord Jesus Christ in the (necessary) disguise of a movie.
… and The Passion of the Christ may be the greatest manifestation possible of the spirit of antichrist.
ONE SIXTH OF THE WORLD
’You can hear us? ‘
A PLAY STARRING Jenny Brown and Marcello Rocka and Cary Betty-Wing
Two women.
One man.
Beautiful piste.
She skis.
Her name is Cary.
Jenny is wored.
This is about après-ski.
The location in Connecticut.
After a long drive from Mount Norms they head to their country estate.
They own it a third.
All of them are rich.
This is a minimalist play.
Jenny is-is-is virgin.
She’s nnnobody’s daughter.
She’s a beautiful woman.
Frankly’s, she’s a tramp.
Marcello thinks they all clean stables.
Cary is a traitor.
She’s no woman politician.
She throws spiteballs made half of ground beef.
This isn’t a temple play.
CARY
very underdressed
‘Are you beautiful, Marcello?’
MARCELLO
‘Yes, but I am respectful.’
CARY
Virgin.
This is the zfifties.
It is December 31, 1959.
After dark.
Crat.
This is Marcello’s job.
He load’s his life with people all day.
Jenny is only a prostitute.
Cary is a producer lady.
This is different from a producer.
Her contract specifies that she not call herself ever lady–*producer.
Jenny is from the slums.
She is quite a virgin.
As hound define.
JENNY
‘I am a hound dog.’
Several firecrackers go off in the next town.
Marcello is really a fire-starter.
MARCELLO
‘Shall we send the waiters? Are there any left? Are there poor? Are there many?’
There are no waiters.
Everyone is working by candlelight.
CARY
‘You are all asleep fires.’
JENNY
‘Night night. Nighty night. One hundred bottles of beer on the wall. One punt red bottles of bier on the wall. Take them down. Pass it around. Ninety nine bobbles of bear on the wall. Ninety nine bobbles of fresh ninety eight. I’m too poor, but I pass that much late. Take it down. Pass this around. Ninety-eight bobbles of beer wine you sate.’
MARCELLO
‘Ever listen to Elvis?’
JENNY
‘Oh, he’s understandable, but he has secret words and everywhere!’
The court thinks Jenny invented The Bobblehead Doll.
In her dolor, she was forbidden from writing a contract late.
So she wrote it early.
It says that to specify the number of grams in an ounce you must be very smart foally.
JENNY
‘Ninety-eight records of rhythm I play. Take it quite off and I pass the new day. Break op.down. Pass it around. Ninety-seven bottles of beer on the mall. I don’t like this thing called new shopping mall. I order my eggs at the basket ham. Break this down to 96 tears, I don’t play cupcakes with strawberry jam.’
Jenny is youthfully senile.
Bored as a lovings tear.
Cary has atorn her comb.
CARY
‘Don’t you know how hard it is to sing hard today?’
JENNY
‘I mumbles and mumbles and then I mess with my broke bosom and then I double cable sweat. I grumble to tumble for the forty four fox is a wide eyed bet. I can name all the barrels and the beer and the carrels. Won’t you please me, mister –Snowman? I’ve got double heart tallows? You have no more. It is show more. Fix the contract contra mine you’ll do fine.
MARCELLO
‘The Respectful Prostitute is a real abomination. It’s the adman come to haunt. And three cheers for the beggars next year who to flaunt. You’re e-aunt. Sitting by the button pater pant.”
CARY
“jingle Bell ::Town is a Rocking thrown down for the daylight and the scream.”
MARCELLO
“There’s children in the soup.”
CARY
They’re just like Betty Boop.’
JENNY
‘In my triangle, a woman has but two speeds to dream.’
MARCELLO
‘They’ll add the shriek.’
JENNY
“And you are a geek.”
CARY
“And they’ll add a fourth.”
MARCELLO
“ But it’s just called talk. ”
The shriek is here.
It’s a pile away.
From a cottage of lumber.
The girl had no pay.
There’s no witness and quite poor silently the dame’s gone.
CARY
’’Well, the game’s gone.’’
JENNY
‘There’s no business like show business. It’s no business we know.’
MARCELLO
‘Even in the darkest places, find a hand. I don’t think you know your braces in the whole wand. Acting is a stupid game for rag any profession. But it’s a real obsession. To future-bond the andrafty cession. Even if you don’t know what I still do tell. Switch them back and forth and make the people run well. Oh, then, she’s dying now.’
She was expelled from her house.
In the slums.
Will not show up at Cary’s .
The girl represents ((((( money ))))).
Suddenly the prostitute gets up and (because this is not fake in the movies) does not walk a mile into the inner city poor dressed in catwoman clothes to find out who just yelled hard. Nor she turns on the scanner.
MARCELLO
‘Doom.’
If a point equidistant and the like can be used to triangulate a vector, but Yale University is a crime univy front, but the poor people who must do these math are all there, have we a prayer?
Because they are rich, including prostitutess, they have license scanners.
This is a sexism country.
Cary is wearing Batwoman clothes.
She looks like Kathy Bates.
Jenny looks like Marianne Faithfull.
In this era, Catwoman wears a long veil.
Batwoman has baseball equipment and a hangdog gun.
Catwoman is in the abaya.
She can see his eyes.
JENNY
‘I myself attended Yale University.’
MARCELLO
“ It’s time to hear. “
SCANNER
“We interrupt this message to give you a repeat of the Big Broadcast of 1938. Co ventriloquists.”
CARY
“ What could be the matter? “
SCANNER
“ A shrieking girl has just died in my arms of trouble. You’ve got a whole lot of nerve to live in my neighborhood, Mister Marcello Mafia and his two brown cuddlies. I am the real Walter Mitty. “
CARY
“I’LL get on the horn.”
They are at a top of a hill that can see a top of a hill with poverty. Lady have no servants.
End Scene I
Scene II
MITTY arrives at their house with a woman of the streets, call JOLOUEI.
He got her pregnant.
She tried some soda crackers core the bathtub.
Police ruled it accidental asphyxiation and let the abortion doctor go.
He was Mitty.
JENNY
‘ wears their claw foot ‘
MITTY
‘ Have you ever seen a lucky rabbit’s foot? ‘
CARY
“ Suddenly I producerlady realize I am going to undergo the same experience in ten minutes really. “
JENNY
‘’Aren’t you much too poor?’’
CARY
‘See! i’M! Not! !A’a Virgin!
End Scene II
Scene III
SCANNER
” Hello there. It’s time.
JOLOUEI
‘Time for what, really?’
SCANNER
‘The lords and ladies have been quite replaced by gourds and babies, oh, I don’t quite know what, I’m,+ ,time out of mind.’
MITTY
“I’m not on the scanner. That’s Jenny, lucky.”
JOLOUEI
“Straight arrow girl.”
He tries to tape her.
She causes his wear death.
He walks out entirely naked.
MARCELLO shoots him to pieces.
MAN falls on Tiki torch.
JOLOUEI
“That’s revenge against my innocents, son my child, and his wackrama that means oppression in little Madrid, where I really live. Who else wants to die?”
MITTY is deafs.
He’s on fire.
He spits out these words.
( a secret code concerning the disposition of all ladies assets )
Jolouei is nearly ‘’’’’dead.
MITTY is not.
MITTY
‘Hey, little girl, let me light your candle, cause you know I’m ‘
spinning
and MARCELLO???
He’s in no Mafia.
Resigned all by the scanner.
JENNY
‘What should we do with the servant wifed?’
CARY
“ FREAK. “
JOLOUEI is out if school.
She would have been nun.
MITTY
“Can we fix the bare table?”
MARCELLO!!
“ A cricket to Catalonia and a life for all to see, I’m going to hang me with a tree, so yore. In daysa of old the plenty hab new day with poor the renty. “
Marcello is actually mad.
Mitty contains shock absorbing bran.
MITTY
“Pelletize the anodize. I’ll be the last man to survive Ireland if I can get my hand on a dog wafer.’
The man’s ONLY on FIRE.
CARY
Give Me The Scanner
SCANNER
“Hello there. I see your telephone number. Mind if I come into your home? Take to bark the women?”
JENNY
“Hash up the cooties.”
SCANNER
“Darkest day of olady life.”
MARCELLO
JENNY
“Ratchet up the novels, I’m going to dinner for a sleep………;. ‘
SCANNER
‘Jolouei, leave the house, robot.’
JOLOUEI
‘I would die street.’
SCANNER
‘We’ve met, luck gal.’
JOLOUEI
‘You’re so tragic it’s magic.’
And then the triagic spagic.
And carts and moons to blow.
Maybe, and you don’t know.