Film, culture & influence
I read a healthy critic of Christian filmaking - really of Christian public life - from Fernando’s Desk, entitled “Why do heathens make the best Christian films?”
One reason he offers is that “these films are willing to embrace the ambiguity and mystery at the heart the parables, which contrasts sharply with the rigidity of so much Christian comunication…” I agree that the parable of parabolic teaching is generally lost in most Christian teaching. Especially in the post-modern era, the response to a relativistic worldview - instead of being more incarnational and more parabolic - has become to be more didactic.
The other quote that I really agree with from his post is this one from George Miler, producer of Babe and The Witches of Eastwick:
“I believe cinema is now the most powerful secular religion and people gather in cinemas to experience things collectively the way they once did in church. The cinema storytellers have become the new priests. They are doing a lot of the work of our religious institutions, which have so concretised the metaphors in their stories, taken so much of the poetry, mystery and mysticism out of religious belief, that people look for other places to question their spirituality.”
Again, I wonder if the cinema-as-cathedral reflects a lack of authentic inspiration and incarnation by Christians about the life & message of Jesus. It is much easier to fund a project or a program to reach the lost, the least and the last than it is to move in next door to them and live life together. (I say that not from the pedastal of accomplishment, but from the challenge of trying to do it.) So when we actually try to take on a creative - and influence based - project like film, it reflect just another project-mentality of ministry, instead of a reflective & creative bi-product of our love for God and people.
August 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Sadly, all too true. Films do what the church has failed to do, and, ironically enough, many films have been inspired by the same rich source material that is shared by the church. The Bible.
August 17th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
It is even more intriguing to think about how much art - both biblically based and otherwise - the church has inspired/ sponsored over the centuries. Maybe this isn’t actually a very new reality. Look at Da Vinci…