Leary on the Christian film industry, Chance on the recession

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting NPR segment about some folks who are spending lots of cash trying to create a Christian film industry to rival that of godless Hollywood. The story details the phenomenal box office success of films like Fireproof, and the creation of the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival to promote movies on "subjects that evangelicals care about." Needless to say this has inspired much heated reaction around the web, both pro and con. To me a Christian film industry makes as much sense as a Christian toothpaste industry. What's next, a chain of Christian movie theatres to show the newest Christian movies? Well, I guess we already did that with books and music. What I'd welcome, and what would have more effect on culture in the long run, would be Christian filmmakers making movies of excellence on subjects that we all care about. Movies that build on the rich and varied heritage of cinema instead of trying to carve out some competing niche. That's not to say that believing artists shouldn't or can't challenge dominant cultural assumptions in their chosen calling. It can be done without slapping a Christian label on it. Allow me to slightly misquote T.S. Eliot..."the last thing I would wish for would be the existence of two literatures cinemas, one for Christian consumption and the other for the pagan world."

I've just gotten around to reading the always thoughtful Michael Leary's take on this. After parsing some of the culture war rhetoric coming from the festival organizers Leary identifies another problem with this supposed coming of age of Christian filmmaking. It has more to do with marketing than it has to do with the gospel.

The truth is that vision statements like this aren't making Biblical distinctions at all. This simply isn't how the Bible works. They are not even cultural distinctions. They are marketing distinctions. By framing the differences between Hollywood media and Church media in these kinds of a-biblical thematic terms, this vision statement isn't drawing the dramatic line between spiritual life and death that it thinks it is. It is simply drawing a line between two different kinds of products: We don't want to see your filth, Hollywood. We are going to make our own films. We are going to leverage our market. We are going to buy tickets and go to them. We are going to award them prizes! Then we are going to buy them when they come out on DVD. We are going to do this until the pile of our products over here is bigger than your pile of products over there. This will be our signal that we have won the hearts and minds of the* culture. We will gain total thematic dominance over your dark and nefarious visions one DVD and related study guide at a time.

Is this really the "narrow path"? If so, why does it look exactly like the broad one that has led Hollywood to destruction? This kind of Christian film marketing is theologically insane. In the NPR story, Fireproof producer Stephen Kendrick explained why the film was such an instant success: "We did a lot of screenings showing the film to 'influencers,'" he explained. "That would be pastors, ministry leaders, those would be people who speak to the audience." The worst effect this envisioned Christian Film Industry would have on American christianity has little to do with these films themselves. I have no problem with people having family friendly media around. And the loss of narrative intelligence that accrues from being immersed in such didactic media is easy to deal with. The most deadly fallout is the culture that appears in the wake of Pastors and other ministry leaders being thought of as "influencers," which is an awfully Orwellian euphemism for "advertisers." This subversion of the Church by business in the guise of evangelism isn't worth whatever it produces.

Read the whole thing.

And now some good, solid sense for these tough economic times from the great Peter Sellers -- playing Chance the guileless gardener of Hal Ashby's wonderfully unique Being There. This is one of those obscure films that I love to recommend. I'd never heard of it until my friend Bill gave me a copy a few years ago. It's become one of my favorites. This scene also stars Jack Warden as the President and Melvyn Douglas as industrialist Benjamin Rand. The late 70s context tracks nicely with our own.



Being There (dir. Hal Ashby, 1979)