The villainous Christians of independent films
At The Onion‘s AV Club – that’s the non-satirical portion of the site devoted to popular culture – Alison Willmore has an essay asking, “Are indie films unfair to Christianity?”
Noting that the “religion-baiting” film Red State “was just one of a crowd of films [at Sundance] to feature broad villainy in the name of fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity,” Willmore asks, “If faith is still such an important part of American life, why is it met with such a lack of empathy in so many indies that theoretically go in search of a more sincere, less ‘Hollywood’ version of characters and stories?”
I haven’t seen any of the movies she mentions, so I’m not qualified to evaluate them or say much about the question of fairness in indie films in general. But her analysis of the way such movies use and abuse religion, and particularly Christianity, is thought-provoking. To me, the question of whether Christianity is being treated “fairly” is less interesting than the question of whether faith is being treated intelligently. What are independent movies missing that would make for better movies, not just better contributions to the national discussion about questions of faith and its place in public life? A few years back I reviewed the indie film Henry Poole Is Here at dotCommonweal. It had a positive attitude toward Christianity and faith in general, and it too premiered at Sundance. But while it was benign, it was also shallow and unrewarding. As I said at the time, “If you’re hoping for an independent movie with style and brains, something made for adults that takes religion seriously and challenges its audience? Then it might be time to start praying for a miracle.”
Of the films at Sundance this year, Willmore says, “These titles were enough to make some — to make me, certainly — squirm in discomfort at the easy targets they set up and then knock down.” Setting up easy targets makes for unsatisfying intellectual or artistic work, regardless of what those targets are.
Willmore’s piece offers plenty of food for thought. But I think she overlooks or at least underanalyzes one important reason that “that the born-again brute is on the verge of becoming a stock type,” as she says. Yes, it has to do with politics and a countercultural impulse on the part of filmmakers. But it’s also an irresistably easy way to inject some dramatic irony into your story. A character who beats his wife is reprehensible; a character who beats his wife and claims to love Jesus – or worse, claims he does it because he loves Jesus – is an obvious hypocrite, and audiences love to hate hypocrites. So the overuse of that device doesn’t surprise me much. What’s missing, as she notes, is “balance” – where are the characters whose Christian faith informs their lives in more complicated and perhaps even positive ways? We shouldn’t be willing to settle for Christian characters who are not hypocritical villains. How about complex, struggling, mostly decent characters who are also Christians?
Sure. I don’t watch movies any more, but one of my favorite films from back when I did was The Night of the Hunter. Powerful film, although, of course, an easy caricature.
I don’t see a problem. Indie films are probably patronized mostly by true believers; I doubt born-again Christians are attracted to them any more than they are to dog fights. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
I don’t think it is the function of fictional works of art to preach. Works which do usually are self-defeating anyway — consider all the gloppy Victorian are that was supposed to be “uplifting”. In fact, the greatest fictional art usually tells a story that is true to human nature, and because it is true, the virtuous are seen to be virtuous and the wicked are seen as wicked.
Consider Hamlet. In many ways it is a very Catholic play. But it is a story of revenge, pure and simple, or impure and not-simple. Revenge plays were very popular in the Renaissance. But which ones have had a good influence? I’ll suggest that Hamlet is a great lesson in what revenge leads to — mayhem, gross unhappiness and death. As such it is not complementary to certain Catholics, but it teaches a lesson about virtue indirectly.
One of the other problems with “being unfair” to groups of people in fiction is that fiction is not about groups of people, not usually anyway. It is about individuals. So in the latter cases the criterion of “being fair” is irrelevant. This, I think, is one of the things political correctness gets wrong. Yes, Shylock is an obnoxious man, but the play is not about all jews. (And, in fact, Shakespeare seems to have gone out of his way in Shylock’s “Do I not bleed?” soliloquy to show his humanity.) Complexity, complexity.
What would it be to write a “fair” Catholic story, anyway? Or a “fair” Protestant one? Is Flannery O’Connor fair to anyone? She wrote about sin and grace and individuals. Not justice.
How about complex, struggling, mostly decent characters who are also Christians?
I think you will find your wish fulfilled in Higher Ground, the film by Vera Farmiga that is currently showing in several theaters arcoss the US. When I started reading your post, I expected it to lead into a review of this film, which intelligently depicts a woman’s honest struggle with her conservative Christian faith.
David Thompson, thanks for the reminder. I haven’t seen that movie yet.
David Smith, I LOVE “Night of the Hunter”; interesting juxtaposition of “good” and “bad” Christians.
“Good Christians” in movies = “The Apostle” (Robert Duvall is an evangelical preacher who is highly imperfect but who has grace nonetheless). Ditto “Tender Mercies,” also with Duvall.
I checked the American Film Institute’s list of 100 best movies, and only one has a religious dimensio , The Sound of Music. Wonder why. At least TV has had the splendid Brideshead Revisited.
Graham Greene novels have been ttranslated into movies more or less well.. He did screen plays of thrillers, but they had no religious dimension. He himself co-authored the screen-play of the original Brighton Rock, which some consider a masterpiece. There’s a new version of it just out, but it seems to have dropped the religious dimension. Not Greene, I’d say. The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory also got good reviews, as I remember, though I didn’t see them. Then there were the not so great Nun’s Tale and The Song of Bernadette, but at least they did take religion seriously.
There’s a fine French version of The Diary of a Country Priest, and Monsieur Vincent, and there’s Gide’s tragic Symphonie Pastoral, a fine little movie about the family of a Protestant minister.
Conclusion: even excellent movies with religious themes can be done.
Machine Gun Preacher is being trashed by critics, but viewers like it. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/machine_gun_preacher/ I haven’t seen it yet, so don’t about the “intelligence” factor.
It seems religion is seen more and more as fundamentalist, even by a significant percentage of Catholics who think their religion forbids them from believing in evolution. As with politics, there seems less and less common ground when it comes to religion, which is written off by producers as non-thinking, anti-science, irrelevant. You have to look long and hard to see morality dealt with in an intelligent manner in movies or TV.
“You have to look long and hard to see morality dealt with in an intelligent manner in movies or TV.”
Yes, I think that’s true. And the less those issues are dealt with in popular culture, the less the Average Joe thinks about them–or gains the language to talk about them.
I recently had a long discussion about the “Twilight” movies with my students, and identified three or four moral issues that were raised (and never answered in the books or films). They included:
1) Do vampires have the right to turn people into vampires if the people are on the point of death and can’t make their wishes known?
2) What does it say about our society when girls prefer perfect pretty dead boys who wil be eternally 17 to real live boys who will grow up and get smarter partly b/c they will not be able to rely on their good looks forever?
3) At a time when teenage suicide has been on the rise, how should we feel about a book in which a girl must die in order to be with her love forever and ever?
The class discussions were very lively, and the fellas participated eagerly (there’s a lot of pent-up hatred among guys for these books and movies …). I think we are hungry as a society for this type of thing, but so rarely get it.
Another movie students like is “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” that deals with links between love and suffering, and what suffering offers.
Of course, these movies aren’t “Christian,” but there are themes that can be discussed in a Catholic context. And I wish they were done more in CCD classes than the Church ladies giving quizzes.
There are a number of indie movies with Christian themes. A new one Courageous about to be released. Blindside had a Christian theme and was very popular. One could even say that The Help had a Christian theme regarding how one treated others.
Everyone knows the greatness of Shakespeare. Some even say he invented the English language, and some say he even invented human nature as we know it.
But when you look at his plays you won’t find any Christian themes. Sure, there’s sin galone, and it’s definitely recognized as such. But there are no saints in Shakespeare, not even with a little “s”. The only thing I can think of which definitely points to a spiritual dimension is the ghost of Hamlet’s father. In other words, this consummate genius didn’t even *try* to portray the spiritual as such, unlike, say, Dante and Milton or Dostoievsky or Graham Greene.
Maybe theatrics are just not the medium for such portrayal. Maybe plays and movies are simply to visual for the writer to portray an invisible dimension. Poetry and books are different — they uses image, but they aren’t the same as actual things or actual photos of things in all their concreteness.
Hmmm.
Ann, it may be best for a writer who doesn’t believe in God not to write about Her. If he did, we probably wouldn’t much like what we got.
David S. –
God isn’t the only spiritual reality. People have a spiritual dimension, and many if not most seek a spiritual God, though many give up, becoming agnostics or atheists.
People seeking God, even if they end up non-believers can be a topic of stories, whether in novels or short stories, or poetry or movies. For instance, the great American poet Wallace was a God-seeker, but was agnostic at best. He thought that what poetry can do instead of writing about God is to invent beautiful poetry about spiritual things that aren’t religious. Yes, there are such things. For instance, he wrote poems about seeking what is ultimate and about seeking “the structure of reality”, which he saw as including man’s creativity. There is a nobility to his work, even though it is not ultimately very optimistic.
Hmm. Spitituality without God is likely to end up sappy and syrupy, I suspect, or wispy and ecstatic. Not that God, too, isn’t likely to turn out that way. When we’re dealing with stuff undetectable by empirical science, anything can appear, from monsters to elaborate abstractions. The human imagination untamed is likely to simply go crazy. Shakespere was probably far too solidly grounded to get trapped by his imagination.
Read some Wallace Stevens. Not sappy, not syrupy, nor wispy nor ecstatic. Hard to figure out sometimes, but often quite beautiful, if sad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens
As I’ve probably said before, I don’t understand “modernist” poetry, so I’ll have to take your word for it that it’s sad and beautiful.
We say God and the imagination are one . . .
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.