The Christian Imagination

The title is a quote from Phil Vischer, founder of Big Ideas productions and creator of the Veggietales series. With the release of his second feature film, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie, Christianity Today interviewed Vischer.

Some Christian films have failed flat-out because their plot was their message when it should’ve been a subtext or a comment that a side character makes in passing. However, if your main character turns to the camera and delivers the truth of Jesus, you’ve probably lost nine-tenths of your audience in five words. It’s hard to accept that when you are a filmmaker who has decided God wants you to use filmmaking to share the gospel.

The Passion was such an anomaly, you really can’t use it to learn much of anything about the nature of film. You had the most popular film actor in the world making a deeply personal work of art about a religious story. What are the odds of that happening again?

The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings are also tough test cases. How many Narnias are there? How easy is it to come up with another Lord of the Rings? It’s not. There’s Tolkien and Lewis and then everybody else. Besides, you couldn’t write Narnia today and have it accepted by the evangelical world because [of the magic] and because in its metaphor, it effectively has a non-Christian worldview.

Now, if we go to another fantasy world, we need to find Jesus there—literally. That is why the Harry Potter books are viewed to be straight from the pit. Even if Rowling says she’s enjoying Christian themes, forget it. How do you write a Christian fantasy today? I have no idea. I don’t know that you can. I think we’ve killed it. I think we are so concerned with how oppressed our worldview is and so defensive that we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. And thus, we can’t tell the kind of stories that Lewis or Chesterton would have told to share the gospel. It’s kind of depressing, frankly.

I think Vischer is right. What do you think?

Thanks to Think Christian for pointing out the article and the quote.

My friend just asked me if I was going to post about The Golden Compass. I told him that I thought about it, but had decided not to, but here it is anyway. There have been emails circulating in protest of the movie, loosely based on this quote from Bill Donahue of The Catholic League:

Look, the movie is based on the least offensive of the three books. And they have dumbed down the worst elements in the movie because they don’t want to make Christians angry and they want to make money. Our concern is this, unsuspecting Christian parents may want to take their kid to the movie, it opens up December 7th and say, this wasn’t troubling, then we’ll buy the books. So the movie is the bait for the books which are profoundly anti-Catholic and at the same time selling atheism.

Make no mistake, Philip Pullman dislikes religion, and his philosophy is expressed in the nature of the story. But as this review by James Berardinelli indicates, the protest is much ado about nothing, and the movie is of average quality. He also has some interesting commentary about the movie. New Line invested over $180 million in a movie that brought in $27 million in the US on opening weekend. It’s unlikely there will be any more produced.

Now, let’s discuss why a movie studio invests over $100 million in a movie. Hollywood, as a whole, is risk averse. They generally appeal to the lowest common denominator, and try to cater to the largest possible audience. Why? Because, the goal of Hollywood is to make money. That’s why most movies that are edgy or have an agenda are independent or low budget, because most of those movies don’t have mass appeal. New Line Cinema produced Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, and took a big risk in doing so, giving him a substantial amount of control. If LOTR had flopped, New Line might have went down with it. New Line chose Pullman’s The Dark Materials series as the fantasy heir to LOTR.

Thus, we have people protesting a movie they’ve never seen, based on books most of them have never read, worrying that a studio who’s investing a lot of money in a franchise so they can make lots of money will create a movie to indoctrinate the audience, and thus alienate a substantial part of their audience. It is, then, no surprise, that the movie largely plays it safe in terms of themes.

The lack of dialogue disturbs me. We, as Christians, talk about how sure we are of Christian truth, yet react defensively, as if God’s truth can’t win in an open arena, as if it is so frail, that it must be protected at all costs. Some Christians are worried that movies like The Golden Compass will indoctrinate their kids in atheism, but feel everyone needs to see The Chronicles of Narnia because it’s a Christian allegory. Huh? We want people to listen to what we have to say, but we boycott opposing viewpoints?? There are plenty of non-Christians who dislike the religious allegory of Narnia, and plenty who certainly don’t want THEIR kids indoctrinated with Christianity, yet many still went to see Narnia in spite of that. And in the end, no conversation takes place, and we stay as far away from each other as when we began.

I often seek theological insights in reading science fiction, because this is a genre eminently suited to explorations of the nature of the Creator and creation. I’m never surprised when I discover that one of my favourite science fiction writers is Christian, because to think about worlds in other galaxies, other modes of being, is a theological enterprise. (L’Engle, 134-135)

L’Engle was known as a children’s writer, with her best known novel, A Wrinkle in Time, essentially being science fiction. I’ve always liked science fiction, though for awhile I didn’t read much fiction, seeing it as a waste of time. In recent years I’ve discovered a real love for fiction and the truth it conveys. Perhaps it’s fitting that a genre like Science Fiction merges the rational and the romantic into a powerful whole that reflects reality back to us.

My favorite TV series of all time is the new Battlestar Galactica. The series is a dark portrayal of what it means to be human and survive. It doesn’t come from a Christian world view, but it gives one of the more positive representations of religion to be found in any TV series.

What I like though, are the questions. The most recent episode, Razors, asked what it means to be a leader and make hard decisions, and it did so without providing an easy answer. When do we love our humanity? When are we no better than the enemy? What level of compromise or violence is necessary to maintain order? When does the letter of the law need to be put aside and grace bestowed?

It’s truth in fiction that causes me to reflect on my own life and learn what it means to be human, and what it means to be a Christ-follower.

But the reality of the outcome of all annunciations is a reality which is scoffed at by most of the world. It is one of the greater triumphs of Lucifer that he has managed to make Christians (Christians!) believe that a story is a lie, that a myth should be outgrown with puberty, that to act in a play is inconsistent with true religion. (L’Engle, 84)

L’Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water. New York: North Point Press. 1995.

One of the missionaries we support through our church is Ron Neptune and his family. Ron and Jennifer, along with their kids Stephen, Marisa, Jeison, help run a ministry for homeless, drug abusing children, on the streets of Medillin, Columbia. They work with a great organization called Latin America Mission. I thought about doing their summer program when I was in college, which involved living with a family in Mexico City and taking language lessons.

The Neptunes are going to be moving to Brazil soon to work with ministries and street kids there. As Ron was speaking, my mind flashed back to the movie City of God (Cidade de Deus). The City of God is a real place near Rio de Janeiro. The movie itself was made in Brazil, is in Portuguese, and is based on the novel City of God, which is based on a true story. It was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards, which is well deserved.

The story is brutal at times, as we watch gangs of children with guns killing those who get in their way as they build their drug empires. The gangs become families, and they look out for each other, and those under their protection. There are police, but they can only do so much, and are sometimes just as desperate. So, I ponder what it means to minister to street children in Brazil, and it melts me.

While on Pandora (the music service) this week, I came across their GlobalGiving Philanthrop Projects, one of which is to teach music to children in Rio de Janeiro, where “about 6,000 youth work for armed drug dealers in favelas. The project offers productive alternatives that promote self esteem and dignity.” Music, it stirs the imagination, something needed in places where there is little hope.