Category: Culture

The Plot To Baptize The DaVinci Code

In what may be the premiere case of trying to have cake and eat it, too, Hollywood wants to both film Dan Brown’s trashy anti-Christian novel The DaVinci Code and market it to Christians as a Christian-friendly film:

"Filming is not yet complete on Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, but the controversy is already raging. An association called the American Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property has called on Roman Catholics to boycott the film, saying: ‘It attacks everything that Catholics hold sacred.’

"They have the backing of the Archbishop of Genoa, who described the book as ‘a sackful of lies against the church and against Christ himself.’ And even enlightened Catholics [unlike, presumably, the Archbishop of Genoa?] such as the commentator Barbara Nicolosi, who runs Act One, a seminar for Christian film-makers in Hollywood, says: ‘The book is particularly repulsive. It says Jesus isn’t Divine and that the Church is basically evil.’

"Normally, such outrage would be all good clean fun at the box-office, but the re-election of George W. Bush on a wave of devout heartland votes and the phenomenal success of The Passion of the Christ have changed Hollywood’s thinking. The Christian moviegoer is now a recognised and lucrative demographic that Hollywood cannot afford to ignore.

"Columbia Studios, which is making The Da Vinci Code, clearly feels that it cannot count on divine protection [and should count itself fortunate not to be the target of divine wrath]. It has called on the services of Grace Hill Media to help to prepare the groundwork for the film, which is to be released next summer, and defuse controversy."

GET THE STORY.

In a backhanded way, this whole plot substantiates the Christian assertion that Dan Brown’s novel is anti-Christian. There would be no need to spin the film as "Christian-friendly" were Hollywood unconcerned that the movie was offensive to Christian sensibilities.

The Plot To Baptize The DaVinci Code

In what may be the premiere case of trying to have cake and eat it, too, Hollywood wants to both film Dan Brown’s trashy anti-Christian novel The DaVinci Code and market it to Christians as a Christian-friendly film:

"Filming is not yet complete on Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, but the controversy is already raging. An association called the American Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property has called on Roman Catholics to boycott the film, saying: ‘It attacks everything that Catholics hold sacred.’

"They have the backing of the Archbishop of Genoa, who described the book as ‘a sackful of lies against the church and against Christ himself.’ And even enlightened Catholics [unlike, presumably, the Archbishop of Genoa?] such as the commentator Barbara Nicolosi, who runs Act One, a seminar for Christian film-makers in Hollywood, says: ‘The book is particularly repulsive. It says Jesus isn’t Divine and that the Church is basically evil.’

"Normally, such outrage would be all good clean fun at the box-office, but the re-election of George W. Bush on a wave of devout heartland votes and the phenomenal success of The Passion of the Christ have changed Hollywood’s thinking. The Christian moviegoer is now a recognised and lucrative demographic that Hollywood cannot afford to ignore.

"Columbia Studios, which is making The Da Vinci Code, clearly feels that it cannot count on divine protection [and should count itself fortunate not to be the target of divine wrath]. It has called on the services of Grace Hill Media to help to prepare the groundwork for the film, which is to be released next summer, and defuse controversy."

GET THE STORY.

In a backhanded way, this whole plot substantiates the Christian assertion that Dan Brown’s novel is anti-Christian. There would be no need to spin the film as "Christian-friendly" were Hollywood unconcerned that the movie was offensive to Christian sensibilities.

Just Imagine . . .

Yesterday I posted a query asking why we should fill up our imaginations with fiction: visions of ways God didn’t make the world.

Earlier today I posted a note that Jesus himself used fictions, therefore they must (in at least some circumstances) be okay to use.

Having established that, I’d like to go into the speculative basis of why they are okay to use.

Because fiction is such a part of our lives, many folks might pass quickly over the question of why we should do fiction at all and not register the full force of the question. For that reason, I tried to phrase the question as strongly as I could, even using prejudicial language and talking about "filling up our imaginations" with how "God didn’t make the world."

The first of these phrases makes it sound as if we’re cramming our minds full of fiction so that there’s no room left for anything else. In some cases, that may be true. Some people live in fantasy worlds, either in the sense of spending an unhealthy amount of time on fiction (like the Star Trek fans satirized in William Shatner’s famous "Get A Life!" sketch on SNL) or in the sense of being literally unable to distinguish fantasy from reality (in which case the person is clinically psychotic).

Those conditions represent the abuse of the imagination (in the case of obsessive fandom) or an outright mental illness (as in the case of psychotics). But just because a faculty can be disordered doesn’t mean that the faculty itself should not be part of human life.

In point of fact, it seems that coming up with fiction is something that is part of human nature. If it wasn’t for Jesus’ use of fiction, one could always say "Well, that’s just because of the Fall," but the phenomenon of storytelling is a true human universal. Every society has fiction, and that’s a pretty good clue that it’s something built into human nature.

The ostensible opposition between our imaginations and how God didn’t make the world is also prejudicial language.

After all: What does one suppose our imaginations are for, anyway? The whole point of an imagination is being able to envision how the world might be but isn’t–at least at present.

It’s true that we can use our imaginations to try to reconstruct the way that the world was or the way it might be right now in areas out of our sight, but one of its principal functions–and very likely its main function–is to enable us to model how the future might go. This allows us to plan, to envision how we’d like the world to be and then determine what’s the best way to move the world in that direction.

What will happen if I ask my boss for a raise? What arguments will be most effective in getting me one? Will this girl agree to marry me? How can I increase my chances of getting her to say yes? How can I get the baby to stop screaming at the top of his lungs? How can I get Fr. to end this liturgical abuse? Etc., etc., etc.

All of these are questions that involve envisioning the world a way it isn’t now. We may be using our imaginations in these cases to figure out how to change the world, but the point is that our imagination is still bound up, part and parcel, with the idea of fiction. Trying out fictions of how the world might be is what the imagination is for.

A person without the ability to engage the faculty of fiction has a broken imagination, and that’s all there is to it.

That’s only one reason why fiction is important, though.

More to come.

A Knock-Down Blow

Let me give you what I consider to be a knock-down blow for the hypothesis we considered earlier that we shouldn’t be filling up our imaginations with fiction–imaginings of the way the world ain’t. I’ll offer additional arguments tomorrow (and I’m sure others will or by the time you read this already have offered them in the comboxes), but this one I consider a clincher:

Jesus used fiction.

If you think about it, that’s what his parables are: They’re short fictions.

When he starts talking about a man who went away on a journey and entrusted his property to his servants, it would be a mistake for someone in his audience to yell out "What was his name?!"

Someone actually does do that in Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian when Brian tries to tell a parable, but it’s missing the point. It’s a mistake.

It would be even more of a mistake to try to find out when and where the guy lived in history. When Jesus says things like this, he doesn’t have particular historical individuals in mind (so far as we know).

As a result, his parables are fictions. They may teach truths about the world, but the contain elements that aren’t the way the world is (or was or will be).

And if Jesus can use fiction . . . then so can we.

The Way The World Ain't

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?

The Way The World Ain’t

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?

About Writing

I’ve decided to add a category to the left hand column devoted to the subject of writing. I already have categories on fiction, books, etc., but these are mostly taken up with particular works or series.

The new one will be devoted to blog posts about the craft of writing itself–both how to do it and what moral and theological questions it raises.

A couple of things started me thinking along these lines. The first was a request I had to help someone learn how to do apologetic-style writing. I’ve been doing this for a baker’s dozen of years now, and in that time I’ve grown a lot as a writer. (Of course, like everyone, I also have more growing to do.) There are certain tricks of the trade–both of writing in general and apologetic writing in particular–that I’ve learned, and I wanted to start writing them down in a place where they could benefit others.

The second thing was the recent dustup over what Pre-16 may have written in a thank you note regarding Harry Potter. This surfaced a number of moral/theological issues connected with that, while I didn’t have time to go into them at the moment, I still thought were worth exploring.

I’ve got less experience writing fiction than non-fiction. Frankly, I don’t have that much time for it. But I do have some experience, and many of the rules are ones it shares with non-fiction writing.

I also have the same experience as others of reading (or viewing or listening to) fiction and wrestling with the moral and theological isues it raises.

So. . . . Hope this’ll be of interest to folks!

To be continued. . . .

Return Of The Sith

Coming soon to a DVD player near you: Revenge of the Sith is to be released on DVD on November 1:

"The Force will return to retail stores Nov. 1 with a double whammy: Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith will be released on DVD, and Star Wars Battlefront II will be made available for all the top video game platforms.

Sith is the year’s top-grossing movie, with domestic box office earnings of $373.9 million (and an additional $425 million overseas). The two-disc set will include a full-length documentary; two new featurettes, one exploring the prophecy of Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One and the other on the movie’s stunts; and a 15-part collection of ‘Web documentaries.’"

GET THE STORY.

Practice your Jedi mind tricks now so that you can convince the Star Wars fanatic in your life that he does not want the new DVD until Christmas Day. If that doesn’t work, take heart. There’s sure to be a jumbo-deluxe, extended-edition, collector’s set of all of the Star Wars movies Any Day Now.

Raiders Of The Lost Templars

Those perennial heroes of conspiracy theorists everywhere, the Knights Templar, have surfaced again. Now the Knights are claimed to be responsible for Renaissance paintings of the pregnant Madonna:

"A string of artists working from the middle of the 14th century near Florence painted the Virgin Mary as they imagined her to have been while she was pregnant. The best-known of these swelling Madonnas is by the great 15th century Tuscan artist Piero della Francesca. It shows an apparently dejected mother-to-be with one hand resting on the burgeoning front of her maternity gown.

[…]

"Carvings and sculptures of pregnant Marys have a longer history before and after the early Renaissance. But the painting of them by artists of stature is almost entirely confined to Tuscany in the 130 years ending around 1467, when Piero della Francesco is reckoned to have created the fresco at Monterchi.

"In a 40-page booklet published last month, Renzo Manetti, a Florentine architect and author of several works on symbolism in art, argues that this is no coincidence.

"’Florence was a major Templar centre and these Madonnas start to appear soon after the suppression of the knights in 1312,’ he told the Guardian this week. The first by a celebrated artist is attributed to Taddeo Gaddi and dated to between 1334 and 1338.

"In virgin and child paintings, the child symbolises wisdom, knowledge, truth. So what the pregnant Madonnas represent is a temporarily hidden truth,’ Mr. Manetti said."

GET THE STORY.

When Mr. Manetti has time for a sabbatical from architecture, I suggest a course in Logic 101. The attribution of one thing to its immediate predecessor simply because it happened afterward is known as the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin, "after this, therefore because of this"). The article reports that an Italian priest has offered a far simpler explanation of the paintings of the pregnant Madonnas:

"In a 15-page article due to appear soon in the diocesan periodical, Father Giovanni Alpigiano argues for the traditional view that the expectant virgins represent the theological concept of incarnation. There is ‘no arcane secret’ attached to Gaddi’s Mary, he insists, despite her cryptic, knowing expression.

"’Great care needs to be taken in attempting to rewrite the history of art or literature solely with the help of esoteric clues,’ Fr. Alpigiano adds. An account of his counter-blast was splashed over the best part of a page in Avvenire, the national daily newspaper owned by the Italian bishops’ conference."

But, of course, simple explanations do not sell books or establish academic reputations so Fr. Alpigiano must be satisfied with being a Catholic apologist rather than an art "expert."

Christ Is Kewl

Hollywood may have been unwilling to honor Mel Gibson for his blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, but it is definitely willing to cash in on the success of his movie by scavaging religious imagery to plump up otherwise thoroughly secular films:

"In the summer blockbuster movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, from 20th Century Fox, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play godless suburbanites and professional assassins. But when they steal their neighbor’s car for an extended chase scene, a crucifix hangs conspicuously from the rear-view mirror, and in the next scene the actors wear borrowed jackets that read ‘Jesus Rocks’ as they go on the lam.

"’We decided to make the next-door neighbor, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians,’ explained the movie’s director, Doug Liman. ‘It’s literally in there for no other reason than I thought: This is cool.’

"Liman isn’t alone. Mainstream Hollywood, after decades of ignoring the pious — or occasionally defying them with the likes of Martin Scorsese’s revisionist Last Temptation of Christ and Kevin Smith’s profane parody Dogma — is adjusting to what it perceives to be a rising religiosity in American culture."

GET THE STORY.

Uh huh. Sure.

What these Hollywood types don’t seem to understand is that Mel Gibson’s movie succeeded because it was sincere. It wasn’t aimed at milking the presumed "religiosity" of a target audience. (Had it been so crassly targeted it would have been far less overtly Catholic in its appeal to an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian audience.) But draping a crucifix on a mirror and stuffing pop icons into "Jesus Rocks" jackets is so patently patronizing as to be immediately scorned by the audience whose bucks Hollywood wants.

Christians, in the eyes of Hollywood studios, are handy milch cows but are not worth taking seriously.