With film being one of the most powerful cultural influences in America, we Christians cheat ourselves and limit our opportunities to witness to the culture when we label all movies as either "completely corrupt" or as "harmless entertainment." The one stance thoroughly excludes a possible source of greater understanding; the other allows ungodly values to freely enter our hearts. What we need is the balance discernment provides. A film not made solely by or about Christians can still be uplifting and connect with us spiritually—as long as it conveys truth with cinematic excellence. Yet many of us are unequipped to determine which movies meet that qualification. That's why we need the right tools. With them we can shift to the offensive and intentionally evaluate and discuss how a movie illustrates God's truth. In this book, two media experts offer you those tools. Using a wide range of examples from throughout cinematic history, they explain how a film is created, what the story line means for its effectiveness, and how films impact our kids. In learning to better understand the movies and unpack their images, you'll not only gain an informed discernment for yourself, but more importantly, help your children, friends, and the unsaved come to view Hollywood's messages more critically and more carefully.
I had read and enjoyed Connie Neal’s “What’s a Christian to Do with Harry Potter?” which I thought gave a fair, balanced approach to both Christians who were for the series and those who were against it, with many topics and themes to discuss. We went through it twice with our kids.
So, when I saw this book, I thought that it would be along the same lines, but with a wider scope. And, as the kids are getting older, I thought it might be more appropriate as they want to expand their viewing options some.
While it was true that the book has a wider scope, that means it also discussed topics in less depth to keep the book size manageable. It included lots of film ideas for our family for the future.
Usually, I have put my favorite quotes at the end of a review, but I scattered them throughout this review to discuss some of them.
“Such a godless approach when filtered down to the average person through our schooling and through the media causes those who lack faith to be hardened in the delusion that God is not relevant to their lives. The result for the average Christian is a compartmentalization of beliefs.”
“The presence of [background] music [at their activity of home repairs] at the very least hinted that our companionship was dull in that we needed loud distractions to divert attention from each other.”
I thought that quote was funny, but I have thought that loud music or TV in restaurants was because people have forgotten how to talk to each other and need something to cover the silence.
I thought it was funny that the authors talked about “The Little Mermaid” for kids, and about how some of its themes are not good ones to emulate. “One suggests that a sixteen year old daughter should be defiant of her father and pursue the person most incompatible with her.”
That summary is funny to me because “The Little Mermaid” was a big deal in our home years and years ago. I tried to mitigate the negative messages of it with discussion, but in the end, I let our middle child watch it over and over again. I think the appealing thing was the fantasy and the way the mermaids could swim through water.
However, the oldest child must’ve absorbed some of what I’d said about the movie, and thoughtfully took it a step further, coming up with a way “The Little Mermaid” either broke or encouraged people to break each of the Ten Commandments. These were seriously written down on a piece of paper, and honestly, I was impressed with the reasoning and evaluating abilities in someone so young, maybe 9.
All that is to say that I agree with the authors that even such innocent-looking videos from Disney can have negative impacts on our children’s futures if they are not thought through, discussed, and brought to light.
“A book may provide a few tools and a context for discussion, but God alone brings wisdom.”
“It may be useful to recall that Jesus never reduced life to simple platitudes, and He never chose the safe, sanitized road.”
“All things are lawful but not all things edify.”
“That is to say, they thought the film lied. Life isn’t this tidy.”
“We [the general Christians] don’t’ care about the artfulness of art, nor its honesty. If we can simply slap a label on a film based on its most obvious characteristics, we don’t need to take the time to understand the uniqueness of that film and to examine its particular strengths and weaknesses.”
“Film … should create or reflect a world that rings true, a world fallen and in need of grace, a world in which the only hope for resolution and individual salvation is the Gospel.”
“Since our Lord is ‘the truth,’ we should be people of the truth who do not need to mask the realities of human existence.”
“The person who has read and enjoyed the novel invariably points out where the filmmaker has altered the story and thus ‘ruined’ it in some way, as if film, the lesser art by implication, is supposed merely to dramatize existing stories. The truth, of course, is that a film cannot tell a story in the same way a novel does. Films follow different aesthetic rules… The story is far less significant than the visual components of the film.”
What followed that quote is a description of those different rules and how they influence people, but it only served to deepen my conviction of why I like books better than movies. I did like this following analogy, however:
“In this respect, watching a great film is like wandering through an art gallery.”
“The film [Pleasantville] is disturbing on two levels. First, it is so cleverly composed and edited that most of the original viewers were taken by its skillful mechanics and thus accepted it as a whole without thinking through its rather subversive message.”
Top films have “… some significant human theme like courage or patriotism or redemption or betrayal or maturation or family love.”
“But overall we look for something that immerses us in the details of the human condition and brings us to see something valuable: Truth. And we look for respect – a respect of who we are as individuals living by the mercy of God in a fallen world, longing for a redemption that only God can provide.”
“You are suggesting that a goal of life is to become a better person, and you are suggesting that a goal of art is, likewise, to make us better people… so as Christians we needn’t blush at the immodesty of stating up front what we consider good. We should, in fact, do so gladly; after all, it is part of our witness to the world.”
“We need to recognize that there are more corrosive messages in film than the violent and sexual ones… I have always been amazed at the selective Puritanism of so many Christians who find everything wrong with sins of the flesh but little wrong with sins like greed or gossip.”
“We promote and dwell on art’s positives – the good, true, noble, and praiseworthy … redeeming every experience through the truth of Jesus Christ.” (The beginning of this chapter began with Philippians 4:8.)
“And as for the bad, it might serve as reminder that the dreams Hollywood tries to convince us are true can never come true in a fallen world that so desperately needs to embrace the love of Jesus Christ.”
“In general it is certainly far better for the soul to watch a film that says something worthwhile than it is to have to wade through sewage in search of the drain stopper. And it is certainly always incumbent upon us to think through the films we see, rather than merely reacting to them emotionally.”
“The great fallacy promoted by film studios and the film industry is the notion that films merely reflect the culture and therefore cannot be considered a corrosive to society.”
Hmm. On that one, I needed only to look to one of my children who, at a very young age, took up stealing because of watching the Swiper character in “Dora the Explorer.” Or my childhood neighbor who at six tried to stab people with a butcher’s knife because he was angry and had watched “Tom and Jerry.” I think he had other issues going on as well, but that was the excuse he gave. (Fortunately, my sister was able to sneak up behind him and disarm him quickly.)
I thought the chapter on the various film genres and what they say about our society was interesting.
Horror – assumptions about random evil and social fears. For those that include a sexual element, the authors said, “To a Christian, this popularity might suggest that sexual freedom has left more broken than happy people, and therefore more young people who might respond to Jesus.”
Westerns – “Since the American family structure has largely disintegrated, the notion of the proud homestead pushing civilization through the wilderness has lost its force… Having lost faith in the history and the identity of this country as passed down for 200 years, Americans for the most part seem to have lost faith in the possibility of a good, nurturing society. If this is indeed true, then churches in America face a challenge to live out Christian community as never before.”
Musicals – “Its celebration of idealized love and pure, American exuberance no longer seem to fit the cultural mood… Christianity offers the very thing that seems to be lacking in modern America – joy. Maybe the death of the musical is a signal that Christians need to show more joy in all circumstances like Paul did in that Roman prison in Philipi.”
Action/Adventure – “The pleasure stems from the implausibility of the story… We have lost hope for real solutions to problems like international terror and organized crime. As in a video game, the villains have no souls, and neither do the heroes.” I thought it was an interesting warning that these kinds of film stories were prolific in Germany just before Hitler’s rise to power. “…remembering we do follow a hero that is larger than life, our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Romance – “The diversity of the lovers in the formula stories recalls the differences between God and us. The ‘love at first sight’ component recalls the mystery of God’s attachment to us (“while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8, KJV). The impediments of the relationship recall the intrusions of sin upon the communion between God and man. The final union of lovers recalls the promise of paradise where we shall behold Jesus Christ face to face… We can recognize in it how desperately all people long for a fellowship that transcends common human experience. People are lonely and long for permanence in love, so they long for God, sometimes at the same time running from Him.”
Children’s – “The challenge for parents is to acknowledge the child’s sense of what is visually interesting, while at the same time, helping that child develop the ability to enjoy what was interesting in the past.”
The way we did that was to introduce kids more slowly to films than most families did. We read to them more often than they watched something, so they had longer attention spans than average. I tried to supply them with a mix of older, more meaningful films and newer, more colorful ones, whenever they got old enough to ask for and discuss more modern films by name. It’s not that we were more strict on it, but that we were more gradual. The point is to eventually have raised adults who can make wise decisions with their entertainment, not to shield them from all of it. And now, I am chagrined to note that although they think they’ve outgrown watching older films with me, they will watch them with their grandma, and point out the good they find in her favorite stories. This amazes me.
As far as children who have seen much TV/film violence, “Either he will be more inclined to strike out in the real world when tensions arise there, or perhaps worse, he will distance his emotions to the point where violence no longer affects him.”
“Parents must commit to watching films with their children and talking about them. If parents can neglect this task, they can expect problems as their children act out the ideology they have assumed from what they have been allowed to see.” Amen.
Back to the topic of Harry Potter, with which I started this review. I had lost the “What’s a Christian to Do With Harry Potter?” book the third time around, getting ready to do the series with our youngest child, who surprised me by coming up with an independent checklist of where it conflicted with the Bible. Like the older sibling’s analysis of “The Little Mermaid,” it surprised me how well it was done. Of course, this youngest child was older then, eleven, than that one was then.
“A parent who cares about the Word of God and his or her children will pray for wisdom from God who alone gives wisdom.”
I must say that I also appreciate the kids' school, which has discussed various films' themes with them, although one child said that "They ruined Star Wars."
Religious Spectacular – “The religious spectacular broke down after a few efforts in the early sixties, perhaps corresponding to the breakdown of American optimism after Vietnam and Watergate. The danger of the old spectaculars was that a person might see one and conclude that he has learned about the Bible.”
“The cultural Christianity that had produced the great biblical epics was always just that, a cultural Christianity, often using the Biblical stories to promote other important political and ideological issues.”
“When they see the film, we talk. It’s a good system of checks and balances.” I think that’s true. We could discover more in a story when we talk about it, whether with our kids or each other.
One of the better Christian books on film that I have read. There is some good material here, although a couple chapters come to a grinding halt--one each to delve way too deeply into the films Babette's Feast and The Last Temptation of Christ. I underlined several parts, and will likely refer to this book again in the future (whether for my writing or my own personal benefit).
Some good insights on how to watch film, and not just from a Christian perspective, but from a film-maker's perspective. There were also some really wise points made about not becoming a slave to pop-culture.
What movies should Christians watch? Is there a litmus test that can be applied to movies to determine the rightness or wrongness of certain movies? How does a Christian interact with "one of the most powerful cultural influences in America?"
In "Reviewing the Movies: A Christian Response to Contemporary Film," Peter Fraser and Vernon Edwin Neal tackle this issue head on in an attempt to help Christians understand both the methodologies and the worldviews portrayed in the theater. What the reader won't find is a checklist of things to look for in determining whether or not he should watch this movie or that one. Instead of providing criteria that paints options either black or white, good or bad, the authors point to the heart of the matter - both the readers' and the movies' worldviews. They state that "the problem in America can be blamed in part on how we have been trained to think about `religious issues.'" They argue that instead of taking the easy road in compartmentalizing things like movies as either "Christian" or "non-Christian," we should be actively engaging the culture, looking for truth to be portrayed whether that truth is pretty or not. Throughout the book, reviews and pictures of both classic and contemporary movies are offered as examples of excellent or poor worldviews as portrayed in the theater.
At the beginning of the book, the authors make some important points in the criteria often used by Christians in determining whether or not a movie is "good." The criteria used is either requiring that the movie be made by a Christian, requiring that the subject matter be blatantly Christian, or that there are obvious symbols of Christianity within the movie. Each of these criteria has their own problems to deal with and the authors discuss each of them in turn, commenting on the double standards inherent with many movies that may indeed fit one or more of the criteria.
The authors' main concerns in how we view movies are the movie's quality of production and the movie's "overall meaning and significance." The bulk of the book revolves around dealing with these two issues. Subsequent chapters provide a better understanding of both the artistry of film production (why was this particular angle chosen, etc), and why certain thematic elements are included (such as the element of love, religion, children's points of view, etc). The authors often seem to be tackling culture rather than movies, but considering that movies make up such a huge part of our current culture, this is no surprise and they shouldn't be faulted for it. The book continuously brings the reader back to what the Bible says about truth, goodness, beauty, love and the gospel. And the authors make an excellent point in saying that "as Christians we needn't blush at the immodesty of stating up front what we consider good. We should, in fact, do so gladly; after all it is part of our witness to the world."
Perhaps a little lacking in this book is what the authors do indeed consider to be good in movies. Again, while a checklist of good and bad things certainly cannot nor should not be expected, I expected something a little less nebulous. It seemed that the majority of the book was spent analyzing poor methods for reviewing and selecting movies, but did not adequately follow that up with better methods. The closest thing I could find is where the authors state "Great films promote great things and tell great stories. They have a fundamental integrity, a truthfulness in the way they portray the deeds and the dreams of men and women created by our loving God." However, that being said, this book is definitely a step in the right direction in understanding how Christians should view movies