made-for-tv gospel – Public Christianity

Blockbuster

July 27, 2010Frank

In the movie biz, summer means three things: big explosions, big-name actors, and big receipts. If it’s not a big-budget shoot-em-up, it’s the innovative star-studded thriller. If it’s not pushing the limits of special effects, it’s pushing computer animation. Whichever, it is the summer blockbuster.

Which is this year’s big blockbuster? Salt failed to dethrone Inception over the weekend and I hear Inception is as good, if not better, than it looks. Earlier this summer Iron Man 2 left many underwhelmed, while Toy Story 3 made everyone cry. The Last Airbender may not be this year’s Avatar (bonus points if you caught the pun), but there’s nothing that looks like it will break box-office records like James Cameron’s 3-D spectacle.

“Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” (Habakkuk 1:5)

Why do we shell out $30+ (for two) to see the latest hits when we can wait a month and watch it at the dollar theater?

What is it that drives the blockbuster? It needs a compelling theme (Avatar knocked this one out of the park), a big name (I couldn’t tell you the main actor in Avatar, but everyone knows James Cameron), and memorable special effects (again, Avatar blew this away). But to be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of that movie. Maybe I’m the only one given all its hype. I found it entertaining and enjoyable and I have to commend the special effects. But the mythology introduced (which many found to be so alluring) was derivative and unoriginal and the acting was flat (mostly because the Navi were perilously close to the “Uncanny Valley”). It was a sight to behold on the big screen, but was it worth waiting in line for hours the day it was released on DVD? (Maybe more people have a 52” plasma screen than I thought)

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:2)

What is the best movie you’ve ever seen? What is your favorite?

The Gospel of Jesus is called “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, but if it were a summer movie release, would it make any money? The Passion of the Christ exceeded box-office expectations (no I won’t talk about Mel Gibson’s recent issues) but had the advantage of being released to coincide with Easter. I’m not sure that movie would have seen the same numbers if released during the summer. Yet the Gospel encompasses every crucial ingredient to be a blockbuster. What could be more compelling than the Son of God, Prince of Peace, Savior of the world? God is a pretty big name, I sure hope his son can live up to the hype and doesn’t fall prey to the temptations that befall many Hollywood protégés. And don’t get me started on special effects- raising people from the dead, driving out demons, re-growing some dude’s ear! The story is filled with action, betrayal, love, and passion. What is there not to like?

But there’s plenty not to like about the Gospel. It’s challenging. It’s exclusionary. It’s (gasp) religious! Most of all, its message is positive and hopeful, contradictory to the cynicism that is so pervasive in today’s entertainment. So why do we watch?

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you?’…

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (John 6:60-61,66)

Have you ever walked out on a movie? Why?

Driving to work today, my carpool buddy was telling me about Inception. He liked the special effects and the action, but didn’t like the message it delivered. This time last year, many derided Avatar because of its not-so-subtle politics. Personally, I don’t give movies (or more accurately, movie makers) that much credit. I don’t think it is some political conspiracy and oftentimes I don’t think there’s intention behind the message beyond what either reflects current events (you write what you know) or what is expected to strike a chord with the audience (and we relate to what we recognize). It could be argued that art is meant to be interpreted, so the messages are intentional, though I don’t consider movies to be art. But my friend countered that whoever first conceived the story was inspired by something and that something shaped the final product. There, he has a good point. I write what is on my heart. If I didn’t feel passionately about it, I wouldn’t write it. I expect the same to be true of novelists, screenwriters, poets and musicians. At the same time, the audience is also influenced by their pre-existing values and expectations. We will read into something what we choose to, independent of the artist’s inspiration.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:15-17)

What inspires you? What influences your worldview?

Evangelicals have coined the term “Biblical worldview” to define everything from media to politics. I agree with the principle- our values, convictions, and faith should influence how we view the world. In fact, that is the underlying theme of this blog- seeing everything that passes through the public square through our Christian lifestyle. I believe if you want to find an inspirational message in something you can in anything. I fully expect there to be several sermons preached based on the themes in Inception, just as there were for the Matrix, or Lost, or Gladiator. That doesn’t make it a Christian film, nor does one (of probably many) Christian’s negative opinion of its themes make it inherently nihilistic or anarchic. Our interpretation is based on our preconceived attitudes.

At the same time, we are inspired to be creative. After all, creation is an attribute of God and we are created in His image. That creativity may manifest itself in different forms- music, writing, career, hobbies, etc. Regardless of the medium, the outlet is still inspired. Just as we can interpret media based on our values (our worldview) we can influence the world with our values (the world viewing). It goes both ways. We cannot simply sit on the sidelines pointing our fingers at what we disagree with if we are not also engaging the very things we desire the world to overcome. Back to our summer blockbuster analogy, you cannot have the blockbuster if we’re not buying the tickets.

“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)

Who is your audience? What story is your life telling?

Last weekend alone, over $150 million was spent on the top-10 movies. Assuming $10 per ticket, that means 15 million people went to the movies this weekend. I don’t know if that’s more or less than the number who showed up to church on Sunday morning. I’m not advocating turning our worship into a spectacle. But I do believe we need to turn our lives into something worth viewing. We need to capture the audience with a big-name star (you), a compelling theme (admit it, your life has plenty of drama, doesn’t it?), and awesome special effects (a life transformed by the Gospel of Christ).

Today continues this summer’s ‘virtual small group’ (VSG in the tags). I hope you come back as I take this season to reflect on the wonders of God’s creation, share vacation stories, etc, with the prayer that we come out of this season closer to God than how we came into it.

R12: Where’s your focus

May 18, 2010Frank

(no blog-carnival for me this week, but I encourage you to check out this week’s numerous entries on Grace)

Tonight is the penultimate episode of Lost. I’ve been hooked from day one and I cannot wait to see how it all comes together. I’m not hung up on the theories, though I did go through that phase. I am more interested in the human drama that is playing out, relying on eternal themes of community and redemption.

Since the second season or so, I’ve been following Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen as he speculates on theories, provides background on philosophies and literature name-dropped on the show, and recaps the latest episodes. Over the weekend he posted his thoughts on community with respect to the “live together, die alone” mantra of Lost. Doc postulates that the assumed puppeteer of the show, Jacob, has been trying for who knows how many centuries to figure out how to break the cycle of “they come, they destroy, they kill”. Doc figures that previous attempts to raise up a “candidate” failed because Jacob was working out the means by trial and error, and it wasn’t until after the Others when Oceanic 815 crashed, that he concluded redemption could only be found through sacrifice (Doc argues Jacob deliberately allowed himself to be killed) and community.

I could not shake this idea as I read the most recent chapter of R12: The Book. We’ve been talking about “authentic community” defined as “when the real you, meets real needs, for the right reason, the right way.” This fourth relationship of Romans 12, Serving in Love, concludes with defining the right way.

I think what makes Lost so compelling is how it touches on themes that speak to our very souls. It is not explicitly Christian and I think it intentionally weaves Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, animism, and numerous philosophies because each are rooted in our innate desire for spiritual purpose. So you could think of Lost as a six season-long, Matrix-meets-Gulliver’s Travels-meets-Gilligan’s Island. Lost resonates with our soul’s desire to belong and have purpose.

Authentic Christian community satisfies this desire, but it needs to happen the right way. Romans 12:12-13 reads, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Paul’s literary style in Romans 12 changes from a narrative to bullet-points beginning in verse 9, which is where we begin our study on authentic community. Each bullet then carries its own weight. Be joyful in hope. Happiness is dependent on what is happening but joy is rooted in the eternal hope we have in Jesus. Be patient in affliction. Persevere through the tough times because you have this hope. Be faithful in prayer. Joy, hope, patience, perseverance can only come if we are turning our hearts to God in prayer. This is an upward focus, taking focus off of ourselves. Our selfishness wants to be happy in the moment, complain when times are tough, and rely on our own strength to push through. The first five seasons of Lost have shown us the futility in that thinking. Share with God’s people who are in need. Give sacrificially. Love unconditionally. Practice hospitality. Literally translated, this means to pursue strangers. Don’t just love those who love back, “even the pagans do that” (Matthew 5:47) extend your service to all in need. This is an outward focus. Again, the focus has to remain off of us.

Community. Sacrifice. Eternal themes. Spiritual needs. As Christians, we can choose to “live together, or die alone.” I pray that through authentic community, we won’t be Lost.

Today continues our “virtual small group” covering the book Living On The Edge. For how this group is going to work, read this entry. For an introduction with disclaimers, click here. For some numbers from Barna to motivate you to continue reading, go here. For the R12 videos, click the R12 button on the sidebar to the right. Finally, as we move forward through the book you can always catch up by clicking the R12 label at the end of each post.

R12: Where’s your focus

May 18, 2010Frank

(no blog-carnival for me this week, but I encourage you to check out this week’s numerous entries on Grace)

Community. Sacrifice. Eternal themes. Spiritual needs. As Christians, we can choose to “live together, or die alone.” I pray that through authentic community, we won’t be Lost.

My Last Post on NBC’s Kings, Honest!

May 21, 2009Frank

There was an interesting article in Entertainment Weekly a week or so back asking why science fiction doesn’t work on TV but does in movies. While not discussed, I think the problem lies in a movie’s ability to wrap up a story line in a couple hours rather than stretch a story over an entire television season if not multiple seasons. Our ADHD, 24-hour news cycle culture doesn’t have the patience for it.

This problem is found in shows like Kings or Life, two of NBC’s latest fatalities. An article at the comic book news portal, Newsarama, compares Kings with Eli Stone (another tragic loss), in that not only having to overcome the challenge of a serialized drama they also had to overcome the stigma of being “about God”. (The creators of both series are in the comic book business, but the hope that would translate into a built-in audience never saw fruit.)

While the religious undertones were a part of the problem with both of these shows, other factors such as time slot and marketing were factored more largely. I really liked Eli Stone myself, but there was no way I was going to stay up to watch it after Lost living on the West Coast. That’s one reason my television viewing is primarily online with the occasional supplement of Netflix. And that’s part of the problem- networks still haven’t figured out a way to take into account online viewership or DVD rentals to gauge popularity. I have yet to meet anyone who has seen Eli Stone that didn’t like it, so it was more a question of finding the time to take on a new show. And serialized dramas have the built-in challenge of viewers not being able to jump in mid-season or even second season without catching up on all the backstory. For example, if you’ve never watched Lost I dare you to watch last week’s season finale. There’s no way to watch that show and not feel, well, lost.

Kings was a different case however. It only got a few shows in before being cancelled and the plot wasn’t so complex that you couldn’t figure out what was going on jumping in mid-stream. In fact, some have said that was the problem- they drew out their storylines too far (in comic book terms, the story was too decompressed). But the biggest problem was the accessibility of the show. NBC gave Kings a big push to kick it off, but they never really said what the show was about. I had to read up on it online after seeing the butterfly banners all over LA to realize it was a “modern retelling of the story of King David”. That had me hooked, but I knew it would be hard to hook others. The article mentions how marketing could’ve been handled differently- targeting different demographics by emphasizing different aspects of the story. Really, Kings had it all: it was somewhat sci-fi in that it was an alternate-reality allegory, it had equal parts teen drama (think David and Michele’s relationship in an episode of Gossip Girls) and adult soap (King Silas and his brother, his infidelity and his wife could’ve come straight out of Dynasty), and despite some criticisms the religious undertones were never overstated. In fact there was one episode where the Reverend Samuels didn’t even show up until near the end. And I don’t consider butterflies swarming (do butterflies swarm?) around David to be “preachy.”

But once the cat was out of the bag that this show was in any way spiritual it was automatically given the label of religious. I never got the impression that this show was preachy, but then again I was the target demographic. And while there was spirituality involved it could hardly be called religious. There is no mention of the God of the show being the Judeo-Christian God, the Reverend Samuels could have just as easily been Leo McGarry in the West Wing, and in the last episode the protagonist expressed doubt God even existed or if he did then he doesn’t care. But there is a preconceived bias against anything spiritual. Read the comments on Newsarama and you’ll see this (“I can’t turn on the TV without being preached to!”). I was taught in elementary school that all stories have morals even if they’re as basic as “crime doesn’t pay”. Those morals have to be rooted in something, right? Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you is universally accepted, but turn that into a quote from Jesus and suddenly you’re preachy. So while Kings and Eli Stone are cancelled, shows that celebrate hedonism and debauchery (The Bachelor, Gossip Girls, Grey’s Anatomy, et al) continue unrestrained. I’m glad I don’t waste my money on cable.

My Last Post on NBC’s Kings, Honest!

May 21, 2009Frank

So Much for Kings

April 24, 2009Frank

Well that didn’t take long. Only a few episodes in NBC has thrown in the towel on its series Kings, a loosely modernized adaptation of 1 and 2 Samuel. No, they haven’t cancelled it, instead putting it off until this summer when no one is sitting at home watching TV. Then again, no one was sitting at home Sunday nights when it first aired or Saturday evenings either after NBC moved it the first time.

Add this show to the likes of Jericho and SportsNight (and I’m sure you can list your favorites) as shows that were critically acclaimed, well written and acted, and not pushed by their networks before dying an inevitable death. It’s too bad too, I think the story was just beginning to pick up steam. Though the plot so far seems more like Frank Herbert’s Dune than the story of David from the Bible.

I was thinking about this the other day while watching the latest episode. David doesn’t yet seem like a “man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22) and Jack is nothing like the Biblical description of Jonathan. But King Silas rocks as an ego-maniacal version of Saul. If you’re looking for a better adaptation of David’s story I’d recommend instead A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. Or if a book written as a three act play isn’t your thing, check out either Kyle Baker’s King David one-shot comic or David: Shepherd’s Song originally published by Alias Comics.

(And yes, this is just a shameless post since “Review of NBC’s Kings” seems to be the only Google search that hits this site.)

Review of NBC Kings

March 18, 2009Frank

So I caught the debut of NBC’s Kings last night (A day late and dollar short, but that’s the price of not having cable) and was very impressed. I was sold right out of the gate when King Silas went ahead with his dedication of the new capitol without waiting for his spiritual advisor, the Reverend Samuels in a direct parallel to 1 Samuel 13. Relevant gives a good overview and a couple worthwhile reviews can be found at Hollywood Jesus (gotta pimp my links on the right) and All I Have to Give (new blog I found- very appropriate name).

I wasn’t too put off with the creative license taken with many of the Biblical references: Samuels anointing David by wiping grease off his forehead, Goliath being a tank, and David skillfully playing the piano were the obvious ones. I would’ve liked other subtle references like when David was asked what his mom thought of his service answering along the lines of, “she thinks I’m too small” instead of referencing his fallen father. And I wish he would’ve taken out the tank with some stones instead of a hand grenade, but I’ll take it.

What I didn’t like however was the blatant Social Gospel being preached- painting Silas as a king who feels blessed by God because of the strength of his military-industrial complex at the expense of health care. Though David did get in trouble in the Bible for counting his troops, and Saul was ultimately done in by going to battle without first consulting God. And war is unpleasantly central in the books spanning Judges to 2 Chronicles, so I probably shouldn’t read too much into that. Another pet peeve was Jack’s (the show’s version of Jonathan) homosexuality. Actually, I missed it at first because I was busy cooking dinner and had to rewind. I wish the writers hadn’t gone there, but it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t subject. Either you offend the gay-rights community by removing one of their lynchpin arguments that the Bible doesn’t universally condemn homosexuality, or you offend religious conservatives who look at David and Jonathan’s relationship as purely plutonic. It will be interesting to see if a love triangle develops, but it didn’t appear that David swung that way.

Another pet peeve, that Eric Pasco at All I Have to Give rightly points out, is the absence of God in the story. He’s acknowledged, but nowhere do you get the sense that David is a “man after God’s own heart”. In fact, Samuels seems to anoint him because he’s a nice guy, which would go along with our modern-day watered-down religion. There’s also no motive for taking out Goliath, other than to save the hostages. In the Biblical story, David is motivated by the Philistine’s continued mocking of the God of Israel. That’s always been a rallying point for my faith, and a large motivator for this blog. Hopefully we’ll see more of this develop as the show continues.

I loved Silas’ glare as it became clear David was the Lord’s anointed and I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here. While it will no doubt appear as a satire on our country’s politics, interviews with the writer seem to say otherwise. Although I don’t think it’s wrong to look at it that way, after all religion has been used lately to both justify war and to justify social programs in this country. And it’s worth it to look back at the Old Testament to see the inherent socio-political dangers of a theocracy.

Sadly, as much as I loved this premiere, not many tuned in to see it. I think the subtle Biblical references (or easter eggs for us religious fanboys) would be lost on the casual viewer, so it would seem the story has a limited audience. I hope that’s not the case as the writer certainly has a grand vision. I’m praying the show continues despite that “talking about God isn’t popular these days.”