If you’ve ever held a 5 minute conversation with me, you
know I love movies. Drama, comedy, romance, action, documentary….they’re all great!
And growing up in a Christian environment, I was taught that movies were worldly and
movies were bad. So I was always confused. There were some truly great movies
out there. But they didn’t talk about God. And usually ones that did talk about
God were cheesy. Was I supposed to love those anyway? It seemed like somebody
was ripping God off, giving him the crappy seconds of our artistic,
story-telling talent. I thought for so long,
Am I alone? Can I be the only
Christian who enjoys good movies? Is something wrong with my walk with God?
This past month I realized that overwhelming, no, I am not alone. I just
finished reading Jeffrey Overstreet’s book
Through A Scanner Darkly: Looking
Closer at Beauty, Truth, and Evil in the Movies. Not only was it a great
book, I also felt he had somehow gotten inside of my head for awhile, and wrote
about what I loved, thought or feared.
I knew as soon as I read the opening quote by Frederick
Buechner I was going to love this book. “The world speaks of the holy in the
only language it knows, which is a worldly language.”
WOW! And then, Overstreet challenged me in the first chapter with “Art needs time to settle in our minds and hearts so that the process of
contemplation, discussion and ongoing exploration can open up possibilities
that never occurred to us in the theater”. There are several times that I’ve
watched a movie and couldn’t even give an opinion until after I had mulled it
over, thought through its plot, its characters, and its themes.
Overstreet
devotes the first section of the book to how we watch movies, and recognizing
what movies had a significant impact on our lives. “It’s possible we will
glimpse the glow of glory, truth that cannot be reduced to a simple paraphrase
glimmering through a screen darkly.” We all watch movies for different reasons…to
be entertained, to be educated, to escape, or even to live vicariously (trust
me, every time I watch
Center Stage, I
live vicariously!) But occasionally we get more than we bargained for, and more
than we expected. We get a glimpse into a reality we didn’t realize about
ourselves or mankind or God, and it’s powerful.
Overstreet had a great analogy on watching film. It’s a little long, but so worth it! He calls it
a “feast of movies”. He equates movie watching habits to eating habits, something
we all are familiar with. There is the
child
movie watcher, grabbing whatever passes by with no thought to harm, only to have
someone reach out and take it from him until he’s ready. Things that were tough
are digest are replaced with easy, manageable portions.
Then there’s the
reactionary diner. This type of viewer labels everything by just
sampling. If one bite is too spicy, the entire dish is ruined. This viewer
writes off an entire film because the opening burst of violence. Then you have
the
casual diner. This viewer is
aware of reviews and previews, and in attempt to satisfy new hungers, he goes
after what he wants when he wants it. This often leads to the road of the
glutton. Consume, consume, consume.
Quantity not quality. A literal walking Blockbuster. If living in this space
too long, it can lead to becoming an
addict, and no addiction is ever healthy.
Viewers also suffer from
cinematic
allergies, by avoiding films of certain subjects. When 9/11 movies started
coming in, several people debated whether it was too soon to release a film dramatizing it or not. Being a rape
victim may steer you away from a storyline of sexual assault. Viewers that are
seduced by nudity, clothing, product placement, or materialism live here.
Overstreet relates
this to food quite well. “If your friend has a peanut
allergy, don’t serve him a peanut butter sandwich. At the same time, don’t
protest the stores that sell peanut butter….The goal should be growth and
strength, not mere safety.” By watching movies in fear, you risk becoming
phobic. It’s easy to look at the
ungodliness in movies and be afraid it will corrupt us as Christians. But as
the Word states “Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained
themselves to know good from evil” (Hebrews 15:4) and “Everything is
permissible to me – but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible
for me – but I will not be mastered by anything.” (I Corinthians 6:12) Learning
how to listen to your conscience and develop your artistic discernment will
allow you view without fear, and move into the healthy stage of movie watching,
the
nutritionist. Like being able to
eat a balanced diet, it’s just as much a necessity to watch movies with a
balanced diet. In learning the difference between “Sofia Coppola’s sauces, the
exquisite wines of Eric Rohmer and the finer points of Martin Scoreses’s
pasta”, comes true enjoyment and true health. “If dining at the table of movies
becomes my primary focus, I am forgetting the purpose of the meal. It is served
to give me strength so that I can return to my life stronger, healthier, and
closer to being whole.”
The book continues on with this intensity of movies and the heart
of God that became such a spiritual experience for me. Overstreet recommends title after title, director after director, all the while spurring me on to my hidden dream of becoming a film critic one day! Perhaps one of my
favorite thoughts in this book is this “I have a strange compulsion to sit down
between Christian culture and secular culture, trying to help them understand
each other – and, ultimately, God – better through a shared experience of art.”
And in that moment I got it. It resonated in my soul in a way I could never
articulate and I am forever grateful to have found this book.
For more on Jeffrey Overstreet, see his blog: Looking Closer
