The Christian War on Hollywood

I read with interest a column on CNN by Roland S. Martin. Martin is a A nationally syndicated columnist and author of “Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith” and “Speak, Brother! A Black Man’s View of America.” Visit his Web site for more information.

I seldom find myself in agreement with Martin, unless its with things like his views on the nuttiness of the Obama “birthers”. This is no surprise since he focuses primarily on things related to his Christian faith, which he seems more interested in propagating than practicing (or maybe they are one in the same). As a polytheist, I find the attitude off-putting. Anything and everything in our lives does not have to touch on your Jesus, Roland. Seriously.

Today, it’s Hollywood he takes to task. It seems there is not enough Jesus in Hollywood. Well, Roland, I want to be entertained, not preached at. I want realistic movies I can relate to, not movies that focus on Evangelical Christians. I’m sure you’re all insecure enough that if you don’t see Jesus on your box of Wheaties you feel persecuted or martyred or somehow slighted, but your insecurities don’t drive us. In fact, they turn us off.

Today Roland expends his energies on Tyler Perry. Why is Tyler Perry so great? “[T[he true success of Perry boils down to two five-letter words: M-O-N-E-Y and J-E-S-U-S.”

This is Martin’s take, which I find amusing:

For years Hollywood has treated people of faith more like lepers, refusing to acknowledge that Christians and others who identify themselves as religious actually go to movies. We’ve always seen the blockbusters filled with elaborate highway car crashes, flicks with a young starlet walking around for nearly two hours in tight fitting clothes, and movie after movie with enough cussin’ to make Redd Foxx and Moms Mabley scream, “Enough!”

You have to wonder if Roland has actually seen any movies or has just based his critique on hearsay. This is nothing more than the tried and true Christian accusation that "Hollywood blasphemers are out to get Christians" - an article of faith (if you'll pardon the pun) among conservative Christians.[1] You will have to go a long way to find any acknowledgment that Hollywood has ever portrayed a single aspect of Christianity in a positive light.

First of all, Roland, it is anything NOT Christian that Hollywood has for decades treated like lepers. When was the last time you saw a television show about a character who was not a Jew or a Christian? I don’t recall seeing many Pagans. The same goes with film. No non-Christian characters there. People in movies are at least nominally Christian, or assumed to be Christian. There is very little outward sign of the religious “other”. People say “God!” or “Jesus!” when they exclaim. They do not say “Thor!” or “Great Zeus!” The tacit acknowledgment of an underlying Abrahamic religiosity is stifling to those of us who do not partake.

Simply put, damn near every movie Hollywood has ever made has been full of Christians. Having people in a film who are not Christian, or who are bad Christians, or who don’t like Christians, does not make a film anti-Christian; it does not give the film an anti-Christian message.

Roland dissembles. But then that is what Christianity as a whole has done for twenty centuries, crying persecution even as it ruthlessly exterminated every alternative to itself. Always the martyr. Always the victim. Never enough attention. Listen to Roland whine now (and threaten):

Their mantra is always, “Show me the money!” Every movie with Christ at the center won’t be as big as Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” ($370 million U.S.; $611 million worldwide), but Perry’s movies continue to bring in the people and the bucks, and Hollywood had better pay attention.

What’s interesting to me is that Roland (and others like him – see my footnotes for a small sampling) can be so utterly blind to the fact that people other than Christians actually exist on this planet side by side with him. But this is a major failing of conservative Christians, an utter blindness to anything outside their parochial concerns.

What the critics hate about Tyler Perry’s films is what I appreciate: A willingness to tell stories about love, redemption, family and God and do so in an entertaining way. He is an unapologetic Christian.

And why, Roland, do we need our movies (and clearly, Roland wants many more movies like this, perhaps all of them) to be about “love, redemption, family and God” in an obviously Christian context? It’s as if there is no love in movies now. There is, but it’s not Roland’s kind of love, so apparently it isn’t love at all (but we all know that morality doesn’t exist without Christianity, don’t we?). Or redemption. I see movies about redemption all the time. What movies are you watching, Roland? Or is it not redemption if Jesus isn’t part of the process? Is that it? And God? Do we really need Roland’s god in all our movies?

Roland heralds Tyler Perry as an “unapologetic Christian.” In other words, he doesn’t do what Jesus said to do and just practice his faith quietly and privately. No, in a very post-Jesus Christian sense, he gets in your face about it. He preaches. He proselytizes. Roland seems to miss the point that you can have a movie with a character who IS a Christian without the moving becoming ABOUT Christianity.

When we look at the destruction going on all around us – people committing suicide because of financial strains, mounting job losses, folks screaming and yelling at health care town hall meetings – it’s gratifying to watch a movie that speaks to the goodness in people, no matter how messed up they are.

Because, of course, nobody who is not a Christian, who does not subscribe to Christian ideas of love, redemption, family and “God” can speak to the goodness in people.

You could not be more narrow-minded if you tried, Roland.

Some say a romantic comedy; horror flick or thriller is a way to escape life. But hope and inspiration should also be available at the movie theater.

And it is, Roland. You’re just missing it because you cannot see it without Jesus being part of it. You can’t see the forest for the trees.

And of course, poor Tyler Perry is a martyr for his faith:

At one time he had a development deal with ABC but when executives objected to the constant references to God, he walked away, saying he wouldn’t compromise his principles for a TV show. (He now has two hit TV shows on TBS, “House of Payne” and “Meet the Browns.” Both mention God, Jesus and the Bible all the time).
“These stars can make all the references in the world to Kabbalah or Scientology, and that’s just fine,” he told USA Today last year, “But mention Jesus Christ, and they (studios) don’t want to deal with you.”[2]

That’s nice, Roland. But perhaps ABC understands that focusing on conservative Christian piety is off-putting for the rest of us. Again, you forget that Christians are not 99.99% of America’s population, and that many Christians are liberal (and secure enough) not to need mention of Jesus or God and the Bible in every other sentence, and in every context. You act like you’re being persecuted, you take on the role of martyrs, but neither is true. Simply because something is not about you does not make it against you. But of course, you can’t admit to that because it goes against doctrine.

Here are some unpalatable facts for Roland and his friends. According to the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) releated in March of this year, 15% of Americans have no religion at all. That’s up from 8% in 1990. USA Today reports of the study that “Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%.” The study also notes, significantly from my perspective, that “Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, pagan or “Spiritualist,” which the survey does not define.” Newsweek reported in an article titled “The End of Christian America” (April 2009) that “The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades.” In other words, rather than making up 86% of the population, Christians now amount to only 76% of America’s population. And it’s safe to say the percentage who share Roland’s type of conservative Christianity amount to far fewer than that. Roland, though he may not wish to admit it, does not speak for all Christians. After all, it is mostly Christians who are going to all those films Roland denounces. They must not be terribly offended.

Hollywood has long made fun of religious people, portraying pastors as crazy or deranged. Yet a new generation of filmmakers, with the Internet and so many ways to reach their fan base, isn’t as willing to compromise their principles in order to get a movie deal.

Nasty old Hollywood. It’s not as if Hollywood has never portrayed polytheists, atheists and others as crazy or deranged. And Roland forgets films like Ben Hur and Spartacus, hailing Christian love and joy and a mythical egalitarianism while portraying polytheists as evil atheists, or worse. He forgets films like Master and Commander which portrays a ship full of British sailors who are Christian to a man, who live and act like Christians of the period, even *gasp* reading from the Bible when the dead are buried. I suppose since it’s not “Jesus this” and “Jesus that” the film must by its very nature be a negative portrayal of Christianity. They don’t mention Jesus in every breath, so it can’t possibly be the kind of film Roland is looking for. Roland doesn’t want realism. He doesn’t want historically accurate films. He wants films that are not about real life but about Christianity.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.” Maybe we just need to keep praying for Hollywood so they’ll wake up and realize there is a huge field that can be cultivated, if only they work it.

It’s a shrinking field, Roland. More and more our religious landscape is becoming diverse. It is not solidifying, as you seem to think, into a monolithic mass of Christian believers. There are Buddhists out there, and Hindus, and Muslims, and polytheists like me, not to mention the atheists and the agnostics. There are people of hundreds of different religions that do not include your Jesus. Why you imagine we want more films about your religion, that basically amount to pious propaganda, I cannot imagine, especially since there are fewer and fewer of you.

You need to open your eyes to the wider fabric of our world and our culture. Sure, the films you want will appeal to the Republican base. But the Republican base is not a microcosm of America’s religiosity. It’s an abnormality, a reactionary anomaly of backwards looking theology more in tune with the 13th than with the 21st century.

Far be it Hollywood make a realistic movie with mainstream Christian characters who accept multiple paths to “salvation” and ideas of reincarnation and karma and acceptance of forms of belief different than their own. This is a truer slice of America’s religious landscape. And, I, for one, think Hollywood has it right. I don’t have to like every film put out, but at least they’re not being manufactured by the American Family Association, which is apparently the kind of film our friend Roland wants. In the end, it’s not Hollywood that is blind to America; it is Roland and Christians like him.

Notes:

[1] See Time Magazine, Hollywood vs. Jesus March 1, 2007 for a review of the furor over James Cameron’s documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595242,00.html. See more of this cry of persecution on Newsmax.com, The Media and Hollywood War Against Christianity October 2, 2003 http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/10/2/102405.shtml and FrontPageMagazine.com Why Hollywood Hates Christianity May 31, 2004 http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12835

[2] Actually, you can’t. You can get sued if you mention Scientology. And I don’t know a lot of shows that are about the Kabbalah.