Hollywood is slowly, slowly catching on that in a country where >80% describe themselves as Christian, there are myriad throngs of people out there who don't go to the movies because they don't want to spend their money on immoral garbage that promotes values they hate.
Except for the really diehard ones for whom even the almighty dollar cannot dissuade them from the duty they feel to use their movies to preach the baspel of "progressive" irreligion to the ignorant rabble, movie people are starting to wonder how they can make faith-based films so that more normal people will find them more agreeable .
This is good, but I see a cultural problem that promises to keep this good impulse from reaching its full potential. The issue that many movie types are not believers and therefore more prone to spiritual tone-deafness aside, many religious people think inside the box that conditions them that in order to be a Christian film or to appeal to Christians a film has to be about Christianity explicitly. With this mindset there will be this bifurcation of the movie world into "Christian films," such as The Passion, and "normal" or "neutral" films (or "everything else"), which would all be like "Million Dollar Baby" or "Brokeback Mountain." In other words, the "normal" movies will stay the same or get worse, but they will additionally do some Bible-story movies and the like.
That would be good, but much better would be that this impulse would be channeled into making normal movies about life where the people in the movie act like it's normal to go to church on Sunday and not normal to sleep with your girlfriend before you're married; normal movies about the usual stuff that are informed by Christian values, and also some Bible story movies if they like.
Comments