The Battle in the Movie Theaters
I haven’t forgotten my promise to write about the “revolution in cinema,” by which I mean the Christian revolution: the fact that Hollywood is now realizing the actual numbers of its Christian audience and is now trying to respond. Above all, I mean the recent explosion in Christian-themed fantasy epics on the big screen, including The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. Very much a reason to celebrate, though most of the films weren’t actually made by Christians. But this may soon change. This is one of the reasons Act One (of which I am a proud graduate) trains Christians for the movies is so that WE can get our own stories up on the big screen.
Not only this, but the cultural war between believers and atheists is going to heat up with this December’s release of The Golden Compass, the first of the three projected films based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman makes no secret of his hatred for Christian fantasy as written by Lewis and others, and his trilogy is directed toward the need to fight the “oppressivness” of religious belief. Meantime, more Chronicles of Narnia are coming to the screen, not to mention the final two Harry Potter films. The next couple of years are going to be interesting ones at the box office!
But there are some Christians who don’t realize what weapons we need in this war and why. They retreat into their Bibles while continuing to condemn most Christian fantasy literature for paganism, witchcraft, magic, and not having a scriptural quote in every line so people will know that the books are Christian. J. K. Rowling’s insistence that she is a Christian and even that she is writing about her own struggle with faith mean nothing to them. Or else they will make comparisons — Tolkien good, Rowling bad — based on nothing more than the fact that Tolkien has had a Christian label for years, and no one knows that much about Rowling’s beliefs — at least they didn’t when she first started writing.
Here is a wonderful post by an author who points out that one of the most basic problems some Christians have in reading fantasy literature is their lack of knowledge of ancient and medieval Christian symbolism and literature. Rowling, like other Christian fantasy writers, is working from a very rich tradition, which many of the evangelical side — and sadly, many Catholics as well — are ignorant of. They don’t even begin to know how to recognize the allusions in the books. And they simply refuse to open themselves up to knowledge.
This is only a taste of what I want to write. Now that I’ve completed the book, I should have time to explore the subject of the revolution in cinema at greater length — hopefully soon.