Friday, January 06, 2006

Christ in a Free Speech Society

Every few months or years, we hear about one program or another that's run afoul of the self-appointed Guardians of Christian Decency. Another news program runs with a story of how us nice Christians are pouring a nice warm glass of vitriol down the backs of yet another liberal/secular/atheist filmmaker. Another station cuts off an unwanted show unseen. Another movie gets picketed because it's content is offensive, sacreligious, or whatever else.

And what do we gain? A reputation as being stiflers of culture, backwards mouth-breathers whose anti-elitist sentiments drive us to tear down other in our intolerance. Worse yet, there's another unintentional effect. strong, or even casual religious expression in movies becomes radioactive, as both sides threaten filmmakers with boycotts and picketting for daring to put something more than lukewarm spirituality on.

In a way, we Christians are somewhat responsible for the lack of Christian content and religious values on the air. We simply make it not worth the trouble for people to get their hands dirty with it. Yet one movie after another successfully plays on themes present in religious material, and evokes spiritual sensibilities during their run times. What's going on? There's obviously a market for transcendance, for religious experience in the cinema and on television.

The thing is, though, we're not providing nearly enough of it. Typically, we're either getting ham-handed with it, making hysterically bad or mundane films. The real values of Christianity are not being presented in the dramatic fashion that values of character and philosophy are on a regular basis. Secular values, being more universal, and unradioactive enough to be regularly pondered upon, are presented with both greater grace and greater saturation. Artists and thinkers are encouraged among the more secular to think for themselves, to take exciting new directions. These are the things any culture should do, if they wish for it to remain alive in people's hearts and minds.

The solution of some folks is to surpress the offensive, but that not only carries with it the negative connotations, that encourages groupthink and stagnation, as people rest on their assumptions. For values-based thought to come back to the fore, it has to be more than a spirit of weak, didactic, message-sending. It has to be a full fledged dive into the problems and concerns from which our cultural responses emerge.

But to do that, we have to give people the freedom to mess up, and to say things we don't want them to say. We have to give the broadcasters and moviemakers the freedom from controversy that would encourage them to treat your average piece of cinematic religion as no big deal.

There are some who would worry that such an approach would encourage antagonistic messages. It could indeed, but that's the price of carrying messages that are antagonistic to other folk's beliefs. This has always been a matter of competition between different ideas, different views, and not usually in the neat sort of camp vs. camp fashion. The charisma of the different works is what carries them forward. Because of the vibrant cultural melieu that constitutes secular society in America, they are more free to experiment, to dare, to be visionaries. They can present movies to people that have power, narrative drive, which ask questions, and reveal new corners of humanity. Some may look at that and resent it, claiming that it represents an ominous temptation to the unwary. Whatever it is, though, we would be well advised to confront it with something else than just scorn. We need to confront it with a new culture of ideas and charismatic artistry of our own.

Otherwise, we have no excuse to talk about the direction our culture is taking, since we won't be doing enough to truly take it in another direction.