After checking out the story about the Oscar-nominated scores that I wrote about in my last post, stumbled onto another NPR story about movies. This one is about Christian movies. So I read the story, and I watched the two clips they had, one from Fireproof and another from The Widow’s Might. Each was only a couple minutes long, but it was hard to sit through them. They were pretty bad.
An easy criticism of the clip from Fireproof would be that it’s just insufferably heavy-handed with the preachy parts. But that doesn’t really explain why it seemed so utterly terrible. Lots of movies are heavy-handed, and lots of them don’t work. But some of them do. I thought Milk was heavy-handed, but it worked because the characters portrayed in the film were compelling people. They seemed real and messy. More than that, however, they shared a struggle that almost everyone can understand: wanting to be recognized and accepted as participants in society despite our differences.
The struggle in Fireproof, at least the one apparent in the clip at NPR’s website, looks shallow and tinny to me. How do you deal with a spouse who doesn’t appreciate you? Sure, that’s normal, I guess. But how did that character end up marrying somebody who didn’t appreciate him? And why is he such a loser that he thinks washing the car, changing the oil, doing the dishes, and cleaning the house should win him so many points? Why isn’t he already doing those things? When you marry somebody, you’re a partner in the household, not a tenant. I guess that’s a normal problem, too—we see it everywhere. But Christians seem especially poor at vetting their potential spouses and understanding what their relationships should include. That’s probably why they’re constantly having to watch movies like this, go to marriage retreats, buy books on how to be a decent person, and so on. They’re so worked up by guilt and social pressure and sexual repression, and they’re so intent on cultivating a relationship with a deity, so much so that they tend to be absolutely piss-poor at regular old human-to-human relationships—which, by the way, for fans of Pascal’s Wager, are completely, provably unavoidable—I have a hard time buying into the struggle that results when, after a few years of marriage, they suddenly wake up and realize the pickle they’re in.
I watch that clip and I want to grab Kirk Cameron’s character by the lapels (if he had any) and yell, “You idiot! You got yourself into this mess with your infantile outlook! I have absolutely no sympathy for you, and I hope your wife leaves you and finds a better man!” (And not just because I’m a family law attorney.) When a movie makes me feel that way, when it thoroughly undercuts any sense of identification with its characters, I have no interest in watching it. That so many Christians are so hyped up about Fireproof is just a signal of how screwed up they are.
It’s easier to criticize The Widow’s Might. That one just looks and sounds amateurish. It’s adequate but not engaging. It looks about as good as a high school musical with an outdoor set. Even so, one of the people quoted in the NPR story called it “awesome.” Sure, maybe, if you’ve never seen a really great movie.
Christians have every right to be offended by whatever they see in movies or other forms of popular culture. And they have every right to make their own movies. But when the rest of us look at their output and its popularity within their subculture, we have every right to be concerned about the mental and social health of people who think this is great art, or even great entertainment.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Only Kirk Cameron could insert himself into a Christ role with such unintentional irony.
Whatadouche.
I agree that Fireproof was not that good of a movie, and most of the fans of the movie probably understand that as well. (I’m not a fan, nor did I think it was a good movie.)
I believe the reason it was so well received by many Christians is that it is one of the few movies in theaters in recent years where the Christian characters are portrayed in a way that at least resembles the “average” Christian that is encountered on a day-to-day basis by most of the viewers who liked it. I’m thinking especially of the father and the co-worker.
Generally in the main stream movies Christians are portrayed as extreme and dangerous fanatics. They’re usually the mother of a serial killer (whose distorted Christianity is part of what made the killer the way he his) or some similar character. At best they are shown as strange caricatures of Christians, something like Ned Flanders on the Simpsons, that don’t really reflect what the majority of real Christians are like.
I’m fairly sure the reason a movie with such poor acting was so well received was because it was obvious that the script at least attempted to show Christians that looked like the majority of believers in America.
You say that “Christians are portrayed as extreme and dangerous fanatics” in mainstream movies, and that Fireproof presents them as they really are. But, from what I can tell, Fireproof only portrays them as extreme and dangerous fanatics who happen also to be repressed in their fanaticism.
Christians who cannot manage their ordinary, everyday human relationships, either because they are totally focused on their relationship with an invisible and imaginary being, or because they believe they are absolved of their social failures and justified in their selfishness, are just as extreme and dangerous as anybody else. They cannot function in human society and they make unnecessary problems for everyone else. Instead of focusing on what is practical and what works, they run everything through an ideological lens that distorts both the outcomes they seek and the means they use to seek them.
And, by the way, while I am sure that most Christians would heartily deny my statement that “they believe they are absolved of their social failures and justified in their selfishness,” and protest that they may be forgiven but they are not relieved of their obligation to improve their conduct, I have no sympathy for that argument. They may, in theoretical or theological terms, still have an obligation to improve their conduct, but the fact that they have (1) removed ultimate consequences from “this life” and placed them in some other, and (2) created for themselves a way to salve their guilty consciences with forgiveness, sets up a system where they have little incentive to change their ways. Some of them change their ways nevertheless, but the maintenance of a system that essentially removes the natural sense of reality, human society, and immediate consequences for conduct is unconscionable. It is fundamentally destructive of human society. That they do this in “peaceful” and gradualist ways makes the aggregate and ultimate effects no less terrible than those of “terrorists,” who opt for more violent and cataclysmic methods.
The characters who “cannot manage their ordinary, everyday human relationships” were the man and his wife who were not Christian. The black friend and the father seemed to be doing OK in that department.
As to improving their conduct:
(1) Christians haven’t removed consequences from “this life,” they’re claiming consequences exist that are in addition to those in the materialistic world.
(2) In my experience, there is almost always a positive change when people become Christians. For example, my father did so a number of years ago and there has been a drastic change for the better in the way he interacts with individuals and society.
I’m sure you must have counter examples or you wouldn’t have formed the opinion you have. I would be interested in hearing an example of someone professing to be a Christian but claiming they don’t need to change their behavior because there are no consequences “now.”
I take it you skipped over the last paragraph of my previous comment.
Wait, Kirk Cameron caricatures an atheist before assuming a Christ-like role in his failing marriage with a wife who doesn’t bow down before him for doing everyday tasks?
Ha ha ha ha ah ahahhahahahahhaahhhahahah!!
I can’t breathe!
Tell me, did Ray Comfort show up anywhere in the film to talk about bananas?
Maybe he explains that, based on the unique shape of the banana, and its bright, sunny color, it was clearly intelligently designed to fit where the sun don’t shine—you know, as an object lesson, since “sun” is a homophone of “son.”