Reframing Theology and Film (Cultural Exegesis)

New Focus for an Emerging Discipline

Johnston, Robert K., Johnston, Robert K., Dyrness, William

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781441201720
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Christian Theology

The connection between theology and film is a hot topic in the academy and the church. But research and writing on methodology and hermeneutics is lacking. This comprehensive collection identifies the overlooked or undervalued areas in the current discussions of film and theology. Including contributions from the leaders in the field, Reframing Theology and Film helps deepen the conversation while bringing it to a new level of prominence. Professors and students of theology and film, libraries, pastors, and film buffs will benefit from this much-needed resource.

Section I
Moving beyond
a “Literary” Paradigm

1

Seeing and Believing
Film Theory as a Window into a Visual Faith

CRAIG DETWEILER

I asked several of my collaborators in this book to run through a mental Rolodex of scenes that stand out and stand up—on their own, as purely visual pleasures. This book began as a community project. Filmmakers and theologians, gathered around a love for God and a love for film, came together for two sessions of dialogue. We talked about our passions, shared our research, and tested our theories. When it came time to consider the visual power of film, I conducted an informal survey. “What cinematic images continue to haunt you, guide you, inspire you? What are the most beautiful moments you’ve seen in screen history?” Our most haunting images ranged from the angels circling the lovers’ heads in F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) to the “green section” of Zhang Yimou’s epic Chinese action film, Hero (2004).1 When I look through a list of the most popular films of all time (compiled by the fan-driven Internet Movie Database [IMDb]),2 particular visual images also leap to mind:

Grasping a snow globe in Citizen Kane.

The rain pounds, puddles form, swords fly in The Seven Samurai.

Riding a nuclear warhead in Dr. Strangelove.

Benjamin and Elaine in the back of the bus in The Graduate.

Coconuts as horse hooves in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The boulder rolling toward Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Band-Aid on the back of Marcellus’s neck in Pulp Fiction.

The lure of a gold ring in The Return of the King.

The eyes on the Pale Man’s hands in Pan’s Labyrinth.

Some of the more memorable images are built upon hours of anticipation. They pay off story points planted by adept filmmakers. The memory of an entire film may be reduced to a single frame or an evocative frozen image. We relish the eerie spectacle of the Titanic sinking. We admire Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid heading toward certain death, guns blazing. We may even want to ride with Thelma and Louise in their convertible, as they soar off the plateau. Some of the more memorable images haunt us. I’d like to forget the Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter, the eating of a live squid in Oldboy, and the victim literally kicked to the curb in American History X. Yet we play the most inspiring scenes over and over in our heads. I never want to forget Christian’s romantic serenade of Satine atop an elephant in Moulin Rouge or Bjork’s transcendent affirmation, “I’ve Seen It All,” amid her dire circumstances in Dancer in the Dark.

Why are certain scenes imprinted so concretely on our psyche? We remember every gesture and nuance. Recollection of the scene can cause us to laugh, cry, or wince at a moment’s notice, even years after first experiencing it. Many have connected the psychic power of film to the principles of Freud or his disciple, Jacques Lacan. In some critical circles, film studies and psychoanalysis are nearly synonymous. The key questions remain, What gives images such power? And is that power to be feared? We have all witnessed the adverse effects when demagogues figure out how to harness it. Perhaps that is why admonitions against “graven images” remain atop the Ten Commandments. The abuse of images has led to repeated controversies within religious communities. Images are distrusted because of their ability to distract, deceive, or overwhelm. Yet why has God given us eyes to see and not just ears to hear? Can we not redeem our eyesight, especially in an image-driven era?

This chapter has one goal: to unpack the power of moving images. I will draw from two disciplines, both of which have relied primarily upon words. I aspire to rescue film theory from a literary paradigm. Then I want to explore film theory’s potential to enhance the nascent discipline of theology and film. I recognize that such a tenuous arrangement could go bad. As in a love triangle in a gritty detective story, someone is bound to feel jilted. By the conclusion, somebody, maybe even everybody, could end up shot. Yet I take the risk of merging film theory with theology to free both disciplines from their bookish and elitist tendencies, which threaten to marginalize them. I admire Pauline Kael’s groundbreaking ability to find a little art in apparent cinematic trash and to point out the trash often lurking amidst acclaimed art.3 She echoes Jesus’s upside-down approach to storytelling. He found goodness amidst the masses and generated anger amongst the elites. So why can’t film theory reflect the populist roots of the medium it analyzes? A more visual approach to theology and film could help the emerging church forge a more integrated Christian practice, rooted in sight and sound, smells and bells, word and spirit.

A few things I don’t want to do. I do not want to unspool the history of film theory.4 I do not want to review the church’s first iconoclast controversy. I do not want to chronicle the Protestant church’s fear of images. Others have done each well.5 They draw upon far more expertise in each of those complicated subjects than I possess.6 When it comes to film theory, I recognize that I will be turning back the clock, concentrating on earlier theorists who are currently out of vogue. But just because the discipline has moved on doesn’t mean it has arrived. Likewise, in theology, despite my desire to move toward a visual faith, I must consider people of faith’s ongoing anxiety regarding images. We will never get to a mature understanding of “reel spirituality” without wading through the murky waters of church history. Yet I do not want to get bogged down in the muck of old skirmishes. Like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, I want to emerge on the far side of the prison of the past with my arms uplifted and my eyes open.

Theology’s Fear of Images

Postmodern pilgrims must navigate a world where style trumps substance and images overwhelm words. Protestants, rooted in the valuable tradition of sola scriptura, are being challenged by our image-driven era. Some may consider filmmaking an advanced form of idolatry. The more practical will purchase state-of-the-art sound systems and projectors for their sanctuaries. Iconoclastic attacks and uncritical embrace both have their blind spots. So how do we grasp the power of images without bowing down to the altar of IMAX?

My word-based faith may need to adopt a more sacramental approach to seeing and believing. Signs and symbols enhance Catholic and Orthodox worship. Candles, colors, and vestments (costumes) play important parts in Lutheran and Episcopalian liturgy. Sacramental churches are teaching sermon-centered Protestants how to worship with their eyes wide open.7 In the Orthodox Church, icons serve as “windows to heaven,” collapsing the time-space continuum, simultaneously dignifying the material world and transporting the icon viewer to a transcendent realm. Some may resist the postmodern recovery of a more visual faith. It calls up ancient controversies regarding icons. While most of the debate rages over prohibitions against graven images, much of the anxiety regarding images involves sexuality, how depictions of the body affect our body.

In his book On Seeing, pathologist F. Gonzalez-Crussi chronicles our ongoing fascination with the human form. Gonzalez-Crussi marvels at the ability of an image to provoke sexual arousal. He finds “that a distinguishing characteristic of human beings, one that identifies them as fundamentally different from animals, is (apart from the capacity to laugh, and to know that they must die) the ability to make love with ghosts.”8 While many claim to fear the reduction of God to an image, perhaps we actually dread the power of an image to alter our physiology. How can something as inanimate as a photograph or a movie star on a flat screen create such a stir?

The idol that today’s iconoclasts may need to smash is the fear of images. In A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis wrestles with his tendency to turn God into an idol. He writes, “Images of the Holy easily become holy images—sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. . . . The same thing happens in our private prayers. All reality is iconoclastic.”9 God can be counted on to smash whatever we’ve made too sacred. Perhaps our fear of images will come tumbling down amid our efforts to forge a postmodern faith.

We also must resist the temptation to drag each other down. In some of the most contentious eras in church history, the controversy centered on the place of imagery in worship. Yet we cannot overestimate the importance of an integrated theology of images for our electronic era. Maybe a healthy view of icons can deepen one’s faith and art. As enhanced definition sharpens our televisions, surely enhanced vision can expand my appreciation of film and my understanding of God. The rich visual storytelling of Catholic filmmakers like Hitchcock, Scorsese, and Coppola suggests that a profound visual aesthetic resides within our broad Christian tradition.10 The haunting films of Russian Orthodox filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky invite us to look through our material world.11 Calvin College graduate Paul Schrader makes movies stained by sin but ripe for redemption. Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians all follow a rabbi who challenged us to have “eyes to see and ears to hear.” In the beginning was the Word, but Jesus was also the image of the invisible God. I long to see clearly. I need to develop a theology of beauty that complements (and counterbalances) my understanding of sin. Simply because our eyes may cause us to sin does not mean we must cut them out of our experience of worship (or filmgoing).

Film Theory’s Blind Spots

Protestants have polished word-based religious expressions, but words have also ruled academia. The printing press fueled the rise of universities as so-called universal education exploded over the past five hundred years. Theology took root in the reading and writing of books. Film theory arose with the same educational assumptions and practices. Arguments are made and responded to in writing. Film scholar Noel Carroll recalls his entry into the Cinema Studies Department at New York University in 1970: “The NYU program was one of the first of its kind in the United States—an academic department of film history and theory, without a practical filmmaking wing.”12 While the PhD program was still being accredited, “one felt the pressure to demonstrate that film studies was a full-fledged academic discipline. . . . Consequently, if one were in the business of inventing a new discipline, one straight-forward strategy was to imitate a going concern like literary studies.”13 Perhaps film theory, focused upon moving images, can enhance a word-bound theology. But only when both fields have been released from a literary paradigm will they be free to truly communicate with an image-saturated society.

Any attempt to theologize via film theory is hedged with trapdoors. In Film as Religion, John C. Lyden challenges theologians to take film studies seriously. Yet he also acknowledges the antireligious sentiments that fuel the left-leaning field of cultural studies. Lyden warns that “the field of film studies may represent a Trojan horse out of which could pour an army of hostile soldiers who are just as happy to reduce religion to ideology as to view film in this way.”14 While I appreciate Lyden’s concerns, I doubt that film theory will sneak up on many readers. Their disdain for all hegemonies is quite palpable. When I dared to defend the institution of marriage to one of my University of Southern California film school professors, I was met with much more than verbal resistance. She picked up a chair and flung it across the room, barely missing my head! Her theory was turned into a violent practice.

I acknowledge the important contributions of feminist theory, queer theory, and Marxist theory. Too often I have digested films as products, never reading the fine print on the wrapper, listing the ingredients. I have been guilty of objectifying women and propping up power structures. I have chosen the blockbuster at the megaplex more often than the subtitles at the art house. We all recognize that films with higher aspirations often suffer at the box office. Yet academia remains too removed from the realities of filmmaking. Sometimes artistic decisions have more to do with overtime pay for the crew than an interest in shooting at sundown. As a moviemaker, I know that art and commerce must merge for sustained success in the marketplace. Consequently, this chapter seeks to dip into the deepest theoretical wells, withdrawing the most accessible ideas. It may end up being too superficial for serious scholars and too intellectual for the average moviegoer. Yet, a via media seems only appropriate, given the form of mass media we are studying. It is about communication and communion, rather than isolation and irrelevance.

Film studies began as an argument between formalists and realists. This dialectic provided a dynamic push/pull across cinema history. Yet, over tim...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on the Contributors
• Introduction: Reframing the Discussion
• Section 1: Moving beyond a “Literary” Paradigm
• Section 2: Broadening Our Film Selection
• Section 3: Extending Our Conversation Partners
• Section 4: Engaging the Experience of the Viewer
• Section 5: Reconsidering the Normative
• Section 6: Making Better Use of Our Theological Traditions
• Movies Cited