*This article first appeared in the Dec. 11, 2005, issue of Today's Pentecostal Evangel.Are filmmakers paying attention to Christian audiences?
by Jocelyn Green
After the landslide box office successes of The Passion of the Christ and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe about to be released on Dec. 9, Christians and non-Christians alike have their eyes on Hollywood. Complaints to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding entertainment decency and morality have mushroomed from just 111 in 2000 to more than 1 million in 2004. But do movies such as these indicate a new trend in Hollywood toward films that appeal to Christian audiences?
According to experts, the answer is yes. And no.
In the “yes” corner is Barbara Nicolosi, executive director of Act One, which runs a three-month program that places Christians in entertainment internships and hosts lectures by industry professionals. She is also one of the editors of Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, And Culture, published in September 2005. “Yes, definitely, Hollywood is trying to make more movies to bring in what they call ‘passion dollars.’ But they’re doing it through gritted teeth because there is so much ideological prejudice in above the line people [executives], that to create entertainment to the Christian audience absolutely galls them.”
The problem is that Hollywood has trouble hitting the target because many of them don’t understand Christianity. “Christianity is a political moniker in Hollywood,” Nicolosi says. “To them, it means you voted for Bush, you are obsessed with fetuses and you hate gays. They’re living outside our framework. In Hollywood, Christianity isn’t even a subculture.”
Gallup polls reveal that more than 90 percent of Americans believe in God, and that as many as 40 percent attend worship services regularly; in Hollywood, however, the numbers are much different. Forty-five percent of those working in Hollywood have no religious affiliation at all, compared to just 4 percent of Americans nationally.
“Hollywood wants to market to every market group,” says Ted Baehr, founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE and chairman of The Christian Film & Television Commission/Good News Communications. “They produce Spanish language films like Selena, African American films like Barber Shop, some for other groups which we don’t like as Christians, some of which we love. Sometimes they get it right (Passion and Luther) and sometimes they don’t.”
David Stidham founded his Conservative Films & Entertainment studio with a determination to “get it right” every time. “Our goal is to make movies that honor God,” says Stidham. “There is a desire now in Hollywood to make movies with a spiritual bent. But there are many spirits in Hollywood, you better be careful which spirit you watch.” Stidham also designed the Conservative Ratings System “to better inform audiences seeking to find traditional morals upheld in entertainment.” (For more on the system, visit http://www.conservativeratings.com/.)
“People of faith have a tendency to put up red flags on movies that are rated R or PG-13 and give a pass on movies that are rated G & PG,” says Stidham. “There are many things we should watch out for besides violence and sex, such as the spiritual messages in many G & PG movies today: new age, humanism, moral relativism and much worse, things of the occult. I question the source of the spirituality in any movie that encourages the viewer to embrace morality which contradicts the Word of God.”
Still, Baehr says, films with a spiritual or religious bent are nothing new. In his book, So You Want to Be in Pictures?, he provides a partial list of movies featuring Jesus, let alone Christian themes, dating from 1897. Some of the titles include: Ben Hur (1926 and again in 1959); Quo Vadis (1951); The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); Jesus Christ, Superstar (1973); The Jesus Film (1979); Matthew (1996); and The Gospel of John (2003).
Dr. Bill Romanowski, professor at Calvin College and author of Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture, points out that the Church (some denominations more than others) has a track record of taking issue with Hollywood. “People are often unaware that the long history of church and the cinema has been contentious with conflicts over matters of artistic quality and morality, free expression and market demands,” he says. “There is a wide range of Christian responses to the cinema, from abstinence to uncritical consumption.”
A 2005 MarketCast study of 1000 adults ages 17-54 shows remarkable similarity between the religious and the non-religious when it comes to movie-going. While religious people go to the movies just as much as non-religious people, MarketCast reported that they view R-rated movies less than the non-religious- but they still go.
“Christians are perceived as either not part of the movie-going public or simply turning out for what everyone else does and not necessarily thinking about films in terms of a faith perspective,” Romanowski continues. “In that sense, it's understandable that Hollywood filmmakers, wanting to maximize the audience for a film, might make a general release that could include Christian audiences, rather than a film targeted at a specific Christian group with the hope of reaching a wider market.”
In years gone by, the Church worked directly with the entertainment industry. From 1933 to 1966, every movie script was read by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Protestant Film Office. They evaluated a movie’s morality, and if it passed, the movie received the Motion Picture Code Seal and was distributed. If it didn’t pass, it wasn’t released in theaters. But in 1966, the churches forfeited that role.
“Sam Engel, the president of 20th Century Fox in the 1960s, once said, ‘If you take the salt form the meat, the meat is going to rot.’ What happened is not that Hollywood abandoned the church, the church abandoned Hollywood,” says Baehr.
“The Church has been told to boycott, fear and detest Hollywood,” says long-time movie reviewer Holly McClure. “The Biola Media Task Force, of which I have been a part for ten years, is trying to get Christians involved in Hollywood. Movies won’t be written better unless we write them; there won’t be better directing if we don’t direct.”
Nicolosi agrees. “Hollywood is not Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s Nineveh—it can still change,” she says. “We can’t afford to let this town go because it is speaking to the planet.”
SIDEBAR:
It’s no secret that the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is being heavily marketed to church-goers. The film, produced by Walden Media and Disney, is Walden’s most expensive gamble to date, costing $150 million to produce.
While Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson said on record that he stripped any Christian themes from his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classics, Walden Media President (and Christian) Michael Flaherty says he’s taking a different approach.
“We didn’t separate out any elements or any themes,” Flaherty says. “The best way to make a faithful adaptation is not to pick and choose scenes. C.S. Lewis wrote a masterpiece enjoyed by millions of people—our goal is to be faithful in our presentation of that masterpiece.”
Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, is a co-producer on the film and was responsible for ensuring that the story and values were retained.
Even so, many Christians remain wary, suspecting that the lines of dialogue clearly symbolizing Christ’s atonement will be left on the cutting room floor.
