We’re bored, and we want to be entertained.  Except for a few months when a newborn enters the life of a family, we have spare time and would like to be entertained.  It’s reasonable, after the day’s work is done, to want to do something that is fun.  Some Christian sects, most notably the Puritans, substituted work for having any kind of entertainment.  Not surprisingly, word ‘puritanical’ is an insult.

A second reason is that, like the animals being trapped for their fur, bored humans can be trapped and harvested in their search for entertainment.  We need good entertainment.  The question is always where are we going to find it?

A confession: I don’t like movies.  I am, as of this writing, 68, so I’ve been to a few movies.  I grew up in the 50s, and I can say that I would not like to be growing up today.  By today’s standards, the movies were tame back then.  Today they would all be G-rated.  Moreover, miracle of miracles, pornography was practically non-existent.  Playboy had just been started.  The biggest star was Doris Day, and the film industry catered to families.   I liked movies back then, and movies were popular.

Movies aren’t popular anymore.  I don’t know any adults who regularly go to the movies, unless they are taking their children to one.  The story lines are boring or implausible.  Movies are actually a small, shrinking industry compared to the potential size of their audience.  Because they have so little appeal, movies have shrunk into niche markets.  The largest niche market is for young people, which is why Disney, a medium-sized studio when I was growing up, is now the largest.  Other niche markets are for comics (another small market when I was growing up) and science fiction (ditto).

At one time, there were over 250 movie releases by major studios in a year.  In 2017, there were 165 movies in wide release, grossing 10.65 billion.  Only 53 (less than 1/3, or a little over 1 per week) of them grossed over 50 million, and they accounted for 80% of the total gross (8.53 billion).  The highest ranked Christian film was The Shack at 57 million, ranked 47^th on the list.

How small is the movie industry?  Movies usually take in around 11 billion in US ticket sales.  By contrast, the NFL takes in 11 billion and college football another 6 billion.  Spectator sports (professional and college) are around 50 billion, total.  The cruise ship industry is around 22 billion.  Golf courses and country clubs are around 23 billion.  The music industry (the one that publishes and sells recorded music) is 6 billion.   Artists and performers, i.e. independent authors, actors, models, dancers, comedians, musicians, etc. are collectively a 38 billion dollar industry.  Ford Motor Company, on the other hand, takes in 140 billion annually.

I can tell you exactly when I decided to quit watching TV.  I was driving my car and listening to the radio.  There was a controversial TV show coming up, and a Christian minister was discussing it with a TV spokeswoman.  Finally, the TV spokeswoman told the minister, “Just turn your TV off”.  I took her excellent advice and dropped cable.  Once that happened, I gave up on sports, too, because most sports are shown on cable.  Since I did not happen to live near a professional sports team (of any sort) I switched to high school and college sports.

I don’t really miss pro sports, nor do I miss the commercials constantly telling me to buy, buy, buy.  In fact, once I turned off the TV, I had a much easier time balancing my budget.  You pay for those commercials eventually.

When I went to movies, it always seemed to me that there were harsh, unnecessary elements in the plot.  There was gutter language and/or violent, explicit sex.  The hero (or anti-hero) was never Christian; those roles were reserved for villains.  The hero seldom has good morals; he was always jumping into bed with women, none of whom were his wife.  We were supposed to think this was a good thing.  I would tense up when watching movies, wondering when a harsh element was going to occur.  I finally just gave up on them and started reading books of all kinds.  Libraries are a lot cheaper than cable (if you return your books on time).  A Christian bookstore can offer entertainment without having to wade through cultural junk.

What to do?  I believe that there is a big enough Christian audience to make a viable Christian film industry.  What we are lacking are stories and directors to tell them.

Consider this.  The biggest explicitly Christian-themed movies that have appeared in recent years are 3 movies based on C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.  Those 3 movies grossed 1.5 billion.  The Chronicles of Narnia, before it was a movie, was first a very successful series of 7 children’s fantasy novels (only 3 of the 7 have been made into movies).  The first movie in this series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, grossed 745 million.  The Shack (57 million) was not a blockbuster but it did very well considering the handicaps that still accompany a Christian release.  There is a market out there.

If you think, as I do, that we need more than Biblical stories (like Passion of the Christ), then we are left with the problem of how to get someone to make good Christian movies.  I believe that successful movies are made from good stories, most of which start as successful novels.  The problem seems to be here.  Our culture (see Myth: the Flat Earth) is so poisoned that writers have a difficult time finding untainted material.  Materials taught in universities are so poisonous that they hamper efforts to produce a different, superior culture.

We cannot rely on Hollywood.  I truly believe that most of their screenwriters can’t come up with a good story anyway.  Plus, it would violate their ethics to show Christians in a good light.  It wasn’t necessarily better in the old days.  Consider Pollyanna, a 1960 flick from Walt Disney Studios when Walt Disney was alive.  It has no harsh elements, but the church scenes are ridiculous.  I believe that is because neither Disney nor the film’s director/writer David Swift had ever set foot in a church, any church (Disney was an atheist).

What should a Christian movie look like?  Is it enough to just strip out the harsh elements in conventional movies?  I think more needs to be done, since even without the harsh elements, most movies are junk from the starting gate.  We need fresh stories and new directors.

We know what a movie shouldn’t look like.  You can find proof that Hollywood has forgotten how to make a good movie just by going to a movie theater and watching one.  One need is to have more Christian directors behind the camera.  Another missing ingredient is good writing.  We need to bring along good young Christian writers.  More Christian fiction is being written.  I hope it reaches a critical mass where there are enough good stories from which to make movies.

Questions for comments

What kinds of stories do you think would make a good Christian movie?

What kinds of Christian entertainment would you like to see?

How do you define Christian entertainment?

copyright 2018 Richard D. Patton all rights reserved

Inside the Atheist Mind is a new book by Anthony DeStefano. It was published on March 20, 2018 by Nelson Books.

The book takes us inside workings of the atheist mind, showing us how they think. I agree with most of what Mr. DeStefano has to say. It is past time that someone pointed out that some atheists are bullies, that they seem fascinated by a culture of death and that they exhibit no tolerance toward Christians.

The tone of the book is as a rant. DeStefano is an angry man, and he lets loose on his foes. He lets atheists know in the first pages that he will not be nice, and he isn’t. Rants are not for altering anyone’s mind; rather they are for confirming the ideas of believers. If you are not sure what militant atheists are up to, and want a run down, this book is for you. It won’t change your mind, but it will confirm your beliefs.

If you are sitting on the fence, this might help. Just remember that it is a rant and therefore angry. If you don’t like rants, stay away.

It is a rather short book. The main body of the book appears to be about 30,000 words, which is half the length of a novel. There are another 50 pages, about 8,000 words, of notes and references, so you can look up the material he is discussing. The total, about 40,000 words, is on the short side. Considering the number of topics that the author introduces, I would have liked a longer book with a more measured pace.

My second problem with the book is that DeStefano speaks of a ‘Renaissance’ as though there actually was a renaissance that brought us out of the ‘Dark Ages’. Most of the book’s quotes start around 1400 AD, so there is very little on early and Medieval Christianity. The ‘Renaissance’ is humanist fiction. It never happened because there was never a Dark Age. By repeating that humanist myth, he forfeits ground needlessly to the atheists. Before he writes about history he should remember that atheists have written history to suit their purposes. One should not accept anything they say. The Dark Ages is the Big Lie about Christianity. DeStefano does us no service by repeating it.

DeStefano also lumps Christians with believers in Islam, Deists and others. Yes, all of them believe in a God, but as a Christian, I don’t necessarily want to be lumped into one big group of ‘believers’.

My final quibble with the book is that there is a mismatch between the dire outcomes and the pitiful input. To speak of the ‘mind’ of Bill Maher is to pay him a giant compliment. I have never thought that Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins had anything new or useful to say. DeStefano elevates these mediocrities to a higher plane than they deserve. Consider Bill Maher. He describes himself as a ‘leading atheist’, which should make everyone feel some pity for the trailing atheists. My suspicion is the Maher is a ‘leading’ atheist in precisely the same way that a figurehead ‘leads’ a ship. The atheist ship has plentiful amounts of fuel (i.e. money). The people supplying the money want something in return. I’d like to know what that is.

However, mostly DeStefano hits the target. The new atheists are bullies and cowards. They constantly pretend to be better than anyone else. DeStefano is right that the atheists want an ‘anything goes’ society in which they have the freedom to oppress others. They think they are above the law. In a godless society, there is, to use a phrase from Al Gore, ‘no controlling authority’. Powerful atheists chafe under the constraints of civil society; they want to break free from what binds them to the rest of humanity. The atheist does not care what unimaginable horrors await a lawless society, because he is rich enough to avoid the consequences. They’ve been around a long time. Hopefully DeStefano’s book will help them shuffle off the stage into the obscurity they deserve.