In my many readings, a few years ago I picked up a couple of books on fur trapping. One of the books I read had some advice that stuck with me. When trying to decide where to set a trap, don’t worry about setting it near the animal’s food supply. Instead, set it near something that is different in the area. You’ll trap more animals because they spend more time being bored than hungry.
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 47th 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
