Movies

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Hulu and the press give Schlafly top billing in new series. Her Catholic faith? Say what?

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Something else was mobilizing many people in the news media last week other than the COVID-19 virus. It was none other than Hulu’s premiere of “Mrs. America,” a tell-all on conservative icon the late Phyllis Schlafly.

There was no way that Hulu — famed for its dystopian series “The Handmaid’s Tale” about what might happen if biblical literalists took over America — was going to give Schlafly a fair shake. After all, Serena Joy, the sadistic Christian wife figure in “Handmaid” who preaches that women’s place is only in the home, is modeled after Schlafly, according to Margaret Atwood, author of the book on which the movie is based.

Indeed, Serena Joy, has been called “Phyllis Schlafly on steroids.” However, I wanted to see how “Mrs. Amerca” portrayed Schlafly, a larger-than-life personality whose strength lay in her Catholic faith — something nearly ignored, at least thus far, in the series. Maybe she is supposed to be a white evangelical?

Only the first three episodes have been aired (successive ones will be released on Wednesdays) and I’ve watched them all. The show’s creators missed the religious angle by a mile. There’s only a very slight allusion to Schlafly’s faith, other than a grace said before meals. Most Catholic homes in that era — and some even now — would have had some devotional paintings on the walls at least.

There were a bunch of reviews about the show, some of which revealed a major journalistic failing in that the main writer, Dahvi Waller, admits she didn’t bother contacting Schlafly’s family to check for accuracy. She explains to Vanity Fair that she didn’t want the family’s views to prejudice her own. Translation: She didn’t want to be bothered by the facts.

I found Waller argument beyond incredible. Would she have attempted a biopic of Michelle Obama without consulting the Obama family?


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An Easter think piece: What happens when movie-makers talk to scribes who 'get' religion?

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When I first met Dwight Longenecker in 1999 I already thought his life story was unique.

The setting was an international journalism conference in Chichester, England. Longenecker was working in journalism at the time, after studying theology at Oxford University. He had already been ordained as an Anglican priest, but then saw the writing on the ancient church walls and swam the Tiber to Roman Catholicism.

But here’s the biographical detail that grabbed me. I was fascinated that, after growing up evangelical in Pennsylvania, he had done his undergraduate work at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. — America’s famous campus that proudly embraces the loaded term “fundamentalist.”

From BJU to England and on to Rome! What a journey, I thought. And people said my pilgrimage from Southern Baptist preacher’s kid to Eastern Orthodoxy was unusual.

But there was one more remarkable shoe to drop in the Longenecker story. In 2006 he returned to America with his wife and four children and — taking the Pastoral Provision door opened by Pope John Paul II (now a saint) — Longenecker was ordained as a Catholic priest.

So where is he now? He is the pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in — wait for it — Greenville, S.C., a few miles from his old BJU stomping grounds. So the Catholic priest who is “in charge” of Bob Jones territory (long ago, the founder called Catholicism a “Satanic cult”) is a BJU graduate.

Now, I offered all of that as an intro to our think piece for this Easter Sunday (for Western churches). It’s a blog post by Longenecker entitled “The Passion of the Christ, me and Mel Gibson” that includes a fascinating detail about what many consider the most beautiful image in that controversial movie (click here for his “Standing on my head” website).

The key: Longenecker, as a journalist, did quite a bit of writing about film. Thus, he ended up in one of those famous advance screenings with Gibson — who showed a rough edit to a variety of religious audiences while raising money to independently release the film. After showing this early version of his movie, Gibson came out to take questions from the small crowd. Then this happened:


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Faith on film and TV: Five takes on the life of Jesus that you can watch this Easter

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With Easter just ahead and many of us stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic, there is no better time than now to both watch movies about the life and death of Jesus. You should be able to find several on television this weekend.

Christ has been depicted in a variety of ways on film over the last six decades. Some depictions have been better than others. Some of these movies made headlines and some did not. The debate over which portrayal of Jesus was most realistic, authentic or powerful has raged on for years.

In 1997, James Martin came up with his own list, republished two years ago in America magazine. In it, he made some controversial picks, ones that keep this debate going every Easter. For many, movies about Jesus allowed many people who would otherwise not have an interest in Christianity or faith and awaken some religious curiosity.

Easter — Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection — is the most significant event of the Bible, one that changed the course of history. There are a number of movies that have captured that moment in both a touching and stirring manner. At the same time, several actors have portrayed Jesus to great public acclaim. The movies, appealing to Christians of all denominations, are a wonderful way to celebrate Easter and educate younger people to the life and times of Jesus.

This list doesn’t consider edgy pop-culture phenomena such as Jesus Christ Superstar or sacrilegious ones like The Last Temptation of Christ, with its mentally unbalanced and rather depressed messiah who calls himself a sinner. Instead, I have focused on serious interpretations through the years of the life of Jesus. As Christians prepare for Easter, here are five movies about Jesus, both in theaters and on TV, that rise above the rest:


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Stories near you? Ultra-Orthodox Jews making news in a time of coronavirus self-isolation

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TV binge-watching has emerged as a primary coping strategy for — I’m estimating here — the gazillions of people tired of 2,000-piece puzzles and cleaning their homes, but who still find themselves indefinitely sequestered because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dare I say, thank God for cable streaming?

I’d include in my moment of praise the new four-part Netflix series “Unorthodox,” the story of a young Jewish woman raised in the ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic Satmar community in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood who runs away because, as she says, “there are too many rules.”

Click here to view the show’s official trailer. The dialogue is in Yiddish, German and English — a linguistic stew that my late in-laws also spoke, often in the same sentence. They also added some Hebrew and were particularly adept at mixing curse words. But I digress.

The show is based on the real-life story of Deborah Feldman. As with virtually all such shows, some details of Feldman’s best-selling (according to Amazon) memoir were changed or invented for dramatic impact.

Media depictions of insular religious communities — be they polygamist Mormons, as in HBO’s TV series “Big Love,” or the Amish in the Academy Award-winning Harrison Ford film “Witness” — require unusual sensitivity.

Journalism, regardless of the form taken (I’m including here cinematic documentaries), requires an equally deft hand. One reason is that the most insular religious groups are notoriously mistrustful of outsiders, making them difficult to penetrate. That in turn often leads to innocent misunderstandings that undercut credibility. (I’ll leave intentional distortions and sensationalism for another post.)

I’ll get back to the how-to issue below. But first let’s give “Unorthodox” a deeper look. This is a topic that could point to news stories linked to other tight-knit religious communities, here in America and around the world.


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Orson Bean's wild life: Why did Los Angeles Times obit skip God's role in final chapters?

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No doubt about it, actor Orson Bean lived a wild life — even by Hollywood standards.

As you would expect, the lengthy Los Angeles Times obituary for Bean — who died at age 91 when hit by two cars — was packed with colorful details. I mean, this is a man whose early life included a run-in with the Hollywood blacklist, yet he ended up as a conservative who helped inspire the career of his son-in-law Andrew Breitbart.

But here is the GetReligion question for this day: Why would the newspaper of record in La La Land avoid one of the key elements of the final chapter of this man’s life, as in his conversion to Christianity?

Surely there was room for a phrase or two about that development in lines such as these?

Bean’s onstage antics included stand-up comedy and magic tricks as he made the rounds on game shows and late-night television. He was fondly remembered by baby boomers for bringing his wit and sophistication to “What’s My Line?,” “I’ve Got a Secret” and “To Tell the Truth” and guest-starring in variety series and talk shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” and “The Mike Douglas Show.” Later in his career, he starred in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Being John Malkovich” and “Desperate Housewives” while racking up dozens of guest appearance credits, with “Two and a Half Men,” “The Closer,” “Modern Family” and “How I Met Your Mother” among them.

Bean, who wrote several memoirs and a cookbook for cats, was briefly blacklisted, became a hippie, a peddler of a self-help method and a beloved Venice resident as he bolstered the local theater scene with wife Alley Mills. All along, his true passion was the stage, though he acquiesced to television, films and even commercials just to pay his bills.

The story gets wilder and wilder, which only points to the irony of journalists (the Times was not alone in missing the faith angle here) avoiding any discussion of Bean’s faith — which he made no attempt to hide, as one can see in the videos accompanying this post.

You can see a hint of what is missing in this colorful passage:


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HBO's 'The New Pope' serves up lots of sinful sizzle, but no substance worth discussing

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There is often a Hollywood fascination with all that’s morbid about religion. This has traditionally included a profane approach when it comes to the Catholic church — dramatizing reality into what can sometimes be an ugly trope.

This is exactly what we get with HBO’s new TV mini-series The New Pope. As is often the case, it’s also easy to see this entertainment as a form of semi-journalistic commentary about the state of the church.

As always, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights spoke up: “We have been tracking what The New York Times and The Washington Post have been saying about the Catholic Church for decades, and it will shock no one to learn that they are not exactly our biggest fans. More proof was offered today with the reviews of the first episode of ‘The New Pope.’ What they said tells us as much about them as it does HBO, another media outlet that likes to stick it to the Church.”

This new series picks up from “The Young Pope,” starring Jude Law as the fictional (and very conservative) Pius XIII, that ran in 2016. That series ended with the young fictional pontiff deep in a coma. The second series, which premiered on January 13, gets even crazier — and more sacrilegious — with the introduction of a new pope, played in over-the-top form by John Malkovich as John Paul III.

The biggest issue with this new mini-series — coming on the heels of the fictionalized Netflix movie “The Two Popes” — is the total lack of respect there is for the church and faith. The Vatican and the men who run it appear to be more into power and greed than saving souls.

The first episode did pack plenty of drama and intrigue, but that ultimately isn’t enough in this case to sustain a meaningful series.


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Merry, well, happy, uh, Trump-era SOMETHING from Twitter, care of Ryan Burge

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So, the day is finally here. It’s Christmas (unless you are part of an old-calendar Orthodox parish).

In shopping-mall liturgy, today marked the end of Christmas — which began just before Halloween with the running of the first cable-TV holiday movies. If you are part of a congregation that is into things like Christian tradition (or Charles DIckens), then the season has just started. In a way, old-school Christmas is rather nice — since the advertising tsunami has passed by.

I realize that some people have been greeting friends and family with “Merry Christmas” — or “Happy Christmas,” for Brits — for weeks now. Others have been more careful and stuck with “Happy Holidays.” Some of us old-school folks waited, you know, until Christmas to start saying, “Merry Christmas.”

But is this choice actually POLITICAL, in this age in which everything can be interpreted as a statement against or in favor of you know what and you know who?

What about on Twitter? What language did you use?

Yes, it’s time for another Ryan Burge chart.


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Podcast: Why reporters (and clergy) should heed religious signals in pop culture

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Readers who have followed GetReligion for quite a few years may remember that, in 1991, I left full-time work at The Rocky Mountain News (RIP) to teach as “Communicator on Culture” at Denver Seminary. Basically, I was teaching classes about religious content and trends in mainstream news coverage and popular culture, providing material for apologetics.

In the summer of 1993, when I moved to Milligan College in East Tennessee, I spoke at a national conference for Episcopal church leaders and laypeople, delivering a lecture entitled: “And Now, a Word from Your Culture — Mass Media, Ministry and Tuning in New Signals.” The respondent to my paper, by the way, was Father N.T. Wright, a big-league British intellectual who was beginning to gain some fame in North America. Here is the opening of that lecture:

True or false: It is impossible to talk — in terms of practical details and statistics — about how modern Americans live their lives without addressing the role played by television and other forms of news and entertainment media.

True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the role that television and other forms of news and entertainment media play in the daily lives of most modern Americans.

True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the daily lives of most modern Americans.

True or false: This applies to my church.

Now, this era of my life surfaced in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), because of two recent posts here at GetReligion. They were, “Old Pete Townshend asks some big questions about rock and what happens after he dies” and “Washington Post offers look at five country music myths and misses a familiar ghost.”

The big idea in the podcast: Every now and then popular culture sends out “signals” addressing subjects on topics that religious leaders simply cannot ignore.


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In advance of Tom Hanks movie opening, AP goes to Pittsburgh and explores Mister Rogers' faith

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Terry Mattingly is our resident Mister Rogers expert here at GetReligion.

Most recently, he posted — and talked — about the spiritual implications of the late Presbyterian pastor’s “neighborhood.” All the discussion is, of course, tied to Friday’s opening of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.

In tmatt’s recent post, he lamented a New York Times feature that “dug deep into the personality and career of Hanks and his take on Rogers — while avoiding key facts about faith and beliefs.”

Which leads me to today’s post on a lovely Associated Press story that incorporates Rogers’ faith at various points throughout the piece — including the headline, which declares:

Across Mister Rogers’ actual neighborhoods, his faith echoes

So yes, Rogers’ religion definitely figures in this retrospective profile — even if AP’s story by veteran journalist Ted Anthony doesn’t focus entirely on that angle.

Right from the top, the writing is lively and colorful:

PITTSBURGH (AP) — His TV neighborhood, was, of course, a realm of make believe — a child’s-eye view of community summoned into being by an oddly understanding adult, cobbled together from a patchwork of stage sets, model houses and pure, unsullied love.

Visiting it each day, with Mister Rogers as guide, you’d learn certain lessons: Believe you’re special. Regulate your emotions. Have a sense of yourself. Be kind.

And one more. It was always there, always implied: Respect and understand the people and places around you so you can become a contributing, productive member of YOUR neighborhood.

Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring is global now, and the Tom Hanks movie premiering this week only amplifies his ideals. But at home, in Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers moved through real neighborhoods — the landscape of his life, the places he visited to show children what daily life meant.

Did you catch that? “Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring …”


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