Movies

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Life in a disenchanted world: Once upon a time, Christians used to write fairy stories

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Life in a disenchanted world: Once upon a time, Christians used to write fairy stories

Demons appear on movie screens all the time, but poet Richard Rohlin is convinced he has actually seen them at work when counseling young people whose search for meaning has driven them deep into experiments with sex, drugs and the occult.

"The stories that I can't tell would curl your toenails," he said, speaking at the Eighth Day Institute in Wichita, Kansas. "If you think that these spiritual realities are not still with us, you are deluding yourself. ... The magic is coming back into the world. Something is happening and it is not an unqualified good."

The young people he works with in Dallas are not interested in sermons and detailed descriptions of why their lives are broken. But they are open to fantasies, myths and tales -- ancient and modern -- about unseen, spiritual realities that interact with their lives.

Millions of Americans know where to find stories about angels, demons, warriors, seers, giants, demigods and heroic kings and queens. They head straight to movie theaters and cable television, where they find entire universes of content offering visions of fantastic worlds. The last place they would seek inspiration of this kind is in churches.

The irony is that some of these works draw inspiration from the fantasy classics celebrated in the ecumenical Eighth Day Institute's annual fall celebration of The Inklings, a mid-20th Century circle of Christian writers in Oxford, England, that included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others.

This year's lectures focused on Scottish writer George MacDonald, often called the "grandfather of the Inklings," who is best known for "Phantastes," "The Golden Key," "Lilith" and many other works. The festival included Celtic and folk musicians, along with workshops on topics such as "The Art of Making Mead" and "Publishing for the Moral Imagination."

The goal of MacDonald and The Inklings, noted Rohlin, was to reclaim an older vision of life in which physical realities corresponded to spiritual realities and nothing was considered purely material. The real divide was between "the seen and the unseen," not between the "spiritual and the material."

This worldview has been lost, even among many religious believers.

"Demons didn't stop existing, angels didn't stop existing, the saints didn't stop existing because the Industrial Revolution came," he said.


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Podcast: Talking fetus scene in 'Blonde' has created another media storm about abortion

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Podcast: Talking fetus scene in 'Blonde' has created another media storm about abortion

Ask any pastor about times when Americans tend to take stock of their religious commitments and it’s likely you will hear something like the following.

For most people, but especially for those who are married or/or have children, there are obvious gateways from one stage of life to another and, frequently, there are religious teachings and rites that go with them. Think birth, baptism, marriage, children, aging and, finally, death. In many lives, there are moments of conversion or doubt, as well as life-threatening illnesses and tragedies. Divorce? Broken relationships with children? Yes, more symbolic gates.

Clergy know they will have to help women and men deal with these gates. I have always argued, in discussions with editors, that these gateways are often linked to important trends and news events. Changing a prayerbook or hymnal, for example, may threaten doctrines and symbols that, for the devout, are linked to rites that frame these life events.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focuses on some news and commentary about the life of one of Hollywood’s greatest superstars — Marilyn Monroe. The problem is that the controversial, lurid new movie “Blonde” includes events and images that clearly link abortion to other life-defining events, especially horrors such as rape and other forms of sexual and emotional abuse.

Abortion can lead to grief and may be viewed as a form of violence against women? That pushes several hot buttons at the same time, and not just for right-wing Christians in the Bible Belt. Consider the symbolism of mourners visiting the famous Garden of Unborn Children in Japan.

As always, let me stress that abortion is a topic that, for many, raises religious issues — as well as moral, legal and political questions. This raises challenges for journalists and artists alike.

First, let’s look at the obvious news hook — that Planned Parenthood officials needed to react to this brutal NC-17 movie, a flick that is creating Oscar buzz surrounding the work of actress Ana de Armas.

The headline at The Hollywood Reporter proclaims, “Planned Parenthood: ‘Blonde’ Is “Anti-Abortion Propaganda.”


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In praise of the humble news Q&A: God, Lt. Dan and spiritual motivations for public service

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In praise of the humble news Q&A: God, Lt. Dan and spiritual motivations for public service

It would be hard to name a form of journalism more “humble” than a simple Q&A piece about a celebrity or someone else who has found his or her way into the news.

The journalist produces a short introduction and then, theoretically, gets out of the way.

Yes, the news organization still controls the narrative — as in asking the questions and then publishing edited versions of the questions and the answers. In practice, readers encounter this bit of journalism-speak: “This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.” (I often advise newsmakers to record these interviews for themselves, allowing them — if necessary — to post transcripts of what went down.)

This brings me to a recent Knoxville News Sentinel feature about actor Gary Sinise, whose work with injured veterans and first responders was bringing him back to Knoxville for the 2022 Medal of Honor Celebration. His public-service work on these issues is rather logical because of his famous role as Lieutenant Dan Taylor, an angry wounded warrior who finds his way back to wholeness in the movie “Forest Gump.”

Here at GetReligion, we often ask why so many journalists, when writing about public figures of this kind, tend to leave facts about religion out of the mix. This is especially problematic when the person being profiled has, on numerous occasions, made it clear that faith is one of the defining elements of his or her life. To cut to the chase: It’s harder to do that kind of crude editing when offering what is supposed to be a verbatim transcript of an interview.

There were zero “religious” questions about in this interview, even though Sinise has for years talked openly about his faith. But the humble Q&A format allowed the actor to talk about his life on his own terms. Here is an example of that in a discussion that is at the heart of the feature:

Knox News: You've played Lt. Dan, but also directed a production of "Tracers," a story about wounded Vietnam vets, in the '80s. You've been very involved with veterans in your show career, how has that influenced your work as a philanthropist?


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Shia LeBeouf converts to Catholicism: News coverage -- good and bad -- focuses on redemption

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Shia LeBeouf converts to Catholicism: News coverage -- good and bad -- focuses on redemption

Celebrity news coverage and religion couldn’t be more polar opposites most of the time. Coverage of actors, models and others in the entertainment industry often resembles a list for the seven deadly sins.

Every so often, the world of celebrity and faith intersect. When they do, the mainstream press doesn’t know what to do with it, creating tone-deaf coverage similar to sports stories containing what GetReligion has long called religion “ghosts.”

Meanwhile, the religious press — I’m referring to Catholic media in this case — love to jump on this kind of story. This has certainly been the case with actor Shia LaBeouf this summer and public statements regarding his conversion to Catholicism.

It’s a textbook case of the mainstream press largely ignoring such an announcement, while the Catholic press can’t get enough of it. When the mainstream press did cover LaBeouf’s interview, it was in the context of his troubled personal life. For some journalists in the Catholic press, he became a poster child for upholding tradition and the Latin Mass against the more progressive forces in the church.

Depending on who and what you read, LeBeouf’s conversion story is either a farce, something to be celebrated or something to be feared.

LaBeouf, like many in his profession, does interviews primarily to promote specific movies and their careers overall. While promoting his new film “Padre Pio,” which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, LaBeouf announced that he had converted to Catholicism. The movie is based on the life of Padre Pio, an Italian Franciscan Capuchin friar famous for exhibiting stigmata most of his life. He was canonized as a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

The former “Transformers” star made it known that he was now a practicing Catholic during an Aug. 25 appearance on Bishop Robert Barron’s show “Conversations at the Crossroads.” The YouTube link alone has generated over 1.3 million views.

Here is where the celebrity news coverage got interesting.


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Let the palace intrigue over at Disney+ palace begin

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Let the palace intrigue over at Disney+ palace begin

Screenwriter and director Tony Gilroy, showrunner off “Andor” in the Star Wars universe (premiers Sept. 21 on Disney+), spoke recently to a Television Critics Association event.

If even one member of the Religion News Association had been present, we might have an encyclical to discuss.

But let’s give credit where it’s due to Lance Gose of CBR.com (Comic Book Resources). Gose captured a few sound bites from Gilroy, who compared the guardians of Star Wars canon with the Vatican.

“If you think about Star Wars as the Roman Catholic Church, if you think about it as a religion, it has all kinds of factions, groups, and within it, there are all kinds of canon,” Gilroy said.

“We are constantly in touch with the Vatican about what we do, we are constantly checking everything we do,” he added. “We have a very complicated relationship with how we deal with everything that exists. We’re telling a story that we want to tell, and we are not violating the grand canon, let’s put it that way.”

Gilroy’s comparison prompts a few immediate questions for me. These are just for fun, but there may be some perfectly valid religion-beat hooks in here. As people frequently say here at GetReligion: Hold that thought.


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Count the Marvel gods: Is Jesus just one of the gang in 'Thor: Love and Thunder'?

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Count the Marvel gods: Is Jesus just one of the gang in 'Thor: Love and Thunder'?

Greek mythology makes it clear that the great god Zeus loved to party.

So wild things were happening when the Norse demigod Thor and a pack of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superheroes entered Omnipotence City in "Thor: Love and Thunder." The Greek gods are out in force, with Zeus serving as king, but so were many other deities from other cultures.

Valkyrie, the female queer king of New Asgard noted, while calling roll, the off-screen presence of another deity -- the "God of Carpentry."

Inquiring minds want to know if, to quote WhatCulture.com, the film's director Taika Waititi had "confirmed the actual existence of Jesus in the MCU? … Without showing Jesus, Waititi has plausible deniability: Valkyrie could've been talking about the Greek God of Carpenters Hephaestus, or even Lu-Ban, the God of Carpentry from Chinese mythology."

The cosmology of the Marvel super-movies has become so complex that it's hard to know precisely what is being said, noted Thom Parham, a screenwriter who teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Early on, the superheroes were simply aliens, instead of gods or demigods.

"But now we've got sub-deities. They want to have their cake and eat it, too," said Parham, after returning from Comic-Con 2022 in San Diego. "We have gods, and we have demigods. We have Greek gods, and we have Egyptian gods. We have the Eternals, and we have the Celestials."

When Parham heard the "God of Carpentry" reference, he felt that "a dangerous line had been crossed. …What are they saying? I don't think they know, yet."

With "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" poised for November release, the "Avengers" series will reach 30 movies and a dozen or more sequels are planned. The franchise has grossed more than $27 billion at the global box office.

In terms of religious messages, the MCU has come a long way since Captain America, after hearing Loki described as a god, said: "There's only one God … and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that." The New Rockstars YouTube channel counted 50-plus gods in "Thor: Love and Thunder" alone.

It's almost impossible to ignore the role this franchise plays in popular culture worldwide, said film critic Steven Greydanus of DecentFilms.com, who is an ordained Catholic deacon.


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'Final solution' logic: Was there more to the Wannsee Conference than mere bureaucracy?

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'Final solution' logic: Was there more to the Wannsee Conference than mere bureaucracy?

It’s a blunt New York Times headline about a story that — here is the horror of it all — focused on German bureaucrats doing what governments pay bureaucrats to do, which is plan things.

Read this headline without shuddering: “80 Years Ago the Nazis Planned the ‘Final Solution.’ It Took 90 Minutes.”

Actually, the death squads of the Third Reich were already at work. The following summary material makes that clear:

The host on that January day in 1942 was Reinhard Heydrich, the powerful chief of the security service and the SS, who had been put in charge by Hermann Göring, Hitler’s right-hand man, of a “final solution” and coordinating it with other government departments and ministries.

The men Heydrich invited were senior civil servants and party officials. Most of them were in their 30s, nine of them had law degrees, more than half had Ph.D.s.

When they convened around a table overlooking Lake Wannsee, the genocide was already underway. The deportations of Jews and mass killings in eastern territories had begun the previous fall but the meeting that day laid the groundwork for a machinery of mass murder that would involve the entire state apparatus and ultimately millions of Germans in different roles.

Here is my question and, I will admit, that there is more to it than mere journalism. Is it possible to write about this subject in a way that does not discuss evil with a Big E?

I’ve been thinking about that question ever since I read historian John Toland’s “Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography.” That’s a 1,000-page classic that will earn you some stares as you read it, day after day, on mass transit. The key was that Toland interviewed many, many people who knew Hitler at different stages of his life. Thus, as the 1976Times review put it, the author allowed readers to “draw their own conclusions about what made Hitler as he was, ‘a warped archangel, a hybrid of Prometheus and Lucifer.’ “

In the end, however, Toland was forced to contemplate how a symbolic element of the Holocaust rulebook — “the choice” — was an offense to German efficiency.


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Talking to Jesus? This is big New York Times news when a Hollywood spiritualist is involved

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Talking to Jesus? This is big New York Times news when a Hollywood spiritualist is involved

Let’s see. If you were going to write a New York Times article in which someone claimed to be channeling the Buddha, would you, at some point, talk to Buddhists? Maybe even a scholar whose work is rooted in Buddhist thought?

What about Judaism? If someone was claiming to channel Moses, would you talk to a rabbi or two about that? Maybe a scholar who has studied Jewish mysticism?

How about Islam? How would a reporter approach the claims of someone who says she is channeling Mohammad? And what would Islamic believers think of this process?

With these questions in mind, let’s look at that chatty first-person piece that ran more than a month ago at the Times with this headline: “In Good Spirits — Carissa Schumacher channels the dead for her A-list celebrity clients. But most days, she’s in the forest.”

The headline omits the big reveal: Schumacher claims to channel the spirits of the dead, including her most famous connection — Jesus. This is tricky territory, as demonstrated in the wild correction at the end of this long feature:

Correction: Nov. 29, 2021

An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the biblical name Yeshua. The name refers to multiple people, including Joshua; it does not refer solely to Jesus Christ. The article also referred incorrectly to the Old Testament; while the name Yeshua appears in it, Jesus Christ does not.

Ready for the overture?


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Lessons learned from black-and-white visions of Christmas past -- movies from 1940s

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Lessons learned from black-and-white visions of Christmas past -- movies from 1940s

It's a black-and-white movie Christmas, with snow falling as joyful families mingle on city sidewalks while window-shopping -- buying food, presents, decorations and fresh-cut trees for festivities that are only two days away.

For Americans, this scene represents the ghost of Christmas past, long before suburban malls, big-box scrums and Amazon.com. And as "The Bishop's Wife" opens, an angel -- a graceful Cary Grant -- enters this 1947 tableau, smiling at carolers and children and helping the needy and lost.

"Christmas is always in danger in Christmas movies -- we'd have no reason to make such movies otherwise," wrote critic Titus Techera, executive director of the American Cinema Foundation. In this classic movie, "we have a remarkable concentration of problems in one household: A man's faith, his family, community and church … are all tied together."

It isn't unusual to find miracles, tight-knit communities, glowing churches and parables about human choices, temptation, sin and redemption in old Christmas films, said Techera, contacted by Zoom while visiting Bucharest.

That's why Techera -- a native of Romania, before his work brought him to America -- has written four online essays about the lessons learned from watching '40s movies that were remade in the '90s. The other films in this Acton Institute series are "The Shop Around the Corner," "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Christmas in Connecticut."

There's a reason many modern Americans keep watching these movies, he said. Some yearn for a time before most Americans became so isolated, separated by jobs far from extended families, sprawling suburban neighborhoods and all the paradoxes built into digital networks that were supposed to keep people connected.

"What we see in these movies is a time when Christmas was a far less commercial celebration and there was quite a bit of continuity with traditions from the past. … For many, the church was part of that," he said. "Christmas was a family thing. It was a community thing. … Commerce was more subservient to ordinary life. Commerce had not taken over all of life, including Christmas."


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