While arguing for his “Bazin Option” and a deeper Christian engagement with film, Michael Leary explains that any justification of the arts “must begin with this idea that all our expressions and gestures, even if presented as entertainment, are a material record of our desire for self-disclosure and liberation.” This is, more or less, the thesis that governs my teaching of media ecology. Everything we make, all our objects, images, rituals, languages, and our stories, all “our expressions and gestures” are materializations of meaning. As incarnate beings, meaning rises out from our spiritual center and pours out through our embodied being. Everything we say or do expresses our identity, longings, and values.
Thus, every film made is a nearly inexhaustible well of spiritual and psychological and sociological meaning. Every detail of every image, frames added and frames cut, words spoken and unspoken, facial expressions and body movement, all things done and all things left undone speak something about the many souls who made it and the many souls who view it. This is what makes art fascinating and powerful! A great work of art is an inexhaustible source of meaning and aesthetic pleasure.
The problem with Christian art is that the church has largely forgotten that forms themselves carry meaning. They aren’t paying attention to these details. Christians too often take a popular form – created to express a particular view of the world – and slap a “Christian” meaning onto it. The result? Cringe-worthy cultural artifacts that contain inherent contradictions because their explicit meanings do not resonate with the forms themselves. For example, who hasn’t heard Christian rock music that doesn’t make Jesus cool so much as it makes rock music worse?
So how can Christians make films that embody the Gospel? Perhaps we can begin by reflecting on how God himself materialized Gospel meaning in the world. God directly designed the tabernacle and the culture of Israel, and in his own flesh he told stories and feasted with sinners. He used gold and embroidery and blood and spectacle and stone and wine and oil and light and incense. He appealed to all our senses and all our faculties. He told us the truth in both word and from.
In light of where culture has been in the 20th century, and where culture seems to be going in the 21st, I am not sure that Christian filmmakers need to focus on moral messages. First of all, it’s impossible to write a story that doesn’t have an ethical message. Write a good story and the moral will be there. Second, it is easy to show that sin is real. Most of our actions are foolish and bring us pain. We are well acquainted with the logic of destruction and calculus of consequence; we need to be awakened again to the economy of wonder.
Like Lewis, we need to be surprised by joy. We have had enough of Saturn; we need someone to show us the joy of Jove. I think perhaps Christians can best materialize the meaning of the Gospel by offering the world an aesthetic feast. Not cotton candy or other cheap sweets, but something finely crafted, aged, and served in something beautiful like a chalice. Something that looks like a broken jar of alabaster pouring forth oil on our dirty modern feet.