In case anyone wondered what happened to Rick Santorum, the once rising-star of GOP politics from the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a news story puts those questions to rest. He’s starting a movie company.
“For a long time, Christians have decided that the best way to fight the popular culture is to keep it at bay, to lock it out of their home. … That’s a losing battle,” Santorum said in an interview at America’s Center Convention Complex, where he was attending the International Christian Retail Show.
With “the pervasiveness of (media) right now, the content just seeps through. The only option is to go out into that arena and try to shape the culture, too.”
Santorum said one problem with Christian-themed films was that they’ve traditionally been aimed at just Christian audiences, rather than attempting to appeal to audiences that don’t necessarily share the movie’s messaging going in.
He blamed that limited appeal on what he said were often the “hokey” and “cheesy” feel of such films, with all the filmmakers’ attention focused on the message and not enough on artistic quality.
“Quality. Quality acting, quality directing, quality scriptwriting. That is going to be a watchword for me,” Santorum said at a news conference talking about the studio’s pending projects. He said the goal was to produce movies “that rival any good Hollywood film.”
Aside from the entertaining thought of inserting Santorum into Barton Fink, I am snickering at the proposition that the better way to respond to worldliness is by making the worldliness wholesome rather than fleeing it. I understand that the petri dish that produced Mrs. Hart and me, the fundamentalist mentality of not drinking, dancing, smoking, or going to movies, is a tough sell. It was tough even in the 1960s and it had limited success (obviously) since I became a film studies major. Major DOH! Still, even if the prescriptions weren’t air tight, we did have a sense that worldliness existed and that it was something to avoid. (Just as when it came to worship we had a sense that God could be offended and that we shouldn’t offend him — a sense seemingly lost on worship leaders and members of their bands.) And we also had productions that some believers thought could compete with mainstream culture. (Seriously.) Aside from Billy Graham’s production company, Ralph Carmichael‘s musicals, like “Tell it Like it Is” which Wikipedia describes as a “folk musical about God” (Laugh track, please) were the occasions for relief from not having to endure a sermon.
So I have serious doubts whether Santorum and company will figure out the right mix of piety and entertainment. A major reason is that producing quality rarely is so self-conscious. If you are committed to producing the best thing possible, you are not also calculating its broader effects on society. I can’t prove this but it does seem self-evident about most creative efforts. Only after finishing such a work do its wider consequences become evident. But if you start with the idea of influencing society, you’ll end up not with The Wire but The Restless Ones.
Better to stick with the catechism (especially one that comes in less than 140 questions — that way, there’s time for milk and cookies).
Old Life 
“… Better to stick with the catechism (especially one that comes in less than 140 questions — that way, there’s time for milk and cookies) …”
Agreed 200%, but my experience has been that if you start telling this to the transformer types you might was well buy one of these http://www.halloweenexpress.com/alien-mask-p-19634.html and start wearing it regularly, because they’re going to look at you like you’re an alien.
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Frasier: Noel, surely you realize that Star Trek is just a TV show.
Noel: So was Brideshead Revisited!
Frasier: You’re angry, so I’m going to ignore that.
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This is bizarre to me, not from the angle DGH is viewing it, but from the sheer craziness of waking up one day and saying to yourself, “Today, I think I’ll become a creative genius and produce greatness on the silver screen”. Reminds me of Wodehouse’s Vincent Jopp who put on his day-timer: “Thursday: Master Golf”.
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“No image is able to convey any truth at all. This explains in part why all ‘spiritual’ films are failures. When we insist on expressing spiritual matters through images, something other than truth is always perceived. Even more serious and alarming, truth tends to disappear behind all the lighting and makeup. It tends to vanish when squelched by images. The spectator of such films finds his attention diverted from what the film should be making him feel. The better the quality of the film, the more insensitive the spectator becomes to the truth which the reality should be expressing.” (Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, pg 30)
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What I would like to know is whether Darryl supports the Supreme Court on today’s decision to overturn DOMA. Apparently gay marriage is now well within natural law.
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Philip, you read to much rhetoric. DOMA didn’t/wouldn’t stop one gay marriage. This particular case was about whether a woman would have to pay an extra $363,053 in taxes based on the federal government disregarding her New York same-sex marriage with the consequent removal of her “surviving spouse” tax status. So the SCOTUS sidestepped higher taxes, and yielded to state control of marriage rather than federalizing it.
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“A major reason is that producing quality rarely is so self-conscious. If you are committed to producing the best thing possible, you are not also calculating its broader effects on society.”
So true.
I remember one of the most tedious episodes of the Sopranos (which I believe Michael Imperioli wrote) had to do with prejudice against Italian Americans. The best art is not driven by ideology, whether it be secular or spiritual. Tell compelling stories and good can arise merely from that.
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If I may get personal, your best book in my opinion (of the ones I have read, I still have several to go) is “Defending the Faith”. I am assuming that came out of a doctoral dissertation. It is not polemic, but it is as effective as anything polemical that you have written because it is such a compelling story.
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But then again there are the Kendrick’s movies, which I have a soft spot for in spite of their corniness. “Courageous”, “Fireproof”, “Facing the Giants”, and “Flywheel”.
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Among Kim Jong-Il’s titles was “Genius of the Cinema”. Uh-huh.
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Phil, Are you baiting me? Does that accord with God’s word?
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Erik, you don’t lose when you write about Machen. (Plus, I got to live in Balmer while doing work on the town’s best Calvinist — and this was before I knew Jimmy and Bunk.)
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Billy Graham’s A Thief in the Night was filmed in none other than Des Moines, Iowa. Here is one layperson’s review:
I saw this movie twice through a pentecostal church my family attended in Nanaimo BC in the 1970’s. I was of the tender age of 6, my brother 4, then again when I was 8 my brother 6. This movie terrified my brother and I and shaped how we viewed the world with distrust. It wasn’t just the movie, but it was also the philosophy that engulfs so many “christians” about the “mark of the beast”and the rapture. This movie, the church, and a volatile neglectful upbringing, lead to severe paranoia towards the future. For years, I lived under the delusional affects of the church and fear of being forgotten by Christ. I am now 40 years old. Went through years of counseling. I once explained to a psychiatrist this movie and the belief system of the church and family. I was pegged with a delusional disorder. I actually began to believe this, it was my brother who reminded me, that this cultic philosophy actually happened. I no longer fear the future, I have come to terms with the fear injected into it’s members by the church. I have taken this experience to fulfill a purpose, I am nearing my licensure as a Psychologist specializing in childhood trauma.
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Sometime ago I ran across this quote from John Henry Newman in Idea of a University (page number awol).
Anyway, it seemed relevant:
“Some one will say to me perhaps: ‘Our youth shall not be corrupted. We will dispense with all general or national Literature whatever, if it be so exceptionable; we will have a Christian Literature of our own, as pure, as true, as the Jewish.’ You cannot have it: —I do not say you cannot form a select literature for the young, nay, even for the middle or lower classes; this is another matter altogether: I am speaking of University Education, which implies an extended range of reading, which has to deal with standard works of genius, or what are called the classics of a language: and I say, from the nature of the case, if Literature is to be made a study of human nature, you cannot have a Christian Literature. It is a contradiction in terms to attempt a sinless Literature of sinful man. You may gather together something very great and high, something higher than any Literature ever was and when you have done so, you will find that it is not Literature at all. You will have simply left the delineation of man, as such, and have substituted for it, as far as you have had any thing to substitute, that of man, as he is or might be, under certain special advantages. Give up the study of man, as such, if so it must be; but say you do so. Do not say you are studying him, his history, his mind and his heart, when you are studying something else.”
Santorum may want “more artistic quality” but he’s still advancing thesis driven storytelling in which the characters will doubtlessly posses “certain special advantages”. Makes me think his desire for quality isn’t going to work out real well.
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Santorum, who lost his last election here in Pennsylvania by many many votes, needs some drama now to keep his name in the news (for something other than taking local school funds from Pa to educate his children in DC). I am reminded of the encounter his homosexual ex-aide had with Chris Matthews (and the subsequent version of that encounter on HBO’s Newsnight).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/chris-matthews-santorum-gay-robert-traynham_n_1188992.html
Santorum is one kind of Roman Catholic. Therefore he must know “natural law”. But of course the Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court disagrees with each other about the practical meaning of “natural law”, even though so many of them were appointed by Republicans.
Three Jews and the rest Roman Catholics. No protestants. I guess it wouldn’t matter if the American empire had become “secular” by now.
What does “being secular” mean when it comes to sitting on the Supreme Court? Does it mean that the US Constitution is more important to you than being Jewish or Catholic>
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Actually, Clarence Thomas is the only “natural lawyer” on the Court. The rest subscribe to an originalism of some variety.
Except the liberals, who don’t even bother making a show of constitutionalism atall anymore–they just rule as philosopher-kings.
“Those of you who are lawyers will remember that, in the bad old days, that is to say, before Erie RR v. Tompkins [304 US 64, 78 (1938)], the courts believed that there was a single common law, it was up there in the stratosphere. Now, the state courts of California said it meant one thing, the state courts of New York said it meant something else, and the Federal Courts might say it meant a third thing.
But one of them was wrong! Because there really is a common law, and it’s our job to figure out what it is. So in those days, any common-law decision of one state would readily cite common-law decisions of other states, because all the judges were engaged in the enterprise of figuring out the meaning of what Holmes called “the brooding omnipresence in the sky” of the common law.
Well, I think we’ve replaced that with the law of human rights. Which is a moral law, and surely there must be a right and a wrong answer to these moral questions — whether there’s a right to an abortion, whether there’s a right to homosexual conduct, what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and so on — surely there is a right and wrong moral answer. And I believe there is, but the only thing is, I’m not sure what that right answer is.
Or at least, I am for myself, but I’m not sure it’s the same as what you think. And the notion that all the judges in the world can contemplate this brooding omnipresence of moral law, cite one another’s opinions, and that somehow, they are qualified by their appointment to decide these very difficult moral questions . . .”—Nino
http://web.archive.org/web/20080116061700/http://www.joink.com/homes/users/ninoville/aei2-21-06.asp
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Thanks, Ken, for the Ellul quotation. Humiliation is one of his better books. His Subversion book takes that word vs sight debate into Barthian anti-sacramentalism. Another good but “secondary” thesis…
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It made me a monergist.
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DG, the most amazing salespeople on earth are those who successfully PITCH entertainment ideas that get millions of dollars freed up to feed vanity projects.
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I still remember seeing “A Thief in the Night” in a Methodist Church as a kid. That scene at the end with a guillotine is pretty scary for a kid. I think I remember a scene being shot on the Saylorville Bridge, too. I wonder if I can buy/rent that movie anywhere.
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$20 on Amazon. Pretty steep.
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Thief pops up on youtube in entirety often.
The liberal pastor’s sermon is too accurate to be true…
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HOT OFF THE PRESS!! (especially for Phil)
For those who haven’t heard, Washington State just passed both laws – gay marriage and legalized marijuana.
The fact that gay marriage and marijuana were legalized on the same day makes perfect Biblical sense because Leviticus 20:13 says: “If a man lies with another man they should be stoned.”
I just hadn’t interpreted it correctly before!
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George wins “Best cultural exegesis by a supporting actor.”
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@Ken: Ellul FTW! What a fantastically relevant quote!
@Bruce: exactly my thought daddy-o. I think this holiday weekend I’ll be a 40-lbs lighter tour-de-france climbing specialist and tackle the Great Western Loop.
@DGH, since nobody else did, I’ll take this opportunity to be the first to respond to the shout-out to Barton Fink. That movie has a special place in my heart, as it was my introduction to the Bros. Coen. I saw it many times before I ever saw Raising AZ or BigLeb etc.
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Ruberad, I just did a loop through Jamaica. Er, Jamaica, Iowa
Click to access rrvt_map.pdf
So you’ve got ocean and bistros. We have cornfields, grain silos, and a small town diner that makes a decent patty melt even if they don’t stir the lemonade mix enough and the lock doesn’t work in the bathroom. But you don’t have to try to get the waitress’ attention for a refill – you can just walk over to the counter and pour yourself another.
I encountered a large group of cyclists who were going to stop 12 times, consuming a beer each time. I wouldn’t think there would be 12 places that serve beer along the loop but that was their story.
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Sounds fun — total elevation change 6 ft? 3ft up to mount the bike, and 3ft down when you get off at the end?
As for riding and drinking, there’s also this…
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Rube, for elevation change I put my iphone/cycling app in my pocket then climb a grain silo.
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Lemonade mix. And when you say ‘chalky’ you mean they need to heat it up and spin it again? I see you. In this ‘grain silo’ in Cooper, that’s where the special refrigerator is at? I see your stage 17 TDF ala Landis. Your lemonade mix is safe with me, hombre.
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Sean, I especially like your comments that I don’t understand, then start to understand, then end up agnostic all while digging the style.
PS. We don’t have much for hills but we can have pesky winds. It seems like you go against 20 mph winds for 30 miles and then only get it as tailwind for about 8, which makes no sense but you won’t convince me otherwise.
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