I stumbled across this op-ed from, of all people, Kevin Sorbo and although I think he’s got a good handle on the effects I don’t think he’s got his hands around the causes. If you know his name at all you’ll probably remember Kevin Sorbo as Hercules on the New Zealand-based television series from the 1990s. For the last decade or so other than the occasional appearance on television he’s been starring in what might be described as “Christian movies”. They’re a little bit hard to describe. The closest I think I can come in 25 words or less is that they’re pictures without a lot of sex or bloodshed but with a strong moral core.
Here’s the kernel of his argument:
The mainstream media just doesn’t get faith-based entertainment because they don’t have faith. And they don’t understand people of faith.
Unfortunately for them, the box office belongs to audiences, not elitist critics writing from their ivory Manhattan towers. It belongs to working mothers who want to raise their children with a strong sense of values and devoted fathers who are coaching softball games after a long day on the job. It belongs to regular people in small towns and flyover states and middle-class suburban neighborhoods who are struggling with how to live meaningful lives in an ever-changing society.
If critics want to meet these Americans, they can walk into a church on any given Sunday and listen to their stories. Their tales of faith and redemption sound something like this: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.â€
Until critics understand these types of stories, they’ll continue to misunderstand faith-based entertainment.
I think I’d phrase the question a little differently. Big, bloody blockbusters with lots of overt sexuality aren’t the only movies that make money. Why is Hollywood so fixated on sex and violence? And why have simple values fallen so far out of favor? I’ll give one simple example. The movie Elf has earned a tremendous amount of money. It only cost something like $30 million to make and it’s earned on the order to ten times that. It didn’t inspire a whole platoon of imitations. Why?
My speculation is that there are several reasons: international audiences, that those aren’t the movies that producers and directors want to make, and that Hollywood is tremendously solipsistic and inbred, largely dominated by secularized Jews and fallen-away Catholics who disdain simple stories and simple values and are possibly even frightened of traditional values.
He certainly has the victim thing nailed. Flyover, elitist, etc. That said, I have always assumed that Hollywood is not interested since they don’t think they can make money doing these kinds of movies. I suspect that is not entirely true, just that they don’t have much shot at a real blockbuster. I do have to wonder if the kinds of Christians who use the terms flyover country and elitist would actually watch movies made by traditional Hollywood even if they embraced traditional values. I know it would not have been allowed in my family.
Steve
Most Hollywood writers cannot conceive of characters greater than themselves, although this may be somewhat unfair to the extent some writers can, but Hollywood producers hire writers or re-writers that share their views. They don’t do heroes, and when they do heroes, its given little intellectual or financial support.
@steve, seek counseling.
Victim thing? Steve, he’s talking down to them, very dismissive.
Personally, I don’t see much difference in movies from when I was young except for PG-13 which became the meat of the summer blockbuster. Not much sex in PG-13 and the violence is cartoonish.
I think Sorbo’s complaint made sense a decade or more ago, but today Hollywood and the traditional movie studios are a lot less important. There’s nothing stopping Sorbo from raising money and making the movies he wants to see made.
@PD-You live in flyover country. I will just ignore you. (I think that is the first time I ever used that term. As an elitist I really do need to start using it.)