Luther King House MAS3 Spirituality in Contemporary Culture.

Spirituality and Film

Film and Spirituality

Introduction

Film emerged as religion was loosing its central place in public life and it grew up in
an era when it was (more or less) free to pursue whatever purpose it chose. As such
it is an interesting and potentially fruitful topic when the focus of our concern, as in
this module, is spirituality as broadly understood rather than just explicitly
religious/Christian understandings.

Film is both powerful and pervasive

The Power of Film - ref to
Bambi the first film that made me cry;
Snow White the first film that gave me nightmares;
Peter Pan the film that made me think that I might be able to fly!

What experiences do you have of the power of film?

2003 - viewers in the USA watched on average 39 movies; 95% of adults saw at least
one movie while only 47% read at least one book. (Johnston, 2006) 25

In 2000 142.5 million admissions to British cinemas and nrly 600m taken at the UK
box office. Deacey in (Detweiler, 2008) 6

Film is the primary means of storytelling in contemporary western society. It
contributes to the social glue of our culture giving us a shared language.

According the poet Carl Sandburg Hollywood is the foremost educational institution
on earth. (Johnston, 2006) 27

The year after Bambis release the gross earnings from deer hunting in the US
dipped from $5.7m to $1m (Johnston, 2006) 31

How Might We Approach Film If Our Concern Is

Spirituality?
Films are about more than mere entertainment

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Luther King House MAS3 Spirituality in Contemporary Culture. Spirituality and Film
Making films solely for entertainment is like making soup with only one
ingredient. Detweiler and Taylor (2000) 159

Kes (my favourite film - perhaps)

The shed becomes a Cathedral

Is about beauty in the midst of ugliness and ordinariness
That beauty is almost literally transcendent.

Kes is both about and is itself an exercise in seeing beyond the surface, which is
surely the sine qua none of all spirituality. As such it is an interesting example of two
ways of asking the question about film and spirituality in contemporary culture.

Film as a reflection of contemporary spiritual searching.

As with any other artists, film-makers have their antennae twitching to pick up
whats in the air of the culture in which they work and into which they will sell their
products. As such, even though their concerns are only rarely explicitly religious or
spiritual, they will often resonate with spiritual eddies in the Zeitgeist.
(King, 2014) 12

What kind of things do films tell us about the culture in which we live?
Sex is prominent
There is an issue with fatherhood / parenthood / the traditional family
Violence is prominent
There is fascination with the gothic
Being black or disabled is still deviant
Romance is alive and well

OK so now, what do films tell us about the religious and spiritual concerns and
interests of the culture in which we live?
?
?
?

Some film-makers are explicit about the religious / spiritual motivations behind
their work.

It is well known that Mel Gibsons The Passion Of The Christ was motivated by his
Roman Catholic faith. So are other significant movies.

Cf. Martin Scorsese on the last Temptation of Christ

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I made it as a prayer, an act of worship. I wanted to be a priest. My whole
life has been movies and religion. Thats it. Nothing else.
Detweiler and Taylor (2000) 155

I didnt want you to enjoy the film. I wanted you to look very closely
at your own soul. Sam Pekinpaah (Johnston, 2006) 7

From The 10 Commandments to Dogma and Bruce Almighty religious themes have
regularly featured in mainstream films.

But its not just the explicitly religious that ought to concern us.

Films regularly explores themes such as redemption, sacrifice.

Mike King comes up with twelve categories as a framework for his exporlation of
the luminosity of film:

1. Spiritual Aesthetics, Nature and the Romantic
2. The Esoteric, the New Age and Neoplatonism
3. Dying, Suicide and Bereavement
4. Ghosts, Angles and the Afterlife
5. Reincarnation and Resurrection
6. Spiritual Chaos and Rubber Reality
7. Wisdom, Teachers and Disciples
8. Priests, Monks, Nuns and Spiritual Community
9. Spiritual Practice, Discipline and the Martial Arts
10. Violence, Compassion, Forgiveness and Atonement
11. East and West
12. Spiritual and Secular

(The last two italicised categories round up and pull together issues and themes that
occur across the other ten.)

Film as a means of encountering spiritual reality

But how can film be a means of encountering spirituality?

This from Detweiler (2008) in a section called Raging Bull (for Jesus)
Movies may have been my first love, but as I emerged from Martin Scorseses
Raging Bull (1980, IMDb #68), I was catapulted toward a different kind of
obsession. Robert DiNiros haunting portrait of boxing champ Jake LaMotta
left me beaten and bruised. I wateched the perils of self-immolation, as Jake
destroyed his relationships with his brother, his wife, and his fans. Jake ends

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up alone, in jail, literally banging his head against the wall crying, Why?
Why? Why? As a high school jock with and equally independent streak, I
recognised far too much of myself in Jake. As the film ended, director Martin
Scorsese offered a curious counterpoint. The credits read, All I know is this,
once I was blind, but now I can see. I recongized the blindness in Jake and in
me, but I wondered, What does it mean to see? A violent, profane, R-rated
movie had provided the spark to a spiritual search

Tim Deacey makes a bold claim

the boundaries of what constitute religion are not fixed and religion often
changes shape and appearance as society itself mutates. Accordingly religion
begins to appear in unexpected places and through new media. the film
industry is one of many contemporary secular agencies that have taken on
many of the functions that we would historically associate with traditional
religious institutions. As a result movies can and do raise vital questions
about the spiritual landscape and normative values of society today.
Deacy (2005) vi

Mike King on The Potential of Film For Personal Spiritual

Transformation

For a film to succeed at all it has to engage the audience; for a film to be
memorable it has to move the audience; and for a film to be luminous it has
to have the potential for spiritual transformation. (King, 2014) 1

Film has power to transform to, shake us to the core and religious life is all about the
core of who we are.

Chooses luminous as his way of describing what he is looking for two reasons:
1
Cinema involves watching images created with moving light in a darkened
room, usually with others. (King, 2014) 19
And
2
Mostly it is metaphors of light or illumination [rather than darkness] that
the mystic reaches for to convey the moment of insight, self-realization, and
divine grace . (King, 2014) 19

Hence the word is used of

moments in a film that convey something of the profound connectedness
of the religious experience, or something of the sacred, or a breakthrough or
transformative moment, perhaps one that is even challenging or

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uncomfortable for an audience to face, but which as the potential to change
the viewer, even, perhaps, at some profound level. (King, 2014) 19

At the core of the religious and spiritual life is a profound connectedness. Its
opposite is an anguished alienation. (King, 2014) 7 [emphasis original]

Argues that whatever the starting point, the spiritual journey takes place on
spectrum away from anguished alienation towards profound connectedness.

A spiritual or religious life, then, is one where, even if momentarily,
something much larger enters that broadens the narrow horizon of the
conventional self, and in which there is some striving, or at least yearning, for
the expanded perception of self, and its relation to others and the universe.
(King, 2014) 9

Refers to films which fail to manifest human empathy that is a prerequisite of
ordinary connectedness as, autistic.

Rules out whole categories as not really worthy of consideration in the search for
films that might illuminate and the potential to enable a spiritual life:

Escapist fantasy e.g. Star Wars escape seen as alien to engagement with
life
Feel-Good, Capraesque films e.g. Its a Wonderful Life - fail to take seriously
the whole gamut on lived experience including the bleak.
Films that proselytise or which document religious history or ideas tend to
focus on outward symbols and religios paraphernalia and events e.g.
Bressons The Trial of Joan of Arc - particularly true of historical religious
costume drama and biopics

Luminous films are unlikely to be ultimately reassuring and safe but rather

must at some level confront the viewer with real possibilities, choices that
they may face as ordinary human beings in ordinary circumstances. (King,
2014) 17

Film as a form of (intentional retreat?)

Story of Sister Rose Pacatte and the woman who was watching her third movie of
the day because she was pretty certain her boyfriend was about to propose to her.

I always come to the movies when I have to figure out my life.
Johnston (2006) 13

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Detweiler cites Margaret Miles we now gather about cinema and television screens
rather than in churches to ponder the moral quandaries of American life.
Detweiler (2008) 30

George Barna finds that in 2000

20% of Americans turned to media arts and culture as their primary
means of spiritual experience and expression. He expects that percentage to
rise to 30 or 35% by 2025.
Detweiler (2008) 18

This is said to be at the expense of the church whose figures in the same era as set to
fall from 70% to 35%. Barna foresees a three way split in USA religious experience
between church, arts/media and alternative religious communities.
Detweiler (2008) 18

Movies serve religious functions for filmgoers, offering them time for
contemplation, a change in perspective, a glimpse of the divine.
Detweiler (2008) 30

we must be willing to explore the hidden spaces of our psyche, to
peer below the surfaces weve constructed the movies offer such
promises every single day. We follow conflicted characters through
confusing situations. They emerge either weary and wiser or dead
and defeated. The challenges confronting fictional characters
become a vicarious opportunity for viewers to forge their character.
We may discover our blind spots, recognize the limits of
individualism, and acknowledge our need for community. What a
sweet deal! We invest two hours in the dark in exchange for
moments of levity and clarity, a shift in perspective, signs of life.
Detweiler (2008) 22


I see mass entertainment as a form of Mass, a common grace.
Detweiler (2008) 31

How Do Films Achieve (Spiritual) Impact

Film is an immersive experience (they tell story through script, image and music) that
invites reflection and conversation (often film-going is a communal experience that
leads to discussion).

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Film art and spirituality

The opposite of spirituality is not materiality but superficiality.

Art as seeing otherwise, seeing deeper, seeing beyond, attending to more than
surface.

As a creative God brought forth light form the darkness so we wade
into dark, chaotic films in search of the sacred. The Spirit of God
that hovered over the waters in Genesis continues to stir up
creativity. Detweiler (2008) 10

Despite the entertainment industrys efforts to reduce filmmaking
to formula, the restless longings of artists and audiences still
gravitate towards creative ways to explore ultimate questions.
Detwiler (2008) 28

Film the image and spirituality

Film and the art of painting with light. (Ref to session on Spirituality and Visual Art)

Iconography as a doorway a glimpse of the invisible in the visible, in the
depths of the seen. Loughlin (2005) 303

Film story and spirituality

Like parables stories have power to help us see differently, particularly potent
because they work obliquely

Takes us into another world from which to view our own world with new eyes or
into our own world from a different perspective

cf Stephen Fry signing off as presenter of the 2002 BAFTA awards (matter of
months after 9/11)

Now more than ever we need film. The forces of darkness, ignorance and
hate so horribly busy of late, may never be defeated by something so
apparently trivial as cinema but stories freely told by free film-makers
enrage them. So all of you out there dont stop, dont ever stop. Every story
you tell, whether blockbuster, comedy, intimate vision or wild work of the
imagination strikes a blow for freedom at home and around the world.

Film music and spirituality

Ref back to Kes, suggest searching out films with option to remove soundtrack and notice
the difference
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Musics accessibility, ineffability, elusiveness, allusivness.

Musics ability to connect, to integrate individually (our mind, emotions, body we
feel, we delight in patterns, memory and anticipation, we tap our feet), socially (with
other people as we make and listen to music), ecologically (with our environment in
its general physicality and in its ability to evoke e.g. animals and other physical
features) temporally (enables us simultaneously to be in the moment and to
transform our perception of time)

Critique of Film As An Inadequate or Inappropriate

Spiritual Medium
Film is mere escapism
Isnt cinema just escapism, fantasy rather than myth?

Tolkiens essay On Fairy Stories as validating the escape from the everyday that
audiences seek in cinema not as worthless escapism but as an expression of an
entirely laudable longing for joy and miraculous grace.

[Surely the issue of whether it becomes unhelpful escapism revolves around
whether it is used to avoid the realities of the everyday making no difference to how
we reengage with those realities or whether it is a way of gaining new perspective
or energy that enables renewed life in the real world. [perhaps play with the notion
of the real world and the reel world]]

Key is does it cause us to re-engage with the real world with new eyes and in new
ways? Rather than encouraging us to pretend that the real world is other than it
actually is.

Film is worldly, commercialised, trivial?

It is certainly true of some sections of the church that pop culture, including film, has
typically been the object of both suspicion and criticism; even hostility. It is seen to be
corrupt and corrupting.
Detweiler basis his work on an appeal to and working with General Revelation. He
points to
Egyptian wisdom in Proverbs
Pauls appropriation of Greek poetry written to Zeus in Acts 17.
Art created to honor false gods could contain timeless truth that not
only agrees with out Christian faith but expands our understanding
of God. If the Spirit spoke through the best of Egyptian, Greek, or
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Roman art in biblical times, couldn't the same Spirit still be
speaking through todays art? Detweiler (2008) 16
And again

The same God who spoke through dreams and visions in the Bible
is still communicating through our celluloid dreams the movies.
As the Spirit of God raised up unexpected sources of wisdom during
biblical times, so the same creative Spirit is inspiring actors,
screenwriters and directors today, The relative faith or
righteousness of the artists has no bearing on their ability to
become a conduit for revelatory insights. Detweiler (2008) 29

It is also true of other sections of the church that pop culture is ignored,
disregarded, disdained. It is seen to be trivial and unworthy of serious attention.

In 2000 142.5 million admissions to British cinemas and nrly 600m taken at the UK
box office. Deacey (2005) 6

Religion and pseudo-spirituality still sells. But whether film can attain to
the power of religious parable, to the austerity of the great icons and itself
become the occasion of hierophany, is another matter. Loughlin (2005) 303

It is patently obvious that film can have a profound effect on audiences.

In the light of reader response theories of textual interpretation and
poststructuralist conceptions of meaning it is perfectly legit to take seriously
religious / spiritual responses to films even if it cannot be established that it was the
intention of the director to evoke such a response.

This should not surprise us. Especially if David Hay is right and human beings are
both hard wired to be spiritual and also unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the
traditional God-talk offered by the venerable religious institutions. Such people are
surely inevitably going to express their spiritual nature through the language and
the media of popular culture. This true of both producers and consumers. Perhaps
its worth having a look at what they are saying.

Enduring art emerges from the depths of our human longing and reaches
out in hunger for the divine. Detweiler (2008) 32


God is not always revealed in art in what the Scholastics call the splendor of
beauty or in the glory of which Balthasar speaks. Art may pose the question
of the ultimate goal of human love, rather than give an answer; to this extent
it may evade beauty, or may be beautiful in a painful or anxious or anguished
way. But even such a question, arising from a desiring in darkness rather
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than form the clarity of divine beauty, may be the communication of Gods
love. Richard Viladesau in Detweiler (2008) 41

Film is immoral

To give the history of a wicked life repented of, necessarily requires
that the wicked part should be made as wicked as the real history
of it will bear, to illustrate and give beauty to the penitent part,
which is certainly the best and brightest if related with equal spirit
and life. Daniel Defoe 18C author of Moll Flanders in (Johnston,
2006) 225

It is a contradiction in term to attempt a sinless literature of sinful

men. John Henry Newman in (Johnston, 2006) 225

We need first to appreciate before we appraise
cf The Last Temptation of Christ.

To depict is by no means to approve
cf the Tom Cruise character in Magnolia
cf King David in The Bible

Three Case Studies

1999 the Year that Changed Movies: 6th Sense, The Matrix, American Beauty, Green
Mile, Dogma, Magnolia

The Matrix, dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, 1999

Matrix Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM5yepZ21pI

The most talked about popular blockbuster with patently spiritual/religious themes.
Profound sense of the need of salvation from peril and the waiting for, arrival
and questioning about the prophesied promised one
As X delivers humanity from sin Neo the one leads humanity from bondage to
computers
Trinity, Morpheus, The Oracle, Neo,

Mustnt get carried away though
While Neo must learn a new way of seeing staking his life on the moment of
commitment he also uses some big guns and kicks the shit out the
opposition
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The Wachowski Bros attribute most of its meaning to a link between Budhism and
Mathematics as it addresses explores the relationship between the natural world
and another world that we perceive.

At the very least it asks the question, What is real? and suggests we dont take the
world at face value.

Or is it a matter of simply an example of commercial exploitation of the spiritual -
dressing up escapist fantasies in religious garb.

Perhaps a less obvious but maybe more worthy candidate for film as spiritual
experience is

American Beauty, dir. Sam Mendez, 1999

American Beauty Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q3ltyPJJMQ

Post mortem commentary from middle aged magazine publisher Lester Burnham on
the last year of his life. Questioning the value, significance and depth of his existence.
Offers a parabolic critique of the uptight, superficiality, competitiveness and
materialism of middle class American life. Quits his job and seeks to break out of the
emotional deadness that has gripped him during his pursuit his cultures definition
of the good life.

The Tease is Look Closer

Look Closer - sex - Lola-esque

A puritan would look at [Lester Burnhams] visions of Angela and go, Oh
thats disgusting, a middle-aged man lusting after a young girl like that. I
look at that and I go, You know heres a man who hasnt felt anything for
years, and all of a sudden hes feeling something. Thats not disgusting. His
choice not to follow through with it redeems him, because shes not really the
goal, shes the knock on the door. MoM 170

Look closer also asks us to look beneath the perfect suburban family in other
words it exposes the reality of sin speaking truth rather than colluding with
hypocrisy calling us to expose the delusion of the worlds ultimate dream. White
washed tombs comes to mind.

Look closer though ultimately is about the ability to find beauty in the midst of
ugliness the Beauty of Lesters almost luminous blood, the video of a paper bag
blowing in the wind Ricky Fitt (Lesters Neighbour) is the key character it his

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ability to see beauty around him despite a repressive father, his own closest
homosexuality and the murder of the man next door.

So Much Beauty Bag http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDXjnW3nIWg

Detweiler describes his book as an effort to reunite what the Enlightenment
separated: beauty, goodness and truth Detweiler (2008) 17

NB you have to look it takes fifteen minutes

While walking home from school, Ricky and Jane are passed by a funeral
procession. Ricky says, When you see something like that, its like God is
looking right at you, and if youre really careful, you can look right back. Jane
asks, What do you see? Ricky responds simply, Beauty. MoM 170

Lester Burnham himself towards the end of the film

I guess I could be pretty pissed off at what happened to me but its hard to
stay mad when theres so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like Im
seeing it all at once and its too much my heart fills up like a balloon thats
about to burst and then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold on to it
and then it flows through me like rain and I cant feel anything but gratitude
for every single moment of my stupid little life.

We may have reservations as his redemption comes through an embrace of
essentially adolescent hedonism but that it raises spiritual questions and may
indeed provoke spiritual questing is surely beyond doubt.

Bibliography & Filmography

Christianson E., Francis P. & Telford W. (2005) Cinema Divinite: religion theology and
The Bible in film. London: SCM

Deacy C. (2005). Faith in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate

Detweiler, C. (2008). Into the Dark: Seeing in the sacred in the top films of the 21st
century. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Detweiler, C., & Taylor, B. (2003). A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Popular
Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Geronimi, C., Jackson, W., & Luske, H. (Directors). (1953). Peter Pan [Motion Picture].

Hand, D. D. (Director). (1942). Bambi [Motion Picture].

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Luther King House MAS3 Spirituality in Contemporary Culture. Spirituality and Film
Hand, D. (Director). (1937). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [Motion Picture].

Johnston, R. K. (2006). Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue (2nd Edition
ed.). GrandRapids, MI: Baker Academic.

King, M. (2014). Luminous: The Spiritual Life on Film. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Loach, K. (Director). (1969). Kes [Motion Picture].

Loughlin G. Film and Spirituality in Sheldrake P. (ed.). (2005). The New Dictionary
of Christian Spirituality. London: SCM.

Lyden, J. C. (Ed.). (n.d.). Retrieved July 1, 2013 from Journal of Religion and Film:
http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/

Marsh C. and Ortiz G. (eds.). (1997). Explorations in Theology and Film. Oxford:
Blackwell.

May J. (ed.). (1992). Image and Likeness: religious vision in American film classics.
Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press

Mendez, S. (Director). (1999). American Beauty [Motion Picture].
Pekinpaah, S. (Director). (1971). Straw Dogs [Motion Picture].

Wachowski, A., & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (1999). The Matrix [Motion Picture].


Detweiler and Taylor respond differently.

We celebrate the rise of pop culture as among the most profound provocative, exciting
expressions of legitimate spiritual yearning in at least one hundred years. We turn to pop
culture in our efforts to understand God and to recognize the twenty-first-century face of
Jesus.

We embrace pop culture because we believe it offers a refreshing, alternative route to a
Jesus who for many has been domesticated, declawed and kept under wraps. As the
Christian church has often adopted the role of moral policemen, pop culture has assumed the
role of spiritual revolutionary, subverting and frustrating those religious authorities who
desperately cling to black-and-white answers in an increasing gray world. 9


Religious ideas and imagery float throughout our world form the cross around Madonnas
neck in her, Like a Prayer video to the phrase In God we trust on American currency. Pop
culture returns the favor, offering God prominent billing, from Luryn Hills sublime song To
Zion to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty. .... Jesus makes regular guest appearances in all
arenas of popular culture, including irreverent television shows such as South Park. 15

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Learning to look closer will take time; it will take work; it wil take patience. But those
willing to engage pop culture with eyes wide open may find themselves pleasantly surprised
and spiritually energized. 16

Were here to confirm what we all inherently sense that something big, brash, and
shockingly spiritual is happening. 17

They offer 4 reasons theologically to study pop culture:
1. it shape and reflects who we are as human beings
2. it is already being studied others
3. it serves as the lingua franca of postmodernity
4. it is a mistake for academia only to engage with culture from above

Where are the arenas in which contemporary spirituality is engaging in its searching after and
stumbling across the more that is the object of all spiritual reaching out. We shouldnt overlook the
received loci such as churches and other religions. We have noticed in studying Linda Woodheads
research in Kendal that shops, therapists and self help groups are also likely habitats. The suggestion
here is that one the most significant ball parks of spiritual exploration and expression is popular
culture in general and film in particular.

21st century film makers will be tempted to blast us with visions of Apocalypse Now. But enduring
works of art will dare to remind us that Its a Wonderful Life. Filmmakers may prove humble enough
to hear the creative whispers of their Creator, but its up to audiences to learn to look closer, to
discover and support films that offer truly moving images, that nudge us closer to one another and
closer to the divine. MoM 183

The first demand that any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive.
Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you
deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.) C.
S. Lewis An Experiment in Criticism MoM 7

Deacy

it is possible to read film as a viable and fertile repository of religious significance in
contemporary, western culture. 4

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