Comments on a post by The Native Tourist
Dave, I agree. Check out my "three cents worth" on my blog.
I have to confess,
I just don't understand your perspective on this at all. I do find it a bit distasteful that people are going ape over the movie (especially since it has been, so far, just over the idea of the movie rather than the film itself). But I fail to see why a Jesus movie is more a violation than a movie about any other person or animal or rock or piece of wood.
I also find it odd that the big article by Andy Webb on the film compared it negatively to the older Jesus film, and then goes on to say movies about Jesus shouldn't be made at all.
Is it sinful to visually imagine the events of the bible (the gospels in particular) as they are being read?
Help me out here.
Marshall McLuhan made a distinction between what he called "cold" and "hot" media - one (I can't remember which) like reading a book and "picturing" the action in one's mind induces active participation, while the the other - like watching a play or movie - is passive. Ironically, the one which is passive makes more of an impact - or so argued McLuhan.
[part 2]
Yet even when we imagine something (like the action taking place in a bible story), it has a certain vagueness/ambiguity which adds to its power. The power is lost when I see a specific concrete image. Using images - rather than being satified with "mere" words - indicates a kind of intellectual laziness and imaturity (this is the thrust of Kuypers arguments in 'Calvinism and Art'). I suspect it also points to much of the weakness of contemporary preaching as well - weak, dull exegesis fails to bring out the power of the written word. Add to this a shift from a word oriented to an image oriented culture (see Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death or Ellul's Humiliation of the word) which I think demonstrates that we have lost virtually all of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Purhaps we can speak of the "paganization" of Christianity.
There's also a tremendous set-up here for making the case for a comprehensive Reformed worldview, particularly in art. Evangelicals and Catholics [Togheter :)] hear "no pictures of Jesus," and think "no religious art." A Reformed perspective should be correcting them: No pictures of Jesus, and all art is religious.
Right, Russ. This is Kuyper's point in the art section of Lectures on Calvinism. Art was liberated when it was removed from its liturgical "prison". The flowering of art which began in Holland and moved forward with the likes of Constable and the Impressionists all owes itself to the powerful realization that art can be great without being "religious". I am only myself beginning to grasp the power of what the Dutch achieved, even though I have enjoyed their art immensely for 20+ years.
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