On Impacting Society through Movies
C. S. Lewis said it best. Just substitute “motion
pictures” or “television” for “books”, and “Warner Brothers”, “Fox”, “Paramount
Pictures” – you name the studio – for “Penguin” and “Thinker’s Library” in the
selection from the C. S. Lewis classic God in the Dock below.
(Emphasis in bold red is mine. Text [in brackets] is my
interpolation. Think about it!)
While we are
on the subject of science [movies], let me digress for a moment. I believe that any
Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science
[or write or produce movies] may do
much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up
against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of
view for half an hour or so; but the moment that have gone away from our lecture
or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite
position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread
success is simply impossible. We must attack the
enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books
[movies] about Christianity, but more
little books [movies] by Christians on
other subjects – with their Christianity latent. You can see this most
easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be
shaken by any book [movies] on Hinduism.
But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or
Astronomy [see a movie], we found that its
implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written
[movies produced] in direct defense of
Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic
assumptions in all the other books [movies].
In the same way, it is not books [movies]
on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if,
whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science
[wanted to see a movie], the best work on the
market was always by a Christian. The first step to the re-conversion of this
country is a series [of movies], produced
by Christians, which can beat the Penguin and the Thinkers Library
[Fox, Paramount, New Line, Warner, etc.]
on their own ground. Its Christianity would have to be latent, not explicit: and
of course its science [story structures]
perfectly honest. Science [Movie content]
twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and
folly. But I must return to my immediate subject.
Our business
is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow)
in the particular language of our own age [— movies].
The bad preacher [film maker, screenwriter, director, producer] does exactly the
opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the
traditional language of Christianity. … The core of his thought is merely
contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching
[movie] must be timeless at its heart and
wear a modern dress.
-- C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, Grand Rapids, MI: 1970: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, page 93-94.
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