Big Love v EWTN
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, April 22, 2010 12:00 PM
Here’s a firecracker from Catholic screenwriter and Pepperdine professor Barbara Nicolosi.
In an interview about Christians in the arts she says:
“The saddest realities to look at are not Hustler magazine and Big Love. Much more tragic is what you find on EWTN and CBN, because these things are devoid of creativity and devoid of respect for the audience. They are banal. They may be produced with the best of intentions, but they have no sense of the appropriateness of the art form, of using the medium to its full potential.
Sad though it is, you would never call the Church the patron of the arts today. Never. You would be laughed down.”
I cannot agree with the first statement in any objective sense, simply because EWTN brings people to God and that magazine alienates them from him and themselves.
The global impact of EWTN as a catechist to millions and instrument of conversion or reversion to the faith is undeniable.
In the United States, certainly, EWTN at its inception was an instrument of hope and vehicle of authentic Catholic doctrine at a time when parish life was much less healthy than it is today (without denying that some of us may still be struggling in parishes where Catholic identity is weak—let’s not go there for purposes of this conversation). It makes the universal church more present to us by carrying papal liturgies, broadcasting pilgrimages and world youth days, and encouraging prayer.
I think the comparison is unfair to EWTN because it seems to understand itself as an instrument of catechesis rather than a work of art. Perhaps she means only to compare EWTN’s dramatic offerings to other dramas.
I doubt Nicolosi would fear plopping a child down in front of EWTN given a choice between that and a pornographic magazine.
Having thus defended EWTN, though, in spite of her deliberately inflammatory means of drawing attention to her point, I agree completely with Nicolosi’s longstanding criticism of contemporary Christianity, especially Catholic Christianity: that it has radically abdicated its understanding of the power of beauty; and since beauty might be the only argument for God the people of our time are actually open to, that means we are largely failing to tell the Christian story to the world.
One proof is the utter biblical illiteracy of our young people. It’s not simply that they have no faith, they don’t even have the basic stories for use as literary allusions.
With a group of twenty-somethings not long ago, I threw out an introductory comment, “Well, you all know the covenant with Abraham…” They just looked at me. I said, “You know, the sacrifice of Abraham…” This was a group of twenty-somethings [who] did not know what I was talking about.
She is asked about the difference between “Hollywood” values and “heartland” values, and you can sense her impatience with the question. It’s the question of a Puritan, not an evangelist. Do we want to reach people in Hollywood or just judge them?
not to get myself burned in effigy, but Christians feel as alienated from Hollywood as Hollywood people feel watching EWTN or CBN. Hollywood has a value of excellent production value, of talent, and the pagan world absolutely believes in talent, this mysterious gift that comes from they-know-not-where. We know where it comes from; they don’t know where it comes from, but they believe in it.
The Church does not believe in talent anymore. We think the most important thing is that everyone feels welcome. So we sit at church and suffer through Doris and Stan, who can’t sing, because we don’t want to be mean. They would never get a job in Hollywood, because Hollywood has integrity about the beautiful. Or if it’s not “the Beautiful” in the classical sense, at least, they value the non-lame.
So when you speak of a tension of values, well, there is the value of the Beautiful, which Hollywood understands and the Church does not, and then there are the values specifically of what is good for human beings. What is it that leads them to their fulfillment, their ultimate destiny, fulfilling their nature? Those things are missing, content-wise, in what you’re seeing in a lot of the media.
But in the end, which is more harmful: true words cast in an ugly frame, or untrue words cast in a beautiful frame? I think Hollywood will get people into heaven faster. Even if they have the message wrong, people in the end will turn off some of that. What will really impact them will be the harmony, the wholeness, the completeness of a work.
So for example, a show like Friends, which might make light of pornography, is ultimately not as dangerous because it’s very well-produced, well-acted, well-written. It’s funny. It works as a whole. Whereas you can have a minister in front of a Bible on CBN with a bad toupee, lit garishly, and saying lovely things, but the message is that Christianity is uncreative, banal, boring, undynamic, and irrelevant.
So I’m deliberately not giving the easy answer. One of the things I do in the Church is, whenever Christians ask me to condemn Hollywood, I always condemn the Church. People always ask me if I am surprised by how many gross things Hollywood produces. Being here, and knowing how few people in Hollywood talk to the Living God in any conscious way, I am actually amazed at how much good they do. They do much more profound things than we give them credit for.
I wish she hadn’t taken Friends as an example of the non-banal, as in spite of slick production values I can’t think of anything more banal in content. Perhaps a better example might be a show like Modern Family, which has a highly troubling same-sex partner story-line, but which is well-produced, well-acted, hilarious and very warm. Warmth is a quality usually missing from sitcoms, and the producers and writers of that show are onto something true about family life, even though they don’t share a Christian sense of morality. They write with a clear sense of affection for family life, whereas I can think of other “cleaner” shows that play like a relentless mean-spirited attack on the family. (Unfortunately I wouldn’t let young children watch either.)
Still, I take her point. A story beautifully told penetrates our being in a way that the merely didactic cannot. And when we accept mediocrity from “Christian” art, we are undermining the message of the one who is Beauty itself in a way that someone who is simply telling a different story cannot.
Furthermore, it seems to me in spite of the incredible decay of our culture in the past 30 years, there is a residual layer of Puritanism—fear of the body and the pleasures associated with it—that the Christian community has not shaken off.
The Catholic approach to culture is to encourage what is wholesome from whatever source it comes and to purify what is evil with good. Even our feast days often take their roots from pagan practices that we simply appropriated and filled with Christian content. Christianity doesn’t fear, because we know that genuine truth and genuine beauty cannot contradict faith, as they spring from the same source.
Yet at least in the US Christians often appear to have less a creative culture than a boycott culture. We won’t read that; we won’t see that movie; we get the vapors over cursewords. We’re quick to condemn and slow to patronize. And we gratefully accept a lot of schlock simply because it’s inoffensive. Whereas to truly have an impact on the culture, you have to engage it.
It’s tricky to know how to do that because we have an obligation to protect our own purity and our culture really is in a state of decay in spite of some very encouraging counter-trends. These questions become thornier when we’re raising children and trying to walk the line between raising them in an insular world and destroying their innocence. I don’t think these matters are easy or that I have all the answers.
I just agree with Nicolosi that Christians must engage the culture confident that good is stronger than evil. We have an obligation not to be satisfied with telling the story in a way “good enough” for those who already know and accept it, but in a way that attracts people who deep down want to believe and are seeking. Mediocrity, too, is a way of hiding our light under a bushel basket.
As C.S. Lewis said, genuine art points a finger in the direction of Beauty itself, so that as we look at the work of art, we see as if along a pointed finger, past the work, to God.
My brother told me about a scene from one of the hip cartoon shows—don’t know which one. The kid becomes a Christian rocker, and his dad has to take him aside and say, “Son, you’re not making Christianity better, you’re making rock-n-roll worse.”
Please read the whole interview before flaming Nicolosi; I’ve highlighted her most inflammatory statements.
I am curious if her arguments resonate with you. What do you do at home to develop genuine taste in your kids and fill your own heart with beauty?
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