Hollywood Does Not Equal Evil
My friend was hurt the way any missionaries would be hurt if their efforts were derided and ignored by the broader Church. First of all, the claim is simply not true. Sexual dysfunction among God’s people predates the electronic media age by a few dozen centuries. See our unequivocally R-rated Bible for more. But more than this, my writer friend was upset because this kind of scapegoating of the media ultimately does more harm than good. It is a self-righteous, defeatist addiction for many Christians that has only resulted in keeping us on the sidelines in the popular culture.
From a pastoral standpoint, a posture of angry and fearful criticism is bad evangelization strategy. The Church desperately needs artist-missionaries to roll up their sleeves and enter into the popular culture as holy leaven. But until we as a Church change our rhetoric, our children will not feel permission or enthusiasm about answering a call to be artists. As my friend noted, “We need for the People of God to stop acting as if “Hollywood” and “evil” are synonymous. It is SO unfair to the Christians who are working to change the industry from within. It is hard enough to show up here every day without having to constantly hear about how evil I am!”
This is not to say that there are not plenty of immoral offerings coming out of Hollywood. There are, but there is also much good and we need to help the industry distinguish. Continuing with my friend’s rant, “If you mean MTV, say MTV. If you mean porno movies, say that. Don’t say ‘entertainment industry’ and blanket everyone in the media as being bad guys. Do not tell me that episodes of Judging Amy are encouraging anyone to sexually abuse a child!”
We Need the Media
Since Vatican II, the message from the Magisterium is that Christians need to infiltrate the arts and media, infusing them with a Gospel worldview. There have been a spate of recent ecclesial documents on the topic including John Paul II’s heartfelt Letter to Artists, the statements Ethics in Social Communications and Ethics in Advertising from the Pontifical Council for Social Communication, and the interesting call for a comprehensive Church strategy in media Towards a Pastoral Approach to Culture issued by the Pontifical Council for Culture.
The consensus of all these statements is that human beings need the arts because they are the best medium to express mystery, and God is mystery. Big truths only come to us in journeys, as we ruminate our way from paradox to depth. Artists cajole us into setting out on their finely crafted journeys where we may find what Joseph Conrad called, “that kernel of truth for which [we] had forgotten to ask.”
Still, I am continually encountering Christians who seethe in a dark fury against those who work in the arts. There is a sense of having been let down by painters and musicians and filmmakers and writers, as though artists should somehow have been exempt from acting out the errors of post-modernism. In truth, which of the other professions could stand up to the same standard of having failed society for which Hollywood is constantly berated? Certainly not the medical profession, which has been on the front lines of implementing the Culture of Death. Not the legal profession, which has made the pursuit of justice an ancillary distraction from its principal agenda of litigious greed. The educational profession? The sciences? The corporate Church? Don’t even get me started on career politicians.
Winning Them Over
Further, too many religious people have decided that to change the entertainment industry for the good, we have to replace people in the business who are ungodly with those who are godly. Good programs, they reason, can only come from good people, so we need to exchange “us” for “them.” A more pastoral vision begins with the certainty that God could have the entertainment industry tomorrow if He wanted it. “Success” for the Church in the arts should not be measured in how many TV shows or movies we are able to get produced, but rather in how faithful we Christians are in bearing the presence and love of Jesus to those in the industry with whom we work.
Our task is to make ourselves one with the creative people and decision makers in the industry, so as to change their hearts and ultimately change the projects to which they are attracted. The Church needs a strategic program to send into the industry, a continual stream of professionally trained artists who, as followers of Christ, understand themselves as apostles of love and self-donation. They will work in the midst of the industry, bringing to it hearts of prayer, and examples of faith. The excellence of the work they do, united to a holy life, will be a much more powerful witness than all the angry boycotts and protest letters we could ever muster. The goal is not to replace the secular people in Hollywood, but to win them over.
Barbara Nicolosi teaches screenwriting to aspiring Catholic writers at the acclaimed Act One: Writing for Hollywood. You may email her at [email protected].
(Originally published in LIGUORIAN Magazine, One Liguori Drive, Liguori, MO, 63057.)
