This may be over-pessimistic, but I think that the story-tellers most capable of captivating people with the Christian narrative aren’t Christians. This isn’t to say that Christians haven’t had their moments. Every story by my girlfriend Flannery O’Connor is, in its own way, like the gospel in miniature.
But in popular culture today there are a couple of really great storytellers who do seem to tell the Christian story better than most Christians can manage, movie-makers whose secular movies are better renderings of the gospel, unbelieving singer-songwriters whose songs are better songs of praise.
My current musical obsession is The Mountain Goats. Why does David Dark say about them, as he does about Radiohead, I don’t only like them, I believe them?
In short, it has to do with the way that their songs create reality. In some ways, yes, it’s a “better” reality, but in many ways, it’s a better reality that is only seen with the eyes of hope as they strain through the fog, violence, abuse, and failure of what seems to be a hopeless world.
The video for “This Year” begins with a grizzly indication of hacked and murdered bodies. And these dead are raised to sing, “I will make it through this year if it kills me”–and, the proclamation that “there will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year.”
To alter slightly an introductory moment in Cormack McCarthy’s The Road: “If that [song] ain’t the very word of God, God never spoke.”
Then, of course, there are the Coen Brothers. Watch Raising Arizona, Ladykillers, or O Brother Where Art Thou and you find yourself in a world where the force of divine power overcomes not only evil, but doubt and cynicism as well–a world where the God of the Bible is at work even if apart from the expectations of the protagonists.
This scene from O Brother is typically brilliant:
The set-up for the singing of “Man of Constant Sorrows” is an introduction of the “band” as “Jordan Rivers and the Soggy Bottom Boys.” The “soggy bottom boys” are thus because they’re fresh off their own baptisms. And, the songs they sing are “songs of salvation to salve the soul.” The “Man of Constant Sorrows” song is framed within this appeal to the characters as those who are living out the biblical story. Examples could be multiplied.
Reflecting on these two loves of mine, the unbelieving John Darnielle and the once-upon-a-time orthodox Jewish Coens, I’m struck that both have a sense of telling the story that is often absent in professedly Christian film making and music.
Just a few thoughts on why especially evangelical Protestant Christianity is often behind the 8 ball on this one:
- We tend to equate Christianity with theology rather than stories. Theology makes for really dull songs, and really boring movies.
- We tend to hold scripture so highly that we admire it by repeating it rather than by imitating its often ruthless engagements with God and the world.
- We have tended to create alternative Christian niches for our art, which means that we have had to be overtly Christian in expected ways in order to produce products acceptable to the niche.
- Due to 3, I probably don’t listen to enough of the Christian-world music or watch enough of its movies to know that my assessment is totally off base and that there’s as good stuff being done in that world but I’m just missing it.
- People who don’t have to sell light aren’t afraid to tell stories about the dark. But without the movement from one to the other, the stories of redemption we do tell are thin, even saccharine.
I agree that this is mostly true today (though I think writers like Marilynne Robinson should be noted, as well as how bad many non-Christian artists are, too). But not so sure about previous ages–would Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. have the lasting power they do if they had not been so deeply influenced by the Christian story?
Great question. And, in part, I think it’s important to recognize that both these artists have been deeply influenced by the Christian story as well.
Danielson and Sufjan Stevens are two artist that you should check out. Sufjan tells amazing stories and Danielson is weirdly awesome.
A great story telling group is, “The Lost Dogs,” consisting of Terry Scott Taylor, Mike Roe, Steve Hindalong, and Derri Dougherty.
i just read this article with our staff from mark heard about being in the “christian industry” sort of back when there was no either or. your post was a nice follow up. might be of some interest.
http://mhlp.rru.com/image.html
We can’t tell good stories because modern Christianity is sanitized of tensions . Stories narrate events to heighten and resolve tensions. We are wired to delight in stories just as we are wired to delight in the heightening and resolution of tensions in sound, which is music.
But modern american christianity is marketed as tension-free. We no longer communicate the character of God by recounting an unfolding of events, but with propositional truths and certitudes. Woe to us if our salvation is delayed for three days because our stories and our art doesn’t prepare us for dealing with it. Consider a Kinkaid painting. Or can you imagine hearing anything that wasn’t expectedly encouraging and familiarly positive on christian radio?
thank you for this. i loved it.
@Scott, their remains many great stories from Christians these days, full of tensions. But I understand your point . Too often christian films fall under the category of either exploitation (i.e. Thief in the Night) or banal/sentimental (i.e. Fireproof)
For your consideration:
http://www.nccbuscc.org/movies/d/dark_knight.shtml
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482463/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Hansen_(novelist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Peter_Blatty
http://bit.ly/hauV7
and of course, Rocky Balbosa
Granted these are all catholic writers, but it’s a good start.
Bill,
Thanks for the links! I’ll enjoy chasing these up.
You are right, there are great Christian artist. We daily immerse ourselves in the grand archetypal story and all its sub-narratives. Christians should be most able to frame our own stories in the hope-resurrection template that resonates in the bones of all humanity. I share Daniel’s lament that inexplicably american Christian culture seems untrained.
Scott,
I share your lament. My own thought is that the dearth of American Christian art may come from our Puritan heritage. We are so timid to even think about authentic life, all it’s swear words and edginess that we rarely express reality in our fiction or art work. Maybe if evangelicals had a better grip on the theology of suffering we might see more depth to American Christian fiction as well.
…their remain? yuck. I meant, there remains, of course.
I would venture to say that evangelical Protestant Christianity is often behind the 8 ball because most evangelic Protestant Christians don’t know the Christian story. For many, the Gospel story doesn’t start with Adam or Israel but with Jesus dying to save the individual from his own personal “demon.” If the story of Christianity is just the story of your own personal encounter with Jesus apart from any historical considerations, you don’t really have much to tell.