Entertainment values

Is bad news entertainment? Perhaps it is entertainment only to the extent that the bad news is happening somewhere far away. When it comes closer to home it gets less entertaining. The idea of Ebola becoming a reality here in the UK, or of the imminent possibility of a terrorist attack on our streets or public buildings, changes the way we see things. It also begs the question of what it is we want from entertainment.

Does entertainment need to provide a means to escape from whatever grim realities are around us, or which affect our individual lives? This does not seem all that likely, given the number of films and television dramas which are anything but escapist. Take the new series of Homeland, for example. One would like to think that the plot and action are too bad to be true – not that they are in any sense artistically bad, only that they give us what we are used to seeing every evening on the news with a bit extra. We are accustomed to bad news and have grown to expect it, so perhaps the only entertainment which is bound to be a financial success, at least with TV and film, needs to be bad news.

At the entirely opposite end of the entertainment spectrum are the kind of films and programmes which entertain by taking us back to a world when even bad things don’t seem so bad, at least not when they are cleaned up a bit for us 21^st century viewers. Consider Downton Abbey, for example. Unless you were poor and ‘in service’, or had committed a social sin, like having a child out of wedlock, life was predictable and secure – and even quite pretty. This is a brief and perhaps slightly unfair description of what those of us who are glued to Downton on Sunday evenings thoroughly enjoy. Downton  provides us with a temporary respite from the realities of today, even if the realities of yesterday are somewhat sanitised. At the same time, it is a salutary reminder of how unreal life could become if enough people were to buy into a delusory socio-political scenario pertaining to a ‘better’ past. Such beguiling scenarios are not difficult to create, as we are seeing not only in Downton, but  in the rapid and alarming rise of UKIP.

UKIP’s rise in popularity has, of course, nothing in common with Downton Abbey. While its leader’s earlier gaffes and old world bonhomie almost qualify as entertainment, recent by-election victories suggest that UKIP might yet emerge as a far more disturbing reality in the sphere of English politics and needs to be taken seriously. It is disturbing because UKIP profits from fear, ignorance and a degree of political incompetence on the part of the main political parties and works all three to its advantage. In other words, it tells people what they think they want to hear. Don’t all political parties do that? I hear you say. Possibly. But the fact is that we tend to believe who and what we want to believe, provided they either make us feel secure and safe, or promise wealth or power of some kind to the individual. This bears some relation to the way in which both the media and the viewing public seem to be confusing entertainment with reality, and possibly missing out on something important as well.

One of the most challenging realities facing us at present is that of religious faith. Faith is a reality not only because it plays such an obvious part in making peace and alleviating suffering on the one hand and, on the other, in creating or prolonging existing conflicts, but because it carries in its ‘DNA’ life and truth for humanity. Good religion, real faith, enables us to become the people we were always meant to be. This is why Christianity has enormous entertainment value because at the heart of the Christian faith is the idea of relatedness, relatedness between human beings and their vital relationship with God. On this latter relationship everything else depends.

The Christian faith has much to say to us through the medium of film, whether or not a film is overtly religious. While there have been blockbuster films, as well as musicals with a Christian theme, I do not think many of them take us much further than superficial entertainment. I say this despite the fact that I came back to faith partly as a result of seeing Jesus Christ Superstar. Since that time, the late 60’s in New York, there has been a considerable resurgence of interest in films with a Christian message, and biblical films especially. I do not think this interest is waning. In fact biblical films and stage productions are growing in popularity, even if within mainly Christian circles. But they still need to touch a wider audience.

Some almost do, but not quite. Take Noah, one of the most recent biblical film releases. Wonderful effects and some compelling performances, but I did not come away from it feeling that my life had been changed, or that it was saying more to the world about the human condition in relation to God than is already being said, and sometimes better said, through secular films. In fact, most good films do not have a religious agenda at all, and yet they often have something to say about the human condition and sometimes, implicitly, about God. The Day After Tomorrow springs to mind, despite its dramatic weaknesses. These films speak of a reality which has to do with the stark choices we are faced with concerning good and evil, light and darkness and with human destiny itself.

Biblical films need to mirror something of this reality as it is for us today. They can do this to a certain extent by telling the old stories with the help of sophisticated special effects. The more these effects mirror the realities we witness daily on the news, the more entertaining the film will be. But these realities, terrifying as they are, are by no means the whole picture.  Something more needs to be said.

To this end, much could yet be done to connect Christianity and the bible with other faiths. In the ‘end times’ we are promised that the tree of life, which is the Cross, is for ‘the healing of the nations’. So if we are to read the signs of the times correctly, films will need to widen their frame of reference when they are dealing with the bible, or with any other faith text, so as to allow us to see the whole picture, the reality of good and evil as it is played out on the world stage today.

Good and evil are more nuanced than ever. We know so much more than we did when the bible was written, although the work of biblical scholars suggests that the editors of the bible were wise enough to realise that this would be the case. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and knew at once that good could be used to evil ends. In other words, they knew and both relished and feared, their own propensity for what the bible calls sin. Sin translates into selfishness, greed, the lust for power and ultimately hatred itself. Nowhere is this more true than in the context of religion. The sins of religion are therefore more subject to judgment than any others. Could this be a new and more challenging area for biblical films to focus on in the future?