This article originally appeared in print journal Nov./Dec. 2000.
You might find wise words and plentiful insights from three recently released books that examine the following issues: 1) the ways entertainment has overtaken real life in America, 2) the spiritual impact of the movies, and 3) the role philosophical nihilism plays in popular culture.
Awash in Entertainment
If you’ve ever watched a TV news broadcast, or followed a presidential debate, or even attended a “worship” service at a seeker-sensitive megachurch, you may have found yourself wondering about the increasingly fine line between real life and entertainment. If you’re looking for greater insight into such questions, you’ll find plenty in Neal Gabler’s brilliant 1998 book, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (recently released in a Vintage paperback).
I used to rave about Neil Postman’s 1985 masterpiece of cultural analysis, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which was hailed not only by me but by numerous big-name thinkers and critics. But now, Postman shares top honors in my bookshelf with Gabler, who writes about our “entertainment-driven, celebrity-oriented society,” saying such a culture’s primary standard of value “is whether or not something can grab and then hold the public’s attention.”
We used to find entertainment up on the stage or dancing across the flickering TV screen. But now, “the techniques of theater” have permeated politics, religion, education, literature, commerce, warfare and everything else, transforming all of these fields into “branches of show business, where the overriding objective is getting and satisfying an audience.”
An entertainment ethos now dominates America—Gabler demonstrates this trend with solid reasoning, compelling examples, and an entertaining writing style.
Parts of the book are grim and depressing, but this should be expected from a book saying that our culture, like our popular entertainment, is all about “gratification rather than edification, indulgence rather than transcendence, reaction rather than contemplation, escape from moral instruction rather than submission to it.”
As I read this masterful analysis, I hoped Gabler would give me suggestions for applying his ideas somewhere in the final chapter of Life the Movie. Instead Gabler defers, saying “value judgments” should be made by individual readers. Still, here are two concrete thoughts about how you and your group can respond to the onslaught of entertainment kids experience in today’s world:
1. As we’ve learned from people who’ve studied the differences between baby boomers (who’re in charge of most evangelical churches) and younger, emerging generations (Gen-Xers and postmoderns), it’s clear that many younger believers hunger for a more mystical connection to God than boomers who run seeker-sensitive, entertainment-driven churches. Make sure you find ways to help your kids find and experience this vital connection with God.
2. Think of creative ways to get your kids away from entertainment, if possible. Organize events that expose them to the handiwork of God in the great outdoors. Organize meetings that don’t use any prerecorded video or music and instead rely on kids creating their own music or drama. And finally, consider encouraging your students to go on a temporary “fast” from the media for purposes of slowing down their hectic lives and listening to the quiet voice of God.
Mad about the Movies
We’ve all probably heard somebody say something like this: “Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had far more transcendent, life-changing moments in movie theaters than in church.”
But when the speaker is Ken Gire, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, a former student staffer for Young Life, a former writer for Charles Swindoll’s Insight for Living ministry, and a best-selling author of more than a dozen acclaimed evangelical books, including Incredible Moments with the Savior, it’s time to sit up and listen.
Gire’s latest book is called Reflections on the Movies (Cook), and in its moving pages, Gire expresses his belief that film can usher viewers into the very presence of God. “A moment that touches us, whether it’s a moment at church or a moment at the movies, can be a means of grace whereby God speaks to us,” he writes. “No matter how distant the heart or how dark the theater, even there God can find us, touch us, speak to us.”
The book, which features Gire’s thoughts on film appreciation as well as his responses to 14 specific movies, describes the many ways movies touch us: “They have taken us somewhere in time, back to the future, and around the world in eighty days. They have taken us out of Africa, on a trip to Bountiful, and to Austrian hills that were alive with the sound of music. They have taken us to the jungles of Vietnam, the beaches of Normandy, and the ‘hoods of south central Los Angeles. They have taken us over the rainbow, under the volcano, and into the perfect storm. They have taken us on a voyage to the bottom of the sea, a journey to the center of the earth, and to a galaxy far, far away.”
If you or someone you know still has nagging doubts about whether pop culture is worth serious consideration, give Gire a chance to convince you otherwise.
The films Gire explores at length in Reflections on the Movies include Camelot and The Elephant Man; as well as these titles: Bambi, Amadeus, Field of Dreams, Ordinary People, Saving Private Ryan, Smoke, Hoop Dreams, The Dead Poets Society, Amistad, Schindler’s List and The Wizard of Oz.
Philosophical Nihilism
I was looking forward to diving into Thomas Hibbs’ recent book Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from ‘The Exorcist’ to ‘Seinfeld’ (Spence Publishing). But instead of joyfully swimming around in a deep ocean of provocative ideas, I found myself hitting my head on the bottom of the author’s shallow and poorly articulated arguments.
Most mystifying was the reluctance of the author, a philosophy professor at Boston College and author of academic books on Thomas Aquinas, to provide a concise definition of “nihilism” (he finally tries, I think, on page 136). Also curious is his tendency to conflate nihilism with outright evil (or what he calls “demonic anti-providence”). As for “Seinfeld,” the TV show mentioned on the book’s cover, it is briefly and inadequately explored beginning on page 159!
If it’s a thoughtful analysis of our current cultural malaise you want, stick with Gabler, Postman, or Stanley Grenz’s excellent A Primer on Postmodernism. t
