Why are all "Christian movies" so clean and lame?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Because most Christians are clean and lame.

If anything is problematic with the religion in America, it’s hypocrisy, not adherence.

That's actually a good point. Look at Rand-ites who claim to be Christians yet support gutting every form of government assistance for the poor.

You can’t be a Randist and a Christian. Those two things aren’t possible.

Thank you for coming to this realization.

Speaking of philosophies, I think that Christianity could probably be compatible with both virtue ethics and deontology, and honestly it might qualify as a mix of both depending on which book of the Bible you look at.

The real question is whether you can be a utilitarian thinker and a Christian!

Seems to me they'd be essentially incompatible. Utilitarianism seems to dispense with the very idea of the sacred and any sort of extravagant sacrifice out of love that can't by justified by some calculation.  That is not to say that Christian ethics aren't informed by consequentialism - they should be - but it can't be considered the foundation of ethics.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Also BRTD, do you consider Bruce/Evan Almighty clean and lame?

I only saw Bruce Almighty, a long time ago. It was alright.

[kyc0705]

There was actually an article in Vox a few days ago about the kinds of faith-based movies that audiences respond to: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/19/17136066/i-can-only-imagine-mercyme-movie-box-office-faith-based-gods-not-dead-paul-apostle

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Because most Christians are clean and lame.

If anything is problematic with the religion in America, it’s hypocrisy, not adherence.

That's actually a good point. Look at Rand-ites who claim to be Christians yet support gutting every form of government assistance for the poor.

You can’t be a Randist and a Christian. Those two things aren’t possible.

Thank you for coming to this realization.

Like I said, I genuinely tried. There are a lot of gems in objectivism that people really miss out on. But the broader thought behind the ideology - that all mysteries are solvable, that reason always prevails, etc, simply haven't proved to be true as I've grown older.

I still like her theories on rational selfishness (which I believe exists within the Christian ethos), but I've found the lines between selfishness and selflessness increasingly blurred. For example, you could argue that Jesus "selflessly" sacrificed himself to save our world, or that he "selfishly" did so in order to save his own creation. Both work, frankly.

Of course, most people who abide by Rand's theories are just looking for an intellectual excuse to be assholes. So I don't really even think much of Rand these days, except for when I'm bored, stoned, and in a philosophy mood, in which case I'll go watch her interviews with Donahue and Tom Snyder on YouTube. Overall I still like Rand - her novels were great, her life was hard from the beginning, and as Nathan once said, I think the case for a semi-sympathetic biopic/mini-series can be made. I just found I don't like other Randists.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There was actually an article in Vox a few days ago about the kinds of faith-based movies that audiences respond to: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/19/17136066/i-can-only-imagine-mercyme-movie-box-office-faith-based-gods-not-dead-paul-apostle

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Yeah that's what I don't want. I want a Christian version of Lena Dunham basically.

[kyc0705]

There was actually an article in Vox a few days ago about the kinds of faith-based movies that audiences respond to: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/19/17136066/i-can-only-imagine-mercyme-movie-box-office-faith-based-gods-not-dead-paul-apostle

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Yeah that's what I don't want. I want a Christian version of Lena Dunham basically.

What would that even look like?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Uh, a movie in her style with a Christian theme/message?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It feels so weird to agree with BRTD on a cultural issue.

[HisGrace]

Because good Christian (or Christian-themed) movies aren't marketed towards boring evangelicals as "Christian movies", you won't fill buses of suburban or rural Evangelicals to watch The Passion

IDK, it was one of the highest grossing movies of all time when it came out. Somebody was going to see it, obviously.

[Crumpets]

I tend to think that a movie specifically made to promote any belief or ideology tend to be bad. A good Christian movie is not one that is made as a Christian movie, but a good movie made by someone who is a Christian. Likewise, most "socialist" movies are bad, but there are plenty of good movies that can be viewed through the lens of a Marxist critique. Ditto for feminist films vs. films with a strong feminist message.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I actually saw a play today that while not a comedy kind of fits the bill. It's about a transman who develops ovarian cancer, and develops a friendship with a conservative Christian old woman at a support group also suffering from cancer. She's seeing a hospital chaplain, who is married to the doctor at the hospital treating the transman...except they are both women. He's angry about God and religion from his events earlier in his life and learns the woman basically became estranged from her daughter once her daughter also married a woman. The writer is a transgender former Catholic priest (not Roman Catholic obviously, a liberal schismatic group), so it's not surprising it has that sort of message, and also a call for better access to health care for transpeople.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I actually disagree with the premise of this thread.  I don't even think it's necessarily accurate to say most movies with strong Christian religious themes are necessarily bad.  There are Christian movies which are both legitimately good films, some of which were extremely subversive by the standards of the time period.  

For example, I'd argue that The Exorcist has one of the most explicitly pro-Christian spiritual messages I've ever seen in a film.  The movie is at its core about overcoming the evil in the world (depicted as the devil itself taking possession of an innocent little girl's body in a truly horrific manner) through faith in God.  The main character arc in the movie is Father Karras' transformation from a disillusioned/lapsed Catholic into a true man of God, a change which climaxes in Father Karras successfully confronting the devil by sacrificing his own life to save an innocent child (seems like a clear Christ analogy).  This is not only one of the greatest movies ever made, period; it was also about as subversive and terrifying as you could possibly get with a movie at the time.  Even so, there's a reason the Catholic Church permitted Friedkin to shoot some of the film's scenes on church grounds and that one Catholic priest even accepted an offer to play a minor role in the film.  The people who said it was anti-Christian because Regan stabs herself in the crotch with a crucifix while possessed by the devil completely missed the point imo.  

It's a Wonderful Life (a very different type of Christian film, but one which I'd argue is – for good reason – the definitive Christmas classic) may not seem particularly controversial today, but keep in mind it was made in the mid-40s and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't done so to pay close attention to the pre-third act conflict between Mr. Potter and George Bailey.  Mr. Potter is the archetypical cinematic rogue Capitalist and was basically the trope codifier for that type of character until Gordon Gekko came along.  When It's a Wonderful Life was made, its anti-corporatist, anti-greed message was not only highly controversial, but it led to many folks accusing Frank Capra of being a Communist and arguably damaged his career.  In fact, J. Edgar Hoover considered the film to be "Communist propaganda" and opened an FBI file on Frank Capra specifically due to 1) the film's depiction of Mr. Potter and 2) his belief that the movie's message was incompatible with capitalism.

And of course, there's the fact that – in a 1940s Christmas movie – the main character nearly commits suicide.  That was something folks simply didn't talk about at the time (it was even considered remarkable when Ordinary People dealt with suicide all the way in 1980) and yet here we have a film in 1946 where the protagonist nearly jumps off a bridge to his death.  

The Last Temptation of Christ wasn't a classic like the other two, but it was still an extremely controversial, subversive, risky film that (if memory serves) went where just about no film had ever gone before and depicted Jesus being tempted by sexual fantasies (among other things).  I haven't seen it in quite some time, but I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting.  

For that matter, you can say a lot of things about The Passion of The Christ (among my issues with that movie are the blatant anti-Semitism, the fact that it – imo, no offense to those who disagree – often devolves into torture porn, etc; plus, I just don't think it was a very well-made movie), but I don't think anyone would argue the issue with that movie was it played things too safe  

Now there has been a recent spat of (often direct-to-video) films marketed exclusively to the Christian Coalition crowd, but I'd argue it's far more accurate to call The Exorcist a Christian film than it is to call  something like God's Not Dead or God's Not Dead 2 (I'm gonna pick on them a bit because they're the only films in this subgenre that I've seen, albeit only for "so bad it's good" comedic value).  If the God's Not Dead films are anything to go by, these films are about two things and neither of them are Christianity.  They're about hating the "right" people and the mass-indulgence of a truly remarkable persecution complex.  We never see Christian characters doing things like helping the poor, showing compassion for the less fortunate, or making compelling arguments in support of Christianity (IIRC we barely see the Christian guy's arguments in the Christian vs. obnoxious straw-Athiest "debate" in the first one, probably because the filmmakers didn't care enough to actually think of any).  There's a reason for this: these sorts of movies aren't really about the Christian characters so much as the deliberate hate sinks of anyone who doesn't think the exactly way the target audience does.  

One atheist immediately breaks up with his girlfriend when she tells him she has cancer and won't visit his mother who has Alzheimer's b/c he's an atheist and apparently only Christians aren't complete sociopaths.  Speaking of that character's girlfriend (who is a laughably one note caricature of a #FakeNews liberal blogger), God's Not Dead asks its viewers to basically take an attitude of "if you are liberal then you deserve to get cancer" (or if you are an atheist, you deserve to get hit by a car because...umm...hate the sin, love the sinner or something).  The series hits all the notes you'd expect if Roy Moore had a Fox News show.  There's the spoooooky Muslim who makes his daughter where a hajib and then beats/disowns her when he finds out she listened to a Christian sermon.  The film's chief antagonist is an emotionally abusive, one-note, hyper-narcessistic atheist who is given such weak "arguments" by the writers that even a scarecrow would call him a strawman and who (like all atheists in these sorts of films) can't be an atheist b/c he simply doesn't believe in God; it has to be that he really does believe and just hates God for some reason.  We have the random immigrant who also disowns his son for converting to Christianity.  And of course, there's the "ACLU prosecutor" (whatever that means lol) who always wears all black, randomly goes around telling Christians that he hates "everything you stand for," and literally says at one point "And soon we we will finally be all to prove once and for all that God is...DEAD!  *evil laugh*"  Yes, that is an actual line from one of the movies (I forget which one).  

The point is, I don't consider such movies to really be Christian films.  They exist only to give a certain segment of the country its 90 minutes of hate and I wouldn't call that clean.  I'd just call it hateful and disgusting in a way that doesn't involve swearing or torture porn (every once in a while they slip into that territory from what I've read).  I'm obviously not a Christian, but I'm pretty sure that's not what Christianity is about and I think such films give a bad name to Christians who do take their faith seriously instead of just using it for superficial tribalistic virtue signaling to show how much they hate "the enemy."  Well...that post was much longer than I intended.  Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Fantastic post, Mr. X. I haven't seen the God's Not Dead movies, primarily because they screamed attention whoring and virtue signalling. Aside from that, my only quibbles are minor--I've had this conversation with Nathan before and I recall that Cappra and Stewart were both conservative Republicans, which makes for a very interesting interpretation of the film (I'm sure we can find some Zizek YouTube video where he calls it antisemitic or something). And, call me what you wish, I enjoyed Passion. As for The Last Temptation of Christ, I wasn't a huge fan of it and consider the book (which I did not finish) far superior, but spot on in pointing it out.

I do wonder what the real world views are of the people who make films with overt or heavily-implied Christian themes but do son in "real Hollywood".

[James Monroe]

Children of Men? The Book of Eli?

[AtorBoltox]

A Clockwork Orange