Trite Practices of Hollywood

I've noticed that whenever I watch a movie with a character that is supposed to be a Christian, it often ends up being a fairly clichéd representation, or at least a skewed one.

Many movies I've seen represent Christians as being fundamentalist, judgmental, and often psychotic. For example, in the film Sunshine, one of the characters (the captain of a doomed space flight) is a fundamentalist Christian who is so beholden to his beliefs he will murder his crew to see them through. Somehow, the fact that he screams about God a lot makes him representative of the Christian faith (that's sarcasm folks). The movie There Will Be Blood casts one of its main characters as an off-the-wall Christian type who is, of course, really only seeking for money and power (as a sort of competitor to the main character, Daniel Plainview), not the will of God.

In a slightly different take, I saw The Soloist recently which had a Christian character who wasn't malicious, simply misguided in his efforts to help a mentally ill man. I still felt like this was a damaging stereotype, because he was portrayed as naive, single-minded, and ultimately devoid of any emotional and spiritual depth or insight. I could go on and on with examples of Christians in films who are portrayed negatively.

Most of these films don't outright say, "All Christians are like this!" but because it is such a recurring theme it makes me wonder if some people don't get that impression. It's almost like Christians are a classic bogey-man, alongside the pedophiles, serial-killers, rapists, and other villains that populate movies. This guy here points out that you don't see Buddhists or Hinduists as the villains of films nearly as often. And while Arabs (usually as Muslim fundamentalist terrorists) certainly have seen their days as villains, you've got a lot of films coming out lately that are almost like Muslim apologetics, casting Arabs as wise, peace-loving sages. I understand this is probably a reaction to the Muslim cliché of a terrorist, but nobody seems to care to correct the Christian cliché of a fundamentalist.

Of course, I don't expect this to change much. Hatred for Biblical Christianity has been a constant theme for the past 2,000 years. Our views will continue to be skewed, and our wisdom will be mocked and vilified. Personally, I grow tired of having to swallow such hatred when I'm only hoping for a good movie.

Granted, if you want to see a movie that does portray Christians in a good light, The Mission and Shadowlands are excellent examples of that. Those kinds of movies are out there, but they're rare diamonds in the rough. Unfortunately, the movies that Christians make for each other often end up having little to no artistic merit, for whatever reason, or are so whitewashed they have little meaning even for Christians.

I don't think the solution to this is to complain to the movie industry. I don't think it's such a great idea to make movies only for Christians either, since so many of those attempts have failed to have much mainstream appeal, thus making them fairly irrelevant (arguably so even for Christians) and trying to give Christianity that mainstream appeal is the path to the dark side. I just think this is The Way Things Are, and always will be, until Jesus comes.