Thumbs down for Baehr
Over at the Looking Closer Journal, Jeffrey Overstreet—one of the few great Christian film critics—posts Movieguide theocrat Ted Baehr’s most recent idiotic, puritan rant about the allegedly illicit culture of Hollywood, and then proceeds to demolish it line by line. In the course of his response, Overstreet nails everything that’s wrong with the way far too many Christians approach contemporary culture, especially film. He singles out Baehr for being homophobic, demeaning, and just plain cruel to anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his absurdly limited view of what qualifies as “wholesome” entertainment, finishing by making the most important point of all: not only is Baehr’s misconception of what art and entertainment ought to be wrong, it gives the secular world nearly unlimited ammunition for both rejecting and ridiculing Christians. Baehr, and the perpetually outraged mobs that follow him, don’t just perform a disservice to the Christian world—they actively hinder Christianity's wider acceptance.
Now, I’m no
posted by Peter @ 3/08/2006 01:01:00 PM
6 Comments:
Pardon me if I remain wholly unimpressed with your diatribe against Ted Baher's column.
Let's see now. It's "homophobic" to now state just what AIDS usually stems from? Sorry, but I find that a pretty chilling attempt to whitewash the blunt truth of what does cause most of it, and no amount of epithets is ever going to change the fact that if you don't engage in that kind of sexual behavior, your chances of being stricken with that disease will plummet.
And I think it's a pretty pathetic comment when a simple desire to see some recognition for films that *do* reflect a positive message that Christians can appreciate then get run down with language that could have been ripped straight from the worst kind of anti-Christian blog.
But now let's get to what I think is the most inane comment of them all.
"to heap scorn on the film industry as some sort of pitchfork-waving celluloid Satan simply because it shows people engaging in behaviors you disagree with only serves to set Christians further apart from contemporary culture’s dominant medium for delivering narrative"
Give me a break! If by this we're now talking about Hollywood's obsession with graphic violence, depiction of immoral behavior in graphic fashion, obsession with profanity, and obsession with finding "humor" in bodily functions and other tawdry places with absolutely NO sense of self-restraint, then I for one will count myself a proud member of those who will be *glad* to see Christians dare to set themselves apart from giving a free pass to movies that feel a compulsion to go that low road in their narratives. Since I happen to think that the movie industry produced the greatest movies of all time, including those dealing with adult subject matter in a days when they couldn't go that low road, I see nothing wrong with taking that decision to "set myself apart" from the increasingly warped standards of mainstream Hollywood. And if that means never going to a movie theatrically again and just enjoy the endless stream of great movies from an era when Hollywood had a conscience, so be it.
"to demand that it act as a blockbuster Sunday School lesson"
So? We get so little of that in an endless stream of movies that go out of their way to show their condescending contempt for Christianity, that I don't blame Baehr or any other Christian for wishing Hollywood could be more like the days when the life of the Reverend Peter Marshall ("A Man Called Peter") could be the subject of a great movie than the present when Larry Flynt is the subject of a heroic film bio, or the importance of Christianity is removed entirely from a film about C.S. Lewis ("Shadowlands").
Zero stars to your condescending portrait of Christians who don't always express their concerns perfectly (and there are some things I wouldn't express the same way as Baehr) but who like it or not, speak to some blunt truths about what's wrong with modern Hollywood.
One other point I neglected to deal with.
"I think it’s quite likely that the film industry will see a resurgence of left-leaning, politically invigorated movies in the next few years"
I think to hear the term "resurgence" about this kind of development when there is no "resurgence", that it in fact has been going on endlessly for quite some time without a letup, ultimately reveals that it isn't Ted Baehr who is off the mark regarding the current state of Hollywood.
You write: "And if that means never going to a movie theatrically again and just enjoy the endless stream of great movies from an era when Hollywood had a conscience, so be it."
And then you follow it with: "I think to hear the term "resurgence" about this kind of development when there is no "resurgence", that it in fact has been going on endlessly for quite some time without a letup."
Which is it? Did Hollywood used to have a conscience? Or has its lefty slant been "going on endlessly?
And my point was that there will likely be a resurgence in explicitly political films--the sort which were quite rare from the mid 80s through the late 90s. Not to say some of those didn't have a liberal tint, but they weren't often the clearly political films of the sort that defined New Hollywood and are poised to rise to prominence (for a time) again.
There is no contradiction. "Endlessly" is the term I use for a period starting within roughly the last 20-25 years. The floodgates were opened starting in the late 60s-early 70s with the demise of the Production Code, end of the studio system etc. and it's very hard for me to point to a time period where there has been much of a conscience to be found since then. For me, I've seen very little to admire in actual output from about 1980 onward. The term "endless" is my characterization of what's pretty much gone on since then.
And I think the deeper question that centers here ultimately gets back to just what is so illegitimate about Baehr's basic point? It sounds to me like what you and Overmyer are saying is that in order for Christians to be taken seriously by a group of people whose contempt for Christians knows no limits, is that we have to check our principles at the door regarding our genuine sense of disgust over the appalling lack of self-restraint that's existed in Hollywood over depicting certain things ever since the demise of the Production Code.
Okay, I first will report my error in writing Overstreet's name.
But second, looking at all those on his blog who are praising his column, all I see are a group of people who represent nothing more than the knee-jerk defenders of Hollywood's left wing orthodoxy on political and cultural issues. And those are people that Christians should never feel any compulsion to try and curry favor with by whitewashing what's been obviously wrong with Hollywood for decades now.
A final postscript to this, is that in your effort to insist that the likes of Overstreet were somehow the hope for all Christians in terms of how they should respond to popular culture, you alerted me instead to the fact that people like Overstreet and his ilk are the real problem, and not the likes of Baehr, whose only flaw is a lack of tactful eloquence and a tendency to shoot from the hip. Overstreet is a person who might know how to talk more smoothly, but who champions a fundamentally dishonest way of how Christians should react to the movies.
After discovering further that Overstreet believes the anti-American diatribes of a "JFK" can be glossed over because of its dubious "artistic value" or that "Brokback Mountain" can be whitewashed as a movie that is not pro-gay agenda, or that "The Passion Of The Christ" wasn't even good enough to make his top ten list, I think the worthlessness of his value as a helpful guide to discerning Christians becomes even more evident.
Mr. Suderman, a Christian like me does not have a "misconception of what art ought to be" because I prefer to look at content and agenda first, and the technical frills second. That's just applying common sense, and that common sense approach is not "performing a disservice to the Christian world" or "hindering Christianity's wider acceptance." The real disservice is the one performed by the likes of Overstreet and Sean Gaffney who save their more venemous barbs for their brothers in Christ on their right, then for those in the entertainment industry whose hatred for all things Christian have long been evident.
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