Theology and "What Maisie Knew"

            What do theology and ethics have to do with the movies? Let’s define our terms.

            Theology is a critical, analytical discipline which explores a religious tradition for the coherence and comprehensiveness of its beliefs (Marsh, 163). Christian theology sees itself as having the task of providing a response to everyday experiences, including the experience of watching a movie (Johnston, 111). Ethics, in general terms, is the study of what makes for a good life, and of the ways in which human beings pursue the good life. Christian ethics includes working for the good lives of others, following the teaching and example of Jesus (Lovin, 11-12). What do this discipline and this concern have to do with the movies, which are a good that people pursue for the sake of entertainment and relaxation?

            Yesterday Paco and I saw What Maisie Knew, a movie based on the novel by Henry James. It’s about a little girl who is at the center of a bitter tug of war between her divorced parents. The parents remarry but before long separate from their new spouses, Margo and Lincoln. These two are the ones who, in the end, loving Maisie and discovering each other, take care of her.

No one sees a movie like this only for entertainment and relaxation. Movie-goers are in pursuit of another good, a good story. Stories are central to people’s lives, and movies happen to be our culture’s “primary story-telling medium” (Johnston, 50).

            Then how do movies, as a medium, do their work? Unlike novels, which depend entirely on text, movies tell their stories through images, which often have symbolic power, and through  settings, music, other sound, dialogue, and the physical movements and facial expressions of the actors. For example, an image of kites appears twice in What Maisie Knew. The first time, Maisie is on the streets of New York City and on her way to school. She looks up and sees a standard kite trapped in power lines overhead. The second time, near the end of the movie, Margo has taken her to the seaside and she sees two colorful, marvelously made kites flying high overhead. In another opposition, she sees model boats on a lake in the city and then, at the seaside, a real boat that, she is promised, she will ride on the next day. The sets of opposites—trapped kite vs. free kites; remote-controlled boats vs. a real boat with a human pilot; crowded city vs. wide-open seaside—are intentional. They illustrate Maisie’s development as a character from one who is trapped in a battle zone to one who will demand a happier existence. We are largely unaware, as we watch the movie, that we are becoming saturated with its images and with the values it is expressing through them.

            In our day, especially in the developed world, people depend a great deal on movies and the rest of popular culture for help in making sense of their lives (Marsh, 2). A cautionary tale like What Maisie Knew is the only place where some learn about the importance of stability and emotional constancy in a child’s life. This is something to think about. We live in a technological, media-dominated age. How do people work out the meaning and purpose of their lives when they have no church, synagogue or mosque? They do so in the shared space of media culture (Marsh, 25, 31), which becomes for them a sacred space.

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Whew! The previous three posts are really, really, really rough drafts. I’m back at the drawing board now. The main problem is the theology; it’s fragmentary, maybe even incoherent. And David, he’s only 20 years old, while Clive, I do believe he’s more like 60. Otherwise, how does Bob get away with calling him “old man”? Nevertheless, I did accomplish one thing. Two, actually. I learned the basics of formatting a screenplay (the very rough basics) and I invented a story world. It’s got birds and people and food and stuff.

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Cinema Grandpa (conclusion)

BOB

David and I had a tête-a-tête in the kitchen, and he posed an interesting question. If I remember rightly, David, it was that how theology and the movies talk to each other is just as important as what they say. How they communicate.
                                 (looks at David questioningly)

DAVID

(more animated than before lunch)

I mean, after hearing Grandpa, movies communicate not just with words but with pictures and music. With feelings.

CLIVE

Movies communicate primarily with emotions, that’s true.

DAVID

Yeah, but it’s unconscious, you know? Theology’s conscious, it’s deliberate. You don’t just dream your reactions.

ROBIN

In other words, Davey, how does theology do it?

DAVID

Yes. And ethics. Theological ethics. Christian ethics. How do they think things through before they say what they’re going to say?

BOB

All right. How shall we think through “Where Joe Lives”? I always say (pause) we start with experiencing the movie. We sit there and watch it, not thinking about it very much but letting it take hold of us in whatever way it will. Later—this is what I do, but I’m a college professor and I teach the stuff—you make a few notes while the movie’s still fresh in your mind. You ask yourself, what was the main character’s moral problem? You put what you know about theology and ethics beside this. You look back into the movie for a standard of theological judgment.

CLIVE

Alister McGrath calls it casting theology like a net over the experience, to capture its meaning.

BOB

My sense is that Joe’s story is about his and his community’s need for redemption.

DAVID

You mean from sin?

BOB

You could say Joe was sinful in that he separated himself from God’s love by running away.

CLIVE

You could say he had to recover his understanding of what it means to be human.

BOB

His family and friends had to be turned around from their judgmental and indifferent attitudes.

CLIVE

It’s practical theology, my lad. At Nottingham, students of many religious sensibilities come to our classes: born-again Christians, other kinds of believers, secularists. We’ve found that these students are more alike than they are different. They’re all trying to work out meaning for themselves and, lo and behold, they’re using the same media products to do it, including film. We try to show them how to engage critically both the media and their own meaning-making efforts.

ROBIN

(looking at his watch)

Oh, my goodness, Clive. You have a plane to catch, don’t you?

BOB

(lurching forward in his chair)

I’m ready when you are, old man.

CLIVE

One more word with our clever pupil, gentlemen. David, for theology and ethics to have a dialogue with culture, including the movies; a critical dialogue: it’s vital. Vitally important. It’s what the church has been doing for 2,000 years. Keep asking questions, my lad. You’ll go a long way.

The sound of a barbershop quartet, singing about love in the springtime, takes over.

INSERT  —  David’s face, smiling abashedly but with pleasure.

The four stand up and shake hands. The animals stand up, too, looking quizzical and alert. Clive and Bob leave the frame.

FADE OUT.

As the credits roll the song continues, overlaying the sounds of people and equipment in a bowling alley.

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Cinema Grandpa (cont.)

[VERY ROUGH DRAFT]

ROBIN sips his iced tea reflectively. At the sound of birds twittering excitedly he looks toward a clump of honeysuckle mounded on the fence outside. INSERT Inside the clump are four sparrows hopping around, all twittering at once. The sound fades.

ROBIN: There is something. I can’t help thinking of Bonhoeffer’s divine mandates.

DAVID: Divine mandates? What are those?

ROBIN: It was during the Second World War in Germany, when the Nazis were trying to take over the church and some church people were caving in.

DAVID (looking puzzled): Was there something like that in the movie?

ROBIN: No, the movie showed the mandates pretty well balanced. There was the church. Well, first there was Lars’ family, which is how it should be since family, ideally, is where we first learn about God. There were cultural institutions: Lars’ workplace; the doctor, ambulance and hospital; the beauty parlor and the bowling alley. There was even a small mention of government: Bianca gets herself elected to the school board.

DAVID: Grandpa, can we backtrack a little? What’s a mandate?

ROBIN: A mandate is an authoritative order or command. Dietriech Bonhoeffer believed that God gave us these institutions as places where we could hear his Word and absorb it as a guide for our lives. They are distinct from one another, but they are interdependent.

ROBIN: Okay, the Word of God was pretty evident in the scenes of Reverend Bock, but what about, like, the bowling alley?

CLIVE: The lad asks good questions, Robin.

BOB rattles the ice in his glass and takes a sip of tea.

ROBIN: Did you see what Lars was going through? It was a lot. He looks at Margo, he rubs his eyes, once he starts to cry, he starts interacting with the other guys, he learns how to bowl.

DAVID: I don’t get it. What do you mean?

ROBIN: He’s been hearing the Word of God from the beginning. He’s been experiencing the reaction of his family and friends to Reverend Bock’s question, What would Jesus do. In the bowling alley the Word comes to fruit in him. (beat) I just remembered. Nancy made some egg salad sandwiches, too.

BOB: I’ll help, David. Show me the kitchen.

DAVID turns off the recorder and stands up. Throughout the following sequence: non-diegetic sound of a song in a male voice with the refrain, “Why won’t you talk to me, pretty girl?” INSERT an oil painting depicting two people in conversation. Walking to the kitchen, DAVID and BOB pass the painting, which is hung on a wall.

Cuts back and forth between DAVID and BOB in the kitchen, gathering sandwiches and plates and talking in a lively manner; and CLIVE and ROBIN in more subdued conversation on the porch. ROBIN stands up and walks to the screen door to admit a cat and a mid-sized, mixed-breed dog.

Final cut of sequence: the porch table is at the center. The men eat sandwiches from plates on their laps. DAVID leaves the frame, returns with a pitcher of lemonade, sits down to eat.

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Cinema Grandpa

Cinema Grandpa (working title)

A screenplay by Julia

INT.   DAY

A small room dimmed by curtains on two neighboring windows. Another wall is lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. A long wraparound sofa faces a flat-screen TV between the windows. The end credits of a movie scroll upward on the screen, accompanied by a soulful song in a woman’s voice. A low wooden table in front of the sofa, on which lie magazines and a remote control device. Floor lamps. An oriental carpet.

Four men sit on the sofa. ROBIN is 75; BOB is 60; CLIVE is 45 and British; and DAVID is 23. DAVID sits a little apart from the others on one end of the sofa.

DAVID’s POV. The older men gaze at the screen as if mesmerized. They are not reading the credits. They are listening to the song, letting their impressions of the movie sink in, and waiting for their emotions to settle.

DAVID sits forward, rests his elbows on his thighs, and glances nervously at the others. Then he reaches into his pants pocket and draws out a small black recorder. ROBIN reaches for the remote and, all in one movement, stands up and turns off the TV. He puts the remote down and stretches.

ROBIN: These old bones need light and fresh air. What do you say we retire to the porch? (beat) Davey, your grandmother made some iced tea. You know where the glasses are.

Everyone stands up. DAVID puts the recorder back in his pocket, looking flustered.

Cut to a large screened porch. The view on three sides is of a sun-drenched lawn rimmed by trees and shrubs. The older men sit in white wicker chairs with floral cushions. They talk and laugh, but what is heard is an interweaving of birdsong and the movie song. DAVID walks in and out of the frame several times, bringing tea, sugar, lemons and paper napkins and setting them on a low, glass-topped table. He sits down, lifts his tea to his lips, and the music stops.

ROBIN: What was it your teacher wanted to know, Davey?

DAVID: Wait a sec, Grandpa.

DAVID takes the recorder out of his pocket, places it in the middle of the table and turns it on.

BOB: Posterity, Robin. Careful what you say.

CLIVE: Mind you ask your Grandpa the right questions, lad.

DAVID has a wide-eyed look.

DAVID: She said to ask you, Professor Johnston, and Professor Marsh what movies have to say to theology and ethics, and vice versa. Just that.

CLIVE: Just that?

ROBIN: Well, I don’t know, Davey. That’s the first movie I’ve watched in maybe ten years.

CLIVE: Come on, Robin. Get on with it.

BOB: The ethicist has the floor.

ROBIN: I have to say, ethics didn’t prepare me for that scene in the doctor’s office when Larry lost it. My emotions were all over me.

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"Beasts of the Southern Wild"

            A. Filmmakers are storytellers, and storytellers are magpies.  They glide into the backyard, poke around in the garden and under the swing set, and look for shiny items to take back to their story-nests. They nose their way into the shed and, before we know it, into our other storehouses—larder, pantry, wardrobe—those places of culture, religion, myth and history where we store our collections. They’re not fussy about tradition, faith, reason or logic. They take—they steal!—what they need for their stories.

            So we shouldn’t be surprised in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (2012) when we find six-year-old Hushpuppy living alone in a tumbledown mobile home thirty-five yards through trees and underbrush from her father’s tumbledown shack; or we see her take a football helmet out of the freezer section of a rusty, unconnected refrigerator, put it on, and fire up the stove with a blowtorch. The writer of the story is a magpie, gathering found pieces the way his characters do in the movie, constructing the minutiae of daily life. The writer steals from history: the event of Hurricane Katrina in September, 2005. From sociology: the phenomenon of people in low-lying areas who refuse to evacuate when a hurricane threatens. And from political environmentalism: the dire warnings of what will happen to us as our planet warns. He dips into the spirit of myth and invents the auroch. Back in the day, he intones in the voice of Hushpuppy, the aurochs ate little children for breakfast and were the king of the world.

            B. When we go to a movie, we join a conversation.  The partners are the filmmaker, the story told through the medium of the movie, and ourselves the audience. Robert K. Johnston writes of a critical circle in which “the larger universe, or worldview, that shapes the story’s presentation” (150) is a fourth element; but this obscures the nature of worldview. Realistically, worldview is unique to each of the conversation partners.

            The movie presents a mythical worldview, which is made believable by having it funneled through the mind of a child. In a voice-over, Hushpuppy says, “The entire universe depends on everything coming together just right.” The filmmaker’s worldview comes forward in Hushpuppy’s last dramatic action: she faces down the pursuing aurochs, who represent forces of chaos and destruction, and goes in the house to take care of her dying father.

            What is our, the audience’s, worldview? Something complex and many faceted; the sum of our experiences, education, temperament and character! Let’s examine a particle of it. We are a theology student who has just learned of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of the divine mandate. The many settings that make it possible to live a good life—family, church, school, cultural institutions like the movies and so on; Bonhoeffer calls these the divine mandates. “They are places where the Word of God can be heard and give guidance to life” (Lovin, 106). What do we hear of the Word in “Beasts of the Southern Wild”? How does it amplify our worldview?

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Play, With a Few Words About "Frances Ha"

            Yesterday Paco and I went to an early matinee showing of Frances Ha. We went then because we wanted to be at home when the predicted derecho-furious, tornado-spawning storms came through. The storms were mostly a fizzle, but Frances Ha was a delight. We came out into the sunshine and I was Frances. I felt like Frances was me or I was her; I looked at the world the way Frances looked at the world. My body type is different from that of the actress who played Frances, and I am seventy-three whereas Frances was twenty-seven, but I walked like Frances. I clambered into the car the way Frances would. When we got home and Paco found a book in the mailbox for me, I exulted over it the way Frances would.

            I say these things as a way of describing the feeling of identification with movie characters that sometimes overcomes viewers, and to explore the idea of play with respect to the movies. I am curious about the following: Are we at play when we watch a movie? What is the difference, speaking of play, between watching a movie in the theater and watching one at home? Has the filmmaker, making the movie, been at play? What is the social meaning of going to the movies? Does it have anything to do with play? What would it be like to do theology in a spirit of play?

            My new book is Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, which is actually an old book, its English translation first appearing in 1938. Its author, Johan Huizinga, insisted to translators that he meant the play element of culture, but they wouldn’t listen. Having come to the conviction “that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play,” he says, his object was not “to define the place of play among all the other manifestations of culture, but rather to ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play” (ix).

            All right, how does movie-going, as a social phenomenon, bear the character of play? Since, from what Robert K. Johnston says in Reel Spirituality, identification appears to be a widespread if not universal phenomenon—“it is important not to forget that the power of a movie lies … in what transpires within the individual viewer as she or he gazes at the screen” (26)—what would theological reflection say about identification with respect to what Huizinga calls the play-concept? Are the many theologians who are now reflecting on the movies engaged in play? What would it mean for a solitary student to treat theological reflection as play? And what exactly is culture?*

*Culture.   a: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations   b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.

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Symbolization

What objects, images, words, music or sounds symbolize the main characters or reveal their state of mind? Do they show a change in the lead character as the story progresses? (Character change is an important aspect of storytelling. Truby, The Anatomy of Story, 79.) Are any of them food for theological or ethical reflection?

Paul Rivers

Portable oxygen tank; cigarette; bathroom (a small, confined space)
The small room where he contributes a sperm sample
Bellows (part of the hospital respirator machine); a machine showing his vital signs
Doctors
His heart, which he calls “the culprit,” after its removal from his body
His small blue car, contrasted with the larger, light-colored vehicles of Jack and Cristina
The music as he drives the sleeping Cristina home in her car and gazes at her
The bank of elevators where he tells his wife Mary, “We’re finished”
The two swimming pools he observes
Settings: at home with his wife; the hospital; Cristina’s home; the motel
Beds: bed shared with his wife; Cristina’s; hospital beds; motel bed, when he is dying
Alternating heavy rain and dry weather
The roar in the climactic scene as he watches Cristina beat Jack
The gun
His name: the Apostle Paul said, “Where, O death, is your sting” (1 Cor 15:55); Rivers suggests “life is a river,” resembles the movie’s tag line, “life goes on”

Jack Jordan

Pickup truck; emblazoned on the rear panel are the words “Faith” and “Jesus Saves”; after the accident his wife washes blood from the front grill
His name: in the beginning he wants metaphorically to cross into the Promised Land
Painting of a reclining tiger in his motel room
Drinking glasses
His knit cap as he comes home in his final scene

Cristina Peck

Swimming pool
Her home; the bed she first shared with her husband
Drug paraphernalia
Her naked body, especially her breasts, source of milk for the baby she conceives with Paul
Her blood (unseen), which reveals she is pregnant
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An Invitation to Transcendence

            A question. What are Paul Rivers’ needs in 21 Grams? In The Anatomy of Story (which focuses on screenwriting), John Truby writes: “In better stories, the hero has a moral need in addition to a psychological need. The hero must overcome a moral flaw and learn how to act properly toward other people” (41).

            An early scene in the movie shows Paul sneaking a smoke while his wife is out. He is severely debilitated by heart disease; he wheezes because, even with a portable oxygen tank, he can’t get enough air; he goes into the bathroom, closes the door, opens the window, turns off the oxygen, and smokes a cigarette. He has a psychological need to overcome risky behavior that is hurting only himself; and he has a moral need which has something to do with being sneaky.

            At about the middle point, Paul is having lunch with Cristina. Having exhibited questionable moral behavior, prying into transplant surgery records and stalking, he insinuates himself into Cristina’s life. The viewer sees him burning to tell her his theory that there is “a number hidden in every act of life.” From what he says and the expression on his face, it appears that he is fascinated by the mystery that lies beneath the surface of life.

            At the end Paul dies. The viewer hears his voice, as if he hasn’t died at all. He expresses the odd thought that when someone dies his body weight drops immediately by 21 grams. Curious about where the 21 grams go, he asks a long series of questions, including: “How many lives do we live? How many times do we die?” The effect is to bring the viewer to a state of moral reflection. To answer the questions, she looks into the record of Paul’s life and recalls personal life experiences. She begins to wonder what the movie’s tag line, “life goes on,” really means.

            In Reel Spirituality, Robert Johnston writes about transcendence. The first time he brings it up, he says that, for many, movies provide “alternate forms of transcendence. They provide a reel spirituality” (28; his emphasis). He means the shift of awareness that can occur in a viewer, “away from the self to a wider awareness” (30, quoting Paul Woolf, a friend, screenwriter and ordained Jewish storyteller). He quotes C. S. Lewis, who says that a story should mediate something more than what we see in everyday life (110). He distinguishes between transcendence with a capital T, which refers to encounters with God, experiences of the Holy (242-249), saying that such experiences can’t be induced; and down-to-earth recognitions, either that “there is something more out there” (278) or that there is a deeper, “more central region” in one’s own self (126; 266).

            Two questions. Is Paul’s sneakiness a distortion of another kind of need, a spiritual need, to pry beneath the surface of life? Is the plot device that closes the movie, that is, Paul’s disembodied voice, an invitation to the viewer to experience a wider awareness than usual?

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Story, Plot and Theme

            At the class on Saturday, our professor said that Christians’ lack of moral imagination is a big problem in Christian ethics. The first step toward developing this kind of imagination is to describe situations accurately. Sometimes this involves a re-description. Movies describe situations in the context of stories. How shall we evaluate them? Let’s take a look at 21 Grams.

            The story revolves around three principal characters. Jack Jordan is an ex-con. In the two years since he left prison he has plunged into a practice of fundamental Christianity. One day he runs over Michael Peck and Peck’s two young daughters, then drives away from the scene of the accident. All three die. Christina Peck is the widow and bereft mother. At the hospital she agrees to donate her husband’s heart. Paul Rivers is the recipient of Michael Peck’s heart.

            Other key characters are Mary Rivers, Paul’s wife, and Mary Ann Jordan, Jack’s wife. Paul and Mary are in a loveless marriage. Before the transplant, she maneuvers Paul into contributing his sperm so that she can have his baby if he dies. Mary Ann coaxes Jack to put the accident behind him. She washes the blood off the grill of his truck.

            These details outline the story line that sets the plot in motion. What will keep it moving until the characters reach their final crises? Let’s examine the difference between story and plot. Quoting Lillian Hellman, Robert K. Johnston writes: “Story is what the characters want to do and plot is what the writer wants the characters to do.” He adds, “Plot is the way the movie constructs and conveys the unfolding of action over time” (146). He points out that a movie’s theme drives its plot forward and gives it focus. The theme is the movie’s emotional heart. A filmmaker will come to a standstill if he or she is not clear about the movie’s theme (201-203).

            John Truby provides another view of theme. He calls it the moral argument of a story. Addressing the reader as a budding screenwriter, he says, “The theme is your moral vision, your view of how people should act in the world” (15). From this perspective, the theme of 21 Grams is the idea that life goes on. This is what Christina’s father tells her in an attempt to console her at the funeral of her family. In another scene, Mary Ann Jordan tells Jack, who believes that to be true to God he has to turn himself in, “Life has to go on, with or without God.” Somehow this tagline doesn’t satisfy as the movie’s emotional heart.

            Our professor warned us that 21 Grams was edited non-chronologically, so I was prepared for its randomized jumble of scenes. About a third of the way through, I began to wonder why the filmmaker had constructed the movie in this way. I went back to Truby and discovered his concept of the designing principle: “The designing principle is what organizes the story as a whole. It is the internal logic of the story, what makes the parts hang together organically…. You find the designing principle by teasing it out of the simple one-line premise you have before you” (25-26).

Following examples he gives, I come up with this formulation, not quite a theme:

            Premise. A man whose transplanted heart is failing finds love before he dies and helps the donor’s wife and the man who accidentally killed the donor to find peace.

            Designing principle. Intense emotional experiences cause mental confusion. Illustrate the three principals’ confusion by presenting scenes non-chronologically. Include repetition.

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Play and "21 Grams"

In this post and in as many posts as I can accomplish by June 28, I want to explore at least three movies; theology and ethics with respect to the movies; and moral imagination, storytelling and play, all with respect to the movies. My main interest is in how stories are put together and why they are important to us.

The first movie is 21 Grams (2003), which features Sean Penn in the role of Paul Rivers. The plot can be summed up quickly in one sentence: A man whose transplanted heart is failing finds love before he dies and helps the donor’s wife and the man who accidentally killed the donor to find peace.* 

21 Grams is obviously a story and it ought to be fairly easy to find things to say about the religious extremism of one of the characters, but how on earth can play have anything to do with this movie? Its themes, which also include heart failure, artificial insemination, numbing grief, adultery and a desire for revenge, are deeply serious. Some viewers may consider two graphic scenes of lovemaking erotic play. I did, until I discovered Johan Huizinga’s opinion in Homo ludens. He believes “it is not the act as such that the spirit of language tends to conceive as play; rather the road thereto, the preparation for and introduction to ‘love,’ which is often made enticing by all sorts of playing. This is particularly true when one of the sexes has to rouse or win the other over to copulating.”**

I hope that reading more of Huizinga will help me to answer the question of play in 21 Grams. For now I have three approaches in mind:

(1)  A movie is a product of play. In a book on screenwriting, John Truby writes: “The storyteller is first and foremost someone who plays.”***

(2)  A movie’s content includes acts of play. Besides the scenes in 21 Grams portraying “preparations for love,” there is the mental game Paul Rivers plays with himself and that he attempts to explain to another character. He tells her, “There is a number hidden in every act of life.”

(3)  A movie is received by its viewers through acts of play. Huizinga distinguishes between the “making of works of art” and “the manner in which they are received in the social milieu.” My task currently is to explore how movies, at least some of them, might be received in the milieu of theology and ethics. Exploration is another word for play.

*In filmmaking language, this sentence is the high-concept premise of the movie. It reduces the movie “to a catchy one-line description that audiences will understand instantly and come rushing to the theater to see.” John Truby, The Anatomy of Story, 17.

**Homo ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, 1955, 43. Until I obtain a copy of this book, my notes will be based on a Wikipedia outline of it. I probably ought to delve, among other things, into what Huizinga means by “the spirit of language.”

***Truby, ibid., 6.

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