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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