ABSTRACT
No discussion of the role of religion in film would be complete without at least a modicum of attention paid to the function of the film actor. Building on the discussion generated in the previous chapter on how films from a variety of filmmakers, and covering a range of filmic styles and genres, are amenable to creative Christian encounter, the aim here is to explore the manner in which the film ‘star’ has a crucial role to play in facilitating theological conversation. Although the academic study of film has in the past concentrated on the role of the director, or auteur, from the point of view of the film audience it is, more often than not, the film actor or actress that ‘sells’ a film. As even a cursory glance at the pages of a popular movie or lifestyle magazine will evince, the role of the celebrity is crucial in determining whether or not a film is a commercial success. The likes of Kate Beckinsale, Julia Roberts, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Keira Knightley, Russell Crowe, Cameron Diaz and Nicole Kidman can open movies on star power alone. It may be deemed more ‘high-brow’ or scholarly to focus attention on the film director, but no filmmaker works in a vacuum. How, for example, can even a cursory discussion of the cinema of Billy Wilder not take into consideration the contribution made by Jack Lemmon, who played the lead in seven of his pictures, and whose ‘everyman’ persona, moreover, is one of the most conspicuous trademarks of Wilder’s oeuvre? Likewise, Robert De Niro has collaborated eight times to date with Martin Scorsese, to the extent indeed that there is an inextricable link between any examination of the theological dimension of, say, Taxi Driver or Raging Bull and the contribution of his lead actor, who has played protagonists who may be read as Christfigures. Certainly, there is an inescapable link between the vision of the director and
the means by which that vision is realized, which includes the roles of the screenwriter, editor, cinematographer, producer and, no less importantly, that of the actor or actress. As Richard Griffith and Arthur Mayer attested back in 1957, ‘moviegoers will continue to insist on glamorous personalities to identify with and to idolize’ (Griffith and Mayer, 1957, p. 435), and in the words of John Belton, ‘Though motion pictures may [be] an industry, the general public has always tended to see Hollywood less as a factory town than as a place where royalty resides . . . Stars inhabit a different world from the rest of us and live by different rules’ (Belton, 1994, p. 83). There is little doubt that aside from the most well-known auteurs, such as Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock and
David Lean, audiences tend to associate movies not with the name of the director but with the name of the leading actor or actress. Did audiences go to see Eraser (1996) because it was directed by Chuck Russell – the director of the 1994 hit The Mask – or because it starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, of The Terminator (1984) and True Lies (1994) fame? Likewise, can anyone seriously deny that the selling point of the 1998 summer blockbuster Armageddon was not that it was directed by Michael Bay (although a case could be made that it was marketed heavily as a Jerry Bruckheimer production, and so was from the same producer who devised such commercial successes as Beverly Hills Cop [1984], Top Gun [1986] and Con Air [1997]) but that its cast was led by Bruce Willis, the star of Die Hard (1988)? The existence of the Hollywood ‘god’ or ‘goddess’ is legendary, and,
moreover, integral to any discussion of the interrelationship between religion and the movies. It is not without good reason that, writing in 1947, Parker Tyler contended that Hollywood is ‘at least as important to the spiritual climate’ of humanity as the weather is to the physical climate (Tyler, 1971, p. 25). With regard to the role of film actors and actresses, Tyler inferred from their glamour and ‘star’ status that they are essentially ‘fulfilling an ancient need’ (ibid., p. 31) which the popular religions of the present day are unable to satisfy. Some have taken this point even further. For example, M. Darroll Bryant goes so far as to claim that cinema itself is a form of popular religion in so far as ‘the act of going to the movies is a participation in a central ritual’ of the spiritual life of contemporary western culture (Bryant, 1982, p. 106), wherein the film audience is provided, as with popular religions, with ‘archetypal forms of humanity’ – namely, heroic figures – who take on the role of instructing the participants in ‘the values and myths of our culture’ and providing models ‘on which to pattern our lives’ (ibid.). Although the so-called ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ of the cinema are human beings, they are nonetheless tinged with a supernatural quality in the sense that, to quote Peter Williams, they ‘seem to live in a world of their own, in which the rules that govern and restrict ordinary mortals are suspended’ (Williams, 1980, p. 205). With respect to Marilyn Monroe, for instance, Paul Coates indicates that we may be disposed to ‘read the sheer nervous rapidity of her flickering moods as the spiritual sign of divine flame’, in contradistinction to what may be, in another scenario, ‘the fire reflected in the panic-stricken eyes of the woman tied to the stake’ (Coates, 1994, p. 135). The very fact, then, that we are inclined to accord to film actors and actresses the status of ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ is testimony that films have the potential to fulfil certain religious needs and requirements, even to the degree that, to quote Bryant, ‘movies participate in this culture’s primordial longing for intercourse with the gods’ (Bryant, 1982, p. 106). This image of the Hollywood movie star as some sort of deity is perfectly
illustrated with reference to one of Hollywood’s greatest film musicals, Singin’ in the Rain (1952), in which virtually every form of Hollywood entertainment –
costume drama, western and screwball comedy – is parodied in what amounts to a deft, nostalgic insight into the traumas and triumphs of Hollywood’s transition from silent pictures to sound in 1929. Jean Hagen plays Lina Lamont, a silent film star who believes all the publicity and fan mail she reads and receives, and who sees the Hollywood ‘star’ not as a person but as a celestial being. Convinced of her own stardom, she even refers to herself, without irony, as a ‘shimmering, glowing star in the Hollywood firmament’. Writing with specific reference to the ‘stardom’ of a contemporary ‘star’, Julia Roberts (whose break-up with boyfriend Benjamin Bratt in June 2001 received more publicity in the popular press than the death on the same day of veteran American actor Jack Lemmon, thus reinforcing the point), Jill Nelmes sums up the scenario rather well, when she explains that: ‘The spectator is presented with the classic paradox of stardom: the star is known or knowable, accessible, ordinary and yet, at the same time, extraordinary and only attainable in the everyday world of the spectator in forms of desire and fantasy’ (Nelmes, 1996, p. 142). The star is thus, at root, someone, or something, that answers a particular need which, as Belton understands it, ‘the public either consciously or unconsciously has at a particular time for a particular figure of identification’ (Belton, 1994, p. 94). The star thereby functions, in other words, as ‘a sociocultural barometer of sorts’, who gives expression to (and provides symbolic solutions for) various fears, desires, anxieties and dreams ‘that haunt popular consciousness’ (ibid.). Needless to say, this cult of the celebrity is not restricted to the domain of the
movies, even though it has achieved one of its most powerful cultural expressions through this medium. As Michael Grimshaw attests with regard to the role of sporting stars:
While this could be the focus of a separate discussion (and to this end I would recommend to the reader Joseph L. Price and David Chidester’s chapters on sport as a popular religion in Forbes and Mahan’s Religion and Popular Culture in America), there are sufficient parallels between sporting ‘gods’ and movie ‘gods’ to warrant further examination here. From the outset, the notion of the ‘fan’ or ‘supporter’ is common to both sport and film, inasmuch as audience members are afforded the opportunity to undergo a salvific experience through their immersion in the sporting or cinematic milieu. Grimshaw quotes Frederick Exley in this regard, who wrote in 1968, ‘I gave
myself up to the [New York] Giants utterly. The recompense I gained was the feeling of being alive . . . I had come to find myself relying on the Giants as a life-giving, an exalting force’ (Grimshaw, 2000, p. 94). In particular, Exley recounts how such a transformative experience was focused on a particular player, Frank Gifford, who became his ‘liminal cipher into another state of existence’ (ibid.), and so his alter ego. In Exley’s words, ‘I came, as incredible as it seems to me now, to believe that I was, in some magical way, an actual instrument in his success. Each time I heard the roar of the crowd, it roared in my ears as much for me as him . . . ’ (ibid.). This process is echoed in the words of New Zealand theologian and sports enthusiast Chris Nichol, who sees popular culture itself as a soteriological location, in the sense of ‘a chance for individuals to experience affirmation, a sense of identity, challenge, judgement . . . , a glimpse of hope’ (ibid.). Such a process can also be seen to function in two contemporary films, Fever Pitch (1997), based on Nick Hornby’s bestselling novel, which concerns the obsession of a comprehensive school English teacher in North London with Arsenal football club around the time of their championship success in 1989, and The Fan (1996), in which Robert De Niro plays a psychopathic baseball fan, Gil Renard, whose obsession with centre fielder Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes) is such that he is willing to commit murder in order to ensure that his favourite player remains at the top of his game. It is a moot point, however, as to whether stardom, as construed in this way,
constitutes a rich site of religious significance. As the discussion in Chapter 2 on the dangers bound up with Hollywood escapism has already demonstrated, the issue of illusion is one that militates against a fertile religious reading, in so far as serious religious reflection does not consist of an identification with an ephemeral realm of wish-fulfilment, and in which the tensions and vicissitudes of authentic human experience are left untouched. In bearing witness not to external reality but only to a fantasy as to how one would like reality to be, escapist cinema is inextricably linked to this notion of fandom. To return to the illustration of Singin’ in the Rain, the film works as an adroit satire on the very subject of the role of Hollywood ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’. Despite Lina Lamont’s protestations (and self-delusion) that she is a ‘shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament’, she is not, ultimately, a ‘real’ star in that she does not radiate her own light, but merely reflects that cast upon her by others. As Belton observes, her image as a star has been carefully fabricated by the studios, the media, the public and by herself, and, although she might look like a star she certainly does not sound like one, with her shrill working-class voice at odds with the image of resplendence and distinction she was trying to convey (Belton, 1994, pp. 83f.). Lina’s phoneyness is finally unmasked at the end of the picture, when the stage curtain is drawn back to reveal that her voice is being dubbed by the rather more refined and elegant-sounding Kathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds). Yet, despite exposing the illusions bound up with 1920s
silent movies, with its world of swashbuckling heroes and idealized heroines, Singin’ in the Rain is itself very much a part of this illusory world. As Belton further notes, although the film analyses the creation of the ‘star’ image of Gene Kelly’s character, Don Lockwood, it takes Gene Kelly himself for granted, who is as much a fabrication as his screen character. For, despite the supposed similarities between Lockwood and Kelly, in that both are seen as fun-loving song-and-dance men who have boyish charm and a winning smile, in real life Gene Kelly was a great perfectionist, who allegedly pushed ‘himself and others to exceptional lengths in the rehearsal of dance sequences’ (Belton, 1994, p. 87), and who was also far from an ordinary, unassuming individual who stumbles into stardom as in the case of Lockwood. Rather, Kelly went to college and law school, he was a successful choreographer and stage dancer, and, unlike his happy-go-lucky screen incarnation, serious and hard-working. Kelly does not therefore play himself on screen, but, rather, he creates a different personality to play. Accordingly, even if we met an actor in the street, such as Meryl Streep, our
first-hand knowledge of her would be limited to her public persona and to the roles she has played. Streep may have played a wide variety of different roles over the years, and successfully managed to play characters from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities, from working-class (The Deer Hunter, 1978) to upper middle-class (Plenty, 1985), from American (The Hours, 2002) to Danish (Out of Africa, 1985), Polish (Sophie’s Choice, 1982), and Australian (A Cry in the Dark, 1988), and garnering (as of 2003) thirteen Academy Award nominations along the way, but this is by no means to say we truly know Meryl Streep. She may be one of the most successful, and well-known, film ‘stars’ in the history of Hollywood, whose performances and films have been beheld by millions of people over the last two or three decades, yet we only really know her (if we can in any meaningful sense be said to know her at all) at second hand. As Don Shiach says in his analysis of the work of Jack Nicholson, all that we know of Hollywood stars ‘is a shadow on a screen, an imitation of life, a narrative figure in a celluloid fantasy, a personality written up in feature articles or interviewed on television’ (Shiach, 1999, p. 9). Consequently, ‘when you are as famous as Jack Nicholson’ – or for that matter Gene Kelly or Meryl Streep – ‘and your image is so firmly entrenched in the public mind, it might be difficult to disassociate the real self from the manufactured self’ (ibid.). With this in mind, it is not my aim in the pages that follow to concentrate on exploring the role of Hollywood ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ as traditionally construed, but to offer a new perspective on the subject. I aim to show that religious motifs are evident not in the superficial and illusory sense of film actors being ‘stars’ or ‘gods’, but, rather, that the reverse of this is true. With particular reference to Julie Christie, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman and Jack Nicholson, my hypothesis is that it is the ability of certain actors to immerse themselves so comprehensively in their
performances that accords them a potentially fertile theological significance. I will argue that, albeit paradoxically, the intrinsically human nature of the roles they play – which goes against the grain of the sense in which Hollywood actors are reputed to be ‘godlike’, ‘transcendent’ and inaccessible – necessarily has import for an audience for whom the anxieties and agitations, the suffering and afflictions they undergo and receive, has a universal, ‘everyman’ dimension, which is mirrored in religious discourse. Indeed, redemption in the Christian tradition is a product of an often painful and protracted confrontation with the sin, guilt and alienation that characterises the human condition, and from which redemption constitutes a vital possibility. There is, I will therefore suggest, a direct correlation between the authenticity and realism of the performance – one that bears witness to such basic human themes – and the degree to which that performance may be comprising a religious function.
