ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to raise questions and provoke a discussion about the kind of films which are most amenable to generating a theological conversation. While I do not wish to define the parameters so narrowly that only a particular genre or type of film is seen to be capable of constituting appropriate territory for the theologian to engage with, I am conscious that not all films comprise an equally fruitful breeding ground for theological enquiry. Accordingly, there needs to be a rationale or criterion of some kind in order to be able to distinguish between those films which are most adept at engendering a creative Christian response and those which are less open to a fertile theological interpretation. A word of caution is, however, warranted. In the previous chapter, I went to some lengths to criticize the approach of others in this field who have made assumptions about the way an audience will respond to a given film simply on the basis of the way in which they have themselves responded to that picture. With this in mind, it would be presumptuous to suggest here that simply because I believe one particular type of film to be especially open to a creative Christian reading that nothing else can be of any possible value to the theologian and should thereby automatically be excluded from this discussion. Yet, I genuinely believe that a dichotomy exists between two quite distinct categories of film. On the one hand there are those films which evince social or psychological realism or offer authentic character development, while on the other there are movies which facilitate little beyond superficial, escapist, entertainment value to audiences. While I do not think ‘happy endings’ are intrinsically bad – indeed, there is much that is constructive about escapism, with its underlying message that evil can be confronted, met and overcome – I feel that films that fall into this second category are simply inadequate at engendering a constructive and felicitous theological conversation. Moreover, in an age of franchises, where films such as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter dominate the box office, I believe that it is all too easy to forget that there is much more to movies than the opportunity afforded by such pictures to escape for two or three hours at a time into a fantasy world. As a result, it is important to emphasize that we can (and should be prepared to) look further than commercial, box-office hits to find signs of theology in film, and in so doing draw attention to a way of ‘doing’ theology which has not been sufficiently addressed hitherto by others working in this field.
