This post is adapted from a discussion from the Something Awful forums.
DStecks: “lol at the people unironically saying that “a movie that advances a conservative agenda cannot be any good”, when that exact sentiment reversed politically is what leads to the movies in this thread.”
Most stories require a powerful opponent
Think about it: a conservative agenda involves deferring to already established power structures. So a conservative story involves obeying power and/or opposing those with less power. That just isn’t a very fun narrative. Haven’t you ever heard of an underdog? It’s much more interesting to see a story about defending the powerless AGAINST the powerful.
Probably why the best religious films use actual stories from the bible, since the protagonists can be reasonably construed as not being part of the dominant power structure of their society.
DStecks: “Are you going to genuinely argue that the only good narrative is an underdog story? Because that’s a laughably simplistic and shallow view of, well, storytelling as a whole. I ask you to think about it: are all detective stories inherently bad, because a criminal, inherently, is an underdog against the police. Your position also disregards that a fictional story can frame a political conservative as an underdog: would a movie about a senator trying to pass anti-gay legislation, fighting a liberal controlled government, be a “much more interesting” story purely by virtue of his being an underdog?
The fact of the matter is that there are dozens, hundreds of films that we would consider great that still have a politically conservative perspective, the currently hippest example to name being Ghostbusters. You can even make an argument that the action genre is inherently conservative, due to inherently being about the righteous application of violence.
At the end of the day, you’re rating a film’s quality by its political stance, and that is exactly what the people who pay money to see God’s Not Dead do, they’ve simply arrived at the opposite conclusion to you.”
I never said that an underdog story was the only story possible. However it is often difficult to tell a story that doesn’t follow a standard 3 act structure in a film meant to have wide appeal.
Detective stories and mysteries must always involve a powerful adversary or they are boring. In many cases, the crook has a mole in the police, for example, or the detective is himself in a position of powerlessness in society (see every noir ever). For example, in the noir classic A Touch of Evil the lead character is a Mexican law enforcement officer in the fifties solving a murder at the US-Mexico border. As you might imagine he is belittled and is disrespected by the “good guys” as well as the bad. In Casablanca the main character is going toe to toe against the Nazi army. Hard to have a tougher foe than that. In Ghostbusters the protagonists face powerful supernatural forces with supernatural origins and abilities beyond their reckoning – they too are in a position of powerlessness against the forces of darkness. You can argue all of those films advance a “conservative agenda,” but all of those films put the lead character in the position of the underdog.
If we have an action hero, he MUST be an underdog. He MUST be fighting against overwhelming force, even if the film’s story is a conservative “strong manly man fights effeminate environmentalists” those effeminate environmentalists must be mean, wily, and have a shitload of force, otherwise the movie is going to be boring and dumb.
In the case of your heroic senator, in theory that could be kind of an OK movie (I guess tepid like Charlie Wilson’s War) except that we all know that gay people get stomped on by society daily, they are murdered disproportionately, and are the very definition of an underdog. So a wealthy white man (your senator) working to stomp on them further doesn’t exactly scream underdog to me. Such a film would function best as a character study, a la Citizen Kane, with the central question perhaps being “why is this guy such an asshole?”
A movie about a man who forces a woman to learn how to be a good brood mare (Old Fashioned, which involves a proposal in a baby food aisle for extra creepiness) is just a story of a person in power who exerts his power over someone who has less power. It is simply not a good narrative. It only makes sense if you think that women have been getting a little too big for their britches – like they don’t know their place and need to be smacked down a little. For anyone outside the fringes of society it’s about as comfortable to watch as a story about a bunch of rich socialites kicking the homeless in the head.
Furthermore, In Back to the Future, an example you give, a hero who is swept up in an adventure where he is in a race against the clock to do things. He has powerful adversaries and obstacles. It is a fun narrative. I’m not saying films with themes that promote things that jive with the current American Conservative agenda can’t be fun. I’m saying a lot of message-focused Christian films are so focused on hitting various checkboxes for “good Christian values” that they end up breaking several narrative conventions – conventions that are common because generally not including them makes the narrative boring. I’ll go into detail below.
Good narratives need death on the line.
Most narratives that can be digested easily by a moviegoing public have the following traits: (not all narratives do this, this just covers most “mainstream” narratives)
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They feature a protagonist who will have at least one character trait that is detrimental to their well-being or the well-being of others. (Flaws from their backstory that they got over before the start of the story don’t count.) The protagonist, if aware of their flaw, does not want to change it – the flaw “comforts” them in some way. Often this flaw is a coping mechanism that they adopted due to something bad in their past.
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Over the course of the story, the price the protagonist has to pay for failure increases. Eventually the cost of failure will be at least one of three kinds of death: 1. actual death (the protagonist dies physically or their essence/inner self is so changed that effectively the person we were following through the story is dead — typically seen in sci-fi plots about getting absorbed into the singularity/turned into a robot/brainwashed/whatever), 2. social death (everyone will think the protagonist is dumb and lame; they will have zero social capital/be a laughingstock/be exiled in shame, etc), 3. Spiritual death (the protagonist becomes a broken person).
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The protagonist is opposed by an antagonist who is powerful and who can threaten the hero with death (see above for the three kinds of death). The antagonist is not always evil – in most romantic comedies, the love interest is also the antagonist.
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The audience is made to understand that the antagonist is indeed capable of inflicting death on the hero. It is made very clear what will happen to the hero if they fail – there is no ambiguity. If the threat involves the bad guy killing the hero or one of his allies, the bad guy will be shown killing someone else in the same way first. If the threat involves the hero being shamed and losing all social capital among his society/in-group, the hero will usually be shamed/rejected in the middle of the story and will have to defeat the antagonist in order to restore his rightful status (the consequence of failure is remaining an outcast.) If the threat to the hero is that they might not get together with their love interest, we see a point in the story where all hope seems lost and the hero is a broken-hearted wreck before they gather their wits and attempt to win back their love interest through one final dramatic gesture – we know that if they don’t get their love interest, they’ll revert back to their broken-hearted state, presumably to remain that way FOREVER. Typically at some point a “ticking clock” is introduced. The protagonist has to win by X time or else they will experience one or more types of death. This is usually required dramatically so that the audience doesn’t say “why don’t they just let somebody else do it/fuck around for 20 years/walk away from the problem?”
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The progression of the plot hinges on a series of dilemmas faced by the protagonist. Usually what makes these choices hard are the traits of the protagonist. These dilemmas force the protagonist out of their comfort zone. Typically the antagonist stays inside their comfort zone for most of the narrative – often the antagonist is confronted in their “home turf,” giving a maximum advantage to the antagonist and maximum disadvantage to the protagonist. It is unusual for an antagonist to face tough choices.
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At some point the protagonist is faced with a difficult choice where the only options are give up their flaw or something just as painful. Typically in a tragedy the protagonist rejects change. In a “comedy,” or story with a happy ending, the protagonist decides to give up their flaw, even if it’s painful to them. Usually in tragedies the protagonist will experience one of the three types of death outlined above, even if they achieve their stated goal. Often in a story with a happy ending, the hero doesn’t get their stated goal but they lose their flaw (like one where the hero starts out with a materialistic goal and then at the end decides they value something intangible more.)
A lot of explicitly Christian films miss the mark on this. Typically the Christian films will feature a protagonist who opposes someone who is in no way a credible threat. Either their antagonist is never shown to be able to “deliver the goods” or the hero is never in any danger of dying in any one of the three ways mentioned above. One of the reasons why this happens a lot in explicitly Christian films is that usually authority figures are helpful and great role models who lack flaws and often enough the protagonist is also a shining Christian role model themselves, cruelly misunderstood by their secular opponent.
Remember, a flaw is a trait that is typically a coping mechanism for the character who has it that ends up harming the character or others. Some sort of “wacky” flaw like “plays the tuba badly but is convinced they are a virtuoso, causing listeners to get hilariously annoyed but doesn’t actually cause real emotional/physical damage” is not the kind of flaw I’m talking about. As you can see by CAP alerts, hardcore Christians HATE the idea of imitable characters being less than perfect.
So often the Christian hero has parents/teachers/pastors who always love and support them, so that usually rules out “social death.” Having a character question their faith is usually waaay too scary for these Christian films to tackle (or the writers are worried that it might cause kids to also question their faith!) so “spiritual death” is often off the table. And usually the antagonist doesn’t credibly threaten the lead with “death death”.
What is also typical is that the opponent is shown as foolish, misguided, incompetent, etc. Often this character does not have any allies, or their allies are equally buffoonish. The end result is that the hero seems comparatively powerful and the antagonist seems comparatively weak. I’ve also seen in some overtly Christian films the ANTAGONIST grappling with temptation/difficult decisions, while the protagonist always knows the correct path due to their strong faith. All these contribute to the feel many of these films have that they are dull and preachy. The protagonist is usually not tempted in any serious ways and if they were, people like that CAP Alerts guy would scream bloody murder.
Why don’t they just…?
Mordiceius: “I think that another major problem with these Christian films is that they take their audiences to be complete fucking morons. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of the view public are pretty big goddamn idiots, but these are written with the grace of a five year old writing a story. Two of the biggest rules they’re constantly breaking are show, don’t tell and creating a sympathetic antagonist. With the first, they usually just have character’s just constantly speak their thoughts and with the second they usually make someone’s motivations boil down to “they’re mad at God” with no nuance because they think for a Christian film, you’re not supposed to supposed to sympathize with an antagonist – black and white morality only.
Like seriously, holy fuck. It isn’t that hard.
A striking example of this is when in the trailer for “Do You Believe?” you have Sean Astin’s doctor character saying “God didn’t save these people. I did! I deserve the credit!”
With this, they’ve done two things: 1 – They told us what he was thinking instead of showing us. 2 – They’ve created someone who is basically a saturday morning cartoon villain.
Here’s how you fix it: Have Sean Astin’s doctor save someone’s life during surgery. During the surgery, he’s kind of a jerk, but he’s really fucking good at what he does, so everyone gets out of his way. After the surgery, the Christian family comes in to see their family member and they kind of ignore him. Sean Astin is standing there ready to bask in the glory, but they just pass him. They immediately go to pray over their recovering family member. Sean Astin walks out, pissed off, and kicks a garbage can and shouts at a nurse in his way. It doesn’t take an idiot to find out that he’s got an ego and wants the credit. But he’s really fucking good at what he did so he deserved at least a thank you. We cut back to the family praying and they’re thanking God for giving the doctor the talent needed and guiding the doctor’s hand to save this life. After praying, they go ask a nurse where the doctor is so they can thank him, the nurse says the doctor left for the day.
Boom. We still have an antagonist with a god complex, but we can actually (at least slightly) understand his view on the situation. You have the same plot point but with FAR more nuance.”
You make some good points, but I disagree with the idea that the antagonist has to be sympathetic (although perhaps we’re just disagreeing over semantics.) I think that you can have a great story with an antagonist who is not at all sympathetic as long as the antagonist at least provides a credible threat and has a believable motivation. As an example, consider Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. He’s not sympathetic but he’s powerful and scary and definitely is a threat to a pack of hobbits.
It sounds like your chief complaint is that the antagonists motivation is paper-thin. That leads me to something else good narratives have: a minimum of moments where the audience can ask “why don’t they just…?” and not get an answer from the narrative’s text or subtext. Characters should behave in ways that are natural based on who they are, the setting they’re in, and the situation they face. Otherwise you can’t provide a real answer to the question of “why don’t they just…?” Essentially, a character should have no choice but to act the way they do.
Example of where a character’s choices intentionally reveal an aspect of their character – in Star Wars at the climax Han Solo arrives at the battle at great risk to himself to aid Luke. Why didn’t he just take the money and run? Because he is actually a good and loyal guy deep down and he couldn’t force himself not to.
Example of where a character’s choices unintentionally reveal an aspect of their character – Padme dies after “losing the will to live” even though she has two healthy babies. You either have to come up with some convoluted explanation neither supported by the text but not explicitly contradicted by the text about this or you take it to its logical conclusion – Padme is the kind of person who deep down doesn’t really value their children very highly. Also, a wimp. Honey you’re not the first girl to date a homicidal maniac.
Other example – the famous “why didn’t the hobbits just ride the Eagles to Mordor?” requires extratextual knowledge (reading books!) to answer. That the movie doesn’t address this explicitly is to its own detriment.
So a lot of these Christian movies have someone who just hates hates hates Christianity but you’re always like “dude, why don’t you just chill?” And the movie can’t provide a satisfying answer.
Case Study: Looper
Here’s a case study of a film that I think has a very solid narrative. I was gonna use Casablanca, but like EVERYBODY has done Casablanca so I’ll try to touch on some key points with something that hasn’t been so overdone.
Film: Looper (I’m going to spoil this movie so leave now if you haven’t seen it.)
Protagonist: Young Joe
Flaw(s): Young Joe is only interested in satisfying his wants in the short term.
How does the flaw “comfort” the protagonist?: Joe saw his mother murdered when he was young and he inhabits a cruel world where life is cheap. Treating life like a non-stop party helps him avoid the suffering of others and thus any obligation to ease the suffering of others.
How is the flaw detrimental to the hero and/or the hero’s allies?: Joe’s desire to drown out reality through a hedonistic lifestyle leads him to become a literal hitman – to add icing to the cake, he knows that he will be forced to kill himself at the end of his contract but he avoids thinking about it. This trait clearly stays with him through life – Old Joe has sworn revenge because his wife was killed during an attempt by the mob to kill him instead. When asked “why don’t you just make sure that you never meet her to begin with?” he can’t accept that answer because his memories of her are more important to him than guaranteeing her safety.
Goals through the narrative and the stakes if the protagonist fails
Do lots of sex and drugs — No consequence for failure
Kill Old Joe — the threat of death as if he fails, the mob will put a hit on him
Hide from the mob — Having failed to kill Old Joe, Young Joe now has a hit on himself and has to lay low
Protect Sara and Cid from Old Joe — The price of failure is the actual death of Sara, death of Cid’s innocence (we know that if Sara dies he’ll grow up to be a mob boss himself), spiritual death of Joe (the death of Old Joe’s wife utterly broke him, presumably Young Joe would be distraught knowing that he failed to prevent an eternal cycle of suffering and death)
Antagonist: Old Joe
Antagonist’s goal: Get revenge for the death of his wife by killing the man responsible – who we later learn is a young boy named Cid. Incompatible with the protagonist’s goals (1. Young Joe wants Old Joe to die, if Old Joe dies he can’t continue his quest for revenge. 2. Young Joe doesn’t want Old Joe to kill Cid. Old Joe wants to kill Cid because Cid will grow up to be a mob boss whose botched hit on Old Joe results in Old Joe’s wife’s death.)
How do we know that the antagonist is powerful?: In the first confrontation between Old Joe and Young Joe, Old Joe easily knocks Young Joe unconscious. Later, we see Old Joe kill everyone in the future mob by himself. Old Joe also shoots some kids dead – he’s willing to murder children to achieve his goal, so we know that he won’t hesitate to kill a grown woman either.
Dilemmas/Giving up the flaw: Young Joe repeatedly has to choose between selfishness and altruism. Early on he clearly isn’t ready to put his neck on the line as hegives away the hiding place of his friend, who is subsequently mutilated and killed by the mob.. Later, upon realizing that if Old Joe kills Sara (she is using herself as a human shield to protect Cid, we know that Old Joe is absolutely willing to kill her in order to also kill Cid) then Cid will escape and grow up to be the mob boss whose orders led to the death of Old Joe’s wife, leading Old Joe to swear revenge, leading him to kill Sara, etc, he commits the ultimate selfless act of killing himself, thus preventing his revenge-crazed older self from having ever existed. He is in part able to make this decision by coming to terms with what caused him to have his flaw in the first place. He watched his mother be murdered and hardened his heart as a result. He commits a selfless act in order to prevent a little boy with whom he identifies from also having to witness his own mother’s murder.
I’m not saying the movie’s perfect, but it hits all the right narrative beats with little waste (waste here meaning scenes/lines that neither reveal character, up the stakes, or advance the plot.)
The Threat of Death in God’s Not Dead
Per synopsis and youtube clips of God’s Not Dead, I have concluded that the film is bad in part because there are no real stakes.
First type of death: actual death. Never on the table.
Second type of death: social death, eg, public humiliation, being cast out from society, etc. The fact that once the protagonist trounces his erratic hysterical atheist professor in a debate everyone stands and claps shows that everyone was on the main character’s side the whole time (it appears that throughout the film we also see that nobody likes the prof; they all think he’s an asshole.) Even if the main character lost the debate, failed the class, whatever, everyone would have still admired him and thought he was brave or some bullshit.
Third type of death: spiritual death, losing one’s faith or becoming a broken person – again, never on the table. Though I haven’t seen the movie, cursory research shows that the main character never wavers in his faith. The threat of failing a college course is not enough to make him consider atheism. Which is great because half of my college chums failed at least one class and that didn’t turn any of them into shambling wrecks, at least, not any more of a shambling wreck then some of them already were. (420 smoke weed erryday.)
So yeah in essence the story is about a bright, untroubled young man, supported by his community and self-confident, driving some pathetic crazy person into a nervous breakdown and then the pathetic crazy person dies, but not before conceding that the main character was totally awesome and right about everything.
Yep, that reminds me of that really great story I like. It’s about the guy who succeeds at everything, then he does a good job. The end.
Pththya-lyi: “The protagonist does actually face a flaw and overcomes it: Josh has a girlfriend, Kara, who’s got their lives all planned out, and at the start of the film he is content to go along with what she wants. (This is a flaw because obeying God’s Will For Your LifeTM is everyone’s proper purpose in evangelical Christianity – when your loved ones’ desires and God’s WillTM conflict, you have to go with GWFYLTM. Also a relationship where the woman is in a position of authority over the man contradicts the doctrine of male headship – see Ephesians 5:23 and 1 Corinthians 11:3.) When Raddison introduces his class requirement, Josh recognizes that God wants him to reject atheism and witness to the class, but that putting his grade on the line interferes with Kara’s plans for him – he has to choose between GWFYLTM and Kara’s. Josh delays that choice by preparing for the debate behind Kara’s back, but when she catches and confronts him with her ultimatum, he ends up making the right decision and breaks up with her instead of disobeying God.
Also, Josh doesn’t necessarily know that everyone will follow him in accepting God – yes, the students don’t like Raddison’s bullying behavior, but they go along with their professor’s wishes because they are afraid of the consequences he can inflict on them (i.e. a bad grade and the “social death” that comes with being labeled an idiot.) When Josh defeats Raddison in the debate, he breaks Raddison’s power over the students and they are free to openly embrace God.”
But were any of the three varieties of death ever on the table for the protagonist?
Pththya-lyi: “Yes, spiritual death – if he rejects God’s call to righteousness, Josh will have to live with his cowardice for the rest of his mortal life. If he succumbs to Raddison’s atheism and does not repent before his death, he may even earn eternal torment in Hell! (The Book of Revelation repeatedly refers to that fate as “the second death.”)”
SocketWrench: “You’re not going to face a social death because you failed one class….unless your parents/friends are complete assholes in which case why does their opinion matter? Your social death is hyperbole.”
Pththya-lyi: “IIRC, the kids in the movie seem awfully worried about something when they’re all signing the paper saying “God is Dead” in the first act. What do you think they’re worried about, if not bad grades and scorn?”
If the students all thought the prof was an asshole, then they weren’t going to ostracize the kid for debating him, even if he lost.
The big problem is, the movie never makes the consequences of failure clear. When it’s murky like that, you can’t sell the idea of actual stakes and tension. It would have worked if we had maybe seen a glimpse of someone from the previous semester failing the class, falling to their knees, and weeping “NOOOO I FAILED A COLLEGE COURSE, IT’S OVER, IT’S ALL OVER!!!!”
Smart things said by people who are not me
Star Man: “I consider breaking up with a control freak that is mad at me for going to her third choice university so we can be together forever and ever to be a good thing, personally.”
Mordiceius: “The movie logic is stupid as fuck and thus the whole situation isn’t believable. I haven’t seen the movie, so I can only comment on what is being repeated about it, but the whole problem is a false problem since why can’t the main character just go to the academic dean and be like “Yo, this professor is infringing on my religious rights.” Boom. Problem solved. The end.”
Casimir Radon: “Nobody involved went to college anywhere that wasn’t a evangelical diploma mill, so there’s tons of willful ignorance about how public universities work. These are people dumb enough to believe that Christians are oppressed in any capacity in the US.”
Mordiceius: “Ahh…. So what you’re saying is that it’s a bad movie filled with logical inconstancies.”
SocketWrench: “I thought that was well established already with “Sign this denial or fail the class” Well, if they’re religious, they’re denying god, which is pure evil in the fundie mindset.”
McSpanky: “Even worse, the logical inconsistencies are intentional and exist to reinforce the evangelical persecution complex. They don’t want to know how it really works, it’s easier to see the world in this adversarial manner instead. The paradox at the heart of evangelical cinema is that it’s effectively bad on purpose, but the purpose is ostensibly to spread the Good News. I don’t believe it’s actually possible to create a non-Biblical narrative that would both satisfy its target audience and appeal to a broader audience, no matter how well it was produced or acted.”
Cemetry Gator: “The reality is that Evangelicals have a very simplistic worldview, and that just doesn’t make for great entertainment, especially when you’re trying to deal with a film that’s supposed to be a philosophical battle.
These are the argument scenes from God’s Not Dead. They are almost totally unwatchable because there is no flow of ideas. The professor’s role is there to basically be glib and just say “Yeah, that’s nice, but come on! Seriously?” It would be like watching a Rocky movie where he goes up against kids or quadriplegics, or quadriplegic kids. You know the kid isn’t going to be swayed by the professor’s words. The professor is well spoken, but he’s a complete idiot. Incapable of actual thought. And you know what – the audience sees this. But they don’t care.
Because these films aren’t made to entertain or even evangelize. They’re made to pump up the base. They’re made to allow them to see their fantasy played out. They’re the smart powerful ones and the other guys are the idiots.
There’s no introspection. The film was made because the filmmaker was concerned by how many Christians go to four-year colleges and yet, don’t remain Christians upon leaving. And instead of really exploring why that is, instead, they just simply say “Well, they are made to!” They don’t understand atheism (I’ll argue that they also don’t understand Christ or science or anything beyond simple English). How can you make a good film about a conflict between religion and atheism without understanding the core conflict?
It’s not that Christian messages are anathema to good films. There are plenty of great films with Christian messages and themes. Take Gran Torino. Catholicism plays a central role to that story. But it works so well because there are shades of grey. It’s not just the good priest clashing with the mean old racist. There’s some issues with the priest as well.
It feels real because there’s a real conflict that is representative of reality at it.”
Ashcans: “If you hate yourself and would like to suffer for a little more than 15 minutes, you could do worse than watch these clips. As mentioned, the whole argument is really terrible, with the christian kid being painfully earnest the professor just being glib until he switches to be being just threatening and offensive.
What I thought was really interesting though is that at the end of the sham debate the kid heckles the professor into saying why he hates god, and the professor’s answer is ‘because he took everything from me’. It’s obvious this guy is suffering and in pain, and it would be a good moment for our hero (who has made his point to anyone with a quarter of a brain) to back off and show some compassion or something, but instead he goes for the debate suplex.”
SocketWrench: “Well, that’s what the people this film was aimed at honestly believe. atheists are atheists because somewhere along the line a tragedy had struck and they blamed god for it.
Just like the complaint that the professor is just some clueless boob. The people that the thing was geared for don’t think atheists are capable of any thought, rationalization or morals because they reject the obvious. They’re corrupted by satan to try and destroy Christianity and turn people away just because.”
Cognac McCarthy: “Holy crap, the “smug atheist professor’s invocation of Stephen Hawking’s credentials” at 4:50 [of the video] is literally taken word for word from this clip from the Colbert Report, where Colbert mocks a WSJ columnist for not taking Hawking seriously as a smart guy:
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/21iu1g/stephen-hawking-is-an-a-hole
It really says a lot that they were looking for words to put in the mouth of their smug atheist, and they decided to go with something said by a devout Catholic.
It’s also interesting to look at this “debate” as an instructional tool. It’s pretty obvious the filmmakers hoped to equip audiences to bust out some of these sick burns and methods of steering the conversation in real life debates with atheists. It’d be interesting to see if the “atheists hate god” or “you’re not an atheist, you’re an anti-theist!” memes spiked in popularity following the release of this movie. I know my cousin who saw and enjoyed the film would probably parrot the exact points brought up in the debate if the movie/issue were ever brought up and she were compelled to argue about it.”
SocketWrench: “This is the fundamentalist mindset. Atheists deny god because they’re angry with him or blame him for how their life turns out. At no point do any of them understand that atheists don’t believe there is a god. But then if they did, it might help them understand things better, which you know they aren’t going to do.”
Coming up in the next part, analyses of some films with explicitly Christian themes that I think are actually pretty good.
Effort Posts 