Saturday night Crystal and I got together with some friends to watch an episode of Francis Schaeffer’s video series “How Shall We Then Live?” The series surveys significant eras of Western History, including the Roman Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and others. The episode we watched was on the Reformation. It was helpful and its quality was only augmented by Schaeffer’s very blatant pair of knickers (that’s actually him on the front cover of the DVD if you click on the link above).
Amazingly, the Reformation churned out some very great art. This raised the question for us of what the church’s role in art should be today. Should we see Christians being some of the world’s preeminent artists?
In a similar vein, we talked about what Christian art should look like. Take the movie industry, for example. Must a Christian script an expressly evangelistic film for his work to have redemptive value? Or is it possible to view all of the world as belonging to the Lord (Ps. 24:1) and craft a movie out of that framework?
And where do you draw the line? Crystal asked us if a Christian could have written and directed “The Dark Knight.”
What do you think?
3 comments
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August 25, 2008 at 9:42 am
John T Meche III
I talked with my wife after the movie about Batman being a Christ figure. He takes upon the sin of another in order to save him. Batman gets Dent’s sin and Dent gets Batman’s righteousness.
August 25, 2008 at 9:55 am
Jason Abell
Joe R. and I have had a running conversation about the themes in Dark Knight (Joe does all the thinking and I listen). Also, Abraham’s 22 Words has discussed whether a story can be good if it doesn’t have an expressly redemptive characteristic to it. My thinking is that a yes a story can be good without some redemptive quality, but only because we as Christians know the whole story.
Regarding your question, I think a Christian can craft a story like the Dark Knight because Christians better understand the depravity of mankind. With Satan as context, they can come up with a thoroughly evil character (ie. Joker). No Country for Old Men shows the depravity of man and has very little hope, but is still good because we know how this story fits into the bigger Story. This leads to another question: Can/should a Christian write a story without hope? Ultimately, in the Dark Knight there is hope, but only because of the sacrificial heroics of Batman.
August 25, 2008 at 8:11 pm
peacebringer7
I think art is often simply set to the side in Christianity and even we settle for the mediocre. There are many themes worth reflecting on in the Batman movie. Yet, I think the heart of the matter is wether or not Christians can make great art. I don’t buy into having to have a strictly “Christian” theme to be “Christian” art but should always reflect the Biblical and Christian world view.