What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?
If I may, I would like to paint a cinematic portrait for you, faceless nameless regardless Reader. I have just finished watching for the umpteenth time one of my favorite films, & there is a great scene you must know in order to understand this post fully. Okay. So:
Near the end of Sister Act, Deloris Van Cartier (played by Whoopi Goldberg, of course) is tied to a chair, her wrists wrapped tightly to the arms of the decor by thick white ropes. She has witnessed a murder at the hands of her married lover (married not to her), who has ordered his two cronies, Joey & Willy, to “get rid of her.” So here she sits, tied to a chair, with two guns pointed right at her chest. But Joey & Willy, they cannot do it, they cannot pull the triggers, they cannot do what they have been ordered to do. One small thing stands in their way, one little obstacle that is saving Deloris’ life: Deloris is wearing a habit.
“We can’t do it, Vince,” they say. “What if while she was hiding in the convent, she converted or something, you know?” (granted, this is not the actual dialogue, but it is more or less what they mean to say.) These thugs, these men who have been presented to the audience as ruthless killers unafraid to get messy just to get paid, to get even, to get whatever they want - these men just can’t do it. They just can’t kill a nun. Deloris knows this, she knows that while she was hiding in a convent waiting for her lover to be brought to trial, her perceived social status has changed rather substantially. & even though no, she has not converted, she knows the power she holds over these men who think she may be a nun.
Anyway. Joey & Willy, they untie Deloris-dressed-as-nun. They have a solution to their dilemma. “Strip,” one of them says (they are, after all, nameless as individuals, simply movie villains with a purpose & no identity). The logic behind this command, of course, is that if Deloris does not look like a nun, she will be easier to kill. Instead, though, she drops to her knees & throws her hands together & her head up. “What’s she doing?” one of them asks. “She’s praying!” the other replies. They lower their guns & turn reverent quickly. Praying, after all, is no laughing matter.
But Deloris has another trick up her large, black, habit sleeve. “Forgive these men,” she commands of God, “for they know not what they do.” It is classic Biblical stuff, all very jokingly symbolic & tongue in cheek pseudo-spiritual. She throws in some more stuff to make the thugs feel guilty, tosses a dash of fake Latin words in at the end (like “tutu”) & a quick “Amen.” Joey & Willy cross themselves, heads bowed. & before anyone can blink, can even consider what is to come next, with both men standing behind Deloris, still on her knees, one man on each side of her — she performs a kung fu double backwards punch to each of their groins, & runs away.
I present this scene as an introduction to my post for a number of reasons (partly because Sister Act is an awesome movie, partly because I like the names Joey & Willy as villain caricatures), but mostly because it represents perfectly a fascination I have adopted with the portrayal of the spiritual in the artistic media. This excludes “art” art unfortunately, as I have nothing to say about a good painting rather than, “Hey, that’s a good painting. Right?” At which point all the Art History majors hang their heads & shake them sullenly, disappointed at my lack of understanding that this painting is an utter wreck. I’ll try to make this a three-post thing then, I think, to create for you a buff list of movies to watch, music to hear, & books to read. So those are the categories I’m dealing with too, by the way: the film, the album/band, the book. It will be loosely structured, probably poorly organized, & generally all over the place. But you will love it!
So let’s get going: The Spiritual in Film.
In my limited experience with film & the time-honored tradition, it seems religion wears many masks, all of them equally odd. There is, of course, the comical representation, as seen in movies like Sister Act (& Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, which is even better! If you can believe it!). These are generally mixed bags of jabs at God & a reverence for those with a spiritual presence in their lives. The basic idea behind this mask is that religion is serious…but not so serious that it can’t be funny! In Keeping the Faith (okay, not necessarily a movie I recommend, but if you like Ben Stiller…), for example, a rabbi & a priest fight for the same girl’s affection. Do you see the humor here, the way the spiritual establishment as figurehead (i.e. church, synagogue, white collar, yarmulke) is proven to be fallible & yet at the same time, in being fallible, more human? It is a way to strengthen the ties between humanity & God by signaling that in some way, humor is the key to a better understanding of God’s own laughter, of God’s own big toothy grin. It is a priest. & a rabbi. Fighting for a girl. Do you see the humor, the irony?
Also in this category of a movie God being an easy-going, weightless God are countless animated & live-action children’s films, hidden in little nuances or lyrics. I point your attention here to Disney’s Newsies, one of my childhood favorites & one that we watched every year in high school journalism class & one that stands the test of time (Christian Bale said about the box-office bomb that it was, however: “Time healed those wounds. But it took a while.”). Anyway. In the opening song, the newsboys are running through the streets acting like hoodlums & selling their papes & generally having a ball being destitute. It’s the wonderful Disney dream - no parents, no rules, just hawking newspapers & running from the police! But in the opening song, right there in the middle, the boys run into a group of nuns, & their comedy, their joie de vivre, turns rather stoic. They remove their hats. They accept cups of hot liquid & pieces of bread. God has given them this gift of song, of dance, of freedom, but still we are reminded that God keeps them at an arm’s length. Here is your bread, your hot liquid. But remember, you are “lost & depraved.” It is, after all, a beautiful moment of film’s magical dichotomies.
Here is the first 9 minutes of the film. The fun starts around minute 3. The moment I am talking about specifically, if you really just want to cut to the chase without succumbing to my nostalgia, is right at 5:33.
(Note the lyrics here: “Papers is all I got/Sure hope the headline’s hot.” Even Disney can’t just let religion into their films without saying, “Okay here it is, here is your God. But wait! Nobody really wants God, they just want the bread & the hot liquid! Papers, after all, is all they got! Where is room for God?”)
(Also as an aside: I secretly model my life after this movie. Go see it please. Please.)
But it’s not all funny ha-ha spiritual nonsense, of course. The spiritual presence in films takes another, perhaps more common form, as well. We see this form in movies that attempt to explain or define spirituality by means of philosophical arguments or strikingly confusing drawn out shots or iconic imagery. To get a better sense of what I mean, the movie Pi can be used as a perfect example. In this movie by Darren Aronofsky (okay wait, I’ve just realized that my other example for this kind of film is another Aronofsky movie. Ah whatever), a mathematician dedicates his life to figuring out numerical patterns in nature, ultimately searching for predictability in the stock market. The man is accosted by a Hasidic who wants to use the numerical patterns to unlock patterns within the Torah & in doing so, discover the true name of God.
I use this film as an example because it touches on a branch of the spiritual in film that really intrigues me, in that the idea behind the film itself is not to create characters whose faith is pertinent to the story, but create a problem whose answer is pertinent to You. You the audience, You the watcher, You the believer, who sits & wants to know: “Really? This is God? Is this film, or is this really it?” This kind of stuff is absolutely brash in its methods, other worldly in scale. This kind of film might even make Dante weep (& I don’t mean for its beauty or truth; I just mean that it touches on something so beyond the lens, beyond the lighting or acting. It touches on Man’s own willingness to believe, Man’s own faith!).
In a slightly different direction, Aronofsky’s The Fountain is much in the same vein. Besides every amazing thing I could say about the grandeur & scope of this film, how it needs to be seen 20 times to appreciate (still I have only seen it three times!), the basics are that it is the story of the love of two people that spans a millennium. Two characters, three time periods. Anyway, the point in me bringing it up is that it is also founded somewhat firmly in the story of the Tree of Life, that which was written in Genesis 3:24 to be protected by a “flaming sword” after Adam & Eve were banished from the garden of Eden. The placement of spirituality in this film is incredibly bold, not in the way that means brave, but in the way that means thick or heavy. It is essentially the story of one man’s search for life after it has been stripped from him by God. There is a very poignant part in the film, wherein our hero, our protagonist, says, “Death is a disease, like any other. And I will find the cure.” It is a battle, but it is not a battle against God necessarily, only against that which God has stripped from Man. It begs the question, “Are we really to be punished for the Original Sin forever? Because forever is such a very, very long time!”
(I want to quickly point out here that I rewatched No Country for Old Men recently & have a lot ruminating in my head about those two trees under which Lewellyn finds the satchel full of money. Biblical allusions, anyone? Anyone?)
I want to move on quickly & begin to wrap this whole mess up now. But before I do, I believe that there should be definite mention of the placement of religion in the horror film. Obviously, this has an incredibly long history attached to it, so I’m going to purposely steer clear of a lot of it for now. But I do want to point out a couple moments that can maybe shed some light.
In Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, one of the most notorious scenes has a Catholic priest fighting the undead in a church graveyard. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, then you haven’t been reading this blog, because I have been praising it again & again (ceaselessly!). This particular scene is important because it presents us with one of two very classic horror movie/religion binary scenarios. It deals with the death of God in the presence of the priest, the only religious figure in the entire film. There is not much to it, so I will let the video clip speak for itself. Revel in one of the most classic horror movie lines of all times (see if you can guess which one it is):
The other example I want to bring up is perhaps the most obvious: The Exorcist. The interesting thing I find about this film, in the end, is that there are so many misconceptions about the focus of the movie. The film is not meant to be about a girl who is possessed. It is not called The Possessed Girl. It is called The Exorcist, & its focus is thus. The film is so triumphant in many ways because it revels in the triumph of God itself, applauds what one might consider the strength of God’s purpose through the hands of man. It is after all a rather celebratory film!
Despite all this rambling & referencing, the end of the story always goes that God is very often given something of an unfair rap in film. Not being a completely convinced believer myself, I tend to take the view of the outsider, relegated to watching again & again as movies present God & then either allow the image they have presented to dwindle into humor, confusion, or a very untimely death. Hollywood, it seems, has a very potent fear of raising spirituality up & just letting it sit. Not fester or crumble, but just sit. After all, what is Hollywood so afraid of? Deloris ain’t really a nun.
A lot of this blog tends to deal with Christianity & spirituality, as is sometimes a little self-evident. I do this because my fascination with Christianity in America is a very big part of the way I view media of all kinds. As someone who is often completely floored at the idea of adhering to any one specific religious doctrine for an entire lifetime, I am fascinated more than anything else by this generation of mine & its separation into the extremes of faith. It seems to me that we have two clearly divided sides pitted against one another: those who are devoted to their God to the point of hatred & sometimes even violence, & those who see this side & associate it with the entirety of Christianity’s long long long history & immediately denounce spirituality of any kind.
I think it is fair to say that very few things have such an eternal & unbreakable connection with all things spiritual than music. At its most rooted, basic moments, music was the fruit of the religious womb, so to say. It began in the steeples, with songs of devotion & praise & mourning. The dawn of man is itself very deeply entrenched in religion, & truly it does not surprise me in the least that music would follow in that route quite closely. Thus, for me to say that I am going to devote one blog post to the historical connection of the spiritual & the musical…that is just too ludicrous for me to think about. Instead, this post - part 2 in the 3-part series of religion’s influences & structures in three separate media - is going to focus on the current spaces that religion occupies in the musical world. Touching for just a little while on an old devotional/spiritual number (& that is only because I love it & you deserve to hear it), this is mostly going to be about modern Christian-influenced artists & song structures.
