Variety’s Family & Faith Summit: Christians are Alive and Kind of Well in Hollywood

Variety's Purpose Summit

I went to the all-day family entertainment and faith-based summit called “Purpose,” put on by Variety. I saw panel discussions on Faith in Mainstream Entertainment, How to Win the Faith Audience, Representation of Religion in Entertainment and others. This was not a conference for wannabes or Christian subculture, these were successful writers, producers, and executives, key decision makers and content makers in Hollywood. The real thing, people working with studios and networks making and marketing content related to the family and faith audience, or as my colleague Matthew Faraci of Inspire calls it, The “values audience.” (It’s more than just faith, it’s about cherished values that go along with that faith).

I have been involved as an independent filmmaker in Hollywood for a long time and I have experienced my share of cynicism with a system and people who are late to the party of recognizing and respecting the interests of this huge demographic of faith and values audience. But I have also been frustrated with the “faith-based” genre for its cheesy sermonizing and lack of excellence in craft, which to my mind disrespects God by disrespecting creation and beauty. I’m a Christian, and I don’t believe the message of many Christian movies. (Is this the fault of Christians with low standards pouring money into crap or the fault of a media culture that fails to provide for their demographic needs, thus resulting in Christians supporting lesser quality because it’s the only thing that respects them?)

But there is hope growing in Hollyweird.

Studios and networks finally see that there is money to be made in respecting faith and values audiences. As Paradigm agent Michael Van Dyck pointed out, sadly, these gatekeepers still don’t quite understand the demographic beyond their own stereotypes, but they are getting better as they hire more individuals that do get it. Yes, you have the abysmal failures like Noah and Exodus, but then you have the screaming successes of Miracles from Heaven and When Calls the Heart.

Some of those successful storytellers of faith were Devon Franklin, producer of Miracles from Heaven, Patrick Aiello, producer of Risen, Matthew Malick, producer of Scorsese’s Silence, Rick Rekedal of Dreamworks Animation, Jonathan Merkh of publisher Simon and Shuster, Writers Cary Solomon of God’s Not Dead, Bryan Bird of When Calls the Heart and many others.

The key to a growing presence of Christians in Hollywood has been in this generation ceasing seeing Hollywood as Sodom and Gomorrah to flee from without, but rather seeing it as a mission field to go into and influence from within.

Takeaways

Several memes rose within the conference in most all the panels.

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Godawa on Stand To Reason: Storytelling, Imagination, Apologetics in the Bible

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The brilliant and very friendly Brett Kunkle interviewed me on the Stand To Reason Podcast here.

We talked about some heavy stuff. Guaranteed to fascinate you. The need for Christian artists to be theologically informed and the need for theological Christians to be artistically informed from the Bible. Art, aesthetics, beauty are not merely acceptable, they are necessary to knowing God properly. But also, did you know God used artistic imagination to defend the faith? Did you know God used subversion to redeem pagan imagination and pagan art?

This is the book we talked a lot about: God Against the gods.

Here is the video presentation of God Against the gods.

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Captain America: Civil War: American Exceptionalism in a Corrupt World

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There is a passage in the New Testament, Acts 17, that tells the story of the apostle Paul preaching his message of good news to the Greek pagans on Mars Hill. I wrote in an article and in a book about how Paul actually subverts the Greco-Roman culture by retelling the ancient pagan Stoic narrative redefined through a Christian worldview. He was so familiar with pagan beliefs that he could quote them and even retell their narratives. That means he studied his culture in order to connect with it so that he could share with that culture the risen Jesus, whom he had encountered. He read their philosophy and knew their myths and cultural narratives. The passage begins with him telling the Athenians that he perceived they were a religious people, based on their altar for an unknown god amidst the many of the pantheon.

I feel like that when I watch Marvel movies such as Captain America: Civil War.

I perceive that America is a religious people. I don’t mean in the old sense of the “Christian America” origins or even the high percentage of American believers in that God. What I mean is that as Western society has become more secular and more Christophobic, it has correspondingly become, not less religious, but more pagan in its religiosity.

Case in point: Superheroes.*

Pagan religiosity is illustrated in the polytheistic embrace of this new pantheon of gods. It is not news that superheroes are modernized updated versions of ancient gods 2.0. Humanity craves transcendence and deity, and if we refuse the living god, we replace him with new gods, and a new religion. So even the secular reductionism of the modern superhero only serves to perpetuate religious myth in a “secular” pseudoscientific garb. Most superheroes have some kind of scientific origin for their powers. Even Thor is not supernatural, but merely an ancient alien.

Romans 1:21–23
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The modern world rejects the living God and so it creates substitute gods and religions in order to tell stories that embody its values.

But in spite of this idolatry, and like Paul with the Stoics on Mars Hill, I am often amazed to find some powerful truths in the Marvel universe with which I would certainly want to agree.

One of those values is the American Exceptionalism of Captain America.

Movies are not made in a vacuum. They often reflect the zeitgeist or “spirit of the age” that permeates our culture. We are a polytheistic society that has become increasingly polarized in our political and cultural wars. Thus it is no surprise that our gods now express that internal hostility in such movies as Captain America: Civil War (CA:CW) and Batman Vs. Superman. As one of the characters says in CA:CW, “An empire that crumbles from its enemies can rise again, but if it crumbles from within, it is dead forever.” The villain in CA:CW seeks to get his enemies, the Avengers to kill each other.

But in contrast with the usual multicultural zeitgeist of Hollywood is Marvel’s apparent rejection of the socialist utopian madness that is gripping the minds of our society like the talons of a possessing demon. We have become cynical and nihilistic, thus, the perennially perfect good guy, Superman (Of the DC universe) has renounced his American citizenship in the comics, and turned dark along with the Dark Knight by Frank Miller (UPDATE: Correction on the Batman Vs. Superman movie).

But into this cynical world, comes the superhero from the past, Captain America. Quite literally, he is transported into our modern world from the old days of WWII. So he still has those quaint American values that Superman rejected in a previous movie (“Truth, Justice” but certainly no “American Way”). And that is what makes our modern cynical society willing to watch him, because they see it as outdated anachronistic and ironic in juxtaposition with our modern day. Oh, how cynics and nihilists love “irony.”

But it is just here that Cap becomes the lesson from the “greatest generation.” It is precisely those values of “outdated” left behind American Exceptionalism from a bygone era, an era usually damned as “Ozzie and Harriet” values, that becomes the goodness, integrity and righteousness that could save us from ourselves. The values of chivalry that seems arrogant and presumptuous to modern left wing collectivism and the so-called anti-colonialism of Obama’s America.

I won’t pretend to understand all the mythic trails of the Marvel universe, nor remember all the tedious details of their mythology and characters. But the big picture story of Captain America: Civil War is that the world is blaming the Avengers for all the destruction that has occurred because of the terror activities of Hydra’s bad guys who want to control the world. Hmmmm, does that sound like America being blamed while protecting the world from a certain extreme wing of a certain religion we all know is performing jihad in the name of their god? And while we are at it, let’s throw in the atheist religion of communism that still threatens the globe. So these bad guys are so evil, they cause great swathes of destruction as the Avengers fight to stop them. Entire cities wiped out, innocent lives lost, the usual collateral damage that totalitarian regimes cause when stood up to.

And yet, the world blames the Avengers for it! WTF? The Avengers are accused of “routinely ignoring sovereign borders” as if they are global bullies engaging in macroagressions rather than saving everyone’s asses. (Quick, where is the safe space with playdoh and crayons?!)

As the Vision, who is supposed to be very intelligent AI, very stupidly says, “Our very strength invites challenge, and challenge breeds hostility.” This blaming of the victim is the very heart and soul of the left wing Anti-Americanism that is destroying our country from within. It is a collectivism that doesn’t understand the nature of evil. It is not strength that breeds or invites hostility, it is weakness that does. Bullies don’t pick on the strong, they pick on the weak. Communist countries, and Islamic terrorists “vote for the strong horse.” They will only stop when forced to stop — by strength.

Captain America understands the nature of evil, and the nature of American Exceptionalism. He says, “When you can do the things we can, but you don’t, then bad things happen because of what you didn’t do.” When America pulls out, evil grows to fill that void.

But the world blames the good guys, and seeks to have them sign a treaty of “accords” that would place the Avengers under the authority of the United Nations, to be more collectively accountable. Think of it as redistribution of power. Funny how the greed of envy works, isn’t it? Legalizing theft and crybullying.

It is here that the movie seeks to have a dialectic between collectivism and individualism. Some of the Avengers turn wimps (led by the chief cynic, Iron Man. Hmmmm, any surprise, the most cynical becomes the first fooled?), and they split between two camps of Avengers, those who seek to sign the accords and appease the envy and greed of morally inferior debtor nations, and those led by Cap, who has “faith in individuals,” and a strong moral compass to be leaders in righteous strength.

The appeaser Avengers “do what has to be done to stave off something worse,” and in so doing, actually make matters worse, precisely because that collective authority (the UN) under whom they place themselves is morally inferior.

It is here that the movie becomes fallacious in depicting the UN as a neutral body of nations who just want to have peace and order, when in reality, it is a corrupt body of greedy and immoral criminals (See the documentary U.N. Me). But I get it, they want to show both sides at their best in order to have a “balanced” dialectic.

But the true moral superiority of Captain America and his Americanism shines when he says he won’t sign the accords because it keeps them from fighting evil, which makes evil win. As he says, “When I see a situation going south, I can’t ignore it,” and “Even if the whole world tells you something is wrong when it is right, you say, No.” This is how a righteous man thinks, a moral man, a strong protector of the weak.

But this is not a naïve self image that ignores America’s faults or imperfections. No nation is perfect, and certainly not America, but it’s the best we’ve got. As Cap says, “We may not be perfect, but the safest heads are our own.” American Exceptionalism is not “my country, right or wrong,” but it’s also not the moral relativism of multiculturalism that concludes that our morality is no better than any other country’s morality. Moral fools propound moral equivalence.

The collectivism of the United Nations does not create peace, it creates war, by tearing down the strength of the righteous just like it did to the Avengers. The selfish greedy thievery of socialist redistribution does not create wealth, it destroys it. The oppression of human rights and genocidal impulse of Islamic states is not the equivalent of the Judeo-Christian chivalry and self-sacrifice of the West. There is right and wrong, and some cultures are wrong. Cap believes we must lead by strength and righteousness, which will be the model and example for morally inferior nations to aspire to.

That is what made America great.

And that is what makes Captain America the coolest of all the Avengers and the victor in the inevitable civil war of Avengers at the end.

Nevertheless, like Paul on Mars Hill, I have to say that despite some of these positive truths portrayed in CA:CW, I find myself unsatisfied by the substitute pantheon for the living God. For only with the Judeo-Christian God can there be any intelligibility to the chivalric values of righteous strength. Without God, even American Exceptionalism is hollow idolatry. Without a transcendent God, all values are morally equivalent as the godless and nihilist argue. One man’s superhero is another man’s supervillain. Without God, there is no righteous nation, just nations and their gods vying for power — and the will to power rules.

Without the one God of the Bible, there is no justice, there is only war.

 

* Another example of the spreading influence of paganism is Environmentalism and the Climate Change Cult that is sweeping over nations like a global Crusade. It is a return to pagan earth worship with a fascist religious regime akin to the Inquisition, complete with high priests, punishment for heretics and End of the World threats.

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SkyWatch TV Video: Yahweh Vs. Baal. Are they Building a Demonic Portal in London?

I was interviewed by Derek Gilbert about the replica of Ba’al’s Arch of Triumph in London. Watch it here.

A replica of the Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria, was erected in London’s Trafalgar Square today. It was part of the Great Colonnade, a Roman street that linked the Temple of Bel (Ba’al) to the city’s western gate. Did Christians make too much fuss over the original plan to recreate the gate to the Temple of Bel?

Check out my book, God Against the gods: Storytelling, Imagination and Apologetics in the Bible.

Check out the video of God Against the gods here.

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God Against the gods: Storytelling, Imagination & Apologetics in the Bible

JUST RELEASED!

How God Captures the Imagination

Brian Godawa, Hollywood screenwriter and best-selling novelist, explores the nature of imagination in the Bible. He explains how God subverts pagan religions by appropriating their imagery and creativity, and redeeming them within a Biblical worldview. The sea dragon Leviathan, the Storm God and others are examined within their Biblical context to draw out the spiritual meaning. Improve your imagination in glorifying God and defending the faith.

Here are the Chapters Titles:

Demonizing the Pagan Gods

Old Testament Storytelling Apologetics

Biblical Creation and Storytelling

The Universe in Ancient Imagination

New Testament Storytelling Apologetics

Imagination in Prophecy and Apocalypse

An Apologetic of Biblical Horror

 

For more information…

CLICK HERE to buy it at Amazon.

CLICK HERE to see the website.

 

Hollywood Worldviews: Worldview in Movies. It Affects You More Than You Realize.

Check out the short YouTube video.

Every worldview is a story that has a narrative of Creation, Fall and Redemption.
Every movie has a worldview.
I explain the components of a worldview and how they are incarnated within a story in movies.
This will help you understand the underlying meaning of movies.

Get the full version of this lecture, complete with film clips here.

You can find out more about the series here.

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Monster: Very Cool Music Video about Bullying

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This is a music video that I support because it uses the metaphor of monsters in our head like zombies that haunt us to do wrong. Very cool song. I wrote about this band in an earlier post here.

The band’s name is Gavlak.

They only have 3 days left to raise the money for this PSA-style video that will encourage young people not to bully, not to listen to the negative voices in their soul.

Check out the Kickstarter video here.

Gavlak: Poetic Punk Rock Band with Heart, Soul & Mind – & Plenty of Screaming.

Wild at the California Institute of Abnormalarts

Wild punk band Gavlak at the California Institute of Abnormalarts

I saw GAVLAK recently at the California Institute of Abnormalarts, a fascinating venue that feels like a museum of creepy dark mortality. A huge stone sculpture of a skull looks down upon the outer courtyard that wraps around the building for mingling amidst bizarre artifacts like mummified human remains and Carnivale-like statues and paintings. It’s a refreshing truthful change of pace from the delusionary world of immortal youth in LA.

Which is why it was the perfect place to see the EP Release of the punk rock band, Gavlak, a gritty, gutsy performance with Michael Lee bellowing beautifully on lead vocals, Ben Stelle plucking away clearly on bass (and cowriter of the music with Lee), Steve Watson playing a mean guitar, John Steward banging away gloriously on drums (He plays for Fishbone, and was helping them out). The drummer on the EP album is Fredo Ortiz, a previous Beastie Boys drummer, who was on tour with Gogol Bordello at the time of this show.

Full disclosure, Michael Lee is my friend. But also full disclosure, I don’t like loud banging music and I especially do not like live performances, I am a studio music lover. AND I have no problem telling Michael if I don’t like his stuff. We critique each other’s art all the time. But in this case, I truly enjoyed the experience. Yes, I wore ear plugs to stave off deafness, and yes, I was too damned tired to hang around after the gig, since I want my sleep and late hours for rock and roll are not a mid-life crisis of temptation for this boy.

But the performance was really quite amazing. These guys were real pros. The playing was tight, and Lee’s performance as the lead vocalist was truly entertaining. The guy knows how to scream with passion, move with the music and interact with the crowd. And he really does have a great voice for this stuff, and he has the persona of a star up there, which of course makes his wife and me laugh and shake our heads with amusement, since we know he’s just dust.

And that’s the point of the band that makes it transcend your typical punk rock band. Their music feels the pain of existence with a true honesty, but hints at redemption, unlike the nihilism of so many other punks. The lyrics are poetic and gutsy, and there is melody that keeps you humming the tunes. No clashing dissonance of absurdity here. This music is more the ancient text of Ecclesiastes set to catchy music. Wisdom wrapped in suffering.

Their cover songs were truly fun and memorable. Sedated (Ramones), All Day and All of the Night (Kinks), Paint It Black (Rolling Stones), Seven Nation Army (White Stripes). But my personal favorite was Come Together (The Beatles). What can I say, Beatles Bias.

But to be honest, their original material was easily of equal calibre.

And since I have the recorded EP, I will comment more on that because the lyrics are clearer, the music sharper and tighter to my studio loving ears.

1. In the Pain. This is the one I can’t get out of my head. My personal favorite. Singing Gavlak’s crooning coolness as I drive in my car. But it’s also the one I most relate to. It’s a gutsy lament of how we try to hide our internal suffering, yet that is precisely the thing that may wake us up to our true need and hope. It is within that pain that we can actually meet our Maker. “In my pain. I feel you.” Like I said, baby, a musical Ecclesiastes. Damn. This is my friend. But he’s actually got a great voice that I like to listen to along with my few other hard rock songs (I’m an old timer: Zeppelin, Queen, Aerosmith) In fact, in some ways this music reminds of that spirit.

2. Nothing I can do. A song about free will, and how we can’t make someone see what they don’t want to see or understand. It’s really a ballad-like lament of resignation to our inevitable finite humility. Simple, yet profound.

3. Bag O’ Tricks. This one is my favorite for lyrics because it really addresses the futility of the atheist worldview of materialism. It’s philosophical, clever and passionately pure, all in one. The atheist worldview reduces the human experience to meaninglessness, which is self-evidentially absurd to the soul that longs for transcendence.

You’re a skin sack full of bones.
You’re a meat rack on a stick,
a bucket full of oozing sludge,
a biochemical bag of tricks.
You’ve never really made a choice
and you’ve never really had a thought.
That’s not how the whole thing works.
Isn’t that what you’ve been taught?

But he doesn’t leave us wallowing in such insane irrationality. He screams his hint toward redemption as loud as his mockery of godlessness.

You think you know who you are?
I tell you, you better think again.
Not a waste of time and space.
You’ve got something within.

4. Monster. The music begins with an eerie impending doom, as he sings of the “monster in your head,” a revelation of the original sin of human nature. Man is basically bad, not basically good, as delusional humanism keeps repeating to its hollow-souled adherents. It’s only by facing our own depravity that we can begin to find our way out of the bondage to that creature of the dark residing in all our souls.

The things you say and all the things you do
they come from somewhere, somewhere deep inside of you.
What’s hidden there is a fright to see.
It’s just your monster. It looks just like you and me.

5. My Demon. This song is just cool. It’s a catchy riff about being haunted by the demon of our own choices that lead to the consequences of our suffering. We face our comeuppance if we fail to conquer that demon. Because it is coming for us…

Lunatic ahead is aiming straight for me.
Where did he escape? Am I the same as he?
See my demon seething in his cold pale skin.
Eyes of darkness gaze from sorrow deep within.

There is “only one that can make us whole.”

6. Deluded. This is another song of resignation and regret reminiscent of “Nothing I Can Do.” But in this case, it sounds like a deeply personal experience that the writer is somewhat haunted by, trying to sing his justification to cleanse himself. The guttural painful screaming of “I did not backstab you!” carries this home.

The Gavlak EP has strong catchy music, vocals full of passion and character, and a powerful combination of gritty gutsy honesty wrapped in a poetic redemptive hope.

You can hear some of their songs and buy them here at ReverbNation. (At this point, there is Bag O’ Tricks and Deluded. I assume there will be more available eventually.

Their Facebook Page is here. Like it and find out when they will have their songs available for purchase.

AND FINALLY, they are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a music video they are making of “Monster.” Go here to pledge.

I just did.