Saved! Hope For Good Christian Movies
Nov. 13th, 2015 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI don't mean that ironically. It's definitely a Christian movie. Saved! is about Christianity. Its target audience is Christian. The values it promotes are also values that Christianity, ideally, promotes. And, it's actually good.
My previous tip was about taking responsibility for what one puts out in the world, not expecting God to cover for your own failures. In terms of Christian movies, Saved! does that well.
In Saved! a born-again Christian teen, who was born again when she was three, finds out that her boyfriend is gay. She tries, very hard, to save him from this affliction only to come to the conclusion that, maybe, having sex with him will cure him, and that God can restore her virginal heart.
Instead, his parents find out and send him off to one of those special camps that Christians have for their problem children... including problems of homosexuality. During the story, our main character meets up with the only Jewish person in her Christian school, develops a closer friendship with the parapalegic brother of one of the chief antagonists, and becomes, in general, more accepting.
At the same time, the antagonists aren't evil characters so much as mislead in their own faith, unaware of their own hypocracy. One attempts to forcibly exorcise the main character, and follows that up by yelling "I am filled with God's love!" as she throws her bible at the main character.
This results in a talking-to that I have to believe the writers seriously want to give to many of their fellow Christians.
It's enjoyable. And, to this non-Christian's dealings with Christians, it's true to life.
Saved! should be a framework on which to base other Christian movies off of. It focuses on Christians to make a statement to Christians about Christianity... and it says something more complex than "Christian good, nonChristian bad."
But, I can see why this isn't the standard, even though it should be. The standard Christian movie fair includes God's Not Dead (and the upcoming sequel), The Encounter, Do You Believe, and other movies which have a basic moral of "Christians good, non-Christians bad, not-Christian-enough are just non-Christians."
That's standard Christian fair because the audience seems to be hostile to this version. Christiananswers.net, in their review, referenced a scene in which the gay character announces that he believes that Jesus still loves him, viewed Saved! as having the moral that one can continue to sin while remaining in God's good graces.*
jesus-is-savior.com concluded that the positive response to this movie was proof that Holywood is rotton and evil to its core, declaring that this would be offensive to all authentic Christians (their words).**
This tells me that anybody trying to make a better Christian movie is going to have an uphill climb. The economic and cultural push will always be to reaffirm the moral superiority of the movie-goer and the inferiority of everybody outside their subculture. They will be hard-pressed to accept any kind of criticism that doesn't amount to "you should be a more of a true Christian".
But, that isn't all of Christendom. That isn't all of the Christians who make their faith a daily part of their lives. Some reviewers gave Saved! a positive review, even someone in the comments section of the Christiananswers.net review. So, while it's not a sure-fire-Christian-Movie-Hit, there's certainly hope.
And, even as an atheist, I hope for a better set of fiction from this subculture, if nothing else because fiction is a large part of the conversation that is civilization.
* http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2004/saved.html
** http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Hellivision/saved.htm
My previous tip was about taking responsibility for what one puts out in the world, not expecting God to cover for your own failures. In terms of Christian movies, Saved! does that well.
In Saved! a born-again Christian teen, who was born again when she was three, finds out that her boyfriend is gay. She tries, very hard, to save him from this affliction only to come to the conclusion that, maybe, having sex with him will cure him, and that God can restore her virginal heart.
Instead, his parents find out and send him off to one of those special camps that Christians have for their problem children... including problems of homosexuality. During the story, our main character meets up with the only Jewish person in her Christian school, develops a closer friendship with the parapalegic brother of one of the chief antagonists, and becomes, in general, more accepting.
At the same time, the antagonists aren't evil characters so much as mislead in their own faith, unaware of their own hypocracy. One attempts to forcibly exorcise the main character, and follows that up by yelling "I am filled with God's love!" as she throws her bible at the main character.
This results in a talking-to that I have to believe the writers seriously want to give to many of their fellow Christians.
It's enjoyable. And, to this non-Christian's dealings with Christians, it's true to life.
Saved! should be a framework on which to base other Christian movies off of. It focuses on Christians to make a statement to Christians about Christianity... and it says something more complex than "Christian good, nonChristian bad."
But, I can see why this isn't the standard, even though it should be. The standard Christian movie fair includes God's Not Dead (and the upcoming sequel), The Encounter, Do You Believe, and other movies which have a basic moral of "Christians good, non-Christians bad, not-Christian-enough are just non-Christians."
That's standard Christian fair because the audience seems to be hostile to this version. Christiananswers.net, in their review, referenced a scene in which the gay character announces that he believes that Jesus still loves him, viewed Saved! as having the moral that one can continue to sin while remaining in God's good graces.*
jesus-is-savior.com concluded that the positive response to this movie was proof that Holywood is rotton and evil to its core, declaring that this would be offensive to all authentic Christians (their words).**
This tells me that anybody trying to make a better Christian movie is going to have an uphill climb. The economic and cultural push will always be to reaffirm the moral superiority of the movie-goer and the inferiority of everybody outside their subculture. They will be hard-pressed to accept any kind of criticism that doesn't amount to "you should be a more of a true Christian".
But, that isn't all of Christendom. That isn't all of the Christians who make their faith a daily part of their lives. Some reviewers gave Saved! a positive review, even someone in the comments section of the Christiananswers.net review. So, while it's not a sure-fire-Christian-Movie-Hit, there's certainly hope.
And, even as an atheist, I hope for a better set of fiction from this subculture, if nothing else because fiction is a large part of the conversation that is civilization.
* http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2004/saved.html
** http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Hellivision/saved.htm
