We all know the story: the prince goes on a long journey, kills the dragon, and rescues the damsel. So what about slaying the dragon? We as Christians know it must be done, but why do we feel this need to pretty up the slaying? We make it clean, finessed...watered down. We make this assumption that there is no blood, that the prince doesn't get hurt, and that the dragon is killed with a nice paper cut sized slash to the heart. When in fact the battle is long, it's tiring, it's bloody, and above all it is painful. We as Christians either ignore this fact, or even worse twist the truth in order to make it more pleasant. Christians are equipped to fight the dragon why do we assume that it's not a violent battle? We avoid the truth of the battle because we are afraid.
I use this as an example to show how watered down the Christian film industry has become. Why are we afraid to show the truth just because it's uncomfortable. Show some violence, because that's how life is, show some nudity, because that's how life is, show some cussing, because that's how life is. If Christian directors, writers, illustrators, believe that showing the cruel reality of the world is some how wrong, then they end up watering down the battle, and the message loses all impact.
Not all christians are prepared to fight the dragon, or even face that the dragon needs slaying. They don't equip themselves, and they tend not to look into how it's done. People want things nice and clean because either that's all they're prepared to deal with, or their customers don't want to deal with reality, which discourages the real reflection. Frequently both.
ReplyDeleteA way to fix this is to be engaging storytellers, and try to inspire by example. Then again, if that work'd we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
My rant about censorship covers at least some of it, the cliffs notes being that they have specific things they filter for, like cussing. However, if you instead use proper visceral graphic language instead of what is consider'd "strong," the directness is often so stark and new in its sincerity that it leaves the impression of being far more brutal. That's why I tend to avoid cussing. Not because it's bad, but because there's more effective, high-impact language out there. Funny Games applies this concept to violence, and I'm mostly sure if you hunt for it you could find a something that depicts nudity in an effective way without actually showing anything, though nothing comes to mind. I'm probably asking too much of people.