THE EXISTENTIAL SEAT OF CINEMA AND LITERARY ART FORMS

By David Beilstein

WHEN it comes to the issues I have thus far discussed it is important to look at some of the theological issues influencing my thinking on issues confessional Christians encompass when glimpsing relationships of secular culture, specifically, cinema and literature. 

St Augustine of Hippo unpacked in his magnus opus, The City of God, an antithesis between Christians and non-believers in the present age concerning ultimate things related to the Kingdom of God. In St Augustine's schema, the Bishop of Hippo laid out duties and experiences Christians and non-Christians share and can agree on in distinction with those things which divide the elect of God, chosen by God's merciful grace in Christ, and those under the just enmity with God, the unregenerate non-believer. 

In The City of God St Augustine illustrates a basis between ultimate things - things pertaining to salvation; of the Sacred Kingdom of God glimpsed in the gospel proclaimed by Christ's church - and those things penultimate - things common, or profane, encompassing duties, behaviours, that are not inherently sinful, but are nevertheless, non-Holy. It is here the rubber hits the road. 

Movies, cinema, as much as literature, concern themselves with penultimate interests. Thus, they can only describe those things experienced on a secular level. A common, profane level of experience of life and its glory and brokenness. While dramatic art forms can describe people and actions of the Sacred Kingdom, they do so in the interest of dramatic storytelling, not to prescribe proclamation. 

Suffice to say, a character in a movie can proclaim Christ accurately or falsely, but said character does so because of an unfolding narrative - couched in descriptive, dramatic purpose; not for prescriptive apologia, or evangelism. It is also true that God's creation has specific purposes, not all decreed in order to bring men to Christ. Holy Scripture is clear how this work manifests itself through the work and act of the triune God alone. 

Let's peek-a-boo at an example: wine and food are good for the body, but neither brings men and women into reconciliation with God through Christ's Gospel. And these earthly elements, though profane, need not be Holy to be purposeful and good gifts of the triune God of Holy Scripture. In ultimate terms, it is certain that without the presupposed truth of Christ and His Gospel, the ultimate purpose of wine and food goes misunderstood by those outside the Covenant of Grace. 

Nevertheless, I have argued movies and cinema (literature too) rely on penultimate purposes as their basis - apart of the dramatic storytelling medium; to achieve their design. And it is because these art forms are penultimate, they fail to gird up the antithesis Christians desire them to be in contradistinction to ultimate things, which do erect a natural antithesis between those belonging to the city of men, and those brought into a state of grace, awaiting the promised consummation of the City of God through Christ. 

This contention, however, does not mean the Christian who writes movies and literature is left without a personal voice. All writers and filmmakers bring their individuality to their work. There should be no debate, here. And those who do not have failed any meaningful aesthetic purposes. The writer constructs his ideal world in a dramatic contextual design, and it is the requirement of the Christian who is an artist to imagine a world in consistent harmony with the world Sacred Scripture's God has ordained. Our world, brimming with vagaries of all kinds, is itself beautiful, corrupt, broken - immensely expressive of God's wondrous character in nuanced, incomprehensible, but particular ways. 

Nothing the Christian saint imagines should construct a false view of the world. But we must emphasise caution.  For the dramatic conflict between protagonist and antagonist organises the narrative of any story, true or feigned, within a dramatic meeting - a combustion - where numerous characters will have false ideas about the world and human experience and purpose. Quite obviously, such dramatic complexity will be one of the major reasons for the conflict marinating the unfolding narrative; a consequence of the author doing his abled best to observe and describe the epic sweep of human existence, in penultimate terms. 

People believe many another untrue things, Christian and non-Christian. Those beliefs happen upon an edge of conflict, running against and contrary to other character beliefs and actions. As such - because of human experience or dramatic story needs - characters must be equally wrong, equally right, and equally duplicitous - in order to create the foundational apparatus for drama to work. 

Drama works because of the humanity - man as imago dei, denied or accepted - of the audience. Thus, the goal, if that is the right turn of phrase, for the Christian who writes secular movies and literature, is as Flannery O'Connor described: to describe distortions, as distortions; the result of man's fall into enmity with God in the Garden by the first Adam, a type of Christ, resulting in the paradigmatic broken anthropology St Paul describes in the Apostle's Epistle to The Romans, Chapter three. Thus, the writer of Christian faith should describe distortions in the human experience as unnatural and bitterly tragic; as foreign to our humanity. 

We come to a specific paradigm, then. If one of the hallmarks of proper Biblical exegesis is the law-gospel distinction (especially related to the doctrine of Justification through ex nos imputation to sinners by Christ's cross-work) we may define a distortion-beauty-conflict-inducing arch - in a penultimate sense - as the proper function of dramatic storytelling.

The most successful writers of confessional Christian faith have understood dramatic narrative parameters; the laws, as it were, of dramatic storytelling. And they have realised the non-prescriptive nature of the dramatic-storytelling craft. Likewise, these writers comprehend the limits and the design of the art forms they peruse. And it is these same writers who have occasioned in their work, more darkness, more beauty - more earthiness and humanity; than the Christian trying to force-feed evangelism into dramatic storytelling designs and purposes it simply cannot execute because of what dramatic art is as created by God. 

AS I WAS SAYING

By David Beilstein

ONE of the charges I have made of late peek-a-boos at movies and literature with evangelistic pretensions, occasions a look at how so-called "Christian" movies and literature run against the dramatic medium of cinema and literature - dramatic art forms of a descriptive and dramatic nature, rather than a prescriptive medium. 

Moreover, I have also tried to examine on dominium that the Christian writer's attempt to use dramatic art for evangelistic purposes in order to create uniquely "Christian" art, reduces the scope of cinema and literature because it reduces the observable world men and women, Christian or non-Christian, live in. Such reality, then, ceases to imagine the world the triune God - Whom no greater being can be conceived - has been pleased to decree into existence ex nilo before the foundations of the world. 

Writers of the past, from JRR Tolkien to CS Lewis, have been examples I have used to show literature need not be "Christian" to realise imaginatively, the dramatic world realised by writers who are Christian saints. Such work, though not evangelistic, speaks far more resolutely of the plausibility of Christ's Holy Gospel found in the testimony of Sacred Scripture without warring against the inherent confines of the dramatic medium. 

But there is another. 

Her name, Flannery O'Connor. In the lovely O'Connor's essay, The Church And The Fiction Writer, the late Roman Catholic novelist and essayist considers a long held "tension" between religious affection and piety and the import of secular artistic mediums. 

When fiction is made according to its nature, it should reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete observable reality. If the writer uses his eyes in the real security of his faith, he will be obliged to use them honestly and his sense of mystery and his acceptance of it will be increased.

A belief in fixed dogma cannot fix what goes on in life or blind the believer to it. It will, of course, add to the writer’s observation a dimension which many cannot, in conscience, acknowledge; but as long as what they can acknowledge is present in the work, they cannot claim that any freedom has been denied the artist. A dimension taken away is one thing; a dimension added is another, and what the Catholic writer and reader will have to remember is that the reality of the added dimension will be judged in a work of fiction by the truthfulness and wholeness of the literal level of the natural events presented. If the Catholic writer hopes to reveal mysteries, he will have to do it by describing truthfully what he sees from where he is. A purely affirmative vision cannot be demanded of him without limiting his freedom to observe what man has done with the things of God. 

Finally, O'Connor concludes,  

It is when the individual’s faith is weak, not when it is strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life, and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the sense of the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost. Fiction, made according to its own laws, is an antidote to such a tendency, for it renews our knowledge that we live in the mystery from which we draw our abstractions. The Catholic fiction writer, as fiction writer, will look for the will of God first in the laws and limitations of his art and will hope that if be obeys those, other blessings will be added to his work. The happiest of these (and the one he may presently least expect?) will be the satisfied Catholic reader.

My project, therefore, takes off from where the late Ms O'Connor's essay ended. In my examination, I contend there is fixed laws and limitations to art; hence, art cannot do the business Christians desire evangelistic art to do; for dramatic art, unlike Christian theology and practise is not of the apologia; nor the proclamation of the Word of God. To try to force such a limitation on dramatic art is one reason out of many so called Christian movies and literature are unable to obtain a serious reflection upon society as Babylon - a redemptive dramatic theatre where God's purposes are worked out in Sacred and secular spheres. 

It is preciously because most "Christian" artists who impose unnatural evangelistic designs upon dramatic, descriptive art forms, cannot themselves arrive at a literal depiction of natural events glimpsed in the world and experienced by non-believers and believers alike; the art itself becomes untruthful to this world. Whether fear of offending a Christian audience, or a belief that reality is too ugly for fellow Christians to contemplate; filmmakers and writers with evangelistic designs too often fail to reveal the world as is, in contradiction to obedience to Christ and the world God in Christ the Messiah has pleased Himself to purpose into existence for His own eternal Glory. 

Such a failure, then, creates an imagined universe removed from what any audience knows truly about the circumstances and sweep of this life; this side of Christ's first and second advent. It is in the truthful observence of God's creation and revealed decrees in dramatic form that best defends Christian faith. 

Certainly, no two Christians will render such reality the same, but whatever they may imagine in a piece of work, must tell the truth of this world in order to take up the challenge of rendering a world an audience can rightly see as glorious, but also, broken. 

Fiction, no less than gravity, is governed by laws. In realising at the deepest level those dramatic laws  the artist who is Christian has at their fingertips all they need to depict the distortions of human life; all it's vagaries, as dramatic distortions, and alien to our humanity. Therefore, it is because the Christian faith fulfils the good the natural world declares; the paradigmatic reality of nature and grace can be properly acknowledged subconsciously by those viewers who are themselves, non-believers. And so, whatever that art maybe, it becomes truthful because of man's inescapable status as imago dei. 

TOLKIEN'S WISDOM

By David Beilstein

JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN once wrote,

“But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.”

The Hobbit’s release on December 12, 2012, by Lord of The Rings Trilogy director Peter Jackson is occasion to reflect on Tolkien and his professorial pipe visage - gone since 1973 - upon our tabescent cultural scene en vogue once again. One cannot escape Tolkien’s religious affiliation - as a Roman Catholic - combined with his scholarly understanding of literature that creates for those interested a window to glimpse issues pertaining to Christianity and culture. 

Looking back, I was perhaps early to CS Lewis, but late to Tolkien. These migrations of life and moment have a way of working themselves out. So my regrets are few. Still, to reach back to Professor Tolkien’s essay published in The Lord Of The Rings, denouncing allegory is worth a peek-a-boo. Equally relevant, however, is Tolkien’s own claim The Lord of The Rings was a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. At first Tolkien says, it was merely subconscious but became more concrete during revisions of Rings. Tolkien confessed these Christian dimensions of his fictional creation in a letter to English Jesuit Father, Robert Murray.

Success, then, has many fathers. That is, when a piece of literature is adopted by the culture as a generational statement - widely loved and celebrated too - whatever was pertinent to its parturition takes on mythic proportions. People see everything they want to see within the confines of the piece of artistic work (or literature). Since too, the Christian religion is a religion of apologia and evangelism, it thus makes sense there would be a desire to claim Tolkien’s creation as uniquely Christian.

Being Presbyterian, I take issue with this kind of slush. Not in defiance of Christianity, but because of what Christianity is, and less importantly, what literature and cinema/movies happen to be as a dramatic medium. To conflate the two, is in my humble opinion, to weaken the purposes to which both have been created for. Such conflation brings war between nature and grace, rather than realise the distinctions of both nature and grace thereby affording one an understanding of their complementary relationship. 

In so many ways, Tolkien’s creation contains nothing Holy Scripture says belongs uniquely to the Christian saint - this standard being a far better standard for calling something Christian or secular. There is much history here. In the second half of the 20^th century, Christianity in many forms became obsessed with being culturally relevant - winning back the cultural territory it lost with the collapse of the mainline denominations. Gone were the dualistic tensions between the Sacred and secular - accelerated in part by Karl Barth’s all encompassing Christological neo-orthodoxy fad. Within this cultural milieu, Christian voices created the idea that CS Lewis’ Narnia was a ‘Christian' allegory - less so than Tolkien some claimed, but sociologically, evangelical Christians tried to make that case, too. Tolkien scholars, also, though in error, tried to claim Middle Earth was not allegorical, unlike Lewis' Narnia. But CS Lewis said that Narnia was not allegorical, enumerating, he could not write like that. 

Suffice to say, I tried to make the case last time I wrote on dominium that movies in particular, could not be Christian - echoing my past sentiments that literature could not be either. But what is equally important to understand is such a stance does not mean literature and movies are out of reach of symbolism and the right ordering of the universe by the Christian writing secular work we do in fact live in. Such a reality, it seems to me, is far different than using a dramatic medium to convince people to become Christian; it assumes, wrongly too, man the imago dei creature decides to be Christian - rather than it being the consequence of supernatural gratia by God alone.

The writer who is Christian, should in theory be able to reckon the world rightly; it’s glory, it’s brokenness - it’s immense vagaries, which exist within all of life at all times. In the opposite direction, which sadly consumes the Christian popular "culture",  is bare evangelism in artistic endeavours. While quite right and Biblical in matters of faith and practise, it is my suggestion this paradigm is outside the means of the dramatic medium inherent in dramatic art. As stated in previous blogs, stories do not inform the audience in the main; they dramatise for the audience life’s general experience within a dramatic framework. A story confirms what the audience knows to be true generally - meaning belief in life’s full sweep of existential realities: sadness, joy, love, strength and weakness; lust and hate, birth & death, etc. This dramatic exigency, therefore, creates a dramatic framework to process the way such experiential minutia situates itself.

Professor Tolkien deserves his due; meaning, he ought to be read,

I much prefer history, true or feigned, with it’s varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Tolkien, quietly, reveals in this quote why so called “Christian” movies, novels, etc., evangelistically mired, break down. They make no sense; demand no reflection on what exactly is the purpose of drama in the aggregate. Tolkien then, realises here, the central importance, understanding fictional storytelling is feigned history - history being descriptive. Drama, like history, is dramatically descriptive. Evangelism and its method and means; the ministry of Christ’s Church, etc. - including apologetics - is prescriptive. And so, the Christian who demands “Christian” movies and novels is trying to force the natural design of drama as descriptive art form, to become unnaturally prescriptive.

When we watch a movie or read a novel, we are glimpsing (more than likely) feigned history. Our appetite is conditioned to experience the story descriptively, and not prescriptively. It’s why propaganda unsettles our minds. 

We also come to the notion of truth. "Christian" movies, literature, lack truth. They do not reflect the world seen, but a censored world for comfort and propaganda's sake. Holy Scripture does nothing of the sort we might come to realise. Thus, “Christian” movies, literature, depict a world far removed from the source of its religious affections: Holy Scripture. The Holy Bible contains an assortment of ugliness and violence “Christian” movies and literature cannot even begin to ponder producing, not without sturdy rebuke - a questioning from outraged pietists that some Christian saint could depict the world so realistically. Dare I say, that says something pretty bad about Christians. We desire a faith that accounts for all of life, except when it makes us uncomfortable or becomes contrary to our slushy pious moralisms. Ugh. Christian faith is based upon Holy Scripture. Likewise, anything true in a dramatic story presupposes the triune God of Biblical, redemptive-historical reality. The ignoring of the real world in order to sell Christian faith evangelically is a denouncement of the sovereignty of God and the world He has determined for His eternal Glory.

Have we not remembered Samson’s desire for the Philistine woman was from Jehovah? Have we truly believed Sacred Scripture’s testimony that God desired to bring Absalom to destruction (and did), on top of decreeing Absalom would lie with his father’s concubines?  

These Biblical texts are just as clear as the warm and fuzzy ones (John 3:16 comes to mind) eeevangelicals like to man handle out of Biblical context. Further, when was the last time a movie claiming to be Christian depicted a character committing adultery, murder, and after such acts, being described as a man after God’s own heart? 

We know the answer if we are honest. Thus, “Christian” movies do not depict the world Jehovah has ordained; it’s that simple. They do not dare to; for God's world He has been pleased to decree is too beautiful, too meaningful, too offensive and ugly; too unclean, for their myopic vision. But it is the world Jehovah God decreed nonetheless, for His purposes; whether man in his foolishness likes or dislikes it. St Paul spent many pages of Scripture outlining such truth. 

And here Professor Tolkien's wisdom refreshes. The professor of literature understood more than evangelicals an accurate depiction of the world God has ordained would be sterner, more religiously pious admission for an artist confessing himself to be Christian.  Likewise, Tolkien understood the tension of this age and the age to come - a peculiar double-mindedness reverberates throughout his fictional worlds. Tolkien's hobbits are a resounding illustration of this. 

Further, Tolkien comprehended it is not the job of art or fiction to do the work of the Christ’s Church and the preaching of the Holy Gospel. Art doesn’t do that, the professor of Middle Earth wisely realised. There needs to be a clarion call: back to Middle Earth Christian saints; ladies and gentlemen. 

We come and should then admit Tolkien’s Middle Earth  not being allegorical - not being "Christian" best defends the world God has ordained for his glory. In essence, it is the beautiful sweep - of the all things earthy and human, that best describes the good things of this world Christianity fulfils perfectly in the world to come, that so defines Tolkien's sweeping vision. 

We should not be confused that the world Tolkien depicts is only intelligible when presupposing his own Christian faith; a universe that says something more true about existential realities than all the “Christian” art done in generations upon generations.  

THE MEANS OF MEDIUM

By David Beilstein

BY this time I have furrowed my brow and inched out on a tree limb over raging rapids, or so it might seem. Being a confessional Christian who, though not surly in temper, is opposed to the idea of so called “Christian” movies and films.

I have begun to lay out my reasons for this in subsequent blogs on dominium. Some of this has come from a manuscript, or a letter, I wrote to a friend. It ran up to 89 pages, and its inner voice became one of book rather than personal letter. But getting back to the point. I have always had held this opinion, as I have been watching movies for three decades now, lots of movies and films - foreign, commercial, Avant garde, ect. This opinion expanded, however, when I attended Anabaptist caldron Liberty University from 1996 to the spring of 1997. I was surprised to find - and somewhat bewildered - why it was students at Liberty University wanted; or thought I should - make movies, they themselves, did not watch. 

When asked what their favourite movies were - they were, cough, secular movies: Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, Die Hard, Predator, ect. I began to replay this odd contradiction in my mind over and over. Sometimes I warred with it. It did not make sense to me in the least. My journey would take time - as the legalism experienced in Anabaptist and general evangelical churches rubbed me the wrong way and I was churchless for almost a decade.

The more I began to watch movies, old and new, the more I felt these proponents of Christian movies, while maybe well intentioned, had no real understanding of movies (as a medium) even though many of these people watched them routinely. When I became a confessional Presbyterian, this forced me to drink of Christian theology deeply; a study of Christ and His Church, His Holy Gospel. In that process, I became even more convinced there was no such thing as “Christian” movies on theological (Biblical) grounds, not based upon the whims of my own opinion.

So came reasons, then, for my umbrage toward “Christian” movies…  three basic reasons pressed upon my thinking: means, otherworldliness, and aesthetics, repeatedly convicted me such an evangelistic design - or approach - to movies was impossible, contrary to the art and the medium of filmmaking, i.e., of cinematic storytelling in general, and completely out of step with the purpose, or nature of filmmaking in the particular.  This was before film school. And once I entered film school, along with Christian theology, I became more convinced of my previous instincts were more right than I would have known at the time. 

It was in my film class, History of Motion Picture Arts, which sealed the deal.

Silent movies help illustrate the point because they do not contain material some Christians find offensive. Hence, the Christian saint is enabled to watch them without his or her “guard” up. And, given their simplicity (because movies were a new technology in the silent era), silent movies illustrate the very core of what movies do at a discernable level for those not privy to movie aesthetics. Silent movies do not have complex shot selection, kinetic editing, etc., so the “magic” they are pulling off is far clearer to the viewer.

Thomas Edison’s protégé, Edwin Porter, revolutionized cross-cutting in the short films, Life of An American Fireman, 1903, and after, in The Great Train Robbery, 1903. The ability to cross cut established the basis of the modern narrative film. Crosscutting is an editing technique, establishing action occurring at the same time in two different locations, creating the basis of suspense and drama in a scene.

In Porter’s Life of An American Fireman, we watch a fireman have a vision of an imperiled woman and child. The fireman sits in the firehouse, while the woman and her child are in another location, an apartment building. The short then crosscuts between the imperiled woman and child, and the fireman seeing the alarm, and heading off to rescue her.

Here we see, the beliefs and motivations of the characters in stark clarity. There is no room for evangelism - for this is about a universal piece of drama all audience members acknowledge - a woman and child in distress, and the firemen who save them. One can argue these "universal" dramatic premises can be acknowledged only because Christianity is the transcendental faith; where such things can be assumed intelligently. But movies, in themselves, cannot make that argument. They can show it, they cannot philosophy upon it. 

The more I watched these films, the more I saw that movies do not boil down to philosophy, or epistemic investigation (and proof), but simply, Who wants what from who? What happens when you get there? Why now? As we, the audience, take drama in visually, we too are concerned with these elements. What happens next, we ask? As such, the beliefs of the characters, their motivations, their experiences, are for the story's sake - not the audience’s sake. Even when we approach movies with sympathetic Christian portrayals (Chariots of Fire, Babette’s Feast) we come to realise, the characters are Christian for the narrative developments of the film - not as apologetical tools. As both Chariots of Fire and Babette's Feast were made by non-Christians. Why? 

Because they were dramatic stories, bringing together dramatic complexity audiences members regardless of religion or non-religion could relate to. They could relate to the humanity portrayed therein. 

Take for instance an opening scene. We fade in on a Hasidic Jew and his young daughter strolling through Grand Central Station in New York, on 42^nd Street. They are threading through a collage of humanity: the good, the bad, and the ugly. As they walk through the throngs of people, the little girl watches all the grand narratives of life: an elderly man helping his elderly wife; young lovers, recently married kissing, holding one another; two street toughs “pick-pocketing” unsuspecting tourists, and a derelict prostitute threading through a pack of businessmen, eyes teasing, hips shaking.

Then the little girl turns, watching as another woman drops her wallet, walking away from a bookstore. A male stranger, picks up the wallet, and catches up with the women giving it back to her. The little Jewish girl watches from afar, watching how pleased and thankful the adult woman is to have her purse back.

As the Hasidic Jew and his precious Jewish daughter walk through Grand Central Station, the girl watches all this. Then, father and daughter spill out onto the sidewalk into the bright sun. The father is in the midst of hailing a taxi, trying to keep his attention on his daughter, and getting a taxi at the same time.

It is New York, confusion rains. Traffic, horns. People coming and going.

Then, a small boy grabs the little Jewish girl’s attention. He waves to her and she waves back. As the boy goes with his mother across the street, the boy drops a small doll. The Jewish girl rushes out to pick it up - as she saw this action done early by the two adults. But she is struck and killed by an screeching car. We end the scene with the screams of the father, holding the lifeless body of his daughter.  

And we fade back in on the funeral - a Hasidic Jewish funeral for the little girl. The young father is bereaving. Mourners coming and going; giving the Hasidic Jewish man their condolences.

Is this an apology for Hasidic Judaism? Of course not. The main character is Jewish for the particular story needs that are yet to come. If our movie is about our Hasidic Jewish character overcoming grief, then his Hasidic Jewishness will have a major part to play in that process. Maybe he abandons his faith - maybe his faith becomes more personal, more real to him. In essence, no matter where we go with the rest of this story, the religious affections of the character are not for the audience, but for the character’s journey - they will mean thing in story developing. But film is not the medium in which it can be said, that the beliefs and actions of the character, should therefore be ours as an audience. What the audience acknowledges about the Hasidic Jewish man’s religion is not that it is objectively true. It is true for the character, and thus is somehow impactful on the dynamics of the unfolding story. 

That is the problem with “Christian” movies. They ignore the primal underpinnings of storytelling. Movies concern the conflict between protagonist and antagonist; the coming together of these two forces, or people, causes combustion. A movie concerns the dynamics of that conflicting combustion. Hence, movies are not the confessions of the screenwriter, but the conflict between external-to-the-filmmaker protagonist and antagonist. Characters are external to the writer, not biographical. The conflict may reveal certain things that interest the writer, but the magic works when the circumstances and conflict is removed from the author of the film. 

As such, it has always been my belief “Christian” movies were a reaction, not a story-based consideration by Christians. Too many Christians vamping on Christian movies may know about filmmaking, but are clueless when it comes to history of motion pictures and why the art form matters to us as human beings. Good intentions, however, does not equal right use. And that, along with not being functional cinematically, or the point of narrative storytelling, has always been my critical eye toward "Christian" movies. 

This is not to say religious affections do not belong in movies. They do. People are religious in life, many people. If love belongs in movies, if hate too; if violence and the desire for peace, for shalom; then the religious affections of men and women do, as well.

But that is not evangelism or apologetics - that is simply an imitation of life's sweep. 

AN INTRODUCTION: WET SHAVING

By David Beilstein

ONE of the beautiful things about being a man is the ability to grow facial hair. That ability, God given, adds to the character and aesthetic of what it means to be a man. Certainly the character of man, his honor of neighbor and the women throughout his life’s course trump this, but that should not belittle a healthy entheos for beard growth. I must say, when I began to “have” to shave, it was more than exciting.

I was almost - as they say - fascinated.

But limited income or not, shaving can be pricy, and more to the point, many men find shaving by the time they reach their mid-twenties to be nothing but aggravation. Frankly, life has its gifts and subtractions, and male pattern baldness would have to fall under the heading of subtractions - those subtractions, ones good or bad behavior has little if nothing to do with.

The beard, as it were, is a gift. Male pattern baldness, however, is a curse in life.

There was a time I boasted of some of the most beautiful textures of hair God gave to a man. But at the age 24 or so, I began to see discernable signs of hair loss. Sorrow beset me. It was a shock, given how thick and luminous my hair had been. It was not altogether long after, the past ways of styling my hair looked absurd because of the specific pattern of hair loss I became a victim of - yes, it was that horrific it seemed.

It was not long before a change was needed, necessitated by self-dignity. In the proud tradition of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, many moons ago now - one of the proudest, boldest, pure individual Americans, to once draw breath, I began to shave my head. Smooth, bald, no peach fuzz. Thanks to the mightiest God of creation; The God before all worlds, I looked pretty dapper with my head shaved.

It’s not something a man can just decide to look good with. One either pulls it off, or ones do not.

That could be another gift and curse motif. Not the most destructive curses, but enough to add some colour and character to a man’s life. Since becoming a film student full time, however, the reality of limited income has added new dimensions to my life. One of those dimensions is the cost of ordinary things - things everyone has to buy. For a man, this means shaving equipment - cream, oils, and razors. Shaving one’s head adds to this cost, as oils and creams are an asset to present razor burn, and add to the sheen of the pate.

Doing the math, I have found this is an ungodly amount of money when added up. The shaving of the head and the skin needs that requires simply expands the cost of shaving care. Having sworn some kind of loyalty to the Gillette Mach 3 shaving apparatus, the blades alone are enough to send the most loyal customer into Chapter Eleven. Now, every company is entitled to its profits, when in a free society customers purchase their product. Voluntary exchange of goods and services, then, is an enriching basis upon which society moves and grooves.

But when you can’t afford something; you cannot afford something. A revealing statement, something my father - a roaring lion of wisdom - might utter.

Onward we traverse. Many trends and movements envelope American culture - some of them odd, some good, some stupid, some beautiful and worthless, and some worse than obscene. One such trend, or better yet movement, is the comeback of the straight razor or “wet” shaving. Like the nostalgia for bow ties and casual pipe smoking, I find this trend refreshing. But I never considered it an option until I began looking at how much money I could safe partaking of it. The same could not be said of bow ties, or as it were, pipe smoking.

As I began to research shaving with a straight razor, the aesthetics also gripped my attention. It seduced me, I might admit. The shear romance of it - and yes, I must confess I lionized the masculine personification of it. I’ve always romantized the healthier aspects of manhood - courting a woman, rather then dating, and on and on. There is much about our culture’s idea of masculinity I find perverse - not simply on devout Presbyterian grounds - but aesthetic grounds too. But every so often, an old school Negro like myself latches onto something swimming through the culture that reminds one of the freedom and the dignity of being human; of being a man, living in a free society. Or, it used to be, and, still is compared to most societies. Such a tide typically comes from a trend that allows for both innovation and the way the individual likes - or needs - something done to his liking.

Concerning straight razor shaving, then. About a year ago, maybe more, I began to look into this dazzling zeitgeist arriving in the bowels of American culture. I started to learn about the different blades, technique, and products. So I am in the process of converting to straight razor shaving. I’ll need to save up some bucks. The cost up front is pricy, no more than a nice electric razor, but when a film school student - or any college student - that can be a steep price regardless.

There is some men who might read this and say, “Oh Lord, no.” But relax, Gentlemen! I have the hands of a surgeon and am adapt at using both left and right hand with precision and grace; years of pugilism were amenable to such skills. Hell, I even drive with my left hand. Razors are different some will lament. Yes, there will be a nick here or there in the beginning. I have been cut worse before, trust me. Contact my surgeons.

But think of the women, dear sirs. They have babies. Now, I know something about pain - after a handful of mysteries and experience, and other medical gymnastics done to my body. But I can honestly say, if a human being can go through giving birth, a man can draw a blade to his head, or face, even his neck.

Men used to weld the straight razor on a regular basis, and teach their young sons how to handle the blade. The only drawback: time. As it requires more time, more craft, to weld a straight razor. This is good, though. We are a rushed society. A society propelled forward into much morass, forgetting the finer things of life. A man’s face and it’s care, ought to be one of the human things a man treasures about himself; not boastfully, but because it is part of him.

And so, another new thing, If God permits, is upon me. If I was not a Presbyterian, I’d ask those reading to wish me luck. But I am Presbyterian, so if you pray, pray; and likewise, consider the blade. Consider looking forward to that time you spend alone peering at your face, it’s curves - it’s shape.

And enjoy being a man - it’s special.