Religious Themes in Film

Lesson 8: The Omen and The Prophecy: It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Class Themes

We have covered a lot of ground in this course, from rites of initiation to Gnosticism, from evil angels to the stigmata. Let's try and synthesize some of the themes.

What are some of the general concepts that we can take from Campbell's book, the heroes in the movies we covered, and the great hero's adventure we find in the Christian Gospels?

First, we can see that all our lives are a series of births and rebirths. There are many “mini-hero journeys” in our lives. We are called on many times in our life to journey’s of separation, trials of initiation, and the return. The main reason we must go through these journeys is so that we can achieve new identities and new responsibilities at different points in our lives.

If you are an adult, recall the age when you realized that you had become a grown-up. Perhaps it was a moment when, for the first time, you felt like you were being treated like an adult. Perhaps it was a stage, or a series of events. Perhaps it was a time when you left your childhood home. Regardless, a healthy emergence into the identity of grown-up required: 1) a separation from your childhood thoughts and motivations, 2) a series of trials that tested you as a grown up, and 3) the recognition by yourself and your community that you were now an adult.

If one does not consciously go through this development, it is possible that one is still hanging on to childhood motivations and childish actions. If a person is not properly "tested" by society – living on one's own, paying one's own bills, getting a job, taking part in adult relationships – then one may not have firmly grasped adult identity and responsibilities.

This "heroic" structure repeats itself throughout the different phases in our lives. To be consious of these "changes of identity," one needs to pay careful attention to what the tests are, what the rituals are, and what the new responsibilities will be.

Some people, perhaps all of us, are called to heroic destinies in addition to but apart from these phases of life. Some, like Jesus and many of our movie heroes, are called to go through a hero's journey in order to serve a greater good.

By reflecting on the heroes of our movies and the heroes of the Bible, we can see what such a calling would look like. These heroes are called by an instinct, like Neo, or by circumstances, like Frodo, or perhaps by a family duty, like Aragorn and Luke Skywalker. The call is delivered by signs, or by angels, or by a nagging feeling that they should be doing something else.

Such a journey demands that these heroes make a very clear separation from the society that they live in. Not only do these heroes go for a walk away from their community, they begin to live differently from their culture. Instead of living comfortably in the Shire, they leave completely to fulfill their mission. Instead of being a "good" boys and girls and following cultural rules, they become like Jesus and go against the system.

The lives of these heroes are not comfortable. In fact, many times they are dangerous to the point of being fatal. And they carry with them a message for their community and their world that the powers-that-be in that world don't often like or appreciate.

Like Jesus and Neo, these heroes are proposing revolution.

These heroes seek to change the status quo. Their message is both political and spiritual. They demand a change both politically and spiritually. Think of the political and spiritual message of Jesus. Think of the political and spiritual message of Frodo and Aragorn. Think of the political and spiritual messages of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi.

These heroes don't always choose their adventure. Their adventure often chooses them.

It is enough for many of us to make the heroic jumps from childhood to adulthood, from singleness to family life, from adulthood to middle age, and so on. The trials of these initiations are hard enough. Many of us can't even consider a call to an even more heroic journey. Such a journey would most likely lead us away from family and friends and make our lives difficult.

But if the call is there, we cannot ignore it.

Where does the strength for heroism come from?

The movies we have studied nearly unanimously give the same answer. The strength for heroism starts with the hero's personality and character. There is a seed of psychological strength within each of the heroes which cannot be moved. There is something there already that makes them a hero.

However, nearly all the movie heroes are helped along by magical swords, or shields, or forces, or spells, or talents which they did not have when they first started on their journeys. These superhuman strengths and protections are given by compassionate higher forces in each of these characters' universes.

And so we move to the question of grace in Christian thought. In a way, we might think of grace as a superhuman strength or protection that people cannot achieve on their own.

Some Gnostic thought presents grace as secret code that one must know. If you know the code, you are saved. Other Gnostic thought has a sort of inherited "grace." Only humanbeings associated with this family or race can achieve salvation because it is genetically passed on in some way (like Aragorn and perhaps Luke Skywalker.) We see this in some religious beliefs today. But surely grace-as-code or grace-as-family-heirloom cannot be the case.

If grace is a superhuman strength and protection which will help us through our heroic journey - whether that journey be superhuman or just the heroic task it takes to live – then how do we gain that strength?

And how do we know that the messages we are given are from angels, i.e. our true destinies, and not from society, our own selfish minds, or from an even more sinister source? When God tells us to kill our own son, how do we know it’s God?

Let’s ask the question from a different point of view.

We know that there have been human beings who have been given superhuman strength and protection. Beyond the movie heroes, we can see this in history as well as everyday stories of heroism. Some of these heroes take full credit for their acheivements. Most, however, give the credit to something bigger: God, the universe, a feeling of love.

Is it possible, however, to recognize grace in other people? How do we know that the character of Frankie, in Stigmata, is being led by grace with her message or being led by selfishness or something even more sinister? For that matter, are there forces in the universe that can give superhuman strength which does not come from a higher “good” but rather from a higher “bad”(the Dark Side of the Force)? And how would we recognize that?

(Unfortunately, evil hardly ever presents itself as it does in the movies: dressed in black, surrounded by fire and brimstone, physically corrupt, and seething in anger.)

In other words, how can we tell the real heroes – powered by a higher good – from everybody else? How do we know when our leaders, religious or political, are being led by a higher good to fulfill their destinies? How do we know when people who suggest “revolutionizing” our culture are led by grace?

Think about everyone – artists, spiritual leaders, political leaders, movie directors – who propose a revolution in our culture, a change of the status quo, and ask that question again.

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