So, you have probably heard about, if you haven’t seen, the movie The Sound of Freedom starring Jim Caviezel. It is a film that is very loosely based on a true story about Tim Ballard a former Homeland Security Agent who has formed an agency attempting to rescue children from human trafficking.
I haven’t had the time to see it…I get to the movies about once a year at most, nowadays…but SOF looks interesting. More than that it’s about a topic that’s important and I’ve always liked Caviezel—though he does tend to play characters a little over-serious, for my taste, but he’s still very good.
Now, I expected a movie with Caviezel, especially about child-trafficking, and with Angel Studios backing to do pretty well. It’s a summer movie and there are a lot of Christians with disposable income, and considering the popularity and success of The Chosen I would have been surprised if this movie didn’t turn out to be very profitable. It only cost $15M to make!
I also expected to hear nasty and unfounded criticism from the Left.
So far no one has disappointed me. The movie has performed very well—being number 3 in the country as of right now, and the critics on the Left have been exceedingly nasty and mean-spirited.
I’ll grant, I haven’t seen the movie. So I won’t weigh in on its quality. My guess, from reading a broad spectrum of reviews is that it’s probably an OK movie, not terrible, not great, that probably gets a little preachy, and probably could have been improved with a bigger budget, and probably takes too many liberties with the whole “based on a true story” thing. But it’s probably a movie that makes people feel good and inspires them to do something and entertains them for a couple hours.
My guess is that it’s an OK movie that could’ve been better and certainly could’ve been worse.
And I won’t weigh in today on the unhinged criticism coming after this movie—other commentators, like Christian Toto, have done a thorough job of that!
Rather, what I want to focus on is a criticism against the film from Nick Allen of Rogerebert.com.
He says this,
The story is true, but it barely comes to life with such a telling. Which is a shame, not just because it’s uncomfortable to be numbed by these themes, but also because director Alejandro Monteverde well-clears the low bar for filmmaking one expects from movies that are message-first (and often come with similar faith-driven backers). Take away the noise surrounding it, and “Sound of Freedom” has distinct cinematic ambitions: a non-graphic horror film with what could be called an art-house sensibility for muted rage and precise, striking shadows derived from an already bleak world. If “Sound of Freedom” were less concerned with being something "important," it could be more than a mood, it could be a movie.
Now, I’m pretty good at reading and that paragraph was admittedly a doozy! But in short what Allen is saying is that SOF could have been a lot better if it hadn’t tried too hard to be an important movie and had tried a lot harder to make sure that its story was more important than the message it was conveying.
Now, this may upset you. You may think that the message against child trafficking is so important that it warrants a message-first approach. You may think that it’s OK for narrative to be message first. That putting the point front and center doesn’t detract from the quality of the storytelling.
But let’s investigate that claim, shall we? Does centering the message lower story-quality? And, indeed, the more important question is whether it’s even possible to write good, or even great, fiction without it having a “message” or a “moral?” Because the reality is that this is a pretty relevant issue for today. We have an awful lot of fiction with a message. In fact, almost everything in media is VERY message-focused. As we know, people at Disney have a “not-at-all-secret-gay-agenda.”
We know that the woke Hollywood and big-tech/ media outlets have been on a blackwashing spree where they have done their level best to erase straight, white, male characters whenever possible—unless they need a villain, an incompetent simp, a goon, or someone to take prat-falls whenever the plot needs them to.
Look at the recent Disney offerings based upon the Lucasfilm content. Disney has gotten rid of strong male protagonists like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones and replaced them with Mary-Sue girl-bosses like Rey Palpatine and Helena Shaw—all the while making Luke a frustrated, incompetent, moral-failure and Indiana Jones a useless old codger who is only in his namesake film because the eponymous hero needs to pass the bullwhip to the smarter, tougher, better female version. These are messages. The need for Amazon to invent characters for Rings of Power, and to add black characters was because, as we were told over and over and over again—television needs to reflect the world we live in today…even when the televised world is a high-fantasty fiction with imaginary races set in the ancient past.
I could go on and on about the woke messaging in modern media, but chances are you’ve noticed. Chances are you have already gotten sick of it (if the box-office and streaming stats are anything to base anything on, anyways.) And, of course, it’s possible that you’ve noticed that movies and television have been exceptionally terrible lately, even if you haven’t been able to put your finger on “why?”
The reason is the message. The message comes first and it comes loudly and it comes in many forms. From casting, to plot, to dialogue and just about everything else, there is a message that woke media is presenting and it is in every aspect of just about every media production.
But here’s the thing, from the perspective of the woke media moguls all other material has a message too! For the woman at Disney who talks about her “not-at-all-secret-gay-agenda” all those hundreds and thousands of Disney characters who weren’t gay were presenting a message, too! Every time there’s a movie where the protagonist is part of a traditional family, that movie is promoting the message that traditional families are normal, good, and desirable.
You see, friends, once upon a time a lot of people lived in a world where they presupposed that some things weren’t political. That some things simply…were…and that they didn’t contain an underlying moral message. But as we have entered into Postmodernism that idea has been exploded—and that’s fair enough because it wasn’t true. Whenever a fiction writer writes fiction he creates an invented world. And that world can be whatever he so chooses. And it can have any rules. There is no such thing as a fiction story set in the real world. It’s simply a fictional story set in a world that is extremely similar to our world—but it’s not set in the real world, but in a fictional version of our world. And if you create a world where two parents raise happy children you are sending a message that two parents can raise happy children. And if all you present are images of happy children coming from two parent households, then you are suggesting something about the world—that children need two parents to be happy. You may not even believe that, but that’s the message that’s conveyed.
Fiction presents a world as it is and a world as it should be—because fiction is built on the protagonists’ conflict between the world as it is and the world as it should be! Protagonists make the world, or at least try to make the world, conform to their vision for how the world ought to be. And this “ought” is a moral claim. Fictional stories present a vision of the good, and that is a moral and even a theological vision.
Luke Skywalker wants to create a world without the Empire. Indiana Jones wants to create a world where the Nazi’s don’t get the Holy Grail. Frodo Baggins wants to create a world where the One Ring is destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom.
These are all obvious, and they have obvious moral messages attached. Murderous empires are to be resisted; Nazi’s are bad; tyranny should be stopped.
But these stories, and I’m choosing these because they all are major parts of the American imagination and they are all stories that Hollywood is trying to change, but these stories have subtle messages attached to them. For instance, Luke Skywalker’s relationship to Obi Wan Kenobi communicates the message that heroes need older male mentors who can help them truly becomes heroes. Indiana Jones, similarly, must learn to recognize his father’s wisdom and tread the path his father couldn’t. These are basic to mythology, but they resonate with us today. There is a part of us that accepts as fundamentally true that heroes need older wiser mentors to shape them into heroes. We accept that men must at some point take up their father’s mantle and essentially replace their fathers. On a less serious note, Sam Gamgee in LOTR teaches us that a man needs to pluck-up the courage and ask Rosie Cotton out on a date—a message that Hermione Granger explicitly tells Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Stories that matter that have formed the Western Canon, stories that resonate with us and that we know and love have presented an awful lot of morality and messaging: heroes fight villains; men should be brave; women should be virtuous; children should be protected; heterosexuality is the norm; friendship is to be cherished; despair is destructive; cowardice is evil; pride comes before a fall; men are to be strong and women are to be kind; the young prince slays the dragon and gets the girl. These are just some of the basic messages that Western society has embedded, and embedded so deeply that we don’t even notice them in our stories.
But the funny thing is that not everyone likes those messages. There are some people who think that rather than making heterosexuality the norm we need to normalize perversion. And Hollywood did. And it was incredibly effective. Will and Grace did more to change public opinion than any amount of preaching, teaching, op-eds or anything else. Because the truth is that the stories we tell, and the stories we believe, shape us in ways that we can’t even comprehend.
And seeing the success of the homosexual agenda the woke are going for broke and trying to change everything! And the thing is that they aren’t wrong. When those who are constantly whinging about representation say that it matters and that shows that only feature straight, white, male heroes are sending a message they aren’t wrong. The problem is that their transgressive message either presents a false anthropology, or is presented in such an incompetent and hamfisted way that nobody believes it.
Look, I love a strong female character. Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors of all time. Lizzie Bennet is one of my favorite characters. But what Jane knew is that you can have a strong female heroine without making all the men look like trash.
But the She-Woman Man-Haters in Hollywood are often guilty of real misandry, and so they portray men as incompetent boobs, OR they are just crappy writers, OR they HAVE to make the men weak and pathetic because they are presenting a false anthropology and they only way to make it work is for the men to be awful.
Case in point, Cate Blanchet does a world-class job as Galadriel in Peter Jackson’s LOTR. Galadriel is powerful and terrifying—but not because she swings a sword or wears armor or manspreads when she sits. She is all woman—or she-elf—but she presents the naked power of womanhood, the kind of mythical power of an unfallen Eve. She isn’t going to beat you up, but her magical power and her deep knowledge are frightening and you realize that while Galadriel is beautiful and kind, she is also someone who deserves the utmost respect.
Compare her to the new version of Galadriel. She’s a cruel, thuggish, rude, undersized, Mary-Sue girl-boss who plays essentially the toxic male, or the 80s-movie rich-kid villain, but it’s OK because she’s a girl. And the only way that this half-pint is able to get away with it is by making the men weak and stupid around her.
People know this is a lie. People know that this is a false anthropology. Yes, there have been great women fighters in history. There have. And yes, there are women who can fight today. But the notion that this tiny blond spaghetti-armed loudmouth is going to just command the awe and obedience of men who are significantly bigger and stronger than her is ludicrous—that’s not how men behave! And it’s not how women behave—and the women who do act like her are people we all hate!
Brothers and sisters, all fiction has a message, and the truth is that ALL fiction puts its message front and center—the difference is that some do it well and some do it poorly. And some present a message people believe and which resonates with them and some present a message that rings false and that people don’t believe and they reject. And sometimes it’s not easy to understand what a story is teaching us. Not only with fiction, but even with true stories!
Read the narratives in the Old Testament! What is the message of the story of Sampson? What’s the message of King Hezekiah? What about Esther? What about Bathsheba?
Christians are people whose lives are entirely built upon and built around stories—true stories, to be sure—but stories all the same. Christians are mythological people, and we admit it…all people are people of myths but some choose NOT to admit it. We own up to the fact that stories make and shape us.
And it’s true that when it comes to MAKING stories, recently, Christians haven’t always been the best. There’s much to criticize about a lot of Christian art and entertainment. Some of it is downright awful.
But not because of the true messages that Christians believe. Christian film and television is often bad because of bad acting and bad writing and bad production values—but not because Christian messages are bad.
If anything it’s the Christian values and messaging that have dragged Christian media along and allowed it to get better and better—not hindered it. Message-first stories will always be part of Christian media. And that doesn’t mean that it is doomed to be bad or second-rate. But the good messages don’t mean that there is nothing to criticize or that critics are in bad-faith, either.
Christian film and television is growing up, and part of growing up is learning to take your lumps. Believes need to support high quality Christian entertainment so we can get our message our. But we’ve also got to learn to take criticism and to accept that sometimes Christian art is bad and the media isn’t persecuting us when they say so.
Brothers and sisters, the message works—lets work to make sure that the artwork works too!
Let’s keep the message central and strive to produce great art that will shape the souls of generations.