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You Are What You See: Watching Movies Through a Christian Lens by Scott Nehring

Jan20

The author begins this book about the Christian’s attitude toward movies with his conversion as an adult to the truth of Christianity and his life-changing encounter with near-death as he experienced a heart attack in the lobby of his bank. Mr. Nehring then shares that he is and has always been a film geek. Great introduction.

Then, in what is called “Section 1” of the book, we get almost 100 pages of what’s wrong with Hollywood. This first section of the book felt repetitive to me and can be summarized in this quote taken from chapter 8:

“Though many filmmakers may not recognize this desire for God, they know how to take advantage of it. The creation of figureheads, heroes, and celebrities is central to everything they produce. These products, in turn, attempt to fill our need for the Lord’s guidance. . . . When people remove God from their lives, they must replace Him with something. Just as generations have done for eons, we replaced Him with ourselves. It is not too late for us to learn from those previous generations that this is a bad idea.
We may try to remove God from our lives, but that does not mean we will not miss Him. What distracts us from God can never replace Him.”

True stuff, and Mr. Nehring is repeating a message that our culture needs to hear and that I need to be reminded of. Nevertheless, Section 2 of this book, entitled “The Structure of Film: Seeing What’s Right in Front of You,” was the part that I most enjoyed.

Each story begins with a Central Question—Will the boy get the girl? Can the hero learn to forgive? Can you fight city hall? The hero struggles through various trials on his way to learning the moral of the story—and in that ending we see the Answer to the Central Question.

This section continues by giving the reader an introduction to plot development, story arc or structure, heroes, villains, and other archetypes. This exposition of how characters and plot work together to produce a good story, either in print or on film, is the meat of the book. Even though I’ve seen some of this material before in other places (books about writing), Mr. Nehring brings a coherent voice and style to his explanations, and he also includes a wealth of examples from all the movies he has seen and analyzed. The author says that after reading this section of the book you will never watch movies in the same way again; you will see where the story is going and often be able to predict what will happen next and why. You will be intrigued by the choices the screenplay writer and the director made, and a bad movie or story will be seen as bad for a reason: it doesn’t follow the unconscious “rules” that we expect to see in a satisfying work of fiction.

I agree with Mr. Nehring’s prediction. I have been watching movies and reading in a different way since I read this book. I want to go back and review Section 2, though, because I am not as skilled as I would like to be at picking central questions (or themes), following the protagonist’s rise and fall and subsequent “resurrection,” and discerning the other character archetypes and heroic traits in any given narrative. This book is a reference tool that critics and literary and film “geeks” can use to understand the structure and meaning of the stories we are consuming. It would also be a useful source for aspiring writers of fiction, whether they be screenwriters, playwrights, short story writers, or novelists.

Section 3 of the book gives guidelines and suggestions, not rules, for Christians who want to watch movies intelligently and and grow in their discernment about which movies to watch and how to watch those that we do choose to view. Finally, Mr. Nehring’s thesis is that “movies matter. Movies impact your life every day, even if you never watch one.” If this statement is true, and I believe it is, then it behooves us as Christians living in this day and time to learn what we can about the impact of our cultural icons (movies) on us and on those around us. And since we are further commanded to be salt and light in a fallen world, You Are What You See is a good resource for Christians becoming that salt and light in the area of cinematic culture.

Scott Nehring is a film critic whose reviews have been syndicated on Reuters, USAToday, Fox News, and The Chicago Sun-TImes websites. Mr. Nehring’s reviews are available at www.GoodNewsFilmReviews.com.

INSPY Award Winners 2010

Dec13

The INSPYs were created by bloggers to discover and highlight the very best in literature that grapples with expressions of the Christian faith. The INSPY Award winners for 2010 are:

Crossing Oceans by Gina Holmes, General & Literary Fiction (Tyndale House)

Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans, Creative Nonfiction (Zondervan)

She Walks in Beauty by Siri Mitchell, Historical Fiction (Bethany House)

The Knight by Steven James, Thriller/Suspense/Crime Fiction (Revell)

Green by Ted Dekker, Speculative Fiction (Thomas Nelson)

Plain Paradise by Beth Wiseman, Amish Fiction (Thomas Nelson)

Sons of Thunder by Susan May Warren, Romance/Romantic Suspense (Summerside)

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr, Young Adult Fiction (Little, Brown)

I was one of the judges for the Young Adult Fiction category, and I’ll be reviewing Once Was Lost and some of the other books on the YA shortlist in the next few days. Suffice it to say for now, Once Was Lost tells an excellent story of a PK (preacher’s kid) whose family endures all the stresses that afflict other families and still God is faithful, if not always understandable.

Has anyone read any of the others on the list? What can you recommend?

The Dancing Pancake by Eileen Spinelli

Dec8

I like it when a book wins me over to a genre or style of book that I had not been accustomed to enjoying before. The Dancing Pancake is a verse novel, and although I still don’t understand why books are written in this particular style or what the line is between poetry that tells a story and prose that sings a song, I did enjoy reading the story of a girl named Bindi and her broken, struggling, loving family and a restaurant called The Dancing Pancake.

I liked reading about Bindi’s struggle to overcome selfishness and to forgive. She didn’t really seem much different in her difficulties from adults who deal with the same issues. For example, here’s Bindi remembering her absent father while she’s trying to read The Yearling:

“I start to cry.
Again.
I guess I’m not
as finished with sad
as I thought.
I wish I was still
just mad.”

Or Bindi trying to reconcile with a friend whose feeling she hurt and at the same time still working out her own feeling toward her dad:

“Ruby Frances pours
more syrup on her plate.
‘That so?’ she says.
I take another breath.
‘Well, actually, there’s more,’
I say. ‘Since God forgives us
for all the stupid,
thoughtless, mean things
we do and say,
We should forgive others.’
I give her a long sideways look.
Is she listening?
‘Right?’ I say.
Ruby Frances just chomps away.
I plunge on: ‘If God never
forgave anyone, Heaven would be empty.
Right?'”

The Dancing Pancake was a lovely story of separation and forgiveness and reconciliation. Bindi’s anger and sense of betrayal over her parents’ marital problems is real and not too lightly resolved, and Bindi makes some mistakes of her own, getting caught up in her unhappiness and ignoring the problems of her family and friends. However, the tone never gets too heavy, and the story remains appropriate for third through seventh graders throughout. And Bindi deserves the cake that she gets at the end of the book that reads “Bravo to our Bindi!”

This book would make a useful bibliotherapy title, but it would also resonate with any child who deals with forgiving imperfect family members and friends or who finds things to forgive in herself. And don’t we all struggle to forgive others and ourselves?

My Hands Came Away Red by Lisa McKay

Oct14

Immediately after finishing My Hands Came Away Red, I searched the internet to see what other books Ms. McKay had written. That should tell you something about the quality of this compelling story of a Christian youth missions team in Indonesia. Eighteen year old Cori decides to spend her summer in Indonesia, building a church, out of mixed motives. Yes, Cori is a Christian, and she wants to do something meaningful in God’s service. She also wants to get away from her confusing relationship with her boyfriend, Scott, and she just wants to experience her own adventure. Since the book runs to 386 pages, Cori obviously gets a lot more meaning and distance and adventure than she expected.

And I got a lot more than I expected out of reading this novel. The story represents really sophisticated and deeply significant Christian fiction. Ms. McKay is not afraid to tackle the hard questions: why does God allow suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do Christians pray when it seems as if God isn’t listening? How is Romans 8:28 (“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”) true? Is it true? Really?
Not only does the book deal with these and other hard questions, the writing is also courageous enough not to give simple, easy answers. There’s no ending, or at least no ending that ties up all the loose doubts and uncertainties and issues and presents them to the reader in a neat little package.

But at the same time it’s not a hopeless diatribe on the stupidity of simple faith. Cori and her team of five more teens from the U.S. have a horrible encounter with evil and with danger, and they react in all the myriad of ways that a group of young, somewhat immature Christian young people would react. They cry, and they get angry. They are scared, and they sometimes manage to be incredibly brave. They do and say stupid things. They argue, and they support one another. They doubt and become angry with God, and sometimes they experience something that renews their faith in Him. Looking at faith in the face of atrocity and making fun of that faith is easy, but the reality is not that simple. In My Hands Came Away Red, the characters are not allowed to give up on life or on God, even when they do.

Lisa McKay has a degree in psychology, and that background shows in the novel’s vivid descriptions of the psychological trauma that the young people in the story experience. The author has also served on a missions team in the Philippines, and that firsthand knowledge of how Christians really do behave and talk and act like normal young adults also makes the book’s character portrayals authentic and engaging. As I judge in the young adult fiction category for this year’s INSPY Awards for “the best in literature that grapples with the Christian faith,” I will use use this book and a couple of other faith-driven books as the standard by which I judge the entries on the shortlist for this year. It’s that good.

The Passion of Mary-Margaret by Lisa Samson

Sep22

Someone recommended Lisa Samson when I asked about favorite authors of Christian fiction, and I took the bait and borrowed The Passion of Mary-Margaret from the library. The novel was published by Thomas Nelson Publishers in 2009, and I must say I was surprised. Not only was the story absorbing and eminently readable, it was very Catholic. That’s not what I expected from an evangelical writer and an evangelical publisher. The book reminded of something as I was reading, and it was only after I finished that I realized what it was: it has a “Touched by an Angel” feel to it, only with a lot more Jesus than Touched By an Angel ever saw fit to indulge.

Sister Mary-Margaret is seventy years old, and she’s already anticipating the day when she will see God face to face. Since that day could conceivably come at any time, even though Sister Mary-Margaret is in good health, our narrator decides to write down the events of her life and the things she’s learned in the past seventy years.

Because Sister MM is getting older, she move easily between past and present, a fact which makes the timeline in the book a bit confusing in places. The story concentrates on what is happening in the present and moves without warning, sometimes with very few transitional signals, into the past and the events of Sister MM’s youth and the beginning of her life as a religious (similar to a nun). Then, the story takes a detour into the mystical as Sister MM has conversations with Jesus, a Jesus who appears whenever he wishes in bodily form and tells Sister MM whatever he wants her to know.

It took me a little while to get into the flow of Samson’s story and style. Sister Mary-Margaret’s voice is practical, somewhat humorous and irreverent, and at the same time spiritual in the best sense of the word. She’s in the world, but not of it. She’s fully aware of sin and suffering in this world, but also in tune with the heartbeat of Jesus and His love for His broken creation. I thoroughly enjoyed Samson’s story of the awakening and spiritual journey of this Catholic religious sister and her unorthodox journey with Jesus as guide. I’ll be looking for other books by Lisa Samson. Any suggestions?

More reviews of The Passion of Mary-Margaret:
Lisa at 5 Minutes for Books: “I have a little trouble with the mysticism contained in the story. Remember, I told you Lisa Samson likes to push the envelope a bit? Mary-Margaret sees Jesus, talks to Jesus (and He talks back), has tea with Jesus. I can’t decide whether this contributes or detracts from my personal endorsement of the novel.”

My Friend Amy: ” . . . this novel is so completely lovely, so full of reality and yet so bathed in the love of Jesus that it moved me deeply, and in short, makes me feel like a better person for having read it.”

Relz Reviews: “Brilliant characterisation by Lisa brings Mary-Margaret, Jude, Sister Angelica and every other character to grace the pages of this book, to tangible life with their failings and strengths authentically displayed.”