Christian Ethics and the Movies
By David A. Thomas,1
Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Emeritus, University of Richmond
Movies are social texts. Most mainstream movies are strictly for entertainment. The largest audience demographic is teenaged boys. However, some movies make serious statements. Often, such movies come from independent studios.
This year`s Oscar nominations for Best Picture, for example, included Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, Munich, and Walk the Line. Other prominent movies that made numerous "Top Ten" lists included Brokeback Mountain, Cache, The Constant Gardener, Downfall, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, A History of Violence, Hustle and Flow, In My Country, Junebug, King Kong, Kinsey, Millions, Murderball, The Narnia Chronicles, North Country, Paradise Now, Sideways, The Squid and the Whale, Transamerica, and Syriana.
Those twenty-five movies made noteworthy ethical impressions. Any of them could stand alone as the focus for a meaningful commentary in this journal. There are some "biopics" about characters like Edward R. Murrow and Truman Capote. The others are serious dramas that challenge prevailing social attitudes and mores, like Brokeback Mountain and The Constant Gardener. Most of them are rated "R" and cannot be shown in local churches because of graphic sex scenes, violence, language and "mature themes." Paradoxically, these are the ones we should be discussing there.
This column is the first in a series. In future issues, I will analyze some of these movies, and others like them, from a Christian ethical standpoint.
Narrative Rhetoric: My Frame of Reference Perhaps I am an unusual professor of rhetoric in terms of my interests.
I began my college teaching career in the traditional way. Since I majored in speech and English, and I was a member of the Hardin-Simmons debate team, later on I became a debate coach. Debate takes its academic discipline from a combination of classical rhetoric and legal argumentation. I spent about twenty-five years of my college teaching career coaching debate in a highly competitive arena. Half of my book publications are on the subject of debate.
Although I grew up in a rural Texas hamlet and my family raised me in the local Southern Baptist Church, I became an intellectual skeptic, an agnostic, from about age 25 to that fateful year of 1986 when everything changed for me. Then, in midlife, I found myself spiritually unsatisfied. My immersion in traditional argumentation became less and less adequate for coping with my inner problems. During my midlife spiritual renewal, I came to realize that my deep adult resistance to the notion of a personal God had always been rooted in my resentments towards my father, who was an alcoholic.
I made a radical shift in my rhetorical perspective, a shift that coincided with my spiritual turning point. Providentially, as I believe, I discovered a new book by Walter Fisher titled Human Communication as Narration.2 Dr. Fisher`s theories literally turned my life around. That was the year, coincidentally, when I moved from the University of Houston to a new position at the University of Richmond. What must also be said is that narrative rhetoric not only gave me a new lease on a scholarly career, it also gave me a new perspective for understanding my own life.
Dr. Fisher`s book is a scholarly treatment and extension of two major theoreticians. Fisher interpreted Kenneth Burke`s theory of literary dramatism and Alisdair MacIntyre`s After Virtue3 (a monograph about moral philosophy), and applied them to rhetoric. It introduced me to the idea that the heart of rhetoric is narrative, not rationality. From 1986 forward, all of my teaching and scholarly writing revolved around Fisher`s narrative paradigm.
At Richmond, I proceeded to reinvent myself. I literally changed my scholarly worldview. Starting over did not especially help my career, but it helped my sanity. The first thing I tried to do at Richmond was to make a serious study of preaching, based on the notion that preaching is based on narrative more than on logic. I team-taught a course in narrative rhetoric and narrative theology with my Richmond colleague, Dr. Robison James. Also, David Farmer, the editor of Pulpit Digest, gave me a regular column, Rhetoric and Homiletic, which I wrote for two years.
Finally, it struck me like a lightning bolt that the hundreds of movies I had been attending during the mid1990s as an escape from my personal problems were all case studies in narrative. So I created and taught a course in Rhetoric and Film that turned out to be my career defining class. Religious rhetoric and the movies, together combined to define my scholarship and also my life as I live it, to the present day.
Here is what you need to know about narrative rhetoric. Compare these precepts with traditional ways of thinking and communicating.
1. Traditionally, rhetoric is taught as predominantly rational. In contrast, narrative theory says that people are story-telling beings. We think and communicate in stories. The world is a set of stories we choose for the re-creation of truth and for happiness.
2. Traditionally, the content of rhetoric is viewed as persuasive advocacy and arguments. Narratives, not arguments, constitute our basic beliefs. We live and die by them. For instance, consider the Gospel. It is nothing if not a story. Conversely, certain other stories constitute our deepest psychological shadows. Consider Hitler`s rhetoric, or Al-Queda`s.
3 Traditionally, the truth of rhetoric is tested by evidence and logic. Narratively, the two basic principles we use for evaluating whether stories are true are these: (a) True stories tell the whole story, and (b) they are consistent with other stories we believe to be true. Also, the truth of a story hinges on the character of the narrator. Fiction, drama, and poetry are thus eligible to convey truth, and they are also subject to ethical tests.
Now, I am embarking on a new writing project for this journal. My column will be about Christian Ethics and the Movies. My hope is to use some of the movies mentioned in the first paragraph above, and others like them, to illumi-nate some vital ethical issues. Movies shape public attitudes, as well as reflect them. Let`s look at them together.
1 David A. Thomas now resides in Sarasota, FL. He may be reached at davidthomas1572@comcast.net.
2 Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1987).
3 Alisdair MacIntyre After Virtue (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
