In the final months of 1999, Y2K anxiety reached
a fever pitch in America. The nightly news gave regular updates on
how to safeguard personal computers, and the Sunday New York Times
featured articles on how the rich were hoarding canned goods to prepare
gourmet dishes that did not require refrigeration. Meanwhile, in movie
theaters, a few films tried to tap into the zeitgeist. The Arnold
Schwarzenegger apocalyptic thriller End of Days (Hyams, 1999) told
the story of a cop who hits the bottle after his family is gunned
down. An atheist, he finds redemption by helping a virgin whom Satan—played
with great panache by Gabriel Byrne—intends to impregnate on
New Year’s Eve. In another apocalyptic film, also released just
before the dawn of the new millennium, Michael York is the Antichrist,
“a fictional cross between...Romano Prodi, current president
of the European Commission, and Rupert Murdoch.” He has brought
about global peace, and the world is ready to worship him as the new
Messiah. Our feeble hero (played by Casper Van Dien) is a New Age
motivational speaker who rejected God after his mother was killed
by a drunk driver. He hides biblical decoder disks from the Antichrist
and is ultimately redeemed when he asks Jesus to save him. The film
is The Omega Code (Marcarelli, 1999), and it was the first Christian
apocalyptic feature to receive a nationwide theatrical release.
Omega Code is an odd piece of the jigsaw puzzle
that is American popular culture. On the one hand, it is a typical
Hollywood product, an apocalyptic film with lots of action and a lost-yet-redeemable
hero. On the other hand, no one in it is truly loathsome, especially
not Michael York’s clean-cut villain, who has no interest in
using dirty words, much less raping virgins. This PG-13 Antichrist
could only (maybe) frighten a born-again Christian already versed
in end-of-the-world eschatology. If you weren’t already an evangelical,
you probably wouldn’t realize that the hero’s plea—“Save
me Jesus,” shouted as computer-generated demons swirl around
him—is supposed to represent a born-again experience. As a number
of disappointed Christian viewers have pointed out, this is the only
overt mention of Jesus in the whole film. Omega Code is, in fact,
representative of a major change in Christian media: as it has grown
beyond its small-time roots, its salvation messages have been tempered.
The secular press panned Omega Code, but more for its poor script
and acting than for its muted spiritual message. Journalists tended
to define this film as something outside of popular culture that had
intruded into the secular mainstream. While conceding that conservative
Christians had carried the film to respectable box office returns,
reviewers saw Omega Code as a mere curiosity, not a film of potential
appeal to millions of Americans fascinated by the Book of Revelation
and what evangelicals call “prophecy theology.” The film
reviewers failed to see that Christian apocalyptic belief is in no
way a marginal phenomenon. There are as many as sixty million born-again
Christians in America; widespread interest in prophecy is a fact of
American popular culture, and apocalyptic books routinely fly off
the shelves of U.S. bookstores. Nor is this popularity a recent development:
the “prophecy consultant” for Omega Code was Hal Lindsey,
whose “non-fiction” classic of 1970 The Late Great Planet
Earth, is still in print and has sold over 28 million copies. Tapping
into Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation, Lindsey’s book
“systematically went through the apocalyptic scriptures mechanically
transcribing every phrase and image into the vocabulary of Pentagon
strategists.” Lindsey found predictions of the apocalypse throughout
the Bible, though like most prophecy authors his primary sources were
the Book of Revelation, Daniel, and Ezekiel.
Since the 1990s, prophecy books have once again topped the bestseller
lists, although they are now usually classified as fiction rather
than non-fiction. Among the non-fiction bestsellers was The Bible
Code (1997), which loosely inspired Omega Code. Tim LaHaye and Jerry
Jenkins produced eight novels for their “Left Behind”
series between 1995 and 2001; by July 2001 the series had collectively
sold 28.8 million copies. When the ninth book appeared, in 2002, sales
for the series climbed past fifty million. (The spike in sales can
partly be attributed to the all-around success of prophecy books after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. ) Apocalyptic fiction
sells, in part, because it is exciting. But it also claims to dramatize
biblical truths, which are, of course, of vital interest to evangelicals,
who emphasize the individual’s ability to study and understand
the Bible without priestly intervention. That’s easier said
than done. Without instruction, the Book of Revelation is quite simply
indecipherable. What is one to make of verses like, “I saw a
woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy,
having seven heads and ten horns” (KJV Rev. 17:3)? Mainline
Protestants interpret Revelation symbolically, but evangelicals take
a more literal approach. To decipher difficult passages, they turn
to their pastors, televangelists, books, films, and videos.
Apocalyptic media articulate evangelical theories about the end of
the world, finding ways to apply prophecy theology to both the smallest
and largest political events. Indeed, it is this seemingly endless
potential that makes prophecy appealing. As historian Paul Boyer argues,
“prophecy belief is a way of ordering experience. It gives a
grand, overarching shape to history, and thus ultimate meaning to
the lives of individuals caught up in history’s stream.”
Apocalyptic media have three apparent goals: to show Christians, in
an entertaining way, what will happen after the Rapture, while instructing
them in the specifics of prophecy theology (thereby confirming Biblical
truth); to frighten people into conversion by showing them the bleak
future that awaits the unraptured; and to convert those “left
behind” after the Rapture. Some marketers advise Christians
to keep copies of apocalyptic books and videos (along with the Bible)
in their homes so that potential converts will discover them during
the seven-year Tribulation period.
Apocalyptic feature films have always sought to convert viewers, but
their methods have shifted over the years. Whereas the early films
focused on personal transformation and were shown almost exclusively
in churches, now films are seeking a place in multiplexes, and, not
surprisingly, making theological compromises along the way. Evangelical
filmmakers are currently engaged in a complicated push and pull between
two objectives: making profits and saving souls. Many of today’s
evangelical producers would argue that these objectives are symbiotic:
if more people watch (and pay) more will be saved. So to reach secular
audiences, contemporary filmmakers have diluted their salvation messages,
and the resulting films are peculiar. The producers believe that these
films are palatable to a mass audience. But even though they don’t
mention Jesus, most non-evangelical viewers easily identify and dismiss
them as religious films.
The first Christian filmmaker to turn to prophecy theology was Donald
Thompson. Thompson’s four prophecy films spin contemporary action-adventure
stories around the apocalyptic events that many evangelicals believe
are predicted in the Bible. Although it was never released in conventional
theaters, the first film in Thompson’s series, A Thief in the
Night, “has been translated into three foreign languages, subtitled
in countless others, and its international distribution continues
strongly...six or seven hundred prints now circulate, in addition
to videocassettes.” Randall Balmer explains that,
In the United States, where distribution is limited to church groups,
camps, youth organizations, and the like, it is difficult to quantify
the number of people who have seen the film. When I pressed Russell
Doughten [the film’s co-producer] for a figure, he reluctantly
estimated that one hundred million people had seen A Thief in the
Night in the United States, a figure, he hastened to add, that would
include those who had seen it more than once. Even if you slash
that number in half to account for hyperbole, fifty million is still
a staggering figure, a viewership that would be the envy of many
Hollywood producers.
But Hollywood producers would hardly approve of the usual ticket price:
an optional donation. This was the norm for Christian films in the
pre-video days. They were made on small budgets, distributed on 16mm,
shown in churches, and usually advertised only in Christian publications.
They were also unambiguously evangelical, even if the strong salvation
message was deferred until the end, as in most of Billy Graham’s
films from the 1950s. There was no need to dilute the message. After
all, audience members who had not yet made a decision for Christ had
at least decided to watch a movie in church: they knew what they were
in for. Yet subtlety, most producers assumed, was important. Gentle
films like Graham’s (which did not address apocalyptic subject
matter) would open the hearts and minds of unsaved viewers.
Thompson dispenses with subtlety. Instead of first softening up viewers
by raising moral and spiritual issues, then moving on to a more detailed
gospel message, Thompson deluges viewers with scare tactics and biblical
exegesis. The souls left on earth after evangelicals are raptured
suffer tremendously. All of humanity is asked to take the Mark of
the Beast, 666, imprinted as a barcode on the forehead or right hand.
Without the Mark you cannot buy or sell. People who accept Christ
into their hearts refuse the Mark and become martyred “saints.”
The world becomes increasingly chaotic, and even those who have taken
the Mark suffer. This is complicated stuff, and I present only the
bare bones version here. In fact, evangelical interpretations of biblical
prophecy are so complex that several films in Thompson’s series
actually grind to a halt as a character uses a giant wall chart to
explain the most perplexing passages from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation.
The protagonist of the first two films, Thief in the Night and A Distant
Thunder (Thompson, 1978), is Patty, a non-believer whose husband was
raptured. Patty believes in God but has not been born again. Although
she will not take the Mark of the Beast, she is also reluctant to
give her heart to Jesus. At the end of the second film, she is dragged
screaming to a guillotine. At the beginning of the third film, Image
of the Beast (Thompson, 1981) her head is chopped off shortly after
she screams “I want the mark!” Patty has finally made
her choice, and she will pay the price for all eternity.
Image of the Beast introduces a new hero, a saved man who moves the
series away from the horror and melodrama that drove the first two
films. Although the hero has a female companion whom he tries to save,
this and the final film in the series, The Prodigal Planet (Thompson,
1983), do not ask audiences to identify so strongly with a struggling,
unsaved protagonist. Much of the second half of the series is devoted
to witnessing and scripture quoting, but it is done by instead of
to the protagonist.
All four of Thompson’s films largely ignore politics. Through
his organization, UNITE, the Antichrist torments Christians and rules
the world. But the Antichrist is not an important character in the
four films. In fact, he only appears once in the entire series. The
United Nations and other global organizations may be in cahoots with
him, but Thompson’s main point is that the Rapture could happen
at any moment, and unimaginable suffering is in store for those who
are not raptured. God’s grace is the ticket to heaven. So get
saved now! This may also be the implicit message of contemporary apocalyptic
films, but it is now sandwiched into plots that focus on action, intrigue,
and global politics at least as much as individual spiritual introspection.
It would be hard to overstate the influence of Thompson’s films
on evangelical culture. Today, many teen evangelicals have not seen
Thief in the Night, but virtually every evangelical over thirty I’ve
talked to is familiar with it, and most have seen it. Evangelicals
who grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s often cite Thief as a source
of childhood terror, in particular because the film shows people who
think they are saved but are not and are therefore not raptured with
their families. Interestingly, for every person who says this film
drove them away from the church for good, there is another who says
he or she was saved immediately after seeing the film. I have found
that A Thief in the Night is the only evangelical media text that
viewers cite directly and repeatedly as provoking a conversion experience
in them.
For almost thirty years Thompson’s films were the most widely
seen prophecy films in America. They were shown on 16mm in churches,
virtually always followed by an altar call where audience members
would come forward to be saved. In fact, Peter Lalonde, the current
impresario of prophecy films, says that he became a Christian after
seeing Thompson’s fourth film, The Prodigal Planet, in a church.
As video arrived in the eighties, Thompson’s films became the
sine qua non of Christian bookstores. Even the smallest store was
likely to have at least one of Thompson’s films for sale.
In the late 1990s a new series of apocalyptic films appeared, produced
by Lalonde. These films have stolen Thompson’s prophetic limelight
with a dramatically different approach towards apocalyptic subject
matter. Although they are similar to Thompson’s productions
in that they address religious issues and thus distance themselves
from secular mass media, Lalonde’s films also seek to entertain
by emphasizing the power of the Antichrist, his methods of domination,
and the counter-tactics of Christian resistance fighters. Like other
Christian media products in search of a mainstream audience, Lalonde’s
films lighten their gospel message, de-emphasizing the importance
of Jesus and making accommodations to appeal to a mass market. That
they have had little success in the secular market suggests, I think,
that Lalonde does not realize how peculiar prophecy theology—even
when tempered—is to non-evangelicals.
Journalist Adam Davidson has argued that since Thief in the Night,
evangelical filmmakers have radically changed their approach to apocalyptic
events. As he sees it,
The progression (or regression) is the move from rural towns to
the halls of power. It’s the expansion of the evangelical
sphere of concern from the very local (my friends, my church) to
the national and global (my president, my international policy).
It’s a move from a complex view of the individual to an oversimplification
that identifies everyone as either good-believer or bad-heathen.
It’s also a change in sentiment towards the unbeliever from
sadness, caring, and invitation to triumph, judgment, and dismissal.
It’s a chilling mutation, and has entrenched evangelical Christianity
in an antagonism to secular America that borders, at times, on cruelty.
Davidson further observes that in Thompson’s films some of the
Antichrist’s henchmen are sympathetic. One of Patty’s
friends, Jerry, ends up taking the mark and working for the Antichrist.
Yet when he dies in the fourth film, he is weeping. He knows he is
going to hell, and viewers are meant to feel deeply for him. Conversely,
when the Antichrist’s henchmen are blown up in Lalonde’s
Revelation (Van Heerden, 1999) and Tribulation (Van Heerden, 2000),
we are clearly supposed to cheer. There is no room for sympathy for
these unrepentant, hell-bound sinners. Notwithstanding Patty’s
decapitation, Thompson’s films display a compassion that is
largely lacking in contemporary apocalyptic films.
Davidson errs in assuming that today’s apocalyptic films indicate
that evangelicals have universally lost their compassion for the unsaved,
yet his reading of the changes in apocalyptic films is astute. Films
like Revelation do feel less personal than the old apocalyptic films,
and one cannot help connecting this to the reemergence of evangelicals
as a political force at the end of the 20th Century. The rhetoric
of the Christian Right’s leaders focuses more on social and
political salvation than on saving individual souls. In striking contrast
to Thompson’s series, the tone of today’s apocalyptic
films resonates with Christian activists like Pat Robertson who oppose
disarmament, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the establishment
of a Palestinian state. Lalonde’s features, for example, point
to the United Nations as evil and use peace and war in the Middle
East as key plot points.
Lalonde is a prolific producer, and, in partnership with his brother
Paul, released five apocalyptic feature films and a number of shorter
videos between 1997 and 2001, including Left Behind: The Movie (Sarin,
2000), the only one to have received wide theatrical release. Lalonde’s
first feature, Apocalypse, was shot on video for $1 million dollars,
and had sold 300,000 copies by 2001. The film dramatizes the Rapture
and the rise of the Antichrist through the eyes of two reporters,
Bronson Pearl and Helen Hannah. Much of Apocalypse consists of relabeled
stock news footage of disasters.
Lalonde’s second film, Revelation, was budgeted at $5 million
and shot on 35mm film; it sold 375,000 copies on video as of 2001.
The film picks up three months after the Rapture. There is no recycled
stock footage in this film, the special effects are better, and the
Antichrist is now played by a better actor. Most of the evil limelight,
however, is taken by the Antichrist’s henchman, who beats people
up without swearing or doing other nasty things one might expect from
a secular movie villain.
Lalonde’s third film, Tribulation, had a budget of $9 million
and stars Gary Busey, Howie Mandel, and Margot Kidder. With the addition
of second-tier Hollywood stars, Tribulation looks like a respectable
made-for-TV movie. Busey plays an atheist, and Mandel is a New Age
wacko who uses a Ouija board; this is the kind of “occult”
activity, along with channeling, yoga, and astrology, that LaHaye,
Robertson, and others see as a sign that we are in the “End
Times,” a period of moral decline shortly before the Rapture.
Busey is in a car accident and falls into a coma. When he wakes up,
the events of the first two films have already taken place. Helen
Hannah is now using a mobile van for communications terrorism, interrupting
the Antichrist’s broadcasts with videos of televangelists T.D.
Jakes, Jack and Rexella Van Impe, and John Hagee. Helen is arrested
and guillotined. Busey is born again, and Mandel’s fate is left
hanging.
In 2001, Lalonde released the fourth installment, Judgment (Van Heerden).
Actors included L.A. Law star Corbin Bernsen and Jessica Steen, who
was in the mainstream apocalyptic thriller Armageddon (Bay, 1998).
The budget for Judgment was $11 million. Hagee and Van Impe are no
longer listed as sponsors, and neither they nor Jakes have cameos.
Thus, this film in theory moves further towards the “mainstream”
not only because of its increased budget and recognizable stars but
also because it has lost the televangelists’ imprimatur. In
practice, though, Judgment, like Lalonde’s other productions,
will not fool anyone; even with the word “Jesus” omitted,
the movie is clearly religious. It had a very limited theatrical release,
and the bulk of its revenue has come not from the box office but from
Christian bookstores and mail-order catalogues.
These four films demonstrate that Lalonde perceives television—and
other technologies—as inherently neither good nor evil. In this,
he is markedly different from the technophobic Christian conspiracy
theorists who are wary of computers, credit cards, bar-code scanners,
and ATMs. Lalonde’s Antichrist controls WNN (a CNN knock-off)
and uses a virtual reality environment to force people to take his
mark, but the Christian freedom fighters use computers, VCRs, videotapes,
and televisions to inform themselves and teach new converts. It is
especially interesting that although television is one of the Antichrist’s
greatest tools of control, video remains out of his purview. From
this perspective, the films’ primary distribution on home video
rather than film is a good thing. If people keep the videos in their
homes rather than seeing them in theaters, they will help friends
and relatives left on earth after the Rapture. If this sounds farfetched,
consider that Lalonde was among the first to create non-dramatic videos
specifically designed for the unraptured
.
Lalonde pioneered an apocalyptic sub-genre that I call the post-Rapture
survival video. These videos vary from a pastor explaining what will
happen after the Rapture and how to accept Jesus into your heart,
to mixtures of explanation with dramatic elements, such as CNN-style
newscasts showing the rise of the Antichrist. All of these videos
directly address “you,” the viewer, as someone who has
been “left behind” by the time you watch the video. Viewers
are admonished to accept Christ, reject the Antichrist, and die a
martyr’s death. The producers of these survival videos have
not explained how future unraptured people will find the videos, but
in today’s unraptured world, the tapes are widely distributed
via Christian book clubs and bookstores. The cover of the Jenkins
and LaHaye post-Rapture video tells viewers, “If you find this
tape, play it immediately. Your future depends on it!” Further,
at the very end of the video a message reads, “Every Christian
needs to keep a copy of this video accessible in his or her home for
those left behind.” If it’s not clear how the unraptured
would run across this tape, it is at least clear that Jenkins and
LaHaye have hit upon a clever marketing tactic.
Lalonde started with short post-Rapture survival videos before he
moved on to make his first straight-to-video features. All of this,
though, was build-up to his major coup, signing a deal with Namesake
Pictures, a Christian production company that had secured the rights
to the Left Behind novel. It seemed obvious that Left Behind, with
its large budget and best-selling-book tie-in, would be extremely
popular at the box office. Lalonde sees Left Behind as his first true
attempt to reach a mainstream, secular audience. And the key to cross-over
success is getting out of churches and into theaters with a film that
conveys “the truth” about the world’s apocalyptic
future, without being too preachy. In Lalonde’s mind, Left Behind:
The Movie was subtle; to non-evangelical viewers, it was clearly a
religious film. Its run in secular theaters was brief, and its box
office take was minuscule.
When Lalonde set out to make Left Behind he dreamed it would be a
blockbuster. The 17.4 million dollar budget was certainly enormous
by Christian filmmaking standards; this was even a respectable sum
by Hollywood’s standards. (As a point of comparison, Woody Allen’s
films are budgeted at about twenty-five million each.) This was, quite
simply, the most expensive Christian film ever made, but seventeen
million still wasn’t enough, for Lalonde wanted the film to
open in 2,500 theaters. How could he possibly afford the marketing
such an endeavor would take? Could he even afford to strike enough
projection prints? His solution was to call on Christians to help
out at the grassroots level. He sent a half-hour Making of Left Behind
promotional video to churches around the country and sought sponsors,
each of whom would loan his production company 3,000 dollars to help
cover the advertising and print costs of showing the film on one screen.
Sponsors would be reimbursed from the film’s revenue. While
Lalonde did not make his 2,500 screen goal, he eventually raised enough
money to open on just under 900 screens. One month later, the film
remained on about one hundred screens.
But Lalonde added an extra twist: he released the film on video months
before it was released in theaters, to build buzz around the film.
Each video came with two discount tickets for the theatrical release,
and if all went according to plan video owners would not only pay
to see the film again on the screen but would also bring unsaved friends.
Before the video was even available 1.5 million copies were pre-sold.
Lalonde pumped the revenue from video sales back into promoting the
theatrical release. Ultimately, the strategy failed; video owners
did not want to pay to see the film again. Yet the video pre-release
gave Lalonde a lot of free publicity. National media coverage of his
unorthodox marketing scheme helped increase video sales, which enabled
the wide theatrical release. The film grossed 2.2 million dollars
on its opening weekend, ranking 17th of the forty-two films playing
at the time. It was, in fact, the top-grossing independent movie that
weekend. But ultimately it simply could not compete in the secular
marketplace; its final box office take amounted to only 4.2 million
dollars.
Christian film critics have been generous with Left Behind, seemingly
wary of turning people away from a film that might help set them on
the road to salvation. Also, so few Christian features are made that
the critics are loathe to attack films with good intentions. Christian
viewers, conversely, have been less enthusiastic in their evaluations
of Left Behind: The Movie. The HollywoodJesus film review website,
for example, has an archive of over 70 responses to Left Behind, and
while many try to be kind, the majority of the reviews are negative.
One viewer notes that “the casting is third-tier, the performances
often robotic, the script bland, and the plot jumbled...I wish I could
recommend the film to my non-Christian friends and family members,
but I’m afraid seeing it would simply reinforce their dim view
of ‘Christian filmmaking.’” Another viewer says
he looked around the theater after the film started and realized that
this is what the Rapture would look like: many suddenly empty seats!
A number of viewers were embarrassed that the film was released on
video before it was released in theaters, seeing this tactic as both
foolhardy and unprofessional. And several viewers suggested that there
were stronger Christian messages in better secular films, such as
Chariots of Fire, The Elephant Man, and Return of the Jedi. One viewer
notes, “Most ‘Christian’ films I have seen have
been of such poor quality that it has been embarrassing...I find more
of God speaking in non-Christian films than I do in Christian films.”
Finally, as with The Omega Code, a number of viewers at HollywoodJesus
criticized Left Behind for not having a sufficiently clear salvation
message. While the film implies that the heroes are saved by showing
them praying, it does not outline exactly how to repent and be saved.
This is a crucial point that may be lost on non-evangelical viewers:
it’s not enough just to believe in God.
Like Lalonde many Christians had expected Left Behind to be a blockbuster
that would far surpass Omega Code’s success. Further, many hoped
the film would have far-reaching consequences: Hollywood would understand
once and for all that Christians should be valued as a demographic.
As one viewer predicts, “The film makers in Hollywood will eventually
see that they can keep their usual audience and gain the Christian
audience by simply eliminating the profanity and sexual scenes from
their formula in films.” Even without the swearing and the sex,
Left Behind seemed to follow at least one Hollywood formula for success:
it was based on a best-selling book. The film thus had a built-in
viewer base in the book’s fans, and it was cross-promoted with
a tremendous amount of merchandise. Lalonde’s film also had
enormous potential for sequels, as Left Behind is one of a twelve-book
series, all of which have been tremendously successful. But Left Behind:
The Movie could not fulfill its box-office potential because Lalonde
over-estimated both his ability to promote a wide-release and the
fervor among Christians at the grassroots level. Lalonde assumed that
Christians would support a film by seeing it multiple times, as they
did in the pre-video days. But he miscalculated that evangelicals
would buy both videos and theatrical tickets. Numerous viewers at
HollywoodJesus complained that no one would buy a ticket for a film
they could already rent, or which they already owned. Viewers seemed
to put their sensible consumer identities ahead of their Christian
identities, exactly the opposite of what Lalonde expected.
Beyond the profit motive, what exactly is the purpose of getting Christian
films into secular theaters? Christian features have always been understood
as having the capability of provoking a viewer to “make a decision
for Christ.” Crucially, however, it took more than the film
alone to do this. Until the late 1980s, Christian films like Graham’s
and Thompson’s were most often shown in churches on 16mm. Thompson’s
company, Mark IV Productions, published a small manual entitled “Six
Steps to Successful Film Evangelism” to make such screenings
productive. A key step was properly training counselors. An “invitation”
to come forward would be issued after the screening, and counselors
would consult with interested viewers, hopefully leading them in a
prayer of salvation. A careful introduction would be given to viewers
before the film, and “prayer partners” would pray for
viewers as they watched. The assumption was that church screenings,
with trained counselors, were really the best way to exhibit evangelical
films.
Of course, video eventually more or less killed 16mm Christian film
distribution. Some churches have video projection equipment, but public
exhibition rights can be quite expensive. The alternative—buying
a video from a store and ignoring the bright red warning at the beginning
that says “not for public exhibition”—is less than
desirable for most evangelicals wishing to show Christian films in
church. So these days Christian films on video or DVD are mostly watched
in non-church settings by Bible study groups, or simply by Christian
families looking for an alternative to Hollywood movies. This new
viewing context is crucial when we consider Lalonde’s adventures
in theatrical distribution.
When Lalonde contends that Christian films are going to more and more
often be distributed in secular theaters, he assumes that this is
desirable. That is, assuming that his intentions are not purely mercenary,
he presumes that this is an effective way to reach people for Christ.
This represents a radical shift in how Christian filmmaking historically
has been conceptualized. Until video took over, church was unquestionably
the ideal context for viewing such films. Can a film in a secular
theater present an equivalent context for conversions? And is the
tempered spiritual message necessary for a theatrical release an acceptable
trade-off? When Billy Grahan’s World Wide Pictures was approached
by major Hollywood distributors interested in handling The Hiding
Place (Collier, 1975), World Wide turned them down, because they would
have had to cut out some of the spiritual content. “Making it”
in the mainstream film business was simply not a priority for them.
Lalonde seems to assume, though, that a “church movie”
preaches only to the choir, whereas a theatrically released Christian
film reaches out to non-churchgoers, while also “sending a message
to Hollywood” about the profitability of Christian films. On
the other hand, showing a Christian film in a secular context risks
alienating viewers, who will think they were tricked when the apocalyptic
movie they wander into is not what they expected. Since Lalonde believes
in God’s supernatural power, though, perhaps he reasons that
viewers who buy tickets for Left Behind expecting a regular, secular
movie will be spiritually changed when they see “the truth”
that the film offers.
Ironically, Lalonde sees prophetic films as the best way to reach
unsaved people. Blinded by his own belief in prophetic narratives,
he does not realize that prophecy is in many ways a self-enclosed
system that means nothing to outsiders. Chelsea Noble, who plays one
of Left Behind’s female leads, and who, like the rest of the
cast, is evangelical, says that Left Behind “is not a religious
film. It’s a faith-based message in a very large and exciting
story...it’s a supernatural thriller” (her emphasis).
Only someone who already believed in prophecy would consider it not
“religious” but simply a truthful “message.”
That Lalonde and his compatriots imagine their films will speak to
unsaved viewers illustrates how out-of-touch they are with those outside
of their belief system. Non-believers in these films contend, for
example, that being saved is something they can’t leap into
“before they are ready.” Of course, anyone who proclaims
“I’m not ready to be saved yet” has already bought
into the belief system on some level. No unsaved character in evangelical
film or fiction ever resists for complicated political or theological
reasons, disagreeing, for example, that the Bible condemns homosexuality,
or choosing a faith more compatible with feminism.
Lalonde will no doubt continue to make apocalyptic thrillers, but
it is doubtful that an overtly Christian version of the apocalypse
will ever break through at the secular box office. Secular versions
of the end of the world, like End of Days and Armageddon, will, of
course, continue to appear, and if the producers go easy on the sex
and violence, such films will even find evangelical viewers. Some
secular producers already seem to be trying to cash in on the Christian
audience; films like The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999) and Signs
(Shyamalan, 2002) seem tailor-made for evangelicals, without alienating
those outside the belief system. Signs is particularly cagey. The
film never overtly cites God or Jesus. Yet it has virtually no sex,
violence, or swearing; its protagonist is a lapsed minister; and the
moral is that “somebody” is watching out for us. If this
“secular” film had lower production values, it would comfortably
fit in the video section of any Christian bookstore.
Conservative Christians are increasingly striving to identify themselves
as a viable consumer demographic in America, and this means that even
breakthrough low-budget films like Omega Code are no longer desirable.
A tacky low-budget film released in secular theaters will allow non-saved
viewers to laugh at evangelicals. It was Left Behind’s public
box-office failure that stung. Christians will continue to make media,
but will they only make “Christian media”? Or does that
label carry too much old-fashioned, low-budget baggage with it? It
seems that Christian media is at a crossroads. On the one hand, media
producers like those in the music business—who are willing to
dilute their messages so that outsiders do not even suspect that they
are Christian—are likely to find non-evangelical consumers.
On the other hand, producers who do not successfully mask their true
evangelical intentions will remain peripheral to the mainstream, preaching
only to the choir. Apocalyptic films ostensibly designed to convert
will, thus, only be seen by the converted. So, if the future of the
world looks grim according to prophecy theology, the future of Christian
apocalyptic media may not be much brighter.