How to Process a Movie Pt. 1: An Incredibly Long Post

There’s a way out of those awkward conversational pauses that we always seem to find ourselves in. In high school it seems I was more comfortable with this easy cheat, but as I became older I felt as though I should play by the adult rules. Lately, I’ve been reverting to my old ways. The cheat is “movies”. Ask a person what movie they’ve seen lately. It gets 95% of the population talking.

The question is: Why does it get 95% of the population talking? The answer is not a hard one, it’s because everyone is watching movies. Not only are people watching movies, but they’re being affected by them. This is no small influence, either. People light up when they have a chance to reveal the movies they have under their belt. A movie conversation is made of the same high-caliber stuff as a how-are-the-kids conversation.

There’s a problem, though. And, it’s a big problem. People don’t think. We make our trek to the movies, and return from our quest with a good plot outline and possibly some good quotes. We now have the ability to say We loved it or We hated it. But, the ability to say why we loved it or hated it seems to be missing. Sure, we can give answers like “special effects” or “it was funny”, but is this sufficient?

This is a problem for a good chunk of society. But, for Christians this should be an even deeper problem. If we assume that God is real and He’s intended His truth to be revealed through the Bible, then a Christian should consider carefully what they put in their brain (Romans 12:1-2; Philipians 4:8; 1 Peter 1:13-21).

The solution to this problem is not more drivel on how Christianity and morality and all things chipper and happy are seen in movies like Casablanca, Silence of the Lambs, and Napoleon Dynamite. My problem with this type of writing isn’t specifically with anything that’s been written. I enjoy the postmodern activity of ignoring all the artist’s intentions and rendering my own meaning. I’m concerned with the fact that few of these writers take seriously the activity that they are engaged in. Too often they look at the process of finding the spiritual in movies as a type of game. My argument is that movie-processing is more than a game, we should never turn off the device that filters what goes into our brain.

I view the brain as a storehouse. The senses are the loading docks for this storehouse. And, there’s this guy…at least it’s a guy in my mind…and he examines everything that makes its way into this storehouse. By nature this guy is a pretty lazy dude who doesn’t like to work.

This character exists in all of our minds. So, perhaps one person views a Die Hard movie coming in on the loading dock and their storehouse manager says: throw it over there in the action movie pile. Harry Potter…toss him over there between the kid’s-movie pile and the fantasy pile…yeah…right there near where Lord of the Rings is sprawled out. We allow this guy to be lazy as the information enters our minds and therefore our brains look like a lazy teenager’s messy bedroom.

This storehouse doesn’t need to look this way, though. The great thing about our brains is that these movies I mentioned can be sent to more than just one part of our mind. For example, as Lord of the Rings enters the brain-storehouse it can be flagged fantasy. But, if the guy (or gal) waiting on the loading dock is properly prepared, they can immediately send it to a dozen other departments at the same time: friendship, loyalty, good vs. evil, appeal of power, mission, leadership. If our loading dock character stays busy after they’ve directed the movie to its appropriate locations then, it can continue flagging it at later dates.

Our job is to train the loading dock character properly. This guy’s training is a two-part task. One, he needs to know what he’s on the look-out for and, two, he needs to know how to process it. Both are difficult tasks. But, both tasks are essential and should be part of our daily lives anyway.

Think about politics. We typically don’t allow the guy on the loading dock slouch time when a politician is speaking to us. We’ve sharpened up what we stand for politically and we place all the information that we attain in the appropriate brain compartments. We don’t listen to Presidential candidates and think…oh, that was a nice speech, I’ll put that in the nice speech corner. No, instead we put it in the Republican corner or the Democrat corner. We fine-tune the filing system by stapling a note stating the items we agreed/disagreed on. We can further filter things by stacking them according to health care, social security, military policy.

My encouragement is to get that lazy guy directing traffic at the loading docks to stand up and get ready for action. We need to make sure he’s alert and prepared. Here are some basic principles that he/she should be aware of.

1) We need to make the most of our time. (Eph. 5:15-16)
2) We should do everything as though we’re serving the Lord. (Col. 3:23)
3) We should seek cross-worthy thoughts and activities. (1 Cor. 2:2)

These three principles are intricately related to our whole life…which includes movie watching. I’m pleased to inform you that these questions do not suck the “fun” out of the movie watching process, instead it propels you to exciting new levels.

A good movie is an opportunity. The next three-ish posts will list of some of the opportunities the movie-watcher is provided with.