Having so far avoided seeing Argo, Lincoln, or Zero Dark Thirty does not seem to have prevented me from waxing vitriolic about my disdain for film adaptations of real events. [1] Perhaps if I can get it out of my system in the quiet of my own blog then I can stop inflicting my opinions uninvited on others. [2]
My reasons for disliking true story films are many and varied. For one thing, I find a lot of them distasteful: they strike me as 'cashing in' -- financially, and/or in terms of recognition for those inclined to court award success -- on tragedy (e.g. Elephant), or public sentiment (e.g. The Queen), or other people's nobility and achievements (e.g. Schindler's List). Secondly, I dislike the fact that they inevitably present fictionalised accounts and biased analysis as historical actuality (e.g. Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, Pearl Harbor). It is hard to escape the conclusion that we can never *really* get to *the* objective underlying reality of any historical event. Even things which we think of as widely witnessed and which we all take for granted are riddled with nuanced uncertainty -- hidden workings behind the scenes, secret motive, undisclosed agendas, conspiracy theory... But these films go several steps further, re-constructing speculative 'behind closed doors' scenarios and filling in the gaps between known occurrences with made-up plot and conversation. Actors portray reduced, edited, distorted characterisations, adapted to suit the story arc of the film. The filmmakers can't help but have their own opinions about the events, people and issues so that the finished piece will have an 'angle' even if they are trying to be balanced. And by working on the imagination of the viewer, powerful false and biased impressions are made which far outweigh the influence of 'objective' information less engagingly presented. Even if the film tries really hard not to deceive or persuade, audiences are generally sufficiently naive and unguarded to buy in to the fiction almost as though it were straight-up fact.
But not only are such films not true to facts, they are also not true to the imagination. By being pre-occupied with 'real' events they underrate the power and truth-conveying potential of storytelling. The art of cinema represents an amazing opportunity do what is impossible in real life -- deal with a single, coherent idea (or a reduced set) in a self-contained way which can potentially get to the heart of a truth more concisely and compellingly than when we look at the complex, overwhelming, state of the world and try to figure it out all in one go. Films made on that basis can act like mathematical or statistical models, which knowingly simplify in order to better understand. Just think, too, how instructive it can be to relax the constraints: sci-fi offers some amazing insights on what it means to be human by taking known realities and seeing how they play out under an imagined set of rules (The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Moon, The Prestige, Primer -- for some of my own personal favourites). True story films seem so limited by comparison -- the worst of both worlds: factually and imaginatively hampered.
Story literature plays a really important role in the Bible, especially in the teachings of Jesus, who used many, many parables to communicate deep, fundamental claims about the nature of God and His relationship to us. In fact, this seems to have been the predominant mode of his public ministry:
[1] Of course, it's not like I'm consistent or anything. The Social Network immediately became one of my favourite films, like, ever; The King's Speech is pretty good too. And the most obvious difference between these two and most of the other films I glibly write off when this topic arises is that I have actually seen them. Although, in my (somewhat shaky) defence, my main reason for avoiding the three aforementioned recent releases is that I am not at all keen on the previous work of any of the directors, and it's hard to make time to watch films I don't expect to enjoy.
[2] After all, my blog is easily avoided whereas my person, not so much so (for some, that would require changing jobs, moving house, switching churches...)
My reasons for disliking true story films are many and varied. For one thing, I find a lot of them distasteful: they strike me as 'cashing in' -- financially, and/or in terms of recognition for those inclined to court award success -- on tragedy (e.g. Elephant), or public sentiment (e.g. The Queen), or other people's nobility and achievements (e.g. Schindler's List). Secondly, I dislike the fact that they inevitably present fictionalised accounts and biased analysis as historical actuality (e.g. Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, Pearl Harbor). It is hard to escape the conclusion that we can never *really* get to *the* objective underlying reality of any historical event. Even things which we think of as widely witnessed and which we all take for granted are riddled with nuanced uncertainty -- hidden workings behind the scenes, secret motive, undisclosed agendas, conspiracy theory... But these films go several steps further, re-constructing speculative 'behind closed doors' scenarios and filling in the gaps between known occurrences with made-up plot and conversation. Actors portray reduced, edited, distorted characterisations, adapted to suit the story arc of the film. The filmmakers can't help but have their own opinions about the events, people and issues so that the finished piece will have an 'angle' even if they are trying to be balanced. And by working on the imagination of the viewer, powerful false and biased impressions are made which far outweigh the influence of 'objective' information less engagingly presented. Even if the film tries really hard not to deceive or persuade, audiences are generally sufficiently naive and unguarded to buy in to the fiction almost as though it were straight-up fact.
But not only are such films not true to facts, they are also not true to the imagination. By being pre-occupied with 'real' events they underrate the power and truth-conveying potential of storytelling. The art of cinema represents an amazing opportunity do what is impossible in real life -- deal with a single, coherent idea (or a reduced set) in a self-contained way which can potentially get to the heart of a truth more concisely and compellingly than when we look at the complex, overwhelming, state of the world and try to figure it out all in one go. Films made on that basis can act like mathematical or statistical models, which knowingly simplify in order to better understand. Just think, too, how instructive it can be to relax the constraints: sci-fi offers some amazing insights on what it means to be human by taking known realities and seeing how they play out under an imagined set of rules (The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Moon, The Prestige, Primer -- for some of my own personal favourites). True story films seem so limited by comparison -- the worst of both worlds: factually and imaginatively hampered.
Story literature plays a really important role in the Bible, especially in the teachings of Jesus, who used many, many parables to communicate deep, fundamental claims about the nature of God and His relationship to us. In fact, this seems to have been the predominant mode of his public ministry:
All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 13:34-35)'Famous' examples include The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), dealing with such themes as repentance, redemption and the love of God; The Sower (Matthew 13:1-9, explained in Matthew 13:18-23), about the different ways in which people respond to the news about the 'Kingdom of God'; and The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), an illustration of boundary-crossing compassion. Well, I say that that's what they're about: there's lots going on in them short passages and I don't presume to have any definitive answers. Probably N.T. Wright would chime in that I'd missed some pretty important stuff about the political implications of the parables for first century Jews. I'm not gonna try and get to grips with all of that all at once here and now... Suffice to say that, whatever the depths and facets of Jesus' message, parable was frequently his chosen means of transmission:
Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works. Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away. Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view’. That, actually, is what the parables are all about. They offer, as all genuine Christian story-telling does, a world-view which, as someone comes into it and finds how compelling it is, quietly shatters the world-view that they were in already. Stories determine how people see themselves and how they see the world. Stories determine how they experience God, and the world, and themselves, and others. Great revolutionary movements have told stories about the past and present and future. They have invited people to see themselves in that light, and people’s lives have been changed. If that happens at a merely human level, how much more when it is God himself, the creator, breathing through his word. (N.T. Wright, How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?, The Laing Lecture 1989)It's really important, then, to recognise that something doesn't have to be mechanistically true for it to be true. How foolish it would be to say that you didn't 'believe' the parable of the Good Samaritan because it was not corroborated by any of the nearby innkeepers or because the town crime records made no mention of a robbery matching that description. Or, to reject the Prodigal Son because Jesus did not produce the name and address of the family in question so that the events could be confirmed. There are other parts of the Bible where perhaps we would do well to recognise that 'literal' truth may not be the right category -- and that this doesn't make the truths expressed lesser in any sense. The book of Jonah, for example: whether or not the events described 'happened' no longer bothers me anywhere near like it used to. Do I believe God could cause a big fish to swallow a man, and enable the man to survive for three days in its belly, and then prompt the fish to spit him out in a convenient location? Absolutely! He's God. But it is such a rich story that very little could be said to be 'lost' if it is 'just' a powerful extended parable written to tell us about judgment, repentance, compassion, provision... I have been listening to a lecture series by evangelical theologian John Goldingay, who -- within the context, it seems, of a powerfully experienced relationship with God and love for the Bible -- is unafraid to challenge some traditional understandings of it:
Tradition says that Job, Ruth, Jonah, and Esther are factual stories, but evangelical study of the Old Testament can be quite at home concluding that actually they are God-inspired parables. Rather than describing them as parables, I would prefer to describe them as fictional stories, novels inspired by God, but in the end I have yielded to the persuasion of my colleague Marianne Meye Thompson [...] she urged me to take account of the fact that 'fiction' suggests to people something humanly-devised and something that is not true. I recognize that this can seem to be the word's implication, yet we also recognize that fiction can often powerfully picture truth. Many of the stories outside scripture in which we recognize truth about God and ourselves are fictional stories, and there seems no reason why this should not be so within scripture. (John Goldingay, What Are the Characteristics of Evangelical Study of the Old Testament?, Evangelical Quarterly, 2001)It seems to me that a story can contain truth without having happened, but that its significance rests on its relevance and connection to reality: somewhere along the line it has to have some bearing on something that is going on in the real world and touching real lives -- it is this which makes it 'not just' a story. The power of Jesus' stories derives from the reality of who he was and what he was about to do. They helped (and help, present tense) to explain and prepare people for this reality. Crucially, the accounts of who he was and what he did are not presented as story but as history: it is on this basis they they should be evaluated, and unless we conclude that they are reliable records of events which actually happened then his stories lose their 'truth' and his teachings their power. Granted, it is hard (impossible?) to be certain about anything that has happened. We can't even trust information received by our own senses, let alone that collected by the senses of others and disseminated to us across space and time. But what can be known about Jesus is very well-attested as ancient history goes: the information we have seems (to me) to approach the best that we could hope to have. (Not to mention -- if we will allow it as evidence -- the added weight of subjective experience and transformation in the lives of those who follow him). Matthew, Mark and Luke (and Acts, for that matter) read like straightforward attempts to communicate real events that the authors believed happened. Take the opening lines of Luke, for example:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)John reads a little more like an intentionally interpretative account, from a more developed theological perspective, but still with the same ingenuous purport. (E.g. John 20:30-31: "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.") I believe that the things reported about Jesus really happened -- and it is within this context that I try to understand the rest of the Bible, including the less 'factual' truths it expresses. The more I read, re-read, research and engage with it for myself, the more I feel myself 'caught up' into the ongoing story of God's plans and purposes for this broken world...
[1] Of course, it's not like I'm consistent or anything. The Social Network immediately became one of my favourite films, like, ever; The King's Speech is pretty good too. And the most obvious difference between these two and most of the other films I glibly write off when this topic arises is that I have actually seen them. Although, in my (somewhat shaky) defence, my main reason for avoiding the three aforementioned recent releases is that I am not at all keen on the previous work of any of the directors, and it's hard to make time to watch films I don't expect to enjoy.
[2] After all, my blog is easily avoided whereas my person, not so much so (for some, that would require changing jobs, moving house, switching churches...)
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