FlamingText

Pt 1: Special Effects

  Remember last post where I was quoting some political hack who was saying that we are living in a society that all but treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition? I feel certain that this is the sort of thing he was talking about. Seems there’s this scientist who claims to have found a possible explanation for one of Jesus' top-ten miracles: walking on water. He claims that unseasonably cold weather in Israel 1,500 to 2,600 years ago might have caused "spring ice" in the Sea of Galilee, which floated just beneath the surface and would have been strong enough to support a man's weight. Thus to an observer from a distance, somebody could step from a boat out onto the spring ice and appear to be walking on water.

  This is the kind of thing that provokes anger in true believers because they think people are trying to explain away their belief system, which I suppose is kind of true. In a sense scientists who engage in this kind of speculation regarding possible natural explanations for supernatural articles of faith are deliberately raining on that parade. My housemate subscribes to a magazine called the Skeptical Inquirer which is put out by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and which I jokingly refer to it as the Killjoy Monthly. In spite of the fact that this is a publication written by people who literally want to track down and destroy every last trace of magic in the world today, it can sometimes be pretty entertaining reading. It's also a case study for anybody who believes that there are no articles of faith in doctrinaire atheism, but that's a whole other can of worms and it's not my point so I'll steer clear of it for now.

  My point is that people love their miracles and I understand why. In a sense miracles are to spirituality what special effects are to certain movies. Take the Matrix, for example. * I didn't see this movie until about a year after it came out in theatres due to my longstanding policy of avoiding any movie featuring Keanu Reeves in a speaking role. So I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be as well-made as it was, that is to say it was a sci-fi action/adventure movie with lots of CGEye-Candy and attractive people doing kung fu in skin tight leather and PVC, but it also contained an idea that wasn't completely throwaway.

The idea itself is nothing new: There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the notion that hey, what if everything all around us is, like, an illusion? has been around since well before Plato proposed his whole "shadows on the wall" metaphor. But it was in the execution of it, I thought, that the Matrix did a good job. The real money shot of that movie for me was when Keanu pops out of his little capsule and realizes that he's just a pale, flabby little grub living in a test-tube being tended by huge insectoid robots. That was a well-realized vision. That was the point in the movie where I said to myself “Alright! Now we’re getting somewhere.” Without that and all the bullet-time scenes * what you're left with is the sort of long rambling metaphysical conversation such as you might have had in a dorm room with your college buddies, perhaps after a couple rounds of bonghits, except with Keanu Reeves playing the role of your stoner roommate.

   But nobody would pay ten bucks to see that movie. So there’s gotta be a special effects budget; It's non-negotiable if you want to reach your audience. There’s gotta be robots and kung fu and suspension of the law of gravity and Carrie-Anne Moss in tight pants and all that other stuff or nobody would watch long enough to get to the point of the thing. That's the candy coating that make the chewy idea at the center palatable for the general viewing public.

   From the Arabian Nights to Shakespeare, good storytellers have always known that it’s the flash of mystery and magic that hooks listeners and makes them listen longer than they ordinarily would, but it’s the themes that lie just beneath the surface that give the story its lasting impact. And if some in the audience don't really get that second level and walk away thinking only that they heard a good story with a magic carpet and a humble peasant who became a hero and married the princess, well they may have missed the point but no harm done. Maybe the meaning will dawn on them later, when they're ready for it.

   But the people who are ready to fight over the special effects? The ones who protest “But there really was a genie, and he really did grant wishes, and there used to be flying carpets for sale in the bazaar, way back in olden times,” but can’t tell you for the life of them what the story was actually about? These people are all plot and no theme. What can you do for people like that?

Next: A Tale from the Sufis.

Posted by flamingbanjo at April 16, 2006 08:04 PM