Theater had its origins in religious ceremonies. Even before the Greek Dionysian wine and sex parties to celebrate fertility, older cultures combined music and theatricality with religion. It may have involved music or chanting, choreographed dancing, even masks and costumes to personify the gods or the symbolism of something bigger.
In early Greek drama, the chorus started out being the main players and mouthpieces of worship, morality lessons, and the audience watched (and sometimes participated in) the liturgy. Over time individuals began to step forward, with the masks and costumes, monologues and dialogues, and the chorus retreated, at first still advancing the story, and then taking the role of a single narrator.
However, in Greek culture theater continued to keep its religious roots. Whether it was Sophocles reinforcing the theme that humans should not overreach themselves and tempt the gods to anger through their hubris (pride), or Aristophanes protesting the war between Athens and Sparta (the 60s and Vietnam had nothing on Aristophanes. He was perhaps one of the first war protesters who followed the theme “make love not war,” especially through the comedy Lysistrata), theater continued to be the forum for discussing theology, morality, the problems of good and evil and human behavior.
Ironically, then, some of the biggest protestors of theater in Shakespeare’s day came from the religious sector, the Puritans (yes, the hard working folks who helped found and establish some of the American colonies). Perhaps as a response, Shakespeare sometimes poked fun at them for their strict adherence to discipline and contempt for the theater (Malvolio in Twelfth Night, who is played to look like a hypocritical fool, may be one of Shakespeare’s straw men to criticize the puritans). Due to protests stating the theater created tendencies for laziness and vice, the Globe Theatre was shut down and moved across the River Thames in London. Yet Shakespeare’s plays are still studied and mined for their wealth of understanding about human nature, comedy, tragedy, and morality.
Though early film seems to have been a combination of moving photography and vaudeville comedy, the 1920s began to take the fledgling film industry and combine elements of the theatrical (costumes, plot, theme). Many of our conversations about religion, the spiritual, or faith and movies, however, center around the role of clergy (Catholic priests, the absence of Protestant ministers) or the negative press Christians and faith seem to receive in movies.
Yet movies have also become a modern day parable. Seeing the Matrix was like seeing a sermon, or a postmodern messiah that combined elements of Eastern and Western thought together into a philosophical action film. The Matrix II took this analogy even further, creating further extremes of action, interrupted with sermonizing philosophy. Superman Returns also mixes strong elements of a Judeo-Christian messiah with the folklore of superheroes and godlike supermen. I haven’t even mentioned The Truman Show, Lost in Translation, Magnolia, Kinsey, or hundreds of other thoughtful, aesthetically well done movies.
The similarities between religion and the movies don’t end in just its origins or the issues many of our best films address. Culturally, the movies have become our 21st century cathedrals, the centerpoints where we reaffirm and challenge our values, come to understand the world, our fears, what makes us human and express our search for spiritual meaning and significance. With film, we are swept into something outside the normal experience, where we see life as larger than it is in our own realities, and where we can dream we are something more or somewhere else.
The movies have become our communal gathering places. The lights come down, the audience around us becomes a collective of indistinguishably shadowy silhouettes, a human but unrecognizable presence that we participate alongside, but don’t interact with. Sounds surrounds us, envelopes us, and our focus is directed to a bright light and moving images. When film was still a new phenomenon, people would even pick fights with the characters on camera, fooled by the illusion that the person was there when they actually weren’t. And now, even though we can rent movies and take them home to watch them in the privacy of our homes, we still choose to go to the movies sometimes for the larger experience.
3 comments:
I commented on your post on LLP. I know I didn't address every part of it. When I come up with more, I'll let you know. But it was a great post.
Hey Fatty and Enemy,
Thanks for the comments. I'd like to keep thinking about the role of movies in culture and the roles they play. There's a saying that we become like the gods we worship. I think movies and theater is definitely an American god that reflects our value system. I'm wanting to write a blog soon on money, but here I think money = value. People are willing to put their money where their hearts are, the things they value, at least in a capitalistic system. Think about how much producers spend to make movies. Think about how much we pay actors and actresses (even the overrated ones). Will Farrell, Jim Carey are overpriced at 25 mill per movie, but others are making even more than that. That's a lot of value. The only other thing we value that highly are the CEOs of companies (the oligarchs) and sports figures. The role sports and leisure plays in American culture reflects a huge value system statement.
Sorry to go on, but thanks for commenting and thanks for the conversation.
Do we worship the movies, the actors or both? What about pop stars? Idols can be many things--a computer can be an object of worship. Whatever becomes our God...but you know all that. Anyway, let me know if I'm on the right track in my other comment on LLP.
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