“Every time you hear a bell ring, an angel gets his wings.” ZuZu Baily, Karolyn Grimes, It’s A Wonderful Life
“Fill your hands you son of a bitch.” Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn, John Wayne, True Grit
Dyin’ ain’t much of a living, boy.” Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood, Outlaw Josey Wales
“I wish I knew how to quit you.” Jack Twist, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
I almost won a pony at the movies. It was the Saturday afternoon Kid’s Matinee at the Vogue Theater and I was ten years old. My raffle ticket was close, but alas, no pony. I’m going on memory here; there probably was no pony. I mean, what was a kid supposed to do, walk the pony home? Maybe in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but not in Indianapolis. The movie experience was great back then; it started with a series of cartoons followed by a Little Rascals film and the main attraction, a Lassie or cowboy flick. We bought the candy, ate the popcorn, and drank the cokes. We were happy, the theater owner was happy, it was the good ole days. The whole thing was harmless, good was good, evil was evil, and no kid left the theater morally confused. As seen in the film quotes above, the movies have changed.
One must ask, “If my parents weren’t confused, my teachers weren’t confused, who exactly was morally confused in the 1950s?”
I must nominate a writer like Jack Kerouac, the leader of the Beat Generation. His most famous work was On the Road published in 1957. Kerouac was a literary desperado, challenging conventionality, and the standard categories of truth. In the running were artists like Jackson Pollack whose abstract art conveyed a loss of truth as a category. He was a tragic figure, but other artists and people of the arts joined in the rush to find ways to avert standard morality.
Intellectuals, some smart, but many of them lacking wisdom, were novelists like Normal Mailer, Truman Capote, and professors in major institutions. Even theologians, maybe especially theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and pulpiteer Harry Emerson Fosdick hopped on this runaway train to utopia, looking for a place in their minds and souls to support their intellectual quests, or evangelistic efforts to blend Christ and Culture. But, most of these major historical figures didn’t have the same impact as the movies. For a time, from the 1940s until today, images projected on a screen or any screen through the vast content streamed onto our phones and into our bigger screens in our homes, have reset the categories of thought and have erased truth as a moral category.
“I’m not modern, I’m not postmodern, I’m premodern.”[1]
The self-description above is from the late Philosopher Dallas Willard (1935-2013), a man cut from a very different kind of cloth than the morally confused. I will allow Dallas to guide us by dividing the history of the unraveling of morality into three categories: Premodern, where truth was assumed and in agreement, Modern, where truth was challenged, and Postmodern, where truth collapsed.
Premodern ( 1920s to 1960s)
Premodern is not pre-historic, neither is it primitive or even cro-magnon. It can be the very recent past like John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart, it could mean Charlie Chaplin in “City Lights”, or Greta Garbo, “I want to be alone,” in the 1932 film, Grand Hotel. Premodern films were reliable. When you walked into the theater you expected Jimmy Stewart to be the good guy. George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Colonel Keith Davenport in Twelve O’Clock High. Dr. Benjamin McKenna in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.
You could count on John Wayne being the good guy who always rode off into the sunset after defeating evil. It didn’t matter if he was in McLintock! Big Jake, Rio Bravo, or True Grit. He was the hero and he killed the villains. We left the theater feeling good about the state of things and we weren’t confused. I can picture Wayne’s horse and even his dog, whom he called “Dog.” His dog seemed to like him, unlike Outlaw Josey Wales’ dog, who tolerated his master who kept using his head as a spittoon. Vive la differénce between the good guy John Wayne and the troubled Josey Wales.
This was a time when moral knowledge was solidly in place and supported by the culture. The mainstream of American society was in agreement. Some lived on the margins, mostly writers, artists, the Avant-Garde, the Andy Warhols, and Truman Capotes of the world. It was a different world, in some ways better, healthier, and stronger as a nation-state. It provided a safe society for most Americans.
But it was and remains a flawed society. Yes, there was immigration, yes, there was the sin of slavery and its residue visited on the black population with all its hideous inequities. But America confessed our sin and we self-corrected—imperfectly, but progress has been made. This progress was only possible because of the sacrifice of many who championed its cause. Martin Luther King, chief among them. For a kid like me, it was a Wonderful Life. My sister and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a single mother. We were too young to remember our Father. We had our grandparents, we had backup systems. My sister was and remains a great pianist. I had coaches and sports. We weren’t morally confused as we walked to school with fifty cents for lunch in our pockets.
Modern (Now as in the 70s, 80s, 90s)
When did it all start unraveling? The first time I was rattled by a film was in the late 1960s while watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. It starred an artificial intelligence, a computer named “Hal.” Hal’s intelligence overcame human intelligence and as I recall, created new life. The film touched on human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life.
It blew all my circuits and smashed my limited theological categories. Finally, when Dave, the human, wanted Hal to open the pod bay door, Hal said, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that,” I left the theater morally confused. I think for Kubrick, mission accomplished.
The film is a respected filmmaker’s quest to disrupt minds, smash theologies, and rearrange truth. Kubrick did so with other films, including Dr. Strangelove in 1964, The Clockwork Orange in 1972, The Shining in 1980, Full Metal Jacket 1987, and Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. These films challenged the danger of nuclear war, unchecked violence, the blood and guts of madness, the destructive nature of war on soldiers, the secret desires and perversion of the elite culture.
Kubrick’s impact on unraveling the moral order was big, deep, and wide. Kubrick’s reputation is varied, his philosophy clearly advocated a world without God. For a man with a rumored IQ of 200, his personal darkness could have been enlightened by the light of the world, Jesus the Christ.
The 70s through the 90s brought a series of firsts.
The first nude scene between a black man, Jim Brown, and a white woman, Stella Stevens, in the 1972 film, Slaughter. The first to show gratuitous violence was in Sam Peckinpah’s western, The Wild Bunch. The first X-rated films to go mainstream were Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, where Voight plays a male prostitute/or escort, and Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando. The first major film highlighting mental illness and violence was Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro. Also in the Modern category, PG-rated The Graduate (1967) about a cougar, not the cat, with Dustin Hoffman, and R-rated The Last Picture Show (1971) with Cybill Shepherd and Ben Johnson.
Truth begins to unravel
Truth as a category held its own during this era, but the unraveling had begun. Films and their makers were pulling at the strings and the fabric was stressed. You could still have a conversation about truth as real, foundational, and a basis for discussion. Logic was still used when discussing the claims of Christ or the authenticity of the Bible. You could say that Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, a legend, or God. Or people would agree with the law of non-contradiction. For example, all religions could be false, but if you had ten major religions and they were all different, only one could be true. Truth had categories and logic was absolutely necessary for any major decision-making. But then, the barbarians were at the gates, and the zombies started climbing the citadel.
Postmodern (truth collapses 2000+)
This is the era of remakes, sequels, and unimaginative filmmaking. The Rocky franchise has nine films, starting in 1976 and Creed III in 2023. Rambo has blown us away five times starting in 1982 until 2019. A cross between Rocky and Rambo named Sylvester Stallone now resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma where his latest series is Tulsa King. He is 78 and still doing serious damage. His latest character lacks the moral clarity of Rocky and Rambo. Stallone has become much more spiritual and Christian in his golden years, yet his character in Tulsa King is a mobster who, let’s say, is conflicted—a bit morally confused.
We now live in a new world of collapsing categories, a cross between superheroes and fantasy. The highest-grossing films of the 2000s+ are Avatar, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, the Batman series, Shrek, the Spider-Man series, and Star Wars. These films apart from the philosophy of Avatar and the darkness of the Batman series and offshoots are a cultural wash.
The more interesting trend is the films that the “Hollywood” establishment rewards and makes without apology. They make blockbusters to craft message films that are their serious attempt to create a dystopian utopia. Of course, they don’t think of it as a woke dystopia, but rather a better world where we are all one.
Films such as Tar’, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Bridesmaids, and Brokeback Mountain are message films presenting the culture with alternative options to conventional truth. I found Tar’ a great film, the best of the lot. A real study of human nature and the depths of evil. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was entertaining, especially if you lived during the late ‘60s & ‘70s. What if it had all turned out differently? Bridesmaids was unwatchable, but it shows us how distasteful women can be when they try to be like men. Brokeback Mountain speaks for itself, great acting and a good story. It makes what seems unnatural natural, and asks the culture to go against its basic nature. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, distilled the moral confusion and cultural chaos that now dominates the elites who made it. It presents a nihilistic view of reality. Nihilism means nothing, and that is what it offers. The one thing, however, that “Hollywood” movie makers have not factored in is Original Sin. Ah yes, what some call “the flesh” what others call the “black dog” and still others refer to as the “darker angels.”
The postmodern culture seems confused like a blind person feeling their way through the darkness. Jesus claimed,
“I am the light of the world. if you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” John 8:12 New Living Translation.
The only solution to this moral confusion and decline is to fix the human heart. Filmmakers are asking and attempting to answer life’s basic questions. Who am I? What is a good person? How do I become a good person? Why are we all here? What happens when we die? But they are stumbling through the dark. Jesus challenges us to turn on the lights! Light illuminates, and makes things clear. We can follow Him. Just follow the light.
Bill Hull
From the Capital of Dystopia
Fall 2024
[1] Modern is derived from modernity. Modernity is a social-cultural word meaning “The quality or condition of being modern.” Similar words are contemporaneity, contemporaneousness, or a modern way of thinking and working. In summary, “modern” is NOW… Pre and Post then is before now and after now. It’s one of those words that everyone knows what it means, but no one seems to be able to define it. For further reading see https://www.google.com/search?q=Modernity&client=safari&sca_esv=a982c7140206c012&sca_upv=1&rls=en&udm=2&source=iu&ictx=1&vet=1&fir=jG6q7L-aopU6jM%252CMcFTQTzwFTFKQM%252C%252Fm%252F019921%253B3MmYdMTeQxLCcM%252C-DCAEtSAGAe1pM%252C_%253Bnx55IR8sNL3MrM%252CDVCSYikhZdfSxM%252C_%253Bycp4bJzFk1O_MM%252Ce3k09sXrO1awMM%252C_%253Bn0TNggwGDntRuM%252CSKxD_ToYAckxgM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTSBW1D8M6YjNJSVZztte26mobpaQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj40PDRxe2IAxX0EUQIHR4lAcgQ_B16BAgrEAE#vhid=jG6q7L-aopU6jM&vssid=mosaic
Available at Amazon in paperback, kindle, and audible.