I was watching a television show where some teenage daughters were telling their mother about a romcom where the leading man was a widower father. The mother’s reply was, “of course he is, Hollywood hates mothers.” I thought about that for a minute and then realized she got it all wrong. Hollywood doesn’t hate mothers; it just has lazy writers.
For their romcoms Hollywood wants a mature leading man, but if he’s in his thirties and has never married he come across as a loser with trouble launching. If he’s divorced, he’ll seem as damaged goods. Could have been a jerk who was abusive and may have cheated on his wife or was incapable of meeting her needs, so she cheated on him. In any of those scenarios he’s a loser and not a catch. Now a widower with a child means he’s a great guy who loves children but was struck with tragedy. This all makes him sympathetic and great catch.
You see this in other ways. Such as having the female lead being a career woman to let everyone know how empty and lonely her life is. Or by making the antagonist a redneck, neo-Nazi, white supremist, or a black gang banger and a pimp.
This is all just an easy shorthand that a lazy writer will use rather than take the time to make their characters nuanced and multi-dimensional. Of course, this lazy writing by using stereotypes can be and often is offensive and may cause the work to be rejected by large portions of the audience.
I think this is especially true in Hollywood’s depiction of Christians. If there’s a man (or a woman but it’s usually a man) who is white, in position of authority, and quotes the Bible then you know he’s a villain. That is the case for a drama, in comedies he’s an idiot and the butt of jokes. Of course, the really intelligent characters are atheist. Hollywood never considers that some of the greatest humanitarians, such as Bonhoeffer, or scientist, such as Newton, or philosophers, such as C.S. Lewis, were all great men of faith. And when they come up against such historic people they try to edit out their faith. Worse still they will present falsehoods as being part of the faith. I saw this in the series finale of Young Sheldon. In it, Mary was having Sheldon get baptized and her preacher was all behind it as if baptism was some sort of magic trick. Any Christian, and especially a minister, would know that baptism is culmination of accepting Christ in you heart as your savior. For an unbeliever like Sheldon, baptism would be meaningless and useless.
I wish that Hollywood did treat Christian faith with a little more respect. It would be nice if they placed Christians under the same unofficial rule they have with other minority groups. If you pay attention, you will notice that if there’s a black gangster in the movie then at least one of the cops is black. If the show is about Middle East terrorist, then one of the federal agents fighting the terrorist is Arab. It would be nice to do the same for Christians. At the very least they could higher a traditional Christian scholar (not Bart Ehrman) as a consultant to make sure they get the theology right.
#Hollywood, #LazyWritting, #Christians