Interview with the Director of Hoodwinked

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Anne Hathaway)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

The premier of Hoodwinked was of special local interest for those of Anderson University, with the University’s president, James Edwards, particularly beaming. His sons, Cory and Todd Edwards, co-wrote the story. Cory directed the movie (and was the voice of scene-stealer, Twitchy the Squirrel). Todd wrote ten of the original songs for the movie. Together—with their sister, Katie Hooten and another Anderson University alum, Preston Stutzman—they form Blue Yonder Films. The creators had a special Alumni screening of the movie in Anderson, Indiana where I had a chance to meet the creators.

Why did you choose an animated movie this time around?

CE: We had an investor who was a fan of animation and wanted to retell a classic story as an animated feature. I had some experience directing some shorter TV animated projects (such as "Wobots" on DVD), and so I felt confident that I could pull off a feature. But I never thought that my first film would be an animated one.

What drew you to the story of Little Red Riding Hood? Was there anything that particularly attracted you to this fairy tale?

CE: As I researched a number of known fairy tales, I was struck by how universal and recognized the story of Red Riding Hood was, in almost every culture. Plus, it is a fun story to retell! Then when my brother proposed the "Rashomon" concept of flashbacks from many perspectives, I got very excited about doing the project. I knew that this kind of story had never been done in a children's film or animated film before. And with this concept, I thought we could transcend the genre of a typical "kid movie."

As far as themes in the movie, what would you say the film was about? Was there anything you were trying to say about truth?

CE: In any story or event, there's your side, my side, and the truth. Very simply, I want kids to think about the fact that there is always another side to a story, no matter what your perspective tells you. And there is probably more to someone's life than you think. I also wanted to say something about heritage, and about how family makes us who we are. The hood is a symbol of that. When Red discards her hood in the movie, she is basically shunning her connection to her Granny and her heritage. And in the end, she embraces that heritage again as she grows up a little bit.

What themes are you drawn to in the projects that you choose?

CE: I want to tell stories about characters seeking a greater purpose, or who want to become more than they are. I also like stories about risk and what it takes to achieve a higher goal. Those are lofty things, but they are compelling and universal when put in the context of a direct choice a character has to make. Even popcorn movies can make you think.

How would you describe the role of faith in your work?

CE: I worked in the Christian media for many years, enough to know that I am not interested in making Christian "message" films. Those films are valuable, but they are just not what I am driven to make. My mantra is "entertainment first, message second." And by that I mean that your audience only wants to be entertained. Take care of them on that level, and you can work in your ideals and your faith as you tell them a story. If you rivet them to their seats, they will be open to anything.

Who I am is going to come across in my storytelling. If I try to put my own agenda up on the screen first, storytelling becomes secondary and falters. At least that's what happens for me. I am a film-maker who is a Christian, not a "Christian film-maker." I hope people can realize the difference.

There were a lot of movie references that you drew upon; what sort of movies have influenced you?

CE: Growing up, I was greatly influenced by Lucas, Spielberg, Jim Henson's Muppets and Bugs Bunny cartoons. I also saw every Disney movie that came out. I love Robert Zemeckis (especially the style of the "Back To The Future" movies) and the boldness of Tim Burton's vision. Then, in my adult years, my sense of humor has been greatly influenced by Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers' films. And of course, I cannot forget EVERY Pixar movie, the gold standard of animated entertainment these days. Put that all in a big blender and that's what's going on in my head when I make a movie!

What other projects do you have in the pipeline?

CE: We have already started writing the sequel, which is scheduled to go into production by this spring. It is going to be much bigger in scope than the original, and we take Red and her friends into a real "Mission Impossible" adventure.

Other projects I am developing are live action ones. I really want to work with actors in front of cameras very soon! Some of the projects I am preparing are a sci-fi comedy, an action film, and a fantasy film.

— Overview

Underworld: Evolution

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Kate Beckinsale)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

One of the first movies that my wife convinced me to take her to when we were dating was Scary Movie. She thought it looked funny, and I wanted to please her, so I paid what few hard earned dollars I had for us to spend an evening at the movies. It turned out to be a cinematic experience so miserable that she apologized to me afterward. After seeing Underworld: Evolution, someone owes me an apology.

I want two hours of my life back.

I’m now convinced that I’m going to be on my deathbed, re-tracing my life, and I’m going to remember that I once sat through Carnosaur 2 and Underworld: Evolution. And frankly, there were enough unanswered questions from the first Carnosaur to justify me watching the second—at least compared to trying to justify Underworld: Evolution. Having seen the first Underworld, it’s not like I expected a whole lot: Kate Beckinsale, as Selene the Death Dealer, running around in a tight leather outfit shooting a lot of bullets at monsters. That, by the way, is a better plot summary than the barely-one-step-above-a-video-game thing that passed for this movie's screenplay. Before you ask why I went to see this in the first place, I will remind you that sequels of these type of cult movies tend to be better than the original. They tend to up the action quotient, deepen the mythology, create more of a thrill ride, and possibly—possibly—even become a director’s franchise. Not so here.

I want two hours of my life back.

Underworld: Evolution picks up after the ending credits of the first Underworld. So we are in the midst of this overly-Machiavellian, grand conspiracy/war between the lycans (werewolves) and the vampires. [This is basically a story set in the White Wolf gaming company’s Vampyre (the basis of the television series Kindred: The Embraced) and Werewolf games universe, but the uninitiated are not supposed to notice.] The movie is relentless action with no point. The frenetic direction mostly illustrates director Len Wiseman’s love of things crashing through walls. The action literally only stops long enough for gratuitous sex scenes or the one bit of exposition that supposedly explains why everyone is running around shooting and otherwise trying to maim one another. Yes, I said gratuitous—because the randomness of it, like the rest of the movie, made no sense. Sadly, I kept waiting for the movie to start making sense, but by the time it did, I no longer cared.

Vampires represent a resurrection to darkness. In vampires you see the perversion of the idea of blood being necessary for eternal life. Underworld: Evolution continues in the Postmodern era’s tradition of distancing itself from the religious elements of vampire mythology, though sunlight is still an effective weapon against vampires and blood is still essential for the transmission of what they are as well as their reason for being immortal. The lure of vampires, from the original to Anne Rice’s depiction of them, has been their seductive underside. Vampires seem more free, civilized, almost aristocratic; frankly, they have been over-Romanticized. Werewolves, by comparison, are savage—beasts reminding us that we have a corrupted self inside us. A side, a nature, in us that we must tame, restrain, or kill.

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned�

—Romans 5:12

“The journey to the truth� is through the blood, Marcus says. Echoes of the story of Christ reverberate through this movie. SPOILER WARNING (I think. Who knows if I’ve even grasped the plot fully): Much of the movie revolves around the search for Alexander Corvinus (Derek Jacobi, a long way from his I, Claudius days), who is essentially the “Adam� (the first) of the vampire and werewolf clans. He is the father to twin sons, Marcus (Tony Curran), the original vampire; and William (Brian Steele), the original werewolf. Yet, despite the evil his sons immediately inflict on the world, he cannot bring himself to destroy them.

“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.�

—I Corinthians 15:21-22

Selene and Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman as the half-breed or hybrid rescued from the first Underworld) represent the future. The “second Adam,� much like what Christ did, takes on the traits of the first—takes on his very nature—but lives the life meant to be lived. In effect, the second Adam redeems the life and sin of the first. Through facing temptation, through trials, even through a death and resurrection (including an “ascension� in to [sun] light), the lives of the second Adams provide the example for others to follow.

I’m still wondering how a movie full of vampires, werewolves, non-stop action, and a leather-clad Kate Beckinsale sucked so badly. Though I am tempted to make a list of the things I could have done instead of watching this movie, I will continue to concentrate on the themes drawn out of the movie—though even the echoes of the story of redemption are not enough to save it.

— Overview

Glory Road

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Josh Lucas)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

Many of the important or best games in NCAA basketball tournament history seem to feature the University of Kentucky. I spent seven years living with a University of Kentucky basketball fan, a fan that I have known since childhood. Let’s just say that under such circumstances, you learn to love Wildcats basketball.

There is an argument that can be made for the power of divine providence as part of the power and statement of this game. The year 1966 was the only year this could have happened. UCLA won all of the NCAA championships between 1964 and 1973, except for 1966. A little known player, who would one day be known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was ineligible to play as a freshman that year. The University of Kentucky, after a mediocre previous year, came together as a team. With University of Kentucky/Adolph Rupp perception—the pride of the South, old school mentality—it would seem like a story couldn’t be better written. My friend goes on to give more of a detailed history of Rupp and the background of the University of Kentucky basketball program at the time. These days, the only thing that would be unusual is seeing an all-white roster hitting the floor. However, Glory Road is not about these days. It is about a chapter of history well worth exploring, as well as being another entry in the sports movie genre.

Remember the Titans. The Greatest Game Ever Played. Miracle. Like them, Glory Roadis based on a true story. These David vs. Goliath, root-for-the-underdog type movies follow a specific formula: rookie coach/player (in this case, Don Haskins, played by Josh Lucas) new to the game faces uphill battle, first resistance from the players, then the system, then their ultimate arch-nemesis when they seek to win the big game. The standard for the quality of the particular movie is often best measured in terms of how well it can maintain any sort of dramatic integrity. Though Glory Road seems a little more heavy handed, it still is quite the memorable and effective movie.

Remember the Titans is the easy comparison since it has a similar backdrop of racial politics. Glory Road follows the journey of the Texas Western University basketball team, a multi-racial basketball squad in the deep south, breaking barriers akin to those broken by Jackie Robinson in baseball. Though teams were often integrated, the integration amounted to tokenism (the unwritten rule being “that you never played more than one black player at home, two on the road or three if you were behind�). Let’s face it, history is written by the victors though by most accounts, the movie stays fairly close to the truth and depicts the characters fairly. Some expected creative license was taken—for example, the added scene of the players’ trashed hotel rooms and the actual tempo of the final game. However, Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight, doing a lot with very little screen time), legendary coach of the University of Kentucky team, wasn’t portrayed as a frothing racist (which, I rather expected he would be). And, frankly, Don Haskins recruitment of black players almost smacks of desperate times (his inability to compete for the best white players) calling for desperate measures (recruiting black players).

“I don’t see color, I see quick, I see skill.�

–Don Haskins

This was a nice sentiment and I understand what people mean when they say things like this, however the problem is that the rest of society doesn’t necessarily get that same memo. Every time we step out of our front doors we are identified and treated primarily by our racial identity. Or, as the teams’ sometime spiritual advisor put it, “knuckleheads come in all sizes, shapes, and colors.� Black people were still perceived as something less than human. Athletic, sure, but they didn’t have the intelligence for team sports. They couldn’t be leaders, couldn’t control themselves, could never be part of a team game since they were more interested in show-boating. As far as we’ve come, there is still a way to go. Similar sentiments still linger today, since only recently have black quarterbacks seen an emergence on the pro level in football (and I grew up with various adults in my life trying to convince me that black people had extra muscles).

The coach–and by proxy, the movie–succeeded exactly because he actually did see color, recognizing the power inherent in people’s perceptions of color. The importance of the final game was a statement about color: five white players vs. five black players. If color didn’t matter, the movie wouldn’t matter.

“It’s more than just a game now. I sure as hell can’t quit on it.�

–Don Haskins

The game symbolizes something transcendent for all those who are a part of it, something greater than themselves. In a lot of ways, the game is their means of liberation: the coaches and the players, both black and white. The black players had been degraded, humiliated, treated as less than human, yet all they want to do is play. Their white team mates stood alongside them, often abused and insulted also, though without the sting that called into question their very humanity. When the team forgot what they had come to do, their mission—and instead focused more on each others’ skin color—they suddenly couldn’t play together. Hatred is contagious: to return hate for hate, the whole team ends up losing.

One of the things that I have come to realize about faith is that you can’t separate ideas from social reality. What you think about God, your theology can’t be separated from your socio-political status in (your) society. God is involved in history, the story of us, and His revelation is intertwined with our social and political affairs. This movie reminded me that God is for the oppressed, the marginalized. The poor have the Exodus gospel/model: to rise up, decry oppressive powers, and seek liberation. Such a gospel is an offense to the rich and powerful since it usually means the death of their ideas of wealth and power, those priorities.

Our faith needs to have a social dimension, shaped to affect our present situation. We need to understand that evil can be systemic, imbued into the very fabric of our social structures. The good news is about accepting freedom. Christ is the Liberator with a mission of liberation, to free us from the bonds of this world and its systems. Not only that, but we are called to join that mission by adopting the revolutionary methods of peace and love.

The movie succeeds as an inspirational movie not for the usual athletic underdogs aspiring to greatness, but because this particular group of basketball players did not succumb to criticism, jeering and all sorts of racism. A powerful theme of Glory Road was how the game was played. While we need to call evil evil, we can’t use the same means—the hate, the violence—to combat it or fight for equality. This movie forces us to confront our racial issues and attitudes. We all must travel that Glory Road and like any journey, we’re the better for it.

— Overview

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Hoodwinked

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Anne Hathaway)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

Stories have a way of being recycled, finding new life by being renewed and re-told to succeeding generations in ways that make them relevant to the times. Indeed, the story of Little Red Riding Hood has changed through the ages. Originating as a fairly dark tale—more of a horror bed time story for children—it morphed and has been cleaned up through the years. Cory and Todd Edwards, the co-writer-directors (with Tony Leech) deliver Hoodwinked, a frenetic version of the story of Little Red Riding Hood in tune to a more media-savvy and sophisticated audience.

The writers follow a simple credo: what if you just change one bit of a familiar story? Then they keep changing and changing and changing. Due to the actions of the bandit, almost like a mega-corporation squeezing out the small businesses, The Forest, home to all fairy tales, feels like it’s in the midst of a recession. The movie follows the police investigation of the “incident at Granny’s house� (reminiscent of the comic book, Fables) all as part of their pursuit of the “Goody Bandit, � the thief of goody recipes, who has been plaguing The Forest. Thus Hoodwinked plays like a satirical take on our culture’s fascination with police procedurals like Law and Order, C.S.I., NYPD Blue, or The Wire. With a Rashomon-style take on the story, the backstory leading to the confrontation in Granny’s house is examined through the eyes of the four main characters (rounded up like the criminals from The Usual Suspects).

Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway) laments a world too dangerous for her to make her way in. Few recognize how grown she truly is, but she has been so protected that she doesn’t know if she’s equipped to face the world. The Wolf (Patrick Warburton, The Tick) is re-cast as a reporter investigating goody trafficking. The Woodsman (James Belushi), a dim-bulb actor wanna-be, enjoys a day job as a schnitzel truck driver. Granny (Glenn Close), Triple G, is into extreme sports. And, yes, Hoodwinked does feature a scene that redeems the ridiculousness of XXX.

The more we learn from the characters, the story spins further and further into slapstick comedy territory. No target is safe from the writers’ skewering, not even other fairy tales.

“Pieces of a puzzle have funny shapes, but they still fit together in the end.�

–Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers)

One of the themes of the movie is the search for truth. The investigation into what really happened gave four perspectives on the same events, yet manages to seem like four separate stories. Much like the four Gospels that unveil the story of Christ, each perspective is true, though the narratives don’t quite line up perfectly. However, taken together, the narratives bring out a greater, essential truth.

Hoodwinked also examines the power of fairy tales. Indeed, the slew of animated features of late—from The Lion King to A Shark Tale—are little more than modern day fairy tales. Besides entertainment, their purpose is to help equip children for the reality of the world. Like the story that it adapts, Hoodwinked is a cautionary tale, one that recognizes that it’s not that children can’t handle certain truths, it is a matter of how those truths are conveyed to them. And truths are always best be conveyed in story.

There are wolves and all other manner of bad people out in The Forest (the world) waiting to prey on the innocent and unassuming. It doesn’t necessarily take a warrior or a prince—not necessarily the strong or the powerful—to confront evil; but the humble and the weak, with enough pluck, can face down evil. Sometimes the hero(ine)s have to overcome hardships, trials, and may have to suffer to accomplish their goals. However, getting by with a measure of luck (God-incidence, if you will) and help from their friends, they can ultimately triumph.

Made independently for a meager $15 million, thus explaining the animation style, Hoodwinked feels like the pilot for an animated series. In fact, I think this movie would work even better on television. Not quite as shrewdly subversive as Shrek, and lacking the magic of the Pixar movies (like Finding Nemo), Hoodwinked does not lack for laughs. In fact, the story sometimes feels like an excuse for strings of zany gags and strung together jokes. Yet, it seems to work: the movie succeeds at being entertaining for children and their parents alike. And that, like the truest and best fairy tales have, is a happy ending.

— Overview

The Dark Knight Returns

Time and time again I am asked about comic books, often encountering skepticism and prejudice about them as a medium. Too often they are seen as the domain of children and, let’s be honest, nerds with no lives. The perception–for the most part, correct–is that they are juvenile, 4 color adventures of spandex-wearing, muscle-bound he-men and heaving-bosomed she-women filled with trite dialogue and situations. When I encounter this attitude, I issue a simple challenge. To show how far the medium has grown, I ask that the person read one or both of the following books, each written nearly twenty years ago: Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Both redefined what could be done in what my grandmother called “funny books� and developed an audience far greater than the insular and fairly small pool of comic book readers.

First collected in trade paperback form in 1986, The Dark Knight Returns changed the rules of the medium forever. In four issues, Frank Miller explored the idea, the myth, of Batman and the symbolic power he (and all heroes) represent. Put simply, heroes were beacons in a dark world and never had the world been portrayed as darkly.

Audiences, especially comic book readership, had matured and grown more sophisticated. For too long, stories risked being dismissed as naive and relegated to irrelevance. Audiences were ready for stories with adult themes and situations and the complexities of anti-heroes. For better or worse, The Dark Knight Returns ushered in the age of “dark� comics. “Gritty realism� was the phrase most tossed about at the time, now taken for granted in how stories are told. The reinterpretation of traditional heroes for this new audience soon swept industry wide. Some reinterpretations worked and some didn’t. The ones that did succeeded because the writers remembered what it was that made the heroes what they were. They retained the essence of the hero, the mythology.

Frank Miller employed a lot of the story-telling style that he experimented with in his mini-series Ronin. His art owed a lot to the cinematic style of Lone Wolf and Cub artist, Goseki Kojima. The Dark Knight Returns quickly supplanted the 60s era, Adam West’s silly TV show version, in the cultural consciousness. The popularity of the book provided the heat for the 1989 release of Tim Burton’s Batman. It is the spirit of The Dark Knight Returns that Batman Begins was filmed with (in fact, Batman Begins takes a lot of its story from Frank Miller’s follow up to The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One.)

At the heart of the story, The Dark Knight Returns is about finding one’s purpose. It is the journey of a hero realizing what he was born to do and being faithful to that calling. There are other places you can go to get a detailed rundown on the intertwining storylines of the comic. The important are of emphasis lies in the study of the journey of the hero.

Batman has always been a dangerously focused character. The death of his parents at the hands of a criminal gave him a mission in life, but how he went about his mission has led writers to depict him as either a revenge-driven psychopath (continuing to punish the man who killed his parents) or an ardent pursuer of justice (pursuing a higher calling and mission). So this hero’s journey has always been as much internal as it was external.

The world of The Dark Knight Returns is indeed a dark one: run by a fascist, when not inept, government (both federal and local); societal values turned topsy-turvy (where the release of a murderous villain, the Joker, is heralded as a good thing); and Gotham City a victim of urban sprawl and decay, overrun with crime and gangs and rotting from its center - all with a “retired� Bruce Wayne/Batman as a lion in winter.

The journey of the hero is Christ’s story, the ultimate story, and the larger the hero, the more arduous his journey must be. As the story opens, Batman has been gone for ten years. There is a sense of “Messianic expectation�, as if everyone was waiting for his return. In a sense, the people of Gotham City are waiting for his second coming because their world seems too dark and without hope; and Batman offered a symbol of hope. Though gone for only a few short years, scholars re-examine him and declare him a myth; not believing that he, in fact, ever existed despite the eye witness accounts. On Bruce Wayne’s end, he meditates on (his) death, on what would make a fitting end for him. Pondering death has a way of making one reflect on their life and assess how it was lived and ought to be lived. After all, the hero’s journey isn’t complete without the final story.

To reach his end, Batman must run an escalating gauntlet of his greatest foes, foes which reveal much of the nature of his battle and career. First up was Two-Face. In Harvey Dent, former District Attorney who had the left side of his face scarred by acid by a criminal, Batman found a reflection of himself. His disfigured face, Dent became convinced, revealed his dark side. He used a silver dollar, with one side scarred, as his trademark calling card. It represented the choice each of use has to make between good and evil. Batman often sympathized with Two-Face for battling his inner demons - though it was a battle eventuating in him being consumed by them.

Next up was the street gang known as the Mutants. The Mutants were an army of petty criminals-cum-gang. They were the ever constant threat of crime in the ordinary, the faceless hordes that was the focus of most of Batman’s campaign against crime (as opposed to the occasional “supervillain� that he fought). The other thing that Batman’s mission tended to inspire was disciples called to join with him in his mission. From the various incarnations of Robin to the Mutants converted to the “Sons of the Batman�, his life called others to the mission. The shrine he kept to the second Robin, a fallen soldier in their war, reminds us of the cost of discipleship and the mission.

The rise of the super hero triggered the rise of the super villain. Thus, with the return of Batman came the return of his greatest enemy, the Joker. The Joker–the mad clown prince and homicidal genius–was Batman’s ultimate foe, the personification of evil that people are capable of doing to one another. However, ironically, the Joker was still playing the “old game� by the “old rules�, a villain out of step with the times; almost more interested in wanting to re-live old times than anything else.

Lastly, Batman faces the system itself: the “empire� seen as social and governmental impotence and as embodied by Superman. With Batman’s message spreading, the apocalyptic imagery takes on a life of its own, as if the whole book built toward some final battle. The detonation of a magnetic pulse weapon sends society into chaos. Stalled cars, crashing planes, it was like a scene out of Left Behind. In rides Batman on horseback, with bystanders only remembering the power of his voice, like a sword piercing their hearts.

In these “end times�, superheroes were essentially outlawed, not permitted to operate without license. License that Superman has and Batman does not. The idea of Batman becomes too big, too much of a threat to the powers that be. He challenges them and defeats them with unexpected methods and is thus labeled a threat to the empire. And has to die. The image of Superman and Batman entwined in battle is an interesting one. Both are messianic figures in their own right. Together they form a more complete picture of Justice - keeping in mind the verse found in Romans 11:22 (“Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God�).

The idea of Batman bears further investigation. His origins revolve around the idea of being inspired by a bat to instill fear into the hearts of criminals. He recognizes the power of symbol. The bat, during the course of the story, takes on totemic value, one that Batman draws power from. At first it seems to be just the symbol of fear, but it is actually the symbol of his calling, his destiny. On a strictly human level, Batman represents “the common man’s will to resist� crime and wrong-doing. In a lot of ways, however, this totemic bat spirit is Batman’s own messianic consciousness becoming aware of his mission.

The religious language of the book only intensifies the sense of Batman as mythic icon. Batman returns during a rainstorm, which he refers to as his baptism. His mission is often called his “holy war� against crime. An approaching storm–symbolizing Batman’s return–is described as the wrath of God. In fact, in a lot of ways, Batman embodies the wrath of God, the idea of His (punitive) Justice. Batman is comparable to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character, an Old Testament vision of punishment. It’s easy to forget that wrath is love in action: Batman defends the weak, the oppressed, and the “least of these�.

The story of Batman’s second coming, death and resurrection is a powerful one - a story that draws on an older one. Though written some twenty years ago, it stands the test of time, a testament to the renewing and enduring themes within the book. The Dark Knight Returns is a landmark work for any medium, so much so that it transcends it.

Like all good myths should.

A Theology of Horror: Questions and Conclusion

After my initial comments, the discussion from the Hollywood Jesus Annual Gathering panel on “Horror as a Genre� was opened up for general questions. Some I had anticipated or at least tried to prepare for.

The Enduring Nature of Common Horror Tropes:

Vampires. Bram Stoker created Dracula to be the perfect anti-Christ. This rich and dynamic lore is the prototypical case of the negation of the sacred creating the evil. This fact also explains why the sacred becomes a part of the solution to the problem of vampires. Vampires represent a resurrection to darkness. In vampires you see the perversion of the idea of blood being necessary for eternal life. Resurrection into this life occurs after three days. In the novel, Dracula even comes with his own forerunner (John the Baptist type) in the form of Renfield. The evil of vampires is dealt with by images of the cross, baptism (holy water), or the sun’s (Son’s) light.

Dracula 2000 explains Dracula as being the undead soul of Judas Iscariot. A fascinating portrayal of vampires is depicted in the movie The Addition. “It’s an "arthouse" independent film that captures the moral spirit of the horror genre at its best. It is the story of Kathleen, a philosophy student at NYU, who gets bit by a vampire and descends into the dark shadows of bloodlust. The spiritual angle of this macabre story is that vampirism in the film is an obvious metaphor for human depravity. But that’s not all. The vampires are distinguished by their self-awareness, unlike those they prey upon. Kathleen bites her new friend, who then asks her if she is going to get "sick." Kathleen answers, "No. No worse than you were before." She adds to another, "Sure, it’s easy to spot in people like me. The cancer has grown obvious. But you’re as terminal as I am. You’re as addicted [to sin] as I am." The only difference between the living and the undead is that the vampires are aware of their corruption, while the living are self-deceived in thinking they are not.�

Ghosts. These disembodied spirits point to one thing: some part of us is eternal (we have souls) and we don’t know what happens to them when we die. [Let’s not forget that we tell and re-tell a ghost story every year around Christmas time: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol]

Zombies. These creatures portray a resurrection to walking death. A similar metaphor is found in the case of Frankenstein and the curse of the Mummy. They are the living dead, with no hope, only the eternal existence in a “body of death� (Romans 7:24). They are particular reminders that there are worse things than death.

Werewolf. Similar to what we see with the creature Mr. Hyde, we have a corrupted self with us. A side, a nature, in us that we must tame, restrain, or kill (echos of Romans 6:6).

Serial Killers. Similar as tropes to werewolves in depicting the dark side to our nature, serial killers specifically remind us that evil death is all around us in the form of each other, lurking in the ordinary. The show Criminal Minds has become quite the hit exploring the idea of why we do these things to each other.

Even the movies that the Scream franchise deconstructs and the Scary Movie franchise parodies have a sense of Old Testament morality running through them: the judgment for doing drugs is death; the judgment for sex outside of marriage is death.

Monsters. By default become our catch all category. With movies such as Jeepers Creepers or The Nightmare on Elm Street (don’t forget, Wes Craven went to Wheaton College), we see creatures that embody our fear of the unknown. They also serve as reminders that fears can be blown out of proportion and can consume us.

In a lot of ways, religion–particularly Christianity–provides the “rules� of the genre. Granted, there is a certain amount of reaction to the Enlightenment worldview that led to the creation of the classic pantheon of horror monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man). However, it is Christianity’s concept of good and evil, God vs. the devil, heaven and hell, that often sets the stage for many a horror tale. These are the universal touchstones that are common and explain the enduring appeal of certain horror creatures.

My Responsibility as an Artist:

My responsibility as a writer is to tell the best story possible. Too often we confuse being a Christian (whatever) and being a (whatever) who is a Christian. If I am more concerned with proselytizing over story-telling, what I will produce is propaganda, not art. I don’t worry about injecting Christian ideas into my stories any more than injecting black themes into my stories. I am a Christian. I am black. Those areas form my worldview. It is from the grid of my worldview that I interpret the world and create my art. All artists do this. If I had a nihilist worldview, I’m sure that would come out in my art also. But no nihilist that I know worries about whether or not his nihilist worldview comes through in their stories.

When writing, I take quite seriously the idea that I may be “glorifying� evil or somehow making cool the dark and macabre things of this world. That being said, those drawn to such things will find them in anything. And when creating evil, if evil wasn’t seductive, we wouldn’t struggle with the temptation of it. Naturally, the next verse that typically gets thrown out is I Thessalonians 5:22 “Avoid every kind of evil.� I won’t even go into how this verse is typically ripped right out of context. When we wrestle with evil–the “why we do what we do� and the “what we do what to one another�–it’s not going to be pretty. The “inventive� kills of slasher movies from Friday the 13th to Saw don’t come close to the true, and very human evil, portrayed in Schindler’s List and Hotel Rwanda.

Do I worry about the desensitizing nature of horror? I’m against gratuitous sex and violence because they are generally lazy story-telling. Horror makes an easy target for the charge of desensitization, particularly for violence, but I think that if you are going to do that to horror then other genres need to be held up to that same standard. I think one of the greatest desensitizing genre is romance. I know women who pursue steady diets of romance movies and books. Think of how the idea of romantic love distorts our ideas of what love, what real love is. It turns us into narcissistic lovers (all about our own needs, feelings, and wants) rather than sacrificial lovers (pursuing the needs of our other). The harm from that notion has greater and more pervading reverberations within our culture.

Romans 14 discusses how we are to care for our “weaker brothers� while pursuing the freedoms we have in Christ. Yet somehow while applying these verses, we’ve let a “lowest common denominator� mentality drive how we wrestle with culture. The fact of the matter is that some of us have more sensitive spirits than others. So guard your hearts. We have a tremendous amount of freedom in Christ, not a list of dos and don’ts. With that freedom come responsibility. We’ve also been given wisdom. Don’t sin against your conscience by attempting to view things you may not be ready to handle. Draw your lines. However, don’t confuse the line you have drawn for yourself for the demarcation that all Christians should follow.


Conclusion:

If there was one thing that The Passion of the Christ did is that it made many of us re-think how we view movies. That movie had painfully extended, Hellraiser-esque depictions of violence and torture; but we never lost sight of the overall message and point of the story.

We live in a world of sin, suffering, and evil. Horror stories, like any other kind of story, can be an important vehicle of truth. And I certainly wouldn’t argue about the transformative power of story.

Horror is not for everyone. I’m not going to try and justify all of it because a lot of it is crap. Much of modern horror has drifted from its moral center into little more than exploitative mediocrity. Some books and movies have no agenda beyond seeking to push the boundaries and attack our notions of what is acceptable. There is an element of titillation to glorified sadism. I have my own lines and there are friends of mine, good people and fine writers, who I won’t read because I know that their work would be too much for me. Then again, much of any genre is crap. The truly good stuff rises to the top and is worth consideration.

Philippians 4:8 is the primary verse that often gets lobbed against horror: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.� I see what people are getting at when they toss that verse around. We see this divide between the secular and the sacred and we don’t want to be “of this world�. Many of people choose to separate from mainstream culture, retreat to their Christian ghettos, rather than risk being tainted by the word. Good! Do what you have to do. A maturing believer knows their lines.

However, and I say this with all due caution and humility, as we mature, we, like the apostle Paul, can expose ourselves to culture, draw the good out from it, interact with it in such a way as to use it for redemptive purposes. Yes, we are called to be priests, to be set apart; but set apart, not for our own comfort and edification, but for a purpose: to join in Christ’s redemptive mission.
If God can communicate through a burning bush and a talking donkey, He can certainly do it through some scary stories.

I see myself as a writer, joined in God’s creative ministry, doing what I was called to do, working out my faith with, and in, “fear and trembling.�

A Theology of Horror: The Via Negativa

This topic has continued to evolve after my initial forays in trying to explain how I’m a Christian horror writer and later as I started to think about a theology of horror in preparation for my panel discussion at the Hollywood Jesus Annual Gathering. I was asked to speak on the topic of “Horror as a Genre� to a primarily Christian audience. The panel was videotaped and will be available for download soon, in the meantime, I thought that I would post my notes on my blog. "The Via Negativa" was my introductory comments and "Questions and Conclusions" some of my notes for anticipated questions and my conclusion.

I’ve always been drawn to dark story telling. I was the kid in Sunday School with the flannel graphs depicting tent pegs going through people’s head, begging the teacher to tell us that Jezebel story again. You know, the kid the teacher put in the corner and never called on again. In high school I discovered Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson and found kindred spirits in the kinds of stories that I liked to tell. I’ve been writing seriously for over ten years, published mostly in the last five. I am kind of on staff at The Dwelling Place. Some of my horror writer friends started to call me the sinister minister though.

As the sinister minister, one of the first things that I get asked is “how can you be a Christian and a horror writer?�; from Christians and non-Christians alike, though I suspect for different reasons. First I think it would be instructive to define what exactly I mean by horror.

Horror can be rather hard to define, partly because it’s a genre that often finds itself running from its own label. I don’t write horror, I writer “dark fiction� or “supernatural suspense� or “bizarro fiction�. All because the label “horror� comes with the baggage of preconceptions. When I say horror, many (of you) are thinking blood and guts and maybe randomly naked people. As a genre, it is dismissed as being too brutal, too sadistic, and too terrifying to have any redeeming value.

At its core, horror is about fear, an attempt to get a cathartic release from dealing with what scares us - be it the unknown or ultimately, our fear of death. It encompasses an umbrella of styles from the quiet/atmospheric type of horror (The Others, Sixth Sense) and the psychological type (Session 9, The Blair Witch Project); to supernatural horror (Constantine, The Exorcist); to the serial killer sub-genre (The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Saw); to the slasher/splatter side of things (Chaos - read this article by Roger Ebert).

My first response to the question how can a Christian write or watch horror typically involves wondering aloud what Bible they have been reading. We like to clean up the Bible, forget that it is a very real, very earthy book, not always for the most delicate sensibilities. It can be shocking at times, and the shock is meant to instruct. The overarching theme of the Bible is redemption. It’s the story of God wooing man back to Him, and we often forget to read it as a story. There are individual elements to the story that we could find objectionable:
-the occult: we encounter all manner of sorcerers, witches, mediums, and demon possession.
-the violence: I’m back to the tent peg thing, but there’s also entrails eaten by dogs, and women eating their own afterbirth.
-the language: we try to clean it up today, but some of the language gets a little rough.
-the sex: there are tales of incest-rape and adultery all through the book.
In other words, there are plenty of things in the Bible that can leave a person saying “I can’t believe that’s in there.�

Some people might consider that answer rather glib. I don’t and see it more as wrestling with Scripture and story in it’s entirety not just the G-rated bits. Let me go on to say that no genre uses the language of Christianity more than horror. There are four things that I believe horror deals with especially well.

4. Horror deals with the total depravity of man. Having the attention of all good five point Calvinists for the moment, allow me to say that horror resonates with this principle. Sometimes this comes out as wrestling with the theme of man having a darker nature to resist, restrain, or kill (with such archetype monster tropes such as the werewolf or Mr. Hyde). In fact, the modern day serial killer has become the natural incarnation of man’s capacity for evil.

3. Horror deals with the nature of good vs. evil. In horror, the reality of evil cannot be denied.
Now, Ephesians 5:8-14 is one of those passages commonly thrown at defenders of horror, the salient passage being verses 11-12: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.� Brian Godawa handles the passage this way: “Another way in which horror and thriller movies can communicate truth in today’s postmodern climate of relativism is in their simple but believable portrayal of real and undeniable evil. Showing the harmful results of a belief has been traditionally called via negativa, or the "way of the negative." It is making an argument against a certain viewpoint by showing the negative conclusion to which it ultimately leads.�

You see, in horror, evil takes on a life of its own. It rages against God and it rages against man, in direct opposition to what Christ boiled down the Law and the Prophets to (“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' ; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'� Luke 10:27).

Once the evil is revealed, once we have been dragged kicking and screaming right into the face of evil, one is forced to react. We can’t just deny it and hope it goes away, that’s a sure route to a quick demise for any character in a horror story that pursues that course. Since horror has traditionally been a brand of morality tale that makes us see evil, one of its most powerful lessons is that evil can win if we fail to do the right thing. As the characters, our proxies, gear up for this fight, they must confront their fears. Evil must be opposed. In fact, not just opposed, but opposed in the right way. When we use evil to stop evil, the evil is never defeated and will resurface again, often strengthened (why do you think we have to suffer through so many Hellraiser movies?).

2. Horror, as a genre, embraces the reality of the supernatural. Horror not only acknowledges a spiritual dimension to life, but that transcendent reality often intrudes into our own. Even as we hunger for ths transcendent realm and can’t help but grapple with the idea of its existence, nothing scares like the unknown. The world of the Bible is a world full of mystery. Mystery defies explanation. We’re uncomfortable with mystery despite our need for it. The mystery of the afterlife, the mystery of unseen forces - the Bible takes seriously the world of the supernatural.

Classic horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, talked about the fear of the unknown this way: “uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.� We live in a supernatural world. Horror makes us face that.

1. Horror meditates on our mortality and the reality of Death. The fear of death fuels horror. There is a wisdom that comes from contemplating death. Pastor Rich Vincent put it this way: “This tragic reality raises many important questions: What is the ultimate meaning of human life if every life ends in death? Can there be any meaning to life if death is the final straw that brings every house of straw crashing down? Is death really the end? Could there be life beyond the grave? If so, what is it like? The Bible clearly embraces the reality of death.�

The reality of death forces us to assess what is important about life, what makes it worth living, and wonder what may come after it. That is at the very heart of the genre and why I don’t think it can or should be casually dismissed as “unspiritual�.

Horror is about grappling with what we see in the world around us and dealing with the implications of the eternal philosophical question “why?�. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there evil? Why do we do the things we do to one another? So the question isn’t how can a Christian write or watch horror, but how could we not.