Why do hopeless candidates run for President? For some, it is obviously ego. Ever since they became Parks and Recreation director in Schenectady, they have heard “Hail to the Chief” in their minds. Others have discerned a unique business opportunity: if you can convince even a tiny niche of a party that you will be their mouthpiece, they will pay your bills for two years while you “run.” You can sell books, products of all kinds, and all of it is paid for by the campaign. You live on the campaign and when it is “over” you can advertise yourself for a decade as a candidate for President in 2016 who won the Schenectady County Fair straw poll.
Why do people keep making lousy Christian media? Of course, some hapless souls do not realize that they are a media joke, the equivalent of the song Friday, Friday for the religious. They are good folk who do not realize that the Hallmark Movie Channel should not be an aspiration, but settling. Grifters, however, figured out long ago that having actual viewers is not the issue. Ask yourself. Who do you know that watches any Christian television, listens to much of any Christian radio, or goes to Christian movies? How many DVDs, let alone Christian DVD movies, does the average twenty-something buy?
The answer is almost none, but that does not matter.
It does not matter that few people watch most Christian product, because the grifter has already paid for it. He can raise money by fear mongering an issue (“We’ve got trouble in River City!”) and promising to make a media presentation that will make a difference. A certain number of people can be bubbled out of their cash to support this ministry and then the wonderful process of making the media presentation can begin. How long can this continue? How much can be spent? Quite a bit . . . and then any sale of the product becomes gravy at the end.
And somebody somewhere will be helped by the movie, television show, or program and then the grifter can use the project to start up again. Hiring quality people, folk actually in the industry, are not needed because the money is not in the quality, but in the pitch. Christian media is a bit like a perpetual Spring Time for Hitler in Germany only it is never a hit. Christian media proves the Producers strategy can work.
My dad learned this by working with Christian radio in the days when tubes warmed up to get the set going. The owner of a Christian radio station could sell time to local ministers (they loved being “on the air in radio-land”) and then raise money again from local Christians to keep the Gospel on the air. You could fail back then, but it was hard and mostly happened if you pushed for quality. The tiny audience knew what they wanted and deviating from the niche stopped those cards and letters from coming.
There is an argument that most Christian television in the 1980’s harmed the cause of Christ as much as it helped it. Surely for every soul saved, there were five who tuned in to parodies by Robin Williams (“Heeeeeal!”) and thought of this as Christianity. There is little pressure for quality because viewers are not the goal for many grifters, but the ability to raise money on a tiny demographic that would also buy “PRODUCT.”
How great is a business where people pay you to make a thing and then pay a mark up to buy the same thing?
Of course, not all Christian media projects are like this . . .just as not every long shot candidate is a grifter or a narcissist, but there are enough that it explains the continuous tide of junk that buries anything. Contrast this with the plan of a studio like Pixar. When Pixar made a “meh” movie such as Cars II, even though it made a boatload of money, the critics and the company grew restive. They knew the brand was put in peril by junk. It was what Michael Eisener did to Disney with Cinderella II and direct to video crap that attached a stench to Golden Age Disney product still not removed.
Ask a kid: Disney or Pixar and you will understand what short-term profit did to the Disney brand.
We need Christian film companies that raise seed money for ministry, but then are punished by the Christian market if nobody outside our bubble goes to the show. Making God’s Not Dead is useless as ministry if atheists giggle, the target market rolls its eyes, and people my age fill the theaters. Christians must stop indulging announced good intentions if the delivery is not there.
If one is trying to reach “young people,” and then reaches grandma hoping to reach her grandson only to see him smirk, then one has failed. Why do “Christian” media concerns keep imposing restrictions on their writers that most Christians think are bizarre? These companies know what their tiny, aging niche demands and never disappoint. That most of us go to Pixar films and Jurassic World does not disturb their marketing strategy. Trust me: somebody somewhere is making a knock-off dinosaur movie (funded by grandparents worried about the kids) called Jesus’ World that nobody will watch except those who are looking for the next bad film to parody.
Of course, this is equally true of wasting time, money, and support on candidates who cannot get beyond our niche. I have many eccentric political views (Charles I, not Cromwell!), but safe to say, a candidate who panders to me is a niche candidate indeed. He cannot win and would be so incomprehensible to the general public that he will be the butt of jokes and not the forerunner of success. I don’t need to waste my money on his good intentions (assuming he is not a political grifter). The politics of good intentions without results is not conservative politics.
Pixar dares to make a film about an eleven year old girl and her growing up and depression. We did not know we wanted to see the film, but they earned the right to be trusted with my film money. I went because it was Pixar and Pixar rarely disappoints. The film was brilliant, the movie I did not know I wanted but needed, and so I will see their next film. Christian media needs to earn this trust by producing quality product actual people watch, not merely troll for attention to raise the budget to make the film.
Someday someone will think to run for President of the United States while making a Christian movie. That person will grow rich in Dante’s Circle Eight.
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