THE CITY OF ANGELS, THE HOLY WOOD: Heard Barbara Nicolosi, of ActOne: Christians Writing for Hollywood and the Church of the Masses blog, speak at the America’s Future Foundation tonight. She’s a sharp little Sicilian stiletto! Here are some scattered thoughts from a very fun talk:

She said her organization was working on a credo, based in Christianity but translatable into Aristotle, for artists. She gave us five points of the credo, all of which I thought were great:

1) Sacramentality: Things are arrows toward the spiritual; what we see signifies what is unseen. Apparently the Aristotelian term for this is “hylomorphosis”??? I wouldn’t know–the only A. I’ve read is the chapter in the Nicomachean Ethics on ekrasia.

2) Sacredness of the human person: Individual humans are valuable for what they are, not for what they do. This ought to lead to an appreciation of individual privacy.

3) Connectedness: You are not alone. Friendship, self-donation; you are part of God’s plan for the world.

4) Good and evil are not equal.

5) Ironic juxtaposition of joy and sorrow–there is hope even in the most painful and horrifying moments.

I would sign on to all of these. If I had to list the elements of the credo that shapes my own writing, I think these would be the most prevalent (not the most important themes in the world, just the themes I personally return to again and again):

1) Justice. Humans desire justice, and we know that it is not fulfilled in this life. Many of us would rather have justice–for ourselves and for others–than mercy, and we think we can only have one. We accept a partial good because we cannot believe in the astonishing, bloody coexistence of justice and mercy offered to us on the Cross.

2) Sacramentality, as described above, especially in matters pertaining to cities and to sex.

3) Neither self nor culture are worth full allegiance. And the only hope for avoiding conformity to self or to culture is belief in a personal God.

4) Sin is real. If sin is not real, then all our ideas of justice are either self-righteous back-patting (“thank God my sins are not like the sins of that publican!”) or the random effluence of the ape-brain, like belief in a sky god. You say belief in sin makes no sense? I think disbelief in sin makes much, much less sense.

Anyway… Barbara also dissed the tendency among Christians trying to break into film to go all “grim ‘n’ gritty,” trying to prove that we can be as “hardcore” as the non-Christians. Like, I have a gang rape in my movie, you must take me seriously! As usual, Christians are behind the times here–the industry, according to Barbara, is moving away from raw exposure of body parts and violent acts, even as explicitly Christian flicks are trying to co-opt that stuff.

The other problem Christian moviemakers run into is modeling themselves on the “Contemporary Christian Music” scene, a.k.a. J4J–Junk for Jesus. (Um, that wasn’t Barbara’s term, so direct any hate mail my way–I think that stuff reeks.) Barbara inveighed against the disdain many Christians feel toward the movie industry–and therefore toward the very craft they are trying to practice! She pointed out, “Boycotting is what whiners do. Creation is what artists do.” She’s uncompromisingly on the side of the artists.

She also noted that making G-rated movies is very far from the point. G vs. R in no way maps onto good vs. evil. (In her discussion of “The Passion,” she said someone had commented to her, “There’s something wrong with an R-rated movie about Jesus.” To which she had replied, “Well… there’s something wrong about the Crucifixion.”)

I was a bit conflicted about her presentation. I strongly agree with her basic stance, and with the points of her credo. But the stuff I write is, I think, more sexual and, if not violent, then certainly wrathful and depressive (same thing–anger turned inward), than what she wants Christian artists to produce. I believe it is harder, in this culture at this time, to write well about characters who do good, and so I believe that is a challenge thrown down before a writer, and I try to take that challenge up in my own way. But at the same time I can’t get the They Might Be Giants song out of my head–“There is only one thing that I know how to do well, And I’ve often been told that you only should do what you know how to do well, And that’s be you… Be what you’re like. Be like yourself. And so I’m having a wonderful time, but I’d rather be whistling in the dark….”

I do think my talents (such as they are!), at the moment, are directed toward portrayals of whistling in the dark; losing; sin; failure; and what I think Milton called “the precincts of despite.” I think, despite and notwithstanding, when you truly explore the darkness you give the reader a sense of where the source of light might be.