Hollywood Worldviews

Brian Godawa, the screenwriter for the excellent movie To End All Wars, has written a crash course in the art of watching a movie for something more than sheer entertainment called Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment. Written for  the general audience, the book takes a look at many of the popular films in our culture and dissects the worldview that lies beneath them.  A structuralist critic, Godawa sees films as being bound to specific rules and structures which govern how they should be interpreted and how their worldview should be dissected.  Godawa takes all of his worldview critique from James Sire, and unfortunately he uses Veith’s definition of postmodernism which really distorts the approach to postmodernism within this book.

I am certainly not a structuralist when I approach film or literature, vehmently disagree with Godawa’s worldview criticisms in general, and do not like how Godawa seems to desire that all films bend toward a Christian worldview, such as when he critiques the movie Gladiator for having a pagan worldview (what kind of worldview do you really want a movie about pagans to have, seriously?)   Godawa desires what I call the Beowulf approach to literature and film that so many Christians take as their form of criticism and creativity: they do not want original stories as much as to make sure that any story is Christianized, like the ancient English poet did by taking the pagan myth of Beowulf and adding Christianity into it.  Beowulf was written during a Christian awakening within England, and its cultural value is certainly paramount, as are many Christianized works, but making this the go to way of criticism by judging movies solely on worldview does not give credit to the artist merit and other valuable cultural questions that non-Christian worldviews bring into question for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Even thought I disagree with Godawa’s consensus on worldview criticism, especially his distorted reflections on postmodernism, the conclusion to this book makes it a necessary read.  If you are well versed in most modern popular films and have been in a college philosophy class you may want to skip reading the book, but don’t ever skip the conclusion.  It is by far the best Christian defense of filmmaking I have read.  Godawa excels at laying out the cultural necessity of Christian engagement with the cinema.

Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment*
Brian Godawa
IVP
$10.88 (Amazon)

*I have linked to the revised and updated edition, which I did not read.  The thesis of the work has not changed concerning worldview, from what I have read on IVP’s website or in the new foreword and introduction.  It appears to have been updated to include movies that have come out since the first edition.