Letters
From Behind the Lines
Enemy-occupied territory – that is what the
world is. … When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret
wireless from our friends: that is why
the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.
- C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity, II-2
Big and Subtle Lies
Here behind the lines, there are a number of events that can distract us from what is truly important, if we let them. They are not bad things in themselves, but only become troublesome if we abuse them – or, if they abuse us.
Motion pictures provide an example, as do the yearly Academy Awards shows. Now this potential distraction has never been of particular interest to me, as I don’t much bother with movies until I can watch them at home on DVD. But this year, the whole family ended up watching it. Unashamed Tolkien fans, we wanted to see “The Return of the King” triumph, and we were not disappointed. But at one point, I was more than a bit taken aback.
The AMPAS does the decent thing, and pays tribute to those members and artists who had died in the past year. Gregory Peck was the first artist mentioned in the remembrance sequence, and many others followed. When Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s film maker, was flashed on the screen, it certainly got my attention. Not just mine, apparently. Judging from the volume of commentary and reaction, this was the biggest media item since Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction.”
Riefenstahl is remembered for “Triumph of the Will,” and if you haven’t seen it, I suggest that you do, if the occasion presents itself. But before you do, do your homework. If you don’t know much about the Third Reich, study up before you go. William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (which was written by a skilled reporter who was there, not a postmodern historical deconstructionist) would be useful in that regard. By 1934, much evil had been done by the Nazis, with the groundwork well laid for much more to come. Knowing that, and then seeing the film, the viewer will see, first hand, just how seductive the media can be when presenting a contrived picture to the population. Of its kind, the film remains in a class by itself. But its techniques of seduction are still very much with us behind the lines today.
Today, the Silver Screen is joined by television as a potential instrument of similar media seduction. This past week, the networks that bring us a program called “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” repeated this show’s candidate for a Leni Riefenstahl Memorial Award, if (or should I wonder, when,) such an award is instituted.
The topic? Homosexuality, what else? The output of the writers called to mind the illusion of Albert Speer’s “cathedral of light” that gave rise to some of Riefenstahl’s most breathtaking cinematic effects in her film. There was a difference, though. Speer and Riefenstahl were being overt and direct. In this program, the emphasis was more indirect and subtle. Instead of a stadium, lights, banners, torches, and throngs of people, we had in the show the groundwork of characters who, ostensibly, pursued particularly perverted criminals, and tended to their victims. The imagery, though, was pure Riefenstahl.
One character was a psychiatrist (from a racial minority – nice touch) who went out of his way to gently and pseudo-scientifically (being a physician does not make one a scientist) call into question the concept of the “ex-gay.” The phrases used were “so-called,” and “it’s very controversial.” Curious, when one considers that the recovery rate for people determined to break the bondage of homosexuality exceeds the rate for those determined to break the bondage of alcoholism. (See Jeffrey Satinover’s Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth for the details.) But there appeared to be something to the dialogue statement in its context, just as there appeared to be a cathedral thanks to Albert Speer’s searchlights.
Unlike Riefenstahl, these writers tried to make their cause look good by making the opponents look bad. (Hmmm. Maybe they aren’t ready for that award after all, if they had to resort to that.) The people who ran the ex-gay ministry in the story were presented as benevolent, but benighted. They even worked another physician into the story to help boost that illusion. And the Christians – oh my! There, the writers and casting directors really pulled out all the stops. The character, who was presented as a Christian minister, was facially unattractive to a point nearing disfigurement, and as doctrinaire a fundamentalist (in the bad sense of the word) as could be imagined. He was a character portrayed as a merciless fulminator of hell-fire and brimstone. Quite a contrast from my own Parish Priest, who came close to tears as he recounted to us, one Sunday, his own experience of the tragedy he faced in claiming the body of a young, gay Catholic man, dead from AIDS. And of course, the chance to work in a bit of anti-Catholicism simply couldn’t be let to pass. They dressed this caricature minister in a Roman collar, which, although not a dress exclusive to the Catholic clergy, is not only unknown, but actively shunned and denounced, by the rabid erstwhile Christian extremist they sought to portray. Add to this one on the brave detectives speaking lines that cast aside 12 years of Catholic schooling when he confronted this grotesque figure, and the Catholic bashing was rounded out.
There were other subtle touches. The prosecutor made a point of noting the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the APA, while remaining mute about the political particulars of how that came to be. (There were no clinical particulars.) They gave the defendant no lines to point that out, but what a defendant they gave us! He was older, of course, and an academic clinician, who wore an old style business suit, and a bow tie, and never came close to presenting an argument that reflected the research findings of the members of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), though he was represented as a clinician who offered reparative treatment. Of course, in the story, he was certainly guilty as charged, giving us yet another subtle message.
So here behind the lines, we can note that, although Leni Riefenstahl is dead, the media and artistic propaganda she practiced lives on. We can take some heart, though, in noting that, although she has imitators these days, on the showing of this program, she has no peers. To give her her due, she could make her own subjects look good (when they clearly weren’t) without making others look bad (whether or not they are). But the culture here has absorbed much of Riefenstahl’s art, to the point where it is pervasive. It has even entered into Christian churches, though certainly not in a manner that bespeaks Riefenstahl’s aplomb.
Here in
But there is cause to be hopeful. An examination of Riefenstahl’s work suggests that she may well have come close to doing to her art what Guy de Maupassant did to his. He was so good at the short story that he came close to killing it as an art form in the French language. I’d suggest that the combination of the actual knowledge about what she was portraying, and what the portrait displayed and how, would provide a good set of defensive weapons for the battles in the culture war now raging behind the lines. If we also know the facts about what is being foisted upon us, and truth we must set aside to accept the allurement, faithful Christians behind the lines will not be taken in by corporate structures, elaborate costumes and rituals, committees, titles, or anything else that seeks to use Riefenstahl’s art to rob them of the gifts of the faith once delivered to the saints. And the saints have every reason to be hopeful in resisting the onslaught of this artistic cultural import into the churches, too.
Riefenstahl had one big advantage. She was portraying a movement and a regime that had been in control for less than one year. Few people had much knowledge of its ethos, on a relative basis. But those who would employ her art, in the culture or in the Christian denominations, do not have this advantage. For their intended dupes have over 2000 years of history and teaching by the Christian church, the church of the saints, the martyrs, and those who worship their Lord and Saviour, and tend to the needs of His beloved poor and disadvantaged, and offer the sure hope of eternal salvation, to this very day. You can’t defeat that with dialogue, ceremonies, camera angles, searchlights, and a brilliant director, as long as those who are the recipients of the precious gift of the Good News of Jesus Christ refuse to let it be taken from them, by those who would exalt humanity, rather than worship God made man.
©Gerry
Hunter, 2004