Since, I move to Epiphany, I have discovered that I do not wash nearly as many movies at movie theaters anymore. I think this is because they are somewhat a distance from me and I don’t plan far enough ahead to just go to the movie. I also believe that the time for movies to be released on Netflix and other streaming options has increase. Therefore for my last Faith and Film reflection for July I have decided to reflect on The Netflix television show Daredevil which I found fascinating to watch because the main character Matt Murdoch is supposedly Catholic with a priest for a confident. Some of the scenes are very bloody.
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere." — G.K. Chesterton. Perhaps that is why televisions shows and movies are so powerful. Let us take a look now at some spiritual insights from the last Transformers movie.
One of the great Catholic writers of our time was G.K. Chesterton. He was a contemporary and friends with C.S. Lewis who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. I am particularly fond of this quote from G.K. Chesterton regarding the power that stories (and thus movies) have on our lives. “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
Doctors Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham begin their book: The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search of Meaning focused on the power contained within stories to speak more deeply than mere words alone. Here is one of my favorite quotes from their book: “Listen! Listen to stories! For spirituality itself is conveyed by stories, which uses words in ways that go beyond words to speak the language of the heart. Especially in a spirituality of imperfection, a spirituality of not having all the answers, stories convey the mystery and the miracle—the adventure—of being alive.”
There was a part of me that was really excited when I heard that there was going to be a big screen movie about Charlie Brown and his loyal dog Snoopy. Peanuts was always one of my favorite comic strips and I always loved watching the television specials that came on around each holiday. My personal favorite was the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and the Christmas Special. There was also a part of me that was afraid to go because I was afraid that the director may have decided to add a lot of dirty jokes and foul language under the excuse of trying to appeal to a modern day audience. I am very glad that the director chose to remain very faithful to the classic comic strip and the television specials that I had remembered watching growing up.