The Culture Beat

Everywhere you look in the media this week you see the annual best and/or worst of the year lists, often set at 10 or some arbitrary number. The following is my off-the-top-of-my-head list of events and trends that seemed significant and the list lasts until I run out of items. Take it for what it is.

Year of the Penguin
What is it about those monochromatic flightless birds that fascinates and amuses us so? March of the Penguins was the highest grossing documentary of the year; its story of stalwart avian couples enduring the worst conditions on earth to migrate across the South Pole to lay their eggs and hatch them inspired social conservatives to praise their exemplary parenting. And the kids CGI animated hit Madagascar spawned breakout stars with its four-penguin special ops team dedicated to breaking out of the Central Park Zoo and reaching that same south pole until they find out it’s not what they expected. The quartet won the chance to appear in their own Christmas-themed theatrical short The Madagascar Penguins in A Christmas Caper that preceded the release of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and appears on a supplementary companion disc that can sometimes be found bundled with the Madagascar DVD.

I must add that, in this case, a team of GCI-animated comedic penguins appeared well before mainstream Hollywood’s version. Big Idea, the folks behind VeggieTales has for years had an character-building video adventure series 3-2-1 Penguins!. If you can’t get enough of funny penguins, check ‘em out.

Whither Hollywood?
Countless stories, including this one about the slump in Hollywood’s earnings this year point to the impending arrival of a whole new equation of the entertainment business via digital technology. Now that you can download television episodes to your iPod, the momentum toward video-on-demand will be greater than ever–the attitude of “we won’t wait till you broadcast the show–we want it when we want it” will increase the shift to consumer-contolled content. This long-predicted convergence of all media into digital form to be viewed or read on any type of screen will change the meanings of words such as “film” or “television.”

Also on the near horizon is the conversion of movie theaters to digital projection–which is supposed to benefit not the audience, who probably won’t be able to tell the difference, so much as protect the studios from piracy, assuming some kid doesn’t hack into the encryption code used to send the digitized films to theaters. In these and other shifting areas of entertainment technology, no one is sure what the new landscape will look like or who will wind up on top–Studios in media monoliths like Time Warner or Google or some new entity combining new and old media.

Batman Begins at Last
In spite of the general slump in film revenues, Warner Bros had their best year, thanks in part to Phillip Nolan’s re-invention of a franchise property thought worn out. By sticking to the original mythos and bringing it to a more realistic level, Batman soared again validating the comics fans who always knew the character didn’t need gaudy productions or stuntcasting to succeed. This resurgence is part of a the new wave of superhero films that avoid cutely ironic takes and campiness in favor of straight depictions that allow the characters’original appeal to be their cinematic superpower.

A break in the culture wars long enough to help the poor?

Time magazine choose U2′s Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates as persons of the year for their work in raising awareness and funds for the elimination of extreme poverty and the elimination of Third World preventable diseases. This is a hopeful sign that people of good will who strongly differ in political ideologies can find common cause in showing mercy on a grand scale. Bono in particular has become a bridge between left and right, using his charisma, persuasion and deep knowledge of the facts of the problem to enlist liberals, conservatives and world leaders on the same side of the ONE campaign against extreme poverty. His faith that a diverse coalition of the willing can make a big difference is a refreshing indication that some things are bigger than politics.

Harry, Chapter 6
Those who have fallen under the spell of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter tales lined up again this July to purchase the latest volume in the saga of the boy wizard , Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. What began as a story for young readers has grown still further in its vast readership as adults realized how well-written the books are and how universal are their themes. (Rowling has announced she will begin writing the seventh and last book in 2006 which means it could very well appear in 2007)

Despite the controversy in some Christian circles, the story the seven books are telling has captured the imagination of readers like nothing in modern publishing history and like it or not, this is the Big Story of our generation. It is also, arguably, a profoundly Christian one, according to John Granger.

Christian inroads to Hollywood?
Now that big box office of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has launched The Chronicles of Narnia as a film franchise, it would seem that Hollywood can no longer deny there’s gold in them thar church folk. The Passion of the Christ was the wake-up call and the new film is the confirmation. But how do you strategize stroking the Christian market as part of your business plan? Does a studio executive now take this audience into account in what is or isn’t green-lighted for production? Will it affect the content of certain films so as not to affront that potential audience? Will they begin looking for their own Christian-friendly scripts? Where do you look for them?

That’s where the rising movement of Christians aiming to work in the entertainment industry may meet its first test. Rather than forming a seperate faith-based film colony out of the mainstream, these are men and women who want to work alongside other professionals to tell stories shaped by their Christian worldview. A new book, Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture, articulates this philosophy and invites others to join them. Arising out of the work of Act One, a program for training Christians to write screenplays for the big league studios, it’s a manifesto for those called to be salt and light and professional in Hollywood. Another reason for hope that certain things about our culture are going to get a little better in 2006