While such
as Arnold Schwarzenegger epitomize the positive-thinking success story
in his determination to master the Hollywood blockbuster and the
American Republican political scene, recent films have begun to
deconstruct “positive thinking” to examine its underlying ideological
components. First under the microscope in this newfound
cultural criticism is the “spirituality” behind so many people’s belief
in positive thinking. Take Tom Cruise’s recent
Valkyrie (
read more) for instance.
Beginning with the oath that all German soldiers must take to Hitler,
allegiance to the Fuhrer the equivalence of divine ordainment,
Valkyrie examines
the relentlessly positive drive of a Nazi humanist plotting against
Hitler in the belief that God will validate the righteousness of his
actions.
Cruise’s optimism, backed by his spiritual belief in a benevolent
creator whose absolute moral goodwill he is enacting, is tainted by the
foreknowledge of history – the plot against Hitler failed, Cruise’s
beloved moral “God” apparently siding with Hitler after all.
In the face of history, Cruise’s humanism and relentless positive
thinking make him admirable, his only human weakness being his Theist
belief: spirituality is not an asset to positive thinking – at best it
is irrelevant. In emphasizing positive thinking, stripping it
of any religious component and weighing it against the burden of
history (Nazism here being religious totalitarianism)
Valkyrie confirms
the Cinema of Rationalism’s interest in anti-heroes.
That is not to say that spirituality is absent in contemporary American
film: far from it. But where the cinema of rationalism
struggles with issues of mortality, despair and moral relativism, the
cinema of faith prefers mundane happy endings, Biblical allegory and
disaster – whether it be the Church as the centre of the community of
plague survivors in the Will Smith film
I am Legend or the
self-sacrificial Jesus-like Keanu Reeves saving all humanity from
destruction in the remake of the sci-fi classic
The Day the Earth Stood Still
(
read more) Where the
cinema of rationalism finds tragedy in individual human loss,
Hollywood’s faith-based cinema seeks a validation of divinity in what
can only be described as the cinema of eschatological fantasy.
Eschatology, as that branch of Christian “science” dealing with the Day
of Judgment and the end of the World, is apocalyptic fear-mongering at
its most absurd. Nevertheless, it is the spiritual idea of
“end of days” judgment which saturates
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
its Christ-like alien saving the human race from destruction by taking
the apocalypse on himself. In a re-affirmation of Christ’s
sacrifice,
The Day the
Earth Stood Still obfuscates the distinction between alien
and divine and posits a supreme intelligence determining Earth’s
catastrophes – in accordance with beliefs expressed by such
televangelists as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Disaster –
as punitive judgment – in such faith-based eschatological fantasy is
thus evidence of “intelligent design”.
The Nicholas Cage film
Knowing
(
read more) begins with a countdown
to potential disaster, paralleling the premise in
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
As Cage investigates what may be prophetic apocalyptic disaster in a
stream of written numbers,
Knowing
proceeds with systematic deliberation. At first the
explanation for the numbers veers towards the religious, but this is
soon revealed as mere superstition as the scientific basis to the
numerical stream and its relationship to disaster is
clarified. In this,
Knowing
acknowledges the fearful narrative impetus behind eschatological
fantasy but locates the reasons for the end of the world in science
fact and fiction rather than pseudo-spiritual-religious Biblical
analogy –
Knowing
is eschatological fantasy deconstructed for rationalists/atheists.
