Here and in comments to others, I’ve mentioned that while I am participating in social media, I often miss the ways in which technology, theology and popular culture intersect. Popular film and music just aren’t spheres I spend a lot of time in.
So while, I tweet and watch trends on Twitter on things like #edsocialmedia or conferences like this weekend’s “Wild Goose Festival” (#WGF11), connect with friends, classmates and professors on Facebook, and network with colleagues in fundraising and communications on LinkedIn, if you ask me to list the top three movies in the last year, I bomb.
Somewhere in reading Drescher or Hess, I decided it would be interesting to watch A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and The Matrix (1999) both of which came up in conversations about how digital technology, questions about God and culture mix.
As long as I was going to watch those two, I wondered what else I might be missing, and discovered a list of 100 movie titles with “spiritual significance.” Reviewing the list, I picked out another four films I haven’t seen :
So with the weekend ahead of me, I’m going to spend some time looking at what these filmmakers and actors are saying, or not saying, about who God is and who we are as human beings.
4 comments:
Christina, you are in for a real treat with the movies you have picked out!
One thing, though: to really "get" the spirituality of the Matrix, you have to watch all three movies. The great debate throughout that time (my kids and friends were deeply involved in this discussion) was the question of whether Neo was somehow supposed to be a figure of Christ. His whole trajectory, the good news about Neo if you will, takes all three movies to tell, just as the Lord of the Rings took all three movies to tell. So have some popcorn and enjoy!
Hope you enjoy your film media fest. I found it interesting that the previous post has comments that talk to things not having changed much, while it's obvious that SOMETHING is changing. The spirituality that comes with being human doesn't seem to be changing. Maybe it's mostly the ways we express our spirituality or other pieces of "who we ARE" that's changing. (confession - I have yet to see a single matrix film.) I'll be interested to see your blog on the results! (Stay Tuned for Monday's blog?)
One interesting thing to me about The Matrix is that it's a canvass onto which people project their own stories. So Christians tend to see Christianity in it, and I've heard Buddhists talk about seeing Buddhism in it.
If you're interested in films with spiritual depth, you might take a look at John Pungente's "Finding God in the Dark, which is a lovely version of the Ignatian exercises done using contemporary films. I used to have people do the first third of it in a class, but it was too emotionally intense. So now I tend to save it for independent studies. Still, it's a great book with lots of useful film commentary.
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