CS Lewis' new movie

This is a post by Eric Zeller and my reply.

Yesterday I (Eric Zeller) posted some thoughts on the FoolishBlog about the sneak peek of I saw of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Today I want to comment a bit on the sneak peak event itself and the marketing campaign of the movie.

The event I attended was held at a church, targeted at pastors and other ministry leaders. Besides viewing parts of the movie, we were treated to (according to my count) twelve speeches by eight different speakers. Most of these were people associated with the production of the film, but they also included Doug Gresham, the son-in-law of C. S. Lewis, and Steven Curtis Chapman (who wrote a song for the soundtrack).

Summary: They know we "in the faith community" wanted a faithful reproduction of these "meaningful stories," and they have been very careful to deliver this. They believe the movie will provide a valuable outreach opportunity for us churches, and thus have made available all materials we can post in our church and distribute to our congregations and our neighborhoods. They have established the site narniaresources.com for churches to order posters, bulletins, door hangers, and e-vites. If the generic materials will not suffice, they have partnered with Outreach, Inc. to print customized materials for our churches and the series we are going to do about the Narnia movie, as well as to download sermons we can preach about the movie. An organization called Mission America has been hired to coordinate church's outreach efforts.

This is all an attempt to replicate some of the success of The Passion of the Christ, which has made something like 600 million dollars primarily by marketing to church groups.

As I said yesterday, I think this is going to be a great movie, and I look forward to seeing it. But I have two main concerns about the marketing effort:

1) The people that are making and marketing the movie are non-Christians who have no concern whatsoever for the promotion of the gospel, except that they have now realized that there is a lot of money to be tapped into in the church. Not that that means we shouldn't go; it just makes you feel a little used if you go along with what they want you to do. It is the same line we fall for from the Republican party: "we share some of your minor "values," so come give us your money as you get your hopes up that we will help you with the things you really care about."

2) The "Christian" organizations that are organizing the "faith community" outreach aspect of the marketing have come up with several themes you can emphasize in your outreach: a) "Encounter the Power"; b) "Winter in Narnia"; c) "Discover the Wonder"; and d) "What if there were no Christmas?". These all may be great ideas, but none of them pertain to what I would argue is the book's central point of Christological allegory: the voluntary substitutionary death of Aslan as a picture of the voluntary substitutionary death of Christ. If there is any point at which we should be using Narnia as an illustration it is that! But that is a little bit too much for our friends at Disney; they'd rather talk about "values."

I do plan to see the movie, and it may be that I'll be able to use that illustration in an evangelistic conversation - if God provided that opportunity, that would be great. But that is probably going to be the extent of my Narnia outreach efforts. Disney can afford to advertise their own movie - they don't need me to do it for them.

What do you all think? Am I failing to take advantage of an important opportunity?



ckolstad said...
EZ,

An insightful blog. I agree with you. We need to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. Unbelievers will exploit "Chrisitians" because we have so little discernment. Could this movie be used for evangelism? Sure. Will it be used to make millions of dollars by unbelieving marketing firms? You bet.

I posted a while back on my site http://preacherboy316.blogspot.com/ about the importance of Luke 16:31. We need to teach the Bible (and spread the gospel) using "Bible Dress" (as RL Dabney puts it).

The Rich Man thought the testimony of a resurrected saint (Lazurus) would convince his unbelieving brothers. It was great human logic...

We often think the Passion of Christ movie or a CS Lewis movie may accomplish what "the outdated, insufficient Word" can no longer do.

Abraham reminds us, "We have Moses and the Prophets; LET US HEAR them!"


Thanks for your blog,

Caleb Kolstad