Conventional wisdom among politicians and pastors holds that Hollywood and entertainment are the antithesis of religion. How many times after the Columbine massacre did you hear from either the phrase "godless
Hollywood"? It's an accusation that is only partially correct.
Granted, many of the goals and methods of entertainment are not those of religion. Entertainment is ephemeral and the viewer is a spectator, while religion is transcendent and seeks to transform the spectator into a participant. And much of what is visualized on the screen in front of us is not exactly what the biblical prophetic visions had in mind.
But the '90s have been a decade in which this disparity between religion and entertainment has been narrowing. Both TV and cinema have increasingly been probing religious topics.
Television began the trend in mid-decade with a rash of programs featuring realistic portrayals of clergy lives, including "Nothing Sacred," a drama about the private doubts and public work of an unconventional Catholic priest, and "7th Heaven," which portrays the family life of a Protestant minister. Neither of these was a major hit, but "Touched by an Angel" certainly has been, because it deals with more substantive spiritual matters, albeit with a New Age flavor.
And it was that New Age lens that was employed by cinema when it produced its own films with religious themes. "What Dreams May Come," starring Robin Williams, portrayed heaven as a kind of carpet of waterlilies with Renoir-like hues, and assured us that on sheer willpower one could literally descend from heaven to pluck out his beloved from eternity in hell. "Meet Joe Black" presented a debonair, if fatigued, Angel of Death in the human personification of Brad Pitt. In "Contact," when Jodie Foster scanned the heavens for communication with whatever's out there, she found it, with a psychedelic trip to a heavenly beachfront where ultimate truths were revealed.
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It is only on the eve of the millennium that movie moguls have begun to mine actual biblical passages for their entertainment value. The logical magnets are the passages in the Hebrew and Christian Bible that forecast Armageddon and the apocalypse. An initial foray, promoted from outside mainstream Hollywood, was immediately successful. "The Omega Code" popularized biblical mysteries with suspense, exotic locations and attractive stars, and was produced by Christian fundamentalists.
