Tonight is the first night of "Ekklesia at the Movies." My church, Ekklesia Blacksburg, is, once a month, usually on the second Friday, but this month is weird (Doug, my pastor, forgot to ask off from his job at Starbucks, so we moved it back a week, but he forgot to ask again, so he may not be there tonight), going to watch a popular movie and follow it up with discussion. For our first attempt at this, I have chosen Serenity, the movie by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and, most recently, Dollhouse) based on his short-lived TV series Firefly. The show/movie has been called a "space Western," which is an interesting description that only makes sense if you watch the movie/show, and then it makes perfect sense.
The series was cut short (only 14 episodes) and never even had a true conclusion, and after the series was taken off the air and ultimately put on DVD, the fan-base grew enormously and, ultimately, demanded something be done. I suppose since the DVD sales for the show ended up at #1 on Amazon, the industry decided it would be worth while to satisfy fans' desires and make a full-length movie. As opposed to Buffy, which began as a flopped movie and became a hit TV series, Serenity began as a flopped TV series and became a hit movie. In my experience, people who don't even like sci-fi (or Westerns) often like Serenity, and it has taken on an even wider cult-like following over the years since its release in 2005. I remember seeing the previews for it on TV and in theaters and thinking "Oh, that looks interesting," but never seeing it. I don't remember exactly how I came to see the movie much later on (maybe two years ago or less), but I am a huge fan now.
The movie, as I say, picks up where the TV show lets off (basically), and I don't think one really needs to have seen the TV show in order to understand the movie, though I do think it makes the movie more enjoyable. I had only seen an episode or two of the TV show before I saw the movie, and clearly it didn't hurt me to have not seen the whole series. I think the only thing someone watching the movie who hadn't seen the show might not understand is the inclusion of what in the movie seem to be fairly unimportant characters, such as Shepherd Book and Inara, a "companion." These characters were enormously important in the TV series--one always wonders, just as Mal does in the movie, how Shepherd Book knows so much about things one wouldn't expect a Shepherd (Preacher, Pastor, Reverend, Priest, etc.) to know, such as the information he gives Mal about the Alliance "operative" (essentially an extremely undercover assassin who does not officially exist). Inara and Mal, in the TV series, have a complicated relationship that is only hinted at in the movie. Her vocation as a "companion" (glorified, high-class whore or prostitute, supposedly akin to a geisha) adds additional complications to their relationship, though she and Mal clearly have feelings for one another. These two characters in particular (Book and Inara) are those about whom a viewer might wonder why they were included in the movie at all. Other than that and the deeper knowledge someone who has seen the show would have of the characters (and therefore, a greater interest in their actions), I do not think someone watching the movie who has not also seen the show will miss much.
One thing that might be helpful, and that I intend to tell those who attend tonight, is that Mal had been a soldier in a sort of civil war, and we get the impression in the opening scenes of the series's pilot that he was at that point deeply religious. He wears a cross around his neck and prays to God. After we see that he has lost the battle (and the war) with terrible casualties (I think only he, Zoe, and one other person in his unit survive), the story skips ahead several years, and we then find, especially when Mal first encounters Shepherd Book, that he has become quite hostile to religion. In the movie, we see his hostility, but we do not see the reasoning behind that hostility. He says to Shepherd Book in the movie that praying to God is "a long wait for a train don't come." We can see here how he feels abandoned by God. This is not simple unbelief; it isn't that Mal does not believe in God. Indeed, if he simply did not believe in God, there would be no reason for him to be so hostile to religion (keep this in mind when you think of Richard Dawkins). He doesn't not believe, he rejects. There is a difference, I think. People reject God for different reasons. Some because they have been "burned" (as we say) by believers--some "Christian" did some unchristian thing to them. Some, such as C.S. Lewis, who rejected God after praying for his mother who died young of cancer, and Mal, who rejected God after not only losing a battle, but losing many lives of friends and co-soldiers, many of whom served under him--these reject God because they believe He has rejected them. Whether this belief is legitimate is beyond the point. Mere unbelief is passive, but rejection is hostile, and we see in Mal (as in the young Lewis) a hostility toward God.
This issue of belief comes up in the movie in interesting ways. Most obviously, we hear Shepherd Book say to Mal as he dies, "I don't care what you believe, just believe." Coming from someone who is clearly Christian, which is by definition exclusive ("I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father except through Me" ~John 14:6), this message is clearly at odds with true Christian theology (true as opposed to "Christianity and water"), and could even be thought of as condemnatory. For someone who knows the Truth, belief in which determines whether one spends eternity in Heaven or Hell, to say, I don't care if you believe what I believe (even though I know through faith that I'm right and that I will be going to Heaven any second now and that if one believes something else, well, he won't be so fortunate)--that is essentially saying I don't care whether you go to Heaven or Hell, which is "not very Christian" (to borrow another phrase from Shepherd Book). Anyway, Shepherd Book's statement of belief does not only contradict orthodox Christian views of belief, but it also contradicts other aspects of the movie's internal logic. The operative believes. Indeed, he believes quite strongly, in the same way that the September 11 terrorists believe strongly. He kills entire planets of people because he believes so strongly in achieving a perfect, sinless world, regardless of the cost. Clearly Shepherd Book would not condone this sort of belief. Book attempts, I think, to place belief in contrast to the Reavers who act, not based on any thought or belief, but out of pure malice, not even intellectual malice, but an instinctive sort of malice akin to rabid dogs. However, Inara notes that the reason why Mal cannot handle the operative is because "he is a believer." Surely Shepherd Book would not want Mal to pursue the same course as the operative.
What we have to wonder is why this contradiction is in the movie. Pastor James Harleman at Mars Hill Church in Seattle argues that the contradiction is unintentional, and that Joss Whedon essentially did not notice the contradiction. This answer is possible and, indeed, probable, but I never like to assume that the author messed up, so I have to wonder what this contradiction does for the movie assuming Whedon intended it to be there. My best answer, or the one I want most to believe, is that he shows the contradiction in order to reveal just how absurd the Shepherd's remark is. Of course it matter what one believes in. Being a believer doesn't make one a good person (if we use that as our basis, which non-Christians often do, for what is a good goal in life), and it is pretty clear that the operative is not a good person. He murders on a scale that would make Hitler and Stalin envious (maybe that's not a PC remark to make; I should consider taking it back). In any case, we can clearly see that the Shepherd's remarks are clearly at odds with other aspects of the story.
The operative has what one might consider "noble" ideals. He desires a "world without sin," and it is interesting, as Harleman points out, that Whedon does not shy away from that incredibly un-PC word, Sin. The Alliance, we find out, created the Reavers in an attempt to create their opposite, just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll wants to purge himself of evil and only ends up creating a persona that is basically the embodiment of pure (or nearly pure) evil. The Reavers, however, are not, like Mr. Hyde, nearly pure evil--they are entirely evil with no redeeming value. There is nothing good in them. Yet, once Mal realizes how they have been created, he says in response to the operative who says that a lot of innocent people are dying up there right now (in regard to a big space battle between the Reavers and the Alliance going on over Mr. Universe's planet), "You have no idea how true that is." The Reavers go from being the embodiment of pure evil to innocent people contaminated by the Alliance's attempt to create perfection. These issues create several difficulties for Christians in terms of how we should respond to them. We know that no one is innocent, and it is perhaps true that the Reavers really are what we all would be apart from the common grace of God. There is no redeeming value in us in the Grand Scheme, and the only redeeming value we have in the less grand scheme is what God has put there. When someone talks about "reaching your full potential," you should think of the Reavers and kindly decline to take his advice.
However, we must also note that it is an attempt to rid society of sin that created these creatures. Actually, only about 10% of the population of Miranda became Reavers, the rest, deprived of aggression, just eventually stopped living. What does that say? First, is aggression all that makes up sin? Without aggression, would we live in a perfect world? I think the clear answer is no, but that is apparently what the Alliance believes. Deprived of aggression, 90% of the population just dies. The people just lay down, or put their heads down on their desks, or lean against walls, fall asleep, and never wake up again. It is possible that one could take this to mean that man cannot exist apart from his sin, that only when bad (or even evil) is possible is good also possible. This sort of yin-yang principle seems in keeping with Whedon's worldview, which attempts to take into account many eastern ideas and blend them with our common western ones. As Christians, however, we look forward to the day when there is no sin, when we are all, as it were, glorified, in the presence of God. At least, that's what we say, though I think when we are very honest with ourselves, many of us cannot conceive of such a world, and when we try, are not sure we want to conceive of it. How dull it must be, we think: sitting around on clouds, playing harps, complimenting (and complementing) one another all the time, probably no joking because humor is often achieved at the expense of virtue, no alcohol or tobacco (if the Baptists are to be believed), and so on. A world in which there can be no virtue apart from temptation (to paraphrase Milton) seems ideal to us. Evil (or the possibility thereof) makes things interesting; that's why everyone reads Dante's Inferno and no one Paradiso, Milton's Paradise Lost but not Paradise Regained. So we think. I have no answers to these issues because I cannot myself conceive of perfection. I know it is not what I imagine, that it must be far better, and I know that in the way that I know I am forgiven of my sins; that is, I know consciously that I am forgiven, but I do not always feel forgiven. I know consciously that perfection must be better than I can imagine because what I imagine doesn't seem that great and I have faith (in my best of days) that God's promises are true.
But at what cost perfection? Sacrifice is always required, which the operative knows, and that is why he is so willing not only to sacrifice billions of innocent people's lives, but also his own experience of that perfection, knowing that he, like Moses, will not enter the promised land. But the operative's promised land is promised to him, not by God, but by the Alliance, who, we see, cannot achieve perfection regardless of the size of the sacrifice. Miranda is their Babel. They attempted to play God's game without obeying God's rules, and if we are to learn anything from fairy stories, it is that one must always abide by the laws of fairyland. According to Chesterton (to whom we must always defer in matters of Faerie), "This great idea, then, is the backbone of all folk-lore--the idea that all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one negative." This thread that runs through all fairy stories, according to Chesterton, is present even in our own world as well as in the world of Serenity. The Alliance seems to view the Great Sin to which all other sin can be boiled down as aggression. I have already dismissed this idea, but that is not to say that I dismiss the notion that all sin can be boiled down to one Great Sin. That Sin to me is, briefly, pride, by which I mean man's attempt to replace God with himself. The operative asks the scientist in the beginning of the film, "Do you know what your sin is? [...] Pride." This line really applies throughout the movie, most obviously for the "bad guys" but also for Mal and others of the "good guys." In the Garden of Eden, I believe we see them of pride as ultimately (self-) destructive worked out. In Satan's rebellion from God, we see it as well. In Babel, we see it again. Finally, on Miranda, we see it once more. The Alliance, rather than attempting to reach heaven by means of a great tower, attempts instead to start its own heaven on "earth," as it were. The one law from which all other laws extend, the one law that we must obey, is, in the words of Jesus, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37). On this "thin veto" hangs all possible happiness, and the Alliance, in attempting to make its own heaven, has crossed this line.
The Alliance, then, creates the Reavers in an attempt to do just the opposite, in an attempt to create a sin-free world. What we must notice here is that the movie recognizes sin in the world, and recognizes it as a problem. C.S. Lewis has said something poignant (as usual) that addresses this issue: "Do fish," he asks, "complain of the sea for being wet." Fish do not complain of the sea for being wet because they are created for water, for wetness. There are, of course, problems with this analogy (as with most any analogy), but the point, I believe, remains. We don't complain about that which is natural for us. Sin is unnatural because we were not created as sinful creatures; we became that way after the fall. And though all of us living now have only ever known sinfulness, we nevertheless experience an ancient yearning for sinlessness that betrays our ancestry (i.e., from Adam). That the film recognizes sin and then complains of it, or presents a possible remedy for it, evidences a desire for something that does not exist in this world--sinlessness (which is perhaps perfection, though that may be debatable). This is one of two "nameless gods" we can give a name to in the film. The second is the "made family" the movie presents (and which Harleman does a great job of discussing). The made family is not a family of flesh and blood but a family bound together, almost forced together, by a common cause or goal or some other circumstance, and I believe this idea of family is most clearly present in the Church--the Body of Christ as it extends "through all time and space [,...] rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners" (Lewis, Screwtape Letters). Screwtape, the devil, sees the Church as a "terrible... army with banners," which is true, but what he fails to see (owing to his particular perspective) is that the Church is also, and at least equally importantly, a family. It is a family that is stronger than blood family. Indeed, it is more real than family of flesh and blood because it is eternal. In the film's presentation of the family on board Serenity, we see an echo, or a shadow, of this most important made family.
Finally, as I draw this already way-too-long post to a close, I hope it is clear that we can see in Serenity at least, and, I think, in most (if not all) creative works, opportunities to give a name to the nameless gods of our culture, to provide the only thing that can fill in the void in all of humanity, the desire for something transcendent that is universal.
