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So we're seeing more films dealing with spirituality, but more at the general level rather than anything specific. Forrest Gump is a great example. The floating feather symbolizes his life as blown by the winds of fate and destiny (the "spiritual" element). In one scene, Lieutenant Dan and Forrest are out in a boat in a huge storm, with Dan yelling angrily at God. Then they come in the next morning, and they find that all the shrimp boats that were docked were destroyed. So Forrest and Lieutenant Dan monopolize the shrimp industry. I think that's the American view of God—you get a little outside magical assistance and you become rich and famous or whatever your goals are. But it really is a faith that is rooted in self-reliance and the individual.

What would be a movie that subverts this theme?

Films that deal with redemption or forgiveness or grace, like Schindler's List, Dead Man Walking, and Tender Mercies—even Pulp Fiction, which is in many ways about people getting a second chance. Or take Magnolia. I have to be honest: Some parts of that film were tough for me to watch, yet it's a film about reconciliation, about why people love and forgive each other. And it's got that Exodus 2 metaphor, the plague with the frogs that suggests a sort of supernatural event. In other words, there is more to the world than what you experience with your senses.

In the end, does it really matter how Christians or Christianity is treated—especially since we can't expect a carrier of national culture to become a vehicle for the Christian message?

In such films, you don't necessarily have people who are rugged individualists overcoming obstacles by their own strength to reach their goals. Life is far more complicated for them.

I'd still say it's important. The entertainment media are the most vital and sustained means of communication in our society. For that reason, I think there ought to be positive or fair and honest portrayals of Christians in the media, as well as of other groups outside the American mainstream. The media are one way we understand the world we live in, and so we should argue for pluralism in the media.

For example, note how gender is usually portrayed, the ideal male and the ideal female—self-assured, sexually attractive, individualistic, fundamentally good, and so on. These unrealistic ideals are loaded with contradictions. Wouldn't it be great if there were alternative visions presented as well?

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Romanowski's use of the "Homer the Heretic" episode of The Simpsons is detailed in Mark I. Pinsky's "The Gospel According to Homer." See also Pinsky's Christianity Today article, "Saint Flanders | He's the evangelical next door on The Simpsons, and that's okily dokily among many believers" (Jan. 26, 2001).

Christianity Today's Film Forum dicussed many of the movies Romanowski talked about in this article, including: Magnolia,What Women Want, Toy Story 2, Christianity Today also reviewed The Apostle and The Prince of Egypt. For more of Christianity Today on film, see our Web site's area on the subject.

More on the history of the Hollywood Production Code is available from PBS's Cultureshock, The New York Times, and Written By.

The 1915 Supreme Court decision Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio and the 1952 decision that overturned it, Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, are available online.

U.S. News & World Report asked, "Why are filmmakers suddenly respectful about matters of faith?" in its January 26, 1998, issue.

Modern Reformation's review of Romanowski's Pop Culture Wars says that "the most helpful service Romanowski provides is to show how the church was in the same dilemma with the culture at the turn of the century, and that when it engaged the culture as we engage it now, it went unheeded." Read more of the review here.

Romanwoski's Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Lifeis available from the ChristianityToday.com bookstore.

Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture is available from Christianbook.com.

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February 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 2