Abstract
This chapter addresses the role and impact of the film industry on the increasing secularization of America. More specifically, it explores how both the content of films themselves and the context of the movie-going experience have in many ways not only entertained, but also met human needs previously fulfilled by traditional forms of religion. The study opens and closes, as it were, with a look at the filmmaking capital itself, once a small town with tree-lined boulevards and no alcohol and within a century, because of the industry that would become synonymous with the place, a “Tinseltown” both reflecting and contributing to the transformation of the entire country. I argue that this transformation has a disconnect with traditional religiosity and contributes to a rise in a secular spirituality. The second half considers both the effectiveness of Hollywood’s messaging using examples of specific filmmakers and genres and the inherent narcissism and spiritual superficiality of the moviemaking culture itself.
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Notes
- 1.
A longtime resident of the area described the bucolic nature of pre-movies Hollywood: “It was so lovely with the oak trees, holly bushes, greasewood, and poppies. Ferns grew under the trees and by the little stream beds.” From Gregory Williams, “The Story of Hollywoodland,” www.beachwoodcanyon.org/HISTORY.htm, accessed September 1, 2012.
- 2.
Although those frame-to-frame flickers were gone forever with the move to fully automated cameras at the coming of the “talkies,” the designation stuck and to this day we often speak of movies as “flicks.”
- 3.
Neglect of statistics was not the only problem in the early years of film. Hollywood was also “woefully shortsighted” when it came to preserving their actual movies. “The studios saw little value in silent films following their initial theatrical runs.” From John Bengston. 2011. Silent visions (Santa Monica: Santa Monica Press), p. 9.
- 4.
“Like New York, film is big. Like New York, it is larger than life.” James Sanders, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 22.
- 5.
Jack Warner of Warner Brothers fame spoke these words, cited in Gregory Paul Williams, The Story of Hollywood (BL Press, 2011), p. 102.
- 6.
James Sanders notes that New York was by no means completely left behind, as “an invisible chain” continued throughout the twentieth century to connect “the industry’s financial, administrative, and publicity headquarters in midtown Manhattan to its burgeoning production center in Southern California,” Sanders, p. 5.
- 7.
It is sadly ironic that, although Lois Webber was hailed by a 1916 film magazine as “Best Film Director in the World,” even over D. W. Griffith, women were quickly ousted from directorial duties and relegated to “starlet” positions in Hollywood.
- 8.
DeMille’s epics were “invariably spiced with romance and violence but often neatly wrapped in the cloak of a historical or biblical event.” Britten and Mathless, p. 63. It was because of the lurid images of early directors like DeMille that the so-called Hays Code was created, to set industry standards of what would be considered appropriate. Another more subtle response from Hollywood itself was the creation of the Academy Awards, a way of lifting up the finest in their art, to set a standard not of morality as it were, but of excellence. The public enthusiastically endorsed the coming of the Oscars. See Piazza and Kinn.
- 9.
Smith’s Dogma, one in a long line of films banned by the Roman Catholic Church, goes to extremes in its jabs at organized religion and its ministers, containing such outlandish characters as Rufus, the thirteenth apostle, left out of history because he was black; two inane, drug-taking prophets, Jay and Silent Bob; a sarcastic embodiment of the Voice of God, and public relations campaign by a radical Roman Catholic cardinal played by comedian George Carlin to replace the statues of Jesus as crucified with ones where he displays a toothy smile and offers a big “thumbs up.”
- 10.
The fact that the profits from “God Bless America” went to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America only added to Berlin’s legend, making him something of a national “saint.”
- 11.
Hoopes further notes, the government understood this influence. During World War II, some actors—including Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Henry Fonda—interrupted their film careers to serve their country as soldiers, sailors, and pilots. Others were called on to help with fund-raising efforts, to entertain troops, and, of course, “to continue making films that could rally the people back home,” p. 334.
- 12.
From an interview with Emmanuelle Chriqui in “Hollywood Sunset: A Farewell to Entourage,” from Entourage: The Complete Eight Season (HBO, 2012).
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Robertson, C.K. (2015). A Breath of Narcissism: Hollywood as Proselytizer of Secular Religion. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_194
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