300

300 is a highly stylized telling of the 300 Spartans of Thermopylae in 480 BC who confronted the enormous army of the Persians. If you haven’t already, I would suggest you go see the movie because it is one of the most original films of recent memory. With that said I should also mention that it is extremely violent and therefore not suitably for all viewers, luckily the discussion below gives away no spoilers of the plot nor does it require that you have actually seen the movie.

300 uses computer graphics fundamentally different than most other films. Whereas computer graphics in Star Wars and most other films are used to make fake things look real, in 300 they are used to make real things look fake.

In most films technology is meant to flow seamlessly into the story so that the viewer is not aware of it. If the viewer becomes aware of the illusion the suspension of reality is broken and the story is lost. 300 on the other hand accepts that it is a story and heightens that story through its use of computer graphics. The director Zack Snyder comments on the narrator of the film by saying, “Dilios is a guy who knows how not to wreck a good story with truth”.

What if the Church was able to use technology in new ways like 300?

For example the most ubiquitous use of technology in Churches today is the digital projector. For most it serves as a digital bulletin, portraying the exact same information that is contained in those little printed brochures that you get as you walk in. So again like in most films technology is replicating something we already have to make it cheaper and prettier.

So how we can we use technology in a new way?

I don’t really have an answer to this. The one thing I do know is that movies like 300 and Sin City were not just dreamed up by one person. Both films share the same source material, graphic novels by Frank Miller. But I have never read any of them and chances are neither have the majority of the people reading this (at least before the movies came out). That is because it took collaboration with directors, writers and producers to distribute Frank’s stories to larger audiences. So my only thought is that there are really great things being created by the theological “graphic novelists” of the world and perhaps we can use technology to both connect them with the community and enhance the story they are telling. I feel like the digital community of the internet can and is changing the shape and nature of theology but I am not sure exactly what that looks like.

So what are your ideas?

a blog is born

First I think there are too many blogs out there, just a personal pet peeve of mine and one that I strove to fight against for a long time, but alas here I am.

With that in mind I recently read a friend’s blog and he mentioned that blogging has become a spiritual discipline for him. Hmm?

Back up six months. I took a class called “Theology and Film” and then later “Art, Cinema and Theology in Dialogue” in both I was required to write a journal response to each film watched. These journals became an area which both sharpened my ability to critically analyze film and also a practice in creative theology inspired by film. In an idealistic way I thought I could keep up the practice of journaling about each film I saw and putting it into dialogue with theology. Needless to say that didn’t happen

Fast forward to March of 2007, I went to see the flick “300” with two of my manliest friends and as we walk back from the theater to our respective homes I start thinking about the use of computer graphics in the film and how that is related to the way in which I loved the film and also in my opinion an application for theology (see the next post). This thought stays in my head the rest of the next day and I tell everyone around the office about it and then I realize that this is the type of thought I should be writing down, like in my film journals for my classes but of course I am not writing those journals anymore, oh well.

Then I connected the idea of blogging as a spiritual discipline with my desire to continue a deliberate and meaningful discussion between theology and film and thus this blog was born.