Posted on 01/23/2022 10:47:37 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
“The art made by Christians today is not only not beautiful, but tends to be among the ugliest art that mankind is producing,” screenwriter and professor Barbara Nicolosi-Harrington said during her talk to the students and faculty of Christendom College on May 2. Nicolosi’s talk, entitled Why Hollywood Matters, explored the challenges facing Christians in the art of cinema and the art in churches.
“We have sacrificed the beautiful to other things,” she said. A professor at Pepperdine University, Nicolosi is the founder of Act One, an organization that seeks to nurture the next generation of Christian artists and media pioneers. She was a theological consultant for The Passion of the Christ and she co-edited Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith and Culture. Her latest screenwriting project is Mary, Mother of the Christ, which stars Al Pacino and Peter O’Toole and will be released in 2012 by MGM.
Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Nicolosi said, “considering the music that is in use in most Catholic Churches today, we have to conclude that the People of God are afflicted with the cult of the banal.”
She explained that the traditional philosophical definition of beauty is the combination of wholeness, harmony, and radiance. “That eliminates cute, pretty, facile, puerile, and banal,” she said. “If it is easy, it is not beautiful. But, if when you encounter it, something in your spirit yearns… you feel deeply touched on your most human level—you’ve encountered the beautiful.”
In order to perceive beauty a person needs three things: sensitivity—somewhat free of prejudice and fear, intelligence—as opposed to ignorance, and imagination—to allow one’s history to combine with the artist’s communication, she said.
Nicolosi also explained that egalitarianism, politics, and consumerism or cheapness have caused a loss of beauty in the art found in churches today. To illustrate the point, Nicolosi told the story of a tour she took of the new cathedral in Los Angeles. On the tour she was shown a statue of Our Lady Queen of the Angels, which was described as androgynous and combining all different types of people and features from different races.
“I raised my hand wearily and said, ‘You know, it’s kind of ugly,’ to which [the tour guide] said, ‘Uh, the Church isn’t about that anymore. The Church is about every one feeling welcome by including them in the statue.’ Now it begs the question whether Asian people look at the Pietaand go, ‘That’s nice for the white folks,’” Nicolosi quipped. “They were not going for wholeness, harmony, and radiance here. They were going for agenda, so they sacrificed the beauty because of the political point.”
Nicolosi also related a study done on the three most prominently used hymnals in the Catholic Church in America. The study found that less than 25 percent of the composers in the hymnals had any musical training.
“That is awful,” she said. “We’re singing music that Barney would reject.”
While the Church was once the patron of the arts, the pagans in Hollywood now hold that position, she said. “Why do we love the movies so much? The movies are the combination of the four classical art forms: literature, performance, music, and composition. They are the art form of our time.”
Nicolosi challenged students to get involved in the arts, but especially cinema. “Should you not be one of the people—out of compassion and creativity—talking to the people of your time,” she said. “I know you have the talent. What’s keeping you back? Fear? Laziness?”
Concluding, Nicolosi asked for prayers for her work in Hollywood, for artists, and for the Church. “We need to get this together, because it was a very bad idea that the Church not be with the arts in the twentieth Century.”
The date of this article is 2011, and Ms. Nicolosi’s film venture “Mary” (prequel to Passion of the Christ) is now in the hands of a new production company...
I was raised Catholic, and some of the traditional hymns used in the 50s and 60s were beautiful. I don’t know what they are using now. Meanwhile, some of today’s Protestant songwriters have written some very beautiful songs. Darlene Zscech (I can never spell her name), formerly of Hillsong, comes to mind.
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You’re definitely right Steve. I’m sure the speaker was being hyperbolic at points to prove the greater point that not enough creatively skilled believers are impacting Hollywood, and that too much of Christian content gets “sub-culturized?”
Every movie, and I would only watch a family kind of movie, has to have crude comments, curses, murder or violence, some people having sex before marriage. I’m sick of it.
“I was raised Catholic, and some of the traditional hymns used in the 50s and 60s were beautiful. I don’t know what they are using now.”
I almost kicked the pew in front of me when our choir began with music that was most definitely, O Sacred Head Surrounded, by Bach, but the lyrics were trite, and of course, all about “me, me, me,” and not Christ.
Third Stanza
Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Yep, he certainly was that champion of Colonialism and Conquest! That is UNTIL you read his WORDS!
DRA (Didn’t Read Article)
Hollywood is DEAD!
Hollywood didn’t kill itself. (actually that’s only HALF true).
NETFLIX, HULU, PHILO, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, ROKU TV have made “Hollywood” (and most of its “stars” irrelevant)
Original content, the amazing increase in quality of foreign films and shows (that have ZERO Hollywood stars in them) have overshadowed and REPLACED the spoiled brats (Hollywood stars).
There now are quality alternatives to Hollywood productions. Also the #MeToo movement, Covid, and (shooting members of your production crew) have ground Hollywood production to a halt.
Who loves ya, baby? NOBODY anymore, you are irrelevant.
Yep. Hollywood put itself out of business.
Last night, the PBS (old) Movie of the Week was “Anchors Aweigh,” with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Two guys with actual talent, a patriotic them, terrific music and dancing. A bit corny. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The PBS Saturday night movies are always old and almost always wonderful. Check it out.
This is spot on.
The modern churches that have abandoned their artistic and musical patrimony are appalling. On architecture and art, I realize that tight budgets come into play, though churches that aggressively embrace modernist ugliness for its own sake can't use budgets as an excuse. But there is not even that excuse for walking away from the musical heritage and replacing it with junk.
As for Hollywood: I was struck by the author's affirmation of beauty as "the combination of wholeness, harmony, and radiance."
When was the last time you saw a movie made in that spirit?
There are a few. I have just seen one. The Sundance Film Festival ended up back online this year. Among the offerings -- and by far the best Sundance film I've seen so far -- is After Yang. A "religious" film? No. But the film is a meditation wrapped inside a science fiction movie. Like Kogonada's first film, Columbus (2017), it is quiet, thoughtful and gentle. There is not yet a trailer. I'm sure I will be posting it to the movie ping list when a trailer is available, but put it on your watchlist. When you see it, remember that this is Kogonada 2.0, and the dialogue is heavily metaphorical. There is, for example, a wonderful speech about tea in which the protagonist, who runs a small tea shop and who ritualizes tea to a considerable degree, is struggling to answer a question about why he has "given your life to tea." You will miss the point unless you understand that while Jake may be talking about tea, Kogonada is talking about something else, something which we can sense, smell and feel but for which we don't have an adequate language.
In the meantime, watch Columbus. There is a line in the film about searching for something that is "invisible yet always visible." That sounds stilted here, but it is entirely natural in the context of the film; the leads (Jin and Casey) are trying to make sense of some sketches and cryptic comments in the notebook of Jin's father, a distinguished academic architect or architectural critic, who has fallen into a coma. But the architecture is only a narrative device and a metaphor; the things that are invisible yet always visible are the things that are defined by their absence, and what the movie is really about is loneliness, emptiness and the yearning in the soul for balance, fulfilment and completion. There is no preaching. Kogonada simply presents the problem and invites the viewers to fill the empty space for themselves.
Those are the two examples that pop into my mind. Both are worth watching. I think there must be more. Suggestions?
So: Kogonada is a Korean-American who makes "American" films. Is he "Hollywood?" Columbus was made for $700,000 and was self-distributed; it was a hit on the festival circuit but very few people saw it in theaters. That was as indie as indie can be, short of shooting the whole film on an iPhone. It made a big enough impression that A24 signed on to produce After Yang. Is A24 "Hollywood?" It's not one of the legacy "major" studios, and it's not part of the Borg. It's still an independent company, though it's now large enough to be considered a mid-major. Its brand is to be deliberately unconventional. It takes risks. It can miss big, but it also produces some gems that would probably never be made by the Borg.
Sooner or later, A24 will probably be bought by one of the Borg companies, which will throw enough billions at the founder/owners, who have built a success from nothing and who will eventually be ready to retire. The Borg companies are doing the old Microsoft thing of buying up their rising competitors. The question will then become what new rising independent producer will take its place.
The date of this article is 2011, and Ms. Nicolosi’s film venture “Mary” (prequel to Passion of the Christ) is now in the hands of a new production company...
What ever happened to the sequel? Mel hit the sauce again?
Here is the history of O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
Bach's composition of "O Sacred Head", as sung by Fernando Ortega
NOTE: "American Tune" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Paul Simon...(1973), .... The song, a meditation on the American experience... based on the melody of the hymn "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded"...reached number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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