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DiggPass the Popcorn...It's Eschatology Night at the Movies!
This article appears in the Eschatology issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.
It wouldn’t be summer blockbuster season without millions of Americans paying to see a version of Hollywood’s vision of the end of the world. But do Hollywood’s end times have anything to do with Christianity’s? Surprisingly, more than you might expect.
By the Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson
A brawny young man in a tattered uniform — tattered, clearly, by combat, not age — wanders cautiously among the ruins and detritus of a postindustrial civilization. At first he seems absolutely alone, a sole survivor. But then she appears: his counterpart, similarly wary, similarly armed and dressed in fatigues. But she wears a different uniform and shakes her head at his American English. These two are the survivors of a war between their nation-states. Through the course of thirty minutes, they begin to cooperate, to communicate.
And somehow, there is something theological about all this. Two humans, pre-speech, in a desert world with a past sealed off and a future apparently wide open. We have here a new Eve and Adam, and the species is off to a new start.
This parable was first broadcast in 1961. It is entitled “Two,” and it was an episode of The Twilight Zone, a curious (at the time) television series that, among other things, offered many stories like this reflecting our postmodern anxiety. The woman was Elizabeth Montgomery, who went on to television stardom; the man, Charles Bronson, who went on to motion-picture stardom. They are hugely effective in “Two,” a contemporary version of what the early Fathers of the Church called the great “Eighth Day of Creation.”
Secular artists and thinkers from Karl Marx to Samuel Beckett have borrowed the contours of the Christian eschaton. The postmodern era, with its possibilities for universal destruction, saw this filter down to the popular level: from the 1950s on, there has been a fairly steady stream of novels, motion pictures, and television programs devoted to visions of the future — usually apocalyptic ones. The Battle of Armageddon seems to have taken the concrete form of nuclear annihilation, and the remnant of humanity that survives mass destruction is often presented in the context of a new Eden.
BLADE RUNNER AND THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN
Eschatology reverses Darwin: it is interested not in the origin, but the ultimate destiny, of species. And so it inevitably raises questions of human nature and identity — what are human beings and what are they for? What is their position in the cosmos? Origen of Alexandria, a hugely influential theologian of the third century, made such questions the centerpiece of his On First Principles, which contains his extended interpretation of Revelation and Genesis.
And they are also the theme of one of the most accomplished futuristic films of recent decades, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Based on the intriguing science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, the movie offers a rich, complex exploration of those profound questions.
The film is heavily symbolic, full of topical references (it has to be seen at least three times just to take it all in), and so fundamentally pessimistic (despite a last-minute, tacked-on upbeat ending) that it nose-dived at the box office in 1982, the year of its release. But in the decades since, it has become both a cult favorite and a science-fiction standard for film studies. Its plot can be summarized most simply as a futuristic (set in the year 2019) version of High Noon. Instead of four Western outlaws bent on revenge, Scott gives us four “replicants” — synthetic and souped-up humanoids — bent on prolonging their factitious lives (replicants have all been programmed to “die young,” to prevent their ganging up on the human species). And in the place of longsuffering, haggard Will Kane (Gary Cooper), we meet haggard, long-suffering Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford — this generation’s Gary Cooper). This antihero is a “blade runner” — essentially, a vigilante who hunts down and kills renegade replicants.
The latter have all been given authentic human memories, in order to “replicate” the emotional aspect of humans as closely as possible. But this prompts the question that has begun to haunt Deckard: doesn’t this, in fact, make them human? What constitutes the humanness of a human being — the genetic code? The physique? Or isn’t it rather the collective memory? Origen certainly thought so: for that is spirit, and the rest is dross.
As Deckard pursues the replicants, especially their alphamale leader, he finds himself increasingly “relating” to them, and the concomitant issues of loyalty, love, justice, forgiveness, and sympathy all weave into the story. And by the end, one ultimate question is left unresolved, a question that dawns on most viewers about halfway through. Is Deckard himself human or replicant? Is there really any difference? How, in fact, could anyone tell? How could Deckard himself? How could you?
WHERE EVIL LURKS: STRANGE DAYS
Unless you have studied the Book of Revelation in some depth, especially the 12th and 13th chapters, you will very likely find it cryptic and confusing — it was probably meant to be, to keep its meaning from hostile eyes. But the subject matter and the tone should be quite clear. These chapters have to do with corruption and evil. Evil versus evil. Moral ambiguity. And our response is a queasy, disoriented anxiety. Its perfect cinematic correlative is James Cameron’s Strange Days (1995). Set in the days just before the turn of the millennium (a symbolic date, like Orwell’s 1984), this pessimistic vision of the end point of humanity centers on the question, where is evil located?
Literally. The technological premise of the film is that science has discovered a way to extract the consciousness of a human being directly from the cerebral cortex, so that another human can experience the other’s thought and feeling. The possibilities for law enforcement and prevention are fairly obvious, and so are the grave dangers.
Ralph Fiennes, perfect in an atypical role, is Lenny Nero, a decrepit ex-lawman who ekes out existence as a private eye who uses this morally suspicious technology. But he receives a disc that seems to hold the consciousness of a serial killer who has slain a prostitute friend of his. From this point, Lenny and his loyal friend Macy (Angela Bassett) try to solve the mystery of the woman’s death while evading almost constant danger to their lives.
Film noir always had a strong current of moral edginess. Strange Days takes it to an Apocalyptic extreme. And the result is exactly the moral world of the biblical millennium in the Book of Revelation, where the Dragon and The Antichrist hold their temporary and bewildering sway.
TIM BURTON’S NEW JERUSALEM
Most futuristic films — certainly Strange Days and Blade Runner — are straight, serious, and solemn works, with little comic leavening. But curiously, the science-fiction film most congruent with the full contours of Christian eschatology is an out-and-out comedy: Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. Shot in comic-book primary colors, appealingly overacted by its goodsport cast, it is on the surface a well-executed, campy parody of 1950s-style sci-fi.
But consider the plot. The human race is a damaged creation, utterly corrupt yet morally clueless. At last it is menaced by cosmic evil, in the persons of alien invaders. The latter prove invulnerable to the most advanced weapons technology and impervious to the most basic appeals to justice or compassion. A purgatorial Armageddon ensues, and the world, along with most of humankind, is destroyed. But then innocence, in a most unexpected form (a senile grandmother’s records of cowboy yodeling), manages to overcome the ungodly menace (who melt into putrescence at the sound).
A faithful remnant — the grandmother, her loyal grandson, pop singer Tom Jones, ex-footballer Jim Brown, blaxsploitation queen Pam Grier — is left, to replicate the human race and start over in the New Jerusalem. Suddenly it’s springtime, and flowers are starting to reappear.
This is exactly the plot discerned in Revelation by the great second-century theologian Irenaeus. I doubt that Tim Burton has ever heard of him, but Burton’s body of work — Edward Scissorhands, Batman, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride) — suggests that he is aware of Christian mythos.
And the fact that it is a comedy, not a “serious” work, makes sense after all in the final analysis. The Christian story ends with neither a whimper nor a bang, but with a shout of festal joy: the happy noise of the nuptials of the Lamb, in the symbols of Revelation. This is why Dante labeled his own poetic tour of the Christian afterlife “comedy.” Bear that in mind as you watch the finale of Mars Attacks, when Tom Jones stands on a green hill and belts out “It’s Not Unusual” as little birds dance along. Ridiculous as all get out. And yet sublime.
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE EASTER
Mars Attacks is not a “Christian movie” in the ordinary sense, but it is definitely informed by Christian myth — especially at the eschatological end. The same can be said of Blade Runner and Strange Days, with their very different emphases. And for a whole family of futuristic movies of recent vintage: Independence Day, Johnny Mnemonic, The Fifth Element, Dark City, Independence Day, Men in Black, the Matrix series, and I, Robot. All these envision a future where good and evil have either become exaggerated or ambiguously blended — or, paradoxically, exacerbated and mixed at the same time; where humankind is threatened at its very essence; where human nature is tested and redefined. In the hands of a gifted director and a talented crew and cast, the results are both diverting and thought provoking. But the same can, and should, be said for the Book of Revelation. The fact is, every futuristic film — from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to whatever computer-enhanced celluloid Armageddon is currently in production — borrows from, and comments upon, Christian myth.
The Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson is a retreat leader, spiritual director, workshop leader, author, and parish priest. He has taught spirituality, history, and theology at colleges and seminaries for 30 years.
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