Movie Clips
A few weeks ago a friend emailed me to ask my opinion on his use of movie clips in a series of Bible lessons to young adults. He was privy to certain recent discussions of Christian postmodernism (including some more vigorous ones that went outside this blog), and wanted to know how I felt about using video in Christian education. (Christian Education: that term ought to irk the emergent bloggers.) Here, roughly, is what I said:
You may or may not ever find me doing a multimedia lesson including actual movie clips, but I don’t condemn the practice outright. That is, I’m not nuts about it, but everybody does it, and I don’t think it’s fatal or anything.Technology, particularly technology used for entertainment purposes, is almost literally ubiquitous in our lives. It is far too pervasive for most of us to have much perspective on it. (As they say, if you want to know what water is, don’t ask a fish–and baby, we’re technological fish.) I can’t say I’ve thought enough about this to be able to prove coercively all of the hidden assumptions and ideas that using PowerPoint to project our lesson outline or Media Player to watch a movie clip brings into a teaching environment, but I fear the unexamined assumptions that entertainment technology probably brings along for the ride when we try to harness it for our purposes. My judgment is that they will usually do some kind of harm–a kind most people are ignoring–so I personally try to avoid them most of the time.
And this from a technology professional!
My bent against the user of movie clips in teaching doesn’t have much to do with Postmodernism qua Postmodernism, although the general postmodern (and postmodernist) preference of Image over Word certainly comes into play. It’s more a matter of setting my goal to be engaging souls with ideas, and being cautious (perhaps overly so) of forcing people back into Entertainment Consumption mode instead. Certainly there are large advantages to using movie clips that should be weighed against this concern, and even more certainly, quality teaching shouldn’t be afraid to make appropriate cultural allusions. The sad fact of our lives is that movies and pop music are going to be pretty much the only cultural artifacts we are going to be able to draw on for almost all of the people to whom we minister. If I don’t like that, I might as well get mad at the wind for blowing, or the NEA for existing. Still, at the end of the day, I try to avoid the use of multimedia in teaching unless it matches the subject matter uniquely. (Like if we were studying film depictions of Christ, as in Philip Yancey’s Sunday School-productized The Jesus I Never Knew.)
I know and respect other people who have considered this question and deliberately decided against my approach and in favor of yours. I don’t do it myself, but it doesn’t bother me all that much when other people do. It is no big deal.
On the heels of this (and this was all in that hazy season of my life the few weeks before I left for Spain), I had the exciting opportunity to adapt an enterprise software architecture diagram to PowerPoint use. Now, you may be thinking that’s a simple matter of selecting the whole diagram in Visio, copying it to the clipboard, and pasting it in PowerPoint, but you’re only thinking that because you’re wrong. It has much more to do with figuring out how to present information PowerPoint-style, which consists chiefly in limiting your minimum text size to 18 points.
If you weren’t wondering why I thought it was so hard to get a block diagram into PowerPoint, you may be wondering what this has to do with using movie clips in Bible lessons. Answer: more than you might think. I’m going to try to give you more on this in the next week. Coming soon: Why PowerPoint Is The Devil.
-
- Posted by Tim on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 at 8:01:38 am PST
- Category: Theology, Culture
- Comment RSS Feed
8 Responses to “Movie Clips”
PowerPoint is not the devil.
It’s the false prophet. But let’s not quibble.
I think there’s something else at work with this technology/powerpoint stuff as used in the church. It used to be that the purpose of technology was to enable us to do the labor of our daily bread with less effort — a form of thorns and thistles herbicide and antiperspirant for our brows, as it were.
Now technology, historically associated with work, has become associated with….whatever we think it is we’re doing in church, I guess. Not only is what we do in church no longer seen as a laying down of our earthly labors in order to engage in closer communion with God than is normally possible while we’re busy beating back those thorns, but we’re importing the very “technological language” of our daily work into our worship. Something about that just isn’t right. I remember a few years back I was involved in a discussion over a church that had installed data ports in the first few pews so that laptop-bearers could download the sermon whie in progress. It was being defended on the grounds of, “But where is the chapter and verse in which it says that data ports should not be in church? And isn’t more access to more information about the preaching a good thing? And how is that different from electric lights?” Not only did that bother on “come up front to the best seat, thou bearer of wealth and technology” grounds, but something else rubbed me the wrong way. I wish now I’d thought to say in the midst of that discussion, “But do you really WANT church to feel like a coporate training seminar?” And besides that, it’s implicit in the whole concept that efficient information transfer* is a priority in the church. Just typing that makes my skin crawl and I’m beginning to see visions of John Robbins dancing in my head.
The sad thing is, a vast number of people either do want church to feel like a training seminar, or it doesn’t occur to them what might be rather strange about it if they did.
*Okay, somebody’s going to say, “Isn’t efficient information transfer just a rhetorically snarky way of saying ‘teaching?’” I don’t think it is. Teaching in scripture is about a lot more than information transfer.
Comment Permalink | Posted on March 31st, 2004 at 10:43 am |And here is pentamom’s money quote:
This point is ruthlessly misunderstood by not a few leaders in the evangelical church, particularly the unreflective successful businessmen who sometimes gravitate towards positions of leadership. “It works at the office; why not here?” (For the record: better that they be reflective, not unsuccessful.)
Another interesting observation: this is a huge point of contact between you and me and the–pinching nose now–Emergent community. Funny how we end up arguing that teaching is more than commending propositions for belief, at the same time as we insist that truth is propositional. It seems there is nuance in the real world–nuanced missed by the postmodernists as well as the PowerPointists.
Comment Permalink | Posted on March 31st, 2004 at 11:38 am |Confession: I was just so glad to see a post that didn’t involve specific gravity that I made all that up.
Comment Permalink | Posted on April 1st, 2004 at 8:00 am |I admit it: the Zymurgy category is extremely cheap blogging.
Comment Permalink | Posted on April 1st, 2004 at 11:49 am |First, understand that “PowerPointist” is considered a outdated term in the presentation community, a spurious title which has gathered not a few negative associations through the decades. Their chosen appelation is “Pointalists avec la Puissance Vigoureux” or perhaps “Les Auteurs Tres Creatif de la Animation Coutume.”
Saving PowerPoint for another day, more about movies! They are the lingua franca of our people, so there may be a place for the rare actual clip in a teaching setting. Note, though, that teaching settings vary in acceptable pedagogical methods. You can hand out Play-Do ™ in a small class of kids to illustrate something. You would not want to hand out Play-Do ™ in a worship service. Same thing with discussion questions, brainstormed applications, etc. A small group of adults can be exposed to images and concepts through film clips with far less danger of drift or unintentional association than a static congregation of 150+ (Seemingly static, that is. There should be a terrific amount of internal, spiritual movement in settings of corporate worship, including encountering the sermon. If your tradition allows for external, emotive responses, groovy!)
Like any illustration, though, movie clips must be treated gingerly. Illustrations have the ability to overwhelm - nay, demolish! - the point illustrated. Using clips from comedies and popular films do this nearly every time. Movies that were powerful and poignant the first time around may be used to stir those emotions again, or place those emotions into the context of a given scripture.
I didn’t actually show it, but I would’ve if I had a copy: recently during a lesson on wealth and self-denial, we looked at Luke 6 where Jesus pronounces a woe on the rich who laugh now but who will weep in the day to come. I spoke of the scence in Schindler’s List, where at the end he falls down weeping because he understands how powerful his wealth was in helping real souls. I think that might’ve actually worked, even. But it would only work because of I rarely use clips, and that movie carries its own illustrative power.
Comment Permalink | Posted on April 2nd, 2004 at 6:17 am |Adeodatus, you’re right about the Sunday school/worship distinction. I just had my trigger tripped on the whole subject.
My pastor’s a good example of the “cultural allusions used sparingly work” rule. I have sat through sermons elsewhere that were one illustration after another, and while the point was biblically sound, I didn’t really feel like I’d heard the Word preached substantively. OTOH, no one, and especially not my kids, has ever forgotten the point my pastor made about God uses appropriate symbolism to convey meaning by saying that if Darth Vader appeared on screen in a pink tutu, no one would be scared of him.
Comment Permalink | Posted on April 2nd, 2004 at 10:23 am |“Lord Vader, I should have known. Only you could be so bold…to wear a pink tutu after Labor Day, and with such clashing accessories! The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this, when they hear you’ve attacked a diplomatic vessel in your play clothes! And not wearing those hoop earing they gave you last Christmas! etc. etc.”
Comment Permalink | Posted on April 2nd, 2004 at 1:12 pm |Just a word on Pavlov, et al. I spend much of my time teaching, presenting, and leading meetings. I also spent many years developing interactive courseware, videos, etc. I love using media for support a message, making a point, illustrating a concept. My problem is not with media per se. My problem is this:
Most people do this badly.
We have a flat-brain wave response conditioned into us via inundation. Most meetings are boring, most PowerPoint presentations are badly done, many training clips are wretched. While I have seen compellingly good teaching tapes, I refuse to accept a default position that media is inherently superior.
When I developed interactive multimedia professionally, we pitched that you had to have it to capture our media-conditioned youth. We proposed that interactive media was among the most effective forms of teaching, and that “platform instruction” (lecture, preaching) was the worst.
We were wrong. Dead wrong. Good speaking is always better than bad media. Good coaching is better than insipid speaking. Different approaches are appropriate for different needs. When I do concept-exposure, motivational, or controversial presentations, guess what works best? Stories. That’s what my audiences typically appreciate the most. Guess what Jesus used? Parables. There’s a lesson there.
Film can be compelling, flannelgraphs can be good for visualization, slides for singing choruses can be useful. When these things hit technical glitches, however, it can be distracting. Worse, it can earn the scorn of the “youth crowd” that many of us are trying to engage (subconsciously trying to impress.)
Okay, so here’s my point. “To every thing there is a season.” If I pick up power tools to repair the church building, the Steward committee expects that I know how to use them. If we choose to use media, we should understand how and why. The worship and learning are far more important than the paint job, and they deserve at least as much competence.
[Postscript: every church’s most dreaded 11:00 a.m. spectre is the self-appointed sound man. The scope of potential distraction now is greater.]
Comment Permalink | Posted on April 6th, 2004 at 10:25 am |