WELL WHADDYA KNOW, with Mel Gibson’s The Passion, Hollywood has found faith-- let the choirs sing! It's amazing what a $125 million week at the box office will do for a little healthy (or unhealthy) public dialogue about spirit.
Now, religious and nonreligious groups alike are popping up all over Los Angeles promoting their brand of storytelling as the next new wave in quality entertainment. Christian film festivals, Buddhist film festivals -- every community seems to be looking for ways to share their stories with the ever-evolving marketplace.
This past Valentine’s Day I attended the Conscious Living Expo at the airport. As I was coming out of a David Deida workshop, a woman handed me a flyer for the Spiritual Cinema Circle. For $21 a month they'll send me three DVDs featuring the very best in redemption tales, without all of the blood and bootybumpin' of course. The flyer is sedate and sincere, ready to appeal to my inner desire to be inspired by cinematic excellence.
Hallelujah, my TV will be purged and I'll be clean again!
Stephen Simon, director of What Dreams May Come, is the man of action behind the SCC. He offers these words to those considering the circle:
"These (spiritual cinema) movies ask who are we and why are we here. They ask another question -- who can we be as a humanity when we operate at our very best? They inspire us, they empower us, and they encourage us to recognize that we are the ones that we've been waiting for."
Well that's a lovely thought. Sounds like a three-hankie Atman project.
This reaction to mainstream Hollywood is trying to address the lack of mindfulness in media. From blockbuster flicks to must-see-TV our vacuous common mythology seems more interested in tits and tanks than trueness. Cultural conversations are largely devoid of spiritual awareness, and even our "Reality TV" is produced with plenty of polish. To many, this is a threatening sign that our society is losing touch with its soul.
While it's true that most entertainment lacks meat, is "spiritual" cinema any better? I was a movie reviewer back when What Dreams May Come hit the theatres, and I seem to remember it as an awfully pretty picture with about as much nourishment as a bag of cotton candy. Hats off to any genius who can make a truly inspiring film, but packaging pale imitations together and calling it a “spiritual” film only objectifies already-flat manifestations of transpersonal states.
We're grasping at celluloid and forgetting to turn on the projector light here.
Can we drop the spiritual hide-and-go-seek and realize that everything is spirit? The violent movies and the silly commercials that we create and consume are also valid reflections of who we are and what we're looking for. The picture may not always be pretty, but neither are we.
Reality TV is everywhere now, but the truest television comes through in our advertisements. Take five minutes to watch the news and a few ads and you'll see the best and worst that life has to offer.
Advertising depends on blind consumption, the assumption that we're not awake enough to notice the hidden messages. Most ads sell their product by emphasizing human imperfection, then presenting a product or service to fill that perceived hole. The bait works often enough, and we bite before noticing the hook -- that by buying in we are reinforcing that message of lack and fulfillment. Once we're in the system, the habit builds, new holes appear, and the consumption craving settles in.
But are we truly lacking? Was there ever a need to begin with? What are we missing?
One of my friends from satsang shared her excitement about the work of another spiritual entertainment consortium. She heralded her friends' recent Nissan ad as an example of healthy self-inquiry in mainstream media. Nissan has been spinning the Vedantic question "Who Are You?" as a way to reach out to younger buyers. During their recent push during the premiere of Matrix: Revolutions they employed actor/slam poets to answer that question live for the audience while the car ad played in the background.
In some ways I understand her interest in Nissan's approach. If everything is spirit then why not use a car commercial for inquiry? Does the message change because there's a car for sale at the end of the question mark?
Something in our conversation struck me as incomplete; my spiritual materialism radar flew off the chart and I was reminded of Ken Wilber's words from Eye of Spirit:
"We seek for Spirit in the world of time; but Spirit is timeless, and cannot there be found. We seek for Spirit in the world of space; but Spirit is spaceless, and cannot there be found. We seek for Spirit in this or that object, shiny and alluring and full of fame or fortune; but Spirit is not an object, and it cannot be seen or grasped in the world of commodities and commotion."
The trend toward "spiritual" entertainment, mass-media confessionals and glorified passions all stem from the same source: our inner need to understand ourselves and our place in the universe. With religious institutions eroding at our feet, the natural place for this inquiry is in our media, the common language of our society. TV is our pulpit and the cineplex is our sangha.
If we realize our freedom, fullness and connectedness at this very moment then we can enjoy the show for what it is: a show. Entertainment. We can get lost in the story, appreciate the cinematography and the witty dialogue without buying the dream at the end of the ad.
So hooray for public inquiry in the malls of America, as long as never lose sight of that which transcends all of our images. Each of us has our own way of connecting with spirit, so enjoy this lovely budding spring by seeing the Divine in a new way.
As for me, I'm off to the movies....let's see, there's Mystic River, or Touching the Void, or I hear that City of God is good. Someone even told me that God likes to hang out in a box of Jujubees. I'm gonna look.
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