Rejecting Creation the movie: A business decision
Film distributors not imposing their ideology.
by Emil Silvestru
Published: 10 December 2009(GMT+10)
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UPDATE (January 2010): After this article was published, the US film distributor
overturned their original decision to “pass” on the film Creation, and so the film
was released for distribution in the US, hitting the box office on 24 January 2010.
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Photo wikipedia
Annie Darwin
Canada’s Macleans news site recently published an article titled
“Darwin movie too evolved for U.S. audiences”. The article refers to the
decision of US film distributors to “pass” on the film “Creation”—the
dramatized story of Charles Darwin’s struggle while writing the Origin of Species.
The refusal to distribute a film premiered and acclaimed at the Toronto Film Festival
seems to have again roused the Canadian media’s scorn of the “backward Americans”
of which—according to Gallup—only
39% believe Darwin and his evolutionary theory. It is interesting how very
differently the Canadian and world media treated America during WW II when far fewer
Americans believed Darwin! It seemed then that disbelief in Darwin had little to
do with economic power, and “backward America” was capable of defeating
the “advanced evolution-believing” Germany and Japan economically, technically
and of course militarily. After the war a creationist—Wernher
von Braun—headed the Apollo space program. American schools, most
of which refused to teach Darwinian evolution, have produced (between 1925 and 1957)
more Nobel prizes than the rest of the world put together.
The film “Creation” (see CMI’s
review) has Paul Bettany (who seems to enjoy playing such characters, from
the dark “ecclesiastic agent” Silas in the Da Vinci Code to the surprisingly
Darwinesque doctor Stephen Maturin in Master and Commander) depict a tormented Darwin
who lost his faith in God as he lost his favorite little girl Annie. Dramatic maybe,
but far from reality because Darwin had already stopped believing in the God of
the Scriptures long before. For a useful reality check on Darwin see
CMI’s documentary The Voyage that Shook the World.
Why did the distributors reject it?
But to return to the issue of the US distributors rejecting this movie. There is
no doubt that the US became a world power because of the way its people understood
and practiced the free market. And that means Americans know how to assume risks
in order to prosper, so it seems that distributing “Creation” represents
a risk higher than usual. In other words, the decision was just business, nothing
more.
But how strong is the case taken by the Canadian media that its decision flows out
of a retrograde, conservative culture, something akin to banning the film? A look
at the history of cinematography reveals that many movies have been banned (as opposed
to not distributed) in most civilized countries, including Canada (Table 1). Unlike
the decision of a commercial corporation, the banning of films is a cultural decision
based on moral values assumed to be shared by the majority of the population. Therefore
Macleans and the rest of the critical Canadian media should write about the Canadian
“lack of evolution” before patronizing the American public. But fair
reporting is a dying species anyway and when it comes to cinematography one can
assume it extinct altogether.
|
Country
|
Period
|
Number of films
banned
|
|
01
|
Australia
|
1907-2002
|
51
|
|
02
|
Canada
|
1918–2000
|
15
|
|
03
|
Finland
|
1943
|
2
|
|
04
|
France
|
1953–1963
|
3
|
|
05
|
Germany
|
1919
|
1
|
|
06
|
Hungary
|
1948–1983
|
6
|
|
07
|
Iceland
|
1931–2000
|
13
|
|
08
|
Japan
|
1945–1984
|
5
|
|
09
|
New Zealand
|
1979–2007
|
9
|
|
10
|
Norway
|
1964–2009
|
7
|
|
11
|
Singapore
|
1971–2006
|
17
|
|
12
|
Spain
|
1939–1986
|
4
|
|
13
|
Sweden
|
1922–1997
|
5
|
|
14
|
United Kingdom
|
1932–2009
|
13
|
|
15
|
United States
|
1908–2009
|
21
|
|
16
|
Vatican City
|
1979–2006
|
3
|
|
TABLE 1
Banning of films in various countries
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Consider the treatment of two very different recent documentaries: Ben
Stein’s ”Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, which exposes
the entrenched suppression in academia of scientific debate over evolution, and
Bill Maher’s Religulous, which mocks God and religious
belief. The former was shown in only 36 theatres across Canada (was that because
distributors didn’t believe it was a good investment?) Maher’s film
opening was restricted to only 502 theatres in the USA but to this author’s
knowledge, there have been no restrictions in Canada, both on opening or after.
The media has accused Stein of deceiving people in order to
obtain interviews, and propaganda in the film. But there has been no equivalent
indignation and condemnation in the case of
Maher who said: "We never, ever, used my name. We never told anybody it
was me who was going to do the interviews. We even had a fake title for the film.
We called it ‘A Spiritual Journey.’ It didn’t work everywhere.
We went to Salt Lake City, but no one would let us film there at all." So much for
unbiased reporting.
Media bias against Christian values
There is a long history of Canadian media looking down on Christian values, both
in America and Canada and I hope the US film distributors’ decision regarding
“Creation” will help change the attitudes of Canadian Christians. I
believe too many Christians have adopted the idea of “tolerance” promoted
by the secularists i.e. “we have to tolerate all those who reject absolutes”.
That of course implies that tolerance does not apply to those who believe in absolutes!
Well, Jesus Christ not only believed in absolutes, HE IS ABSOLUTE! How then can
Christians “relativise” Christ in order to be tolerated? The answer
I believe lies in the very heart of what Creation Ministries International is all
about: accepting the authority of Scripture from the very first verse.
The author of The Da Vinci Code,
Dan Brown puts it succinctly:
“I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth
or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe.
I remember saying to a minister, ‘I don’t get it. I read a book that
said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created
heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?’ Unfortunately,
the response I got was, ‘Nice boys don’t ask that question.’ A
light went off, and I said, ‘The Bible doesn’t make sense. Science makes
much more sense to me.’ And I just gravitated away from religion.”
Unfortunately, the response I got was, ‘Nice boys don’t ask that question.’
A light went off, and I said, ‘The Bible doesn’t make sense. Science
makes much more sense to me.’ And I just gravitated away from religion.’
Dan Brown, author ‘The Da Vinci Code’
The opposite process is required to prevent Christian young people “gravitating
away from religion” and that is what our ministry is endeavoring to do. Nice
boys or not, those tough questions need to be addressed and CMI speakers address
them every single time when doing ministry. And the
substantial resources we carry do that also. Big bang, Noah’s Flood,
Cain’s wife, radiometric dating, dinosaurs, the origins of man etc. are all
scientifically tackled, helping Christians not to “Brown out” and ‘gravitate
away” from the Gospel.
In his wonderful grace, God has even granted our ministry the means to take a huge
professional leap into the tough and so powerful world of visual arts. Despite efforts
to discredit it, the documentary The Voyage that Shook the World has been
well received worldwide and
even skeptics had to recognize its quality and fairness. Sure, the deeply
entrenched secular humanistic media will never acknowledge it but by simply comparing
the size of the postings on Wikipedia for Ben Stein’s Expelled …
and CMI’s The Voyage … reveals the truth: our
documentary is too solid and fact-based as well as honest and balanced to be ignored
or attacked. And that’s not because of us but because of God’s grace
and Him answering prayers.
Recommended Resources
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