EDITORIAL
TOO CLOSE ENCOUNTER Real religion is a hard product to sell. Real religion, says the Epistle of James, is taking care of orphans and suffering widows, and keeping oneself from being corrupted by...
...And isn't the discovery of God in everyday human experience infinitely more Wonderful than the Neon Light Show in the Big Screen Sky...
...Not much of a market for "good news" like that...
...Jesus Christ Superstar is more about the difficulties of being a famous rock star than about the dangers of being a religious reformer, and the lovely Franco Zefferelli TV Jesus of Nazareth so blunted the cutting edge of the gospel that it was hard to see how this Jesus posed a threat to anybody...
...and the gospels do put heavy emphasis on the paradox of the cross...
...Particularly when popular culture surrounds us at every second with a neon cocoon of uninterrupted light and sound, to guarantee that not a moment will pass when we are not entertained...
...Father Andrew Greeley has rejoiced in the Sunday New York Times (November 27, 1977) that just when the church has, in his view, given up "Wonder" for political relevance and "bargain-basement psychology" and when the theologians are telling us we don't need to believe in angels, Close Encounters has brought back "Wonder, Marvel and Surprise...
...But celebrating religious messages in science fiction films and the popularity of Jesus shows on Broadway and TV is risky...
...Real religion, says the Epistle of James, is taking care of orphans and suffering widows, and keeping oneself from being corrupted by the world...
...In this context, the critical ecstacy in some circles over the pro-UFO propaganda film, Close Encounters of a Third Kind—in which a giant Holiday Inn chandelier-like space ship lands in the Wyoming desert, gives us a glimpse of its cute little crew, and flies off with a band of volunteer earthlings—is silly...
...If Scripture scholarship tells us that the evidence for angelic beings is not what we once thought it was, isn't it better to adjust our religious education to that discovery than to put flying saucer pilots in their place...
...So, in a sense, we shouldn't be too severe on clerical attempts to find evidence of transcendence or religious meaning in secular culture...
...The film is "deeply religious," he says, and the little visitors are "angels"—even though this "Gracious" visitation causes power failures, gives earthlings radiation burns, wrecks a house, breaks up a marriage, causes the deaths of two policemen, temporarily separates a child from its mother and renders the hero virtually insane...
...If Star Wears is, as Jack Kroll says, a "rousing morality play in which Right zaps the asteroids out of Wrong" {Newsweek, December 26, 1977), it is also a plug for the B-l bomber, since "the Force," the vague remnant of religious consciousness, is nothing without firepower and the willingness of our heroes to blow a whole planet of their adversaries to smithereens...
Vol. 105 • January 1978 • No. 1
