[LINK] "Why are Christian movies so painfully bad?"

[rfmcdonald]

Vox's Brandon Ambrosino makes an argument that a tendency in American Christian culture to prefer didacticism over art and craft is responsible for a general failure of this culture to produce compelling art.

Any person even vaguely familiar with Evangelical subcultures will recognize the trend of copying and sanitizing whatever pop culture is doing. This trend belies a certain impulse within Evangelical Christians to separate the entire world into two categories: sheep and goats, wheat and chaff.

A good deal of contemporary Christian art is predicated on the sacred/secular divide: As Christian film critic Alissa Wilkinson noted, "Christians, and evangelicals in particular, have been really, really prolific in making pop culture products that parallel what's going on in mainstream cultural production."

To illustrate this point, Wilkinson references a poster many '90s Evangelicals will remember quite well: the "If you like that you'll love this" chart. The chart features two columns. The first reads, "If you like that." It contains the names of secular bands. The second reads, "You'll love this." It contains — you guessed it — Christian bands with similar, if sanitized, sounds.

If the chart were around today, it might say "If you like YouTube, you'll love GodTube," or "If you like Twitter, you'll love Gospelr." Or "If you like — and/or abhor — S&M sex, then you'll love this movie about chastity." These artistic replacements are intended to satisfy the Christian's cravings for the secular, harmful version.

The end result is that the Christian product seems like a knock-off, a cheap alternative.