A few months ago, I have had the pleasure of stepping into a Family Christian store for the first time since my deconversion six years ago. It was part of a Mother's Day Gift Run, in search of a journal, that my sister took me on. (That, and there was a Best Buy on the way, and I needed headphones.)
And yes. The inside of the store was as bad as you allow your mind to comprehend. It was wall-to-wall badness. Plaques to the left, TestaMints (breath mints specially made for "spreading the word") on the right, and if you turned around, self-help books for Good Christians, for just about everything, as far as the eye could see. And just behind that, a section just for the kiddies! Why, it's even got stuffed animals and bright colors. The one that I went to even had a litlte backroom for bargain items, mostly books. Those bargain books showed the same writing prowess of those being sold for full price, except they were especially crappy because they were published over ten years ago, and have obviously not aged like milk instead of wine.
But, anyway, if you have a wonderful, sunny outlook on life, there is no faster way to lose the will to live than walking into a Family Christian store, or a Lifeway Christian store. Over the many years of being a Good Christian Girl, I've been a frequent patron of both.
And they both suck. Christian Entertainment Alternatives* suck for a variety of reasons, but I'm only going to pick out the three biggest reasons.
1) Christian Entertainment Alternatives suck because they are largely unrealistic.
This applies largely to the music, but to much of the fiction as well. All fiction is unrealistic, it wouldn't be fiction otherwise. But much of the Christian fiction asks people not only to suspend their disbelief, but to hang it on the gallows for all the world to see. If you don't believe me, consider for a second that there is a Christian-themed manga. Called Serenity. Don't Google it unless you're either curious about that trainwreck, or unless you're a masochist. I have read the first book, and instantly stopped because my disbelief had been goddanm strangled by one sticking plot point.
The popular kids are the ones in a Bible study group. I will never get over that. Largely because Serenity is set in a public school. Dear sweet God, Goddess, and every pantheon in existence, what the hell.
But enough about horrible Christian-themed manga that ought not fucking exist because not even Christians would buy that shit, let's talk about the music. The difference between Christian and Non-Christian music is (aside from quality, I'll get to that later), is that Non-Christian music captures real stuff. Even the cheesiest of Bubblegum Pop portrays the up-down rollercoaster feeling of first love. Every genre of music in the Non-Christian realms captures the entire spectrum of human emotion, from the blissful throes of first love, to the deepest pits of heartbreak, to the blackest of rage, to the spiraling highs of joy for the hell of it.
Christian music, on the other hand, does not. For the most part, Christian music is a one-to-two note thing. It's either "Jesus is Love and being a Christian makes me happy" or "The Rapture is coming! Get Saved Now!" Or. the typical political activism song that tends to fucking offend everyone. But I won't harp on the Second and Third note, but on the "Jesus is love and awesome" type of Christian music, of which there is too damn much. But the problem with Christian Media Alternatives is that it presents the world as it should be, as opposed to as it truly is. It's not the same flavor of happy that Non-Christian music delivers. The "happiness" in Christian music is lobotomized. It's the same sort of brain-dead, toneless joy one would feel while they're on drugs. Most Christian music (and Christian Media Alternatives in general) deny the human experience, the entire spectrum of human emotion. The only option is to feel mindless happiness, fear of a wrathful God, or...that's it, actually.
And that's terrible.
2) Christian Entertainment Alternatives suck because the quality is often inferior.
Let's face it. Most Christian Media Alternatives blow ass. Mostly because, well? The quality tends to be shit in comparison to their Non-Christian counterparts. Twilight is infinitely better than Left Behind, and I would rather watch Gravitation a thousand times than to read Serenity again. Simply put, Christian Media Alternatives suck in one of the three following ways:
- They try too hard.
- They don't try hard enough, or they don't try at all.
- Any combination of the two.
3) Christian Entertainment Alternatives suck because they are not fun or entertaining in any way, shape, or form.
The purpose of entertainment media such as books, movies, and the like, is to entertain people. While I think it is possible to wrap life lessons and other things in things that are fun, and think it's a damn effective way to do so, Christian Media Alternatives...fail at bringing the fun. Miserably. Going back to the example of Christian Fiction, let us go into Inspirational Romance**. We get it. It's good to save sex until you're married. We get it. And somehow, the Left Behind series manages to be even worse with this. The Slacktivist is working on skewering it, because I know that no one else would want to undertake it. No one else could undertake it. The writing is godawful badness, the theology is so fucked in the mouth that it's barely recgonizable as such, and the actions of the characters...When the one who best exemplifies good Christian actions is the fucking Antichrist, and when the characters who are supposed to be good Remnant Christians are mean assholes, the book is fucked.
But going back to the sheer lack of fun, the stuff that tries too hard to be cool/relevant/whatever tends to fall on its face, the stuff that doesn't try at all tends to really, really, really show it, and both varieties of epic fail tend to add up to a severe lack of entertainment value outside of making fun of it.
So Christian Media Alternatives suck. The quality's shit, the fun is nonexistent, and it's not goddamn real.
*For the purposes of this entry, and this blog, Christian Entertainment Alternatives or Christian Media Alternatives refer to music, books, movies, and other media that is made for and produced by Christians, and Evangelicals in particular. Much of it is normal, Non-Christian media, repackaged and sanitized for audiences for whom Non-Christian media is off-limits.
** Inspirational Romance is basically Christian or Religious Romance, or, romance novels, sanitized for an audience that thinks that regular romance novels are too risque.
3 comments:
*shudder* I think you'd get a lot of exasperatedly sighing, eyerolling teenagers, bored-to-tears kids, and angry babushkas, if you let my church loose in that place.
...Maybe we should. >D
Anyway, I don't claim to know anything about Christian media, but I do know that there was this tiny, privately owned religious store in a mall around here that sold mostly non-aggravating stuff. They had a few t-shirts that made me gag, but they mostly had statues and pendants and wall hangings and such. They even had a little Judaica corner!
Rest assured, there are sane Christians out there. ^^; There are probably a couple of babushkas around here who would sigh about sleazy capitalists trying to make a quick buck off of the Lord.
Oh, I know that there are sane Christians. The majority of the more tasteful stuff is geared toward these saner Christians.
It's when you get to the more batshit stuff, you get the evangelicals emptying their pockets for it. Most of it is offensive enough to become hilarious. Like the "Every Man" series of books.
Thanks for the critique. I used to be an Evangelical myself and listened to Christian music. It was pretty much all praise stuff.
I've been enjoying your blog.
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