Imagine, if you can, a major studio releasing a thriller in which the stars investigate the origins of Islam. Pursued by a murderous Muslim cleric, they uncover a series of shocking discoveries: Mohammed was no prophet! The Koran is a hoax, the work of self-serving hypocrites! Modern-day Muslims are dupes, if not deranged psychopaths!It would seem that this writer's observations are all too true!
Now imagine, in the unlikely event such a film were ever made, what sort of reception it would get in the establishment media. Given the categorical refusal of the American press to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons, it's a safe bet that the talking heads and big newspapers would only mention the movie to denounce it.
.............
But then The Passion of the Christ, which brought in $370 million domestically, was one of the highest-grossing films of all time. And while it got plenty of media attention, the coverage was completely different from that surrounding The Da Vinci Code. As aggressively as Da Vinci has been puffed, Christ got poked.
Likewise, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (another big-screen adaptation of a massively popular novel that was a huge moneymaker) never drew favorable publicity of the sort showered on DVC. Most of the Narnia coverage focused on whether the film's Christian themes would doom its chances at the box office.
The discrepancy is not so much a matter of money, then, but manners. To the establishment press, plots that strongly uphold traditional Christian beliefs, whether explicitly (as in The Passion) or allegorically (as in Narnia), are regarded as dubious, rude, even dangerous. Stories that undermine Christianity, on the other hand, are "hot" and edgy, and attract A-list celebrities, big studios, powerful news outlets, and charmed-circle journalists.
All we can do is keep telling the Christian message in whatever venue day-in-and-day-out and leave the results up to God and the hearers.
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