There are a lot of religious movies
that have come out and are coming out in the next several weeks, including
the big budget Noah movie, this movie Son of God.
There's never any shortage of movies about the Bible, about Christianity.
And you can all name movies, like The Ten Commandments, that have been around for a long time.
So, Lawrence Krauss, the physicist, wrote this piece for The New Yorker magazine
where he basically said
there's this kind of unspoken bias in Hollywood
in favor of religious movies.
Which is very silly, because usually, when you hear about Hollywood stereotypes, it's that they're
against religion, it's that they have this liberal bias.
But no, Lawrence Krauss was saying they don't make movies about atheism. They only make movies about religion.
And he's, by the way, starring in a movie called The Unbelievers, which is about him and Richard Dawkins,
you know, trying to spread the "gospel" of reason
across the country.
And so he's like, "Look, I know maybe my movie's not gonna be
a big Hollywood film,
but how come Hollywood isn't sponsoring more big-budget movies that kind of push reason, that push atheism
as much as they
push movies that talk about religion and have a religious agenda to them?"
And it seemed strange, because
there's such an obvious answer to that question.
Which is that Hollywood wants to make money
and they know that if they want to make money, they have to tell a good story.
And whether you like it and whether you agree with it or not, the Bible is full of stories.
You could find stories about anything in the Bible
and you could make movies about so many things that are in the Bible,
and so many people have.
But if I asked you to name a movie about atheism,
what comes to your mind?
Maybe something like Bill Maher's Religulous,
which is a documentary basically saying everyone
who's religious is dumb.
But it was a documentary and it just poked fun at religion.
You think about movies
that are debates,
like this Lawrence Krauss- Richard Dawkins movie.
or I saw one with Christopher Hitchens and another Christian apologist and they debated things together.
Sorry, that's not an interesting movie for most people.
There's no story there, other than we're right and you're wrong.
And even though I pretty much agree with them, it's not a story that's going to reach a lot of people.
So, if you really want to sell atheist movies,
you have to give people a story
through which they can tell--
talk about atheism.
I would go watch-- I think a lot of people would go watch a movie about, you know,
an atheist who is getting bullied, but somehow found a way to overcome that.
And maybe the movie is not about atheism, but it plays a role in it.
There was a movie called The Ledge
that came out a couple of years ago.
That was about a guy who was an atheist
and who had an affair with the pastor's wife.
It was actually a really beautiful interesting love story,
very action-adventure.
And the ending, I thought,
had a very humanistic message to it.
That movie didn't sell so well. It didn't go huge in the box office,
but at least that's a story people could leave the theater and remember. And they'd be talking about it, even if they were religious.
Why don't we have more movies like that? What we need
are better storytellers. What we need are people who are willing to say:
"Here's a story
where atheism plays a role in it. And if I want to tell that story,
it's kind of impossible to do without that religious angle."
That's something that a successful screenwriter might be able to sell in Hollywood.
And I don't think
Hollywood would have a problem with that.
We even saw movies like The Golden Compass which has kind of this humanistic theme to it.
That did decently well in Hollywood. At least, it did overseas.
Where are more movies like that?
So, I take issue with Lawrence Krauss saying Hollywood has a bias against it, even if they
don't explicitly say that,
because I don't think they do. I think they're just interested in telling a good story that'll reach a lot of people
and the Bible has a lot of good stories about love, and death, and murder
and all sorts of crazy things
that are just good source material for so much and it's such a huge part of our culture, too.
We don't have any founding documents as atheists. We don't have any
big story that everyone can latch onto,
but that's why I'm kind of-- I have high hopes for things like the new Cosmos remake that they're doing on television,
because I think that's a way to kind of spread this idea about science and reason
in a way that can reach a lot more people than something
like a documentary or a Bill Maher movie
can probably do in Hollywood.
I'm Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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