CONSPIRACY OR MEDIOCRITY?

Barbara Nicolosi is fast becoming one of my favorite voices in the arts community. She’s a former Roman Catholic nun turned Hollywood scriptwriter. Six years ago she founded Act One, a program to train screenwriters and Hollywood executives to produce quality films that connect with audiences of faith.

In a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle, she made these observations:

“Honestly, I didn’t start out to fix Hollywood,” said Nicolosi, who has a master’s degree in film from Northwestern University. “I started out to fix the church in the arts.”

After two years of “reading hundreds and hundreds of horrible scripts” at a Catholic movie production company, Nicolosi concluded that Christian screenwriters were their own worst enemies.

“They had nothing but arrogance and ignorance, and self-righteousness to boot,” the outspoken Nicolosi said. “They were screaming about how Hollywood was persecuting Christians. I realized Christians were not being martyred in Hollywood; they were committing suicide.

“We were being embarrassed by Christians who were writing works that were substandard and saying the Holy Spirit inspired them to do it.”

Christians commonly assume that the secular media is out to silence them. The perception that publishers, celebrities and Hollywood execs are anti-Christian, is status quo in many faith communities. Which makes Ms. Nicolosi’s opinion all the more interesting.

I’m not one to cede conspiracies, but I happen to believe that positive religious themes and traditional values do not get a fair shake on prime time. Nevertheless, Ms. Nicolosi’s observation is spot on. In fact, I wonder that most Christian artists would be better off — even if they did not whole-heartedly believe it — by acting as if it were true.

Let’s face it — it’s much easier to pin the lack of “Christian witness” on the presence of atheistic gatekeepers, rather than the absence of a superior product. And Hollyweird is an easy scapegoat. But, according to Nicolosi, the drought of a “Christian presence” in the arts may have less to do with a conspiracy, and more to do with mediocrity.

Could it really be that “Christians [are] not being martyred in Hollywood; they [are] committing suicide”? The same could be asked of Christian artists in any field — music, literature, theater. Have we deceived ourselves into believing we are not at fault? Are we too eager to blame our “bad fortune” on the godless gatekeepers? Are we “writing works that [are] substandard and saying the Holy Spirit inspired [us] to do it”?

How one answers those questions is important. The person who’s convinced the system has it out for him, will often spend as much time bellyaching as working to improve his craft. The person who’s unafraid of the mirror’s gaze, on the other hand, will doggedly seek to remove the plank from his own eye. By far, the more noble (and less stressful) tact is to apply ourselves and work like hell to transcend mediocrity, rather than fret about an imagined satanic conspiracy.