A Tale of Two Junkets
As a teacher and a film journalist, I have often quoted a favorite childhood riddle that asked, “What is the similarity between an elephant and a plum?”
The answer — that both are purple, except for the elephant — is meant to illustrate that comparisons must do more than simply list similarities or differences. For a comparison to be meaningful, some analysis is necessary to explain what, if anything, those similarities or differences signify.
The elephant (or plum) in this extended metaphor is CODA, a Sundance hit and award contender from AppleTV, about a child of deaf adults (Emilia Jones) taking music lessons and beginning to think about going to college away from her deaf parents and deaf brother.
Oscar winner Marlee Matlin plays Jackie Rossi in the film, a mother who uses guilt and shame to try to persuade her daughter to defer her musical aspirations a little longer. I asked Matlin whether she agreed with my assessment that Jackie was the least sympathetic character in the film and what it was like to play such a character. While never affirming that she agreed with the premise, Matlin did say that she had to distinguish between what her character would say in certain dramatic scenes and what she, herself, might say if confronted with similar situations.
Matlin singled out a scene in which Jessie asks her hearing daughter whether she would have taken up painting had her parents been blind. This line apparently bothered the actress enough to approach writer/director Sian Heder, who urged her, she said, to use whatever anger she was feeling towards her character in the scene. The line made it into the film, but Matlin said in her interview that she still had a problem with it.
That exchange took me back a half-dozen years or so to a set visit for a film from a nascent Christian film production company. While I was there, a supporting actor in a key role expressed similar reservations about one of his character’s lines in a pivotal scene from the movie. He couldn’t think of any way to make it authentic for his character. He too went to the film’s writer, only to be told that the dialogue was essential to the film’s theme and had to be delivered as written. The actor reported eventually coming up with a motivation that allowed him to complete the scene, though he never revealed what the problematic line was. For him, the point of the story was about the process, not the result.
What can we infer about the artistic process from these stories? Before we infer anything, we must admit that any conclusions will be generalizations from an anecdotal sample size. Film sets are very different places, and the artists that make them interact differently based on a wide array of variables: where they are in their careers, the nature of the film production itself, personalities, past experiences, and training might all play a role.
One important difference is that Matlin couched her interaction with the director as a discussion, while the actor on the Christian film set used language implying requests and directives. Yet Matlin was unquestionably the bigger star of the two and could be inferred to have more power had she chosen to make an issue of her disagreement with the dialogue. But actors, even successful ones, hardly wish to develop a reputation of being difficult to work with it.
Another factor to consider is whether the writer is also the director. In the case of CODA, Heder wore both hats. In the Christian film production, the roles of writer and director were filled by different people. Tellingly, at the same junket, a writer related telling the film’s producer of a desire to create a more authentic script that would have the potential to earn an “R” rating only to be told that this was unacceptable. Thus, the ultimate decision-maker appeared to be neither director nor writer nor actor, but producer. Such lines are blurred, of course, because in artistic endeavors, those in authority may delegate partially or complete the power invested in them.
For most of the last fifteen years, the most common hypotheses I have heard for why Christian films aren’t as good (or as honored) as their secular counterparts have been:
1) Evaluators (film critics/awards guilds/audiences) are secular and have a prejudice against films with Christian themes that echoes the broader cultural prejudice against Christians.
2) Christian artsists are less experienced because they have fewer opportunities to learn in a secular environment and must learn writing, directing, and acting from the ground up.
I tend to think that #1 is nonsense and that #2 is a self-imposed exile that restricts Christians by viewing artistic collaboration as somehow sinful or, at the very least, dangerous.
But perhaps these two junkets point to a deeper problem with “Christian” art production than I had not yet realized. It’s not just that conservative Evangelical versions of Christianity socialize and (mis)educate individual Christians to eschew collaboration. Such a narrative drastically underestimates (in my opinion) the number of professional Christian artists who have little problem working alongside others who are less visible or vocal about their faith. I’m suggesting that suspicion of collaboration is a structural problem, one built into the means of production, and not just an ideological one.
I don’t think it is a stretch to suggest that this suspicion of collaboration is in the same ideological (theological?) kinship group with the authoritarian tendencies that have become increasingly pronounced in some circles of Americans self-identifying as Christian. Perhaps an unwillingness to collaborate in artistic endeavors hardens the hearts and spirits and makes collaboration, negotiation, and even just listening, harder in other areas of life.
Some might argue that the result of both processes was roughly the same. Neither actor got the writer to change the lines that caused them discomfort. Both ended up delivering their lines as written. But maybe how one gets to a decision has ripples that extend beyond the decision itself. Matlin was enthusiastic about supporting the project overall, and she spoke positively about the film and her experience in making it. Could one reason that Christian film productions have a difficult time attracting A-list talent be that most of our skilled writers, directors, and performers thrive on connection and collaboration and find such authoritarian sets infantilizing?
Postscript: As I had access to the CODA junket as part of the studio’s attempts to promote that film, I should probably add that it’s terrific and well worth seeing. Matlin does great work, as always, and Emilia Jones (who had to learn to sign and to sing) delivers one of those career-making roles that promise great things to come. The script is admittedly on-the-nose at times, having characters verbalize what the situations have already made clear, but the emotions it elicits are strong and its praises are well earned. You should watch it on Apple TV+, where it drops on August 13, 2021.
