Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies.

Margaret R. Miles. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. xvi+254pp. $25.00.

In her preface, Margaret Miles notes that in the popular imagination movies, religion and values seem to have little or nothing to do with one another. She tries to correct this misperception in Seeing and Believing by demonstrating that, whether implicitly or explicitly, values are imbedded in films. Analysis of popular film offers insights into cultural assumptions that shape the way people answer the question, how should we live? In her exploration of how Hollywood represents religion in film, Miles limits her analysis to films that treat Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Using the methodology of cultural studies, she "refocuses attention from the film as a text to the social, political, and cultural matrix in which the film was produced and distributed" (xiii). An appendix lists the questions that guided her reading of films.

Miles distinguishes herself from other film scholars by claiming that gender, race and sexuality are not part of her interpretative framework. Rather, considering film as a product of a culture's complex system of constructing values, she focuses first on forms of religion that have "box office" value. Secondarily, she proposes a method for assessing the values promoted by popular films and ascertaining whether these films challenge or sustain normative assumptions, particularly those related to gender, race, and class (4).

In part one, "Religion in Popular Film," Miles divides the films into three general categories. Traditional Christianity is her primary interest in films such as The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus of Montreal, The Mission, and Romero. Fundamentalism with either a futuristic or sci-fi bent is represented by The Handmaid's Tale and The Rapture. Judaism and Islam within Christian cultures are explored in Not Without My Daughter, The Chosen, and Chariots of Fire. Miles begins her analysis with several disclaimers: she is not interested in treating film as a text and exploring its themes; nor is she concerned with traditional themes such as redemption, grace, and so forth; nor does she focus on invidious representations of religion in popular film. Although they often treat religion dismissively, insofar as popular films are concerned with values, she argues, they need to be studied.

Reflecting on The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus of Montreal, Miles asks whether it is possible to make a religious film about Jesus, one that is more than just entertainment. She begins with an overview of elements that conspire to make a film what it is: choice of genre, directorial intention, cinematic conventions, camera strategies, distribution, and so forth. If the category 'religious' is understood as invoking in believers a greater degree of devotion, neither film is up to the task. However, both films try to represent competing values and conflicted relationships; therefore, they could be described as religious, even though she is uncomfortable doing so. Neither directorial intention nor devotionalism gives these films their religious quality. At best, by reading against the grain of the films' conventions, spectators can interpret these films as religious.

Miles also focuses on the social and cultural context of the film's production and on the historical and/or cultural concerns depicted in her analysis of The Mission and Romero, two films about Catholicism and its role in South and Central America. She questions whether the graphic violence can contribute to raising the consciousness of spectators and bring about radical cultural change. She concludes that "box office" movies are just that and that spectators need to come to terms with their limitations. Hollywood conventions, particularly the "box office" value of violence, interfere with the possibility of making serious films about religion.

Miles draws the same negative conclusions in her critique of Not Without My Daughter, The Chosen, and Chariots of Fire, films that represent Judaism and Islam within predominantly Christian cultures. She states unequivocally that "there is no adequate way ... to represent 'the other' truthfully" (70). The high value placed on entertainment and "box office" takes precedence. Of the three films, only The Chosen manages to represent two competing understandings of Judaism in an evenhanded way - "a rare filmic achievement" (93). The other two cater to the prejudices of the dominant culture.

If caricature is a common movie convention for dealing with non-Christian religions, it is also used in the representation of Christian fundamentalism. In The Handmaid's Tale and The Rapture, Hollywood plays to the spectators' fears without offering "viable or attractive religious alternatives" (96). Miles chides liberal Christians for ceding Christianity to the religious right, thereby creating the impression that "the lunatic fringe" of fundamentalism represented in popular films is the real thing (110). Would a film representing complex religious commitments be "box office," she asks rhetorically?

In part two, "Race, Gender, Sexuality and Class in Popular Film," Miles makes religion a secondary issue. In keeping with her generally negative assessment of the representation of religion in popular films, Miles finds that gender, race, class, and sexuality are neither truthfully nor adequately represented, in part because "box office" requires that the white perspective be given top billing. With regard to race, if Daughters of the Dust is a more radical film than The Long Walk Home, Miles argues, it is because "different values governed the film-maker's choices" (134). African-American Julie Dash, an independent director, was not constrained by "box office" values; therefore, she could make a film that authentically represented black experience. The Long Walk Home, on the other hand, focused its attention on the education of the white woman by her black housekeeper and failed to give the African-American perspective adequate weight.

With regard to gender, Miles sees both Thelma and Louise and The Piano as succumbing to the Hollywood conventions of the buddy movie, romance, and/or cautionary tale in their representation of women's lives. She interprets these films within the larger cultural context of feminism and backlash against women. Both films fail in their attempt to image women's agency and self-actualization because their endings revert to "box office" values and Hollywood conventions.

Broadly contextualizing African-American and gay culture of the '90s, Miles concludes that neither Jungle Fever nor Paris Is Burning represents the perspectives of the minority community with which the directors identify. In the case of Jungle Fever, because Spike Lee blames black women for black men's problems, he lets the whites off the hook. Miles levels a similar criticism against Paris Is Burning. Insofar as this film "allows mainstream Americans one-sided access to a minority culture, the [gay] balls themselves both assume and inadvertently support White America" (179). In representing the problems of minority communities, these films reinforce white anxiety, ultimately cater to the interests of the white audience and to the imperative of the "box office." Miles ends her book by commenting on filmic violence and its impact on culture.

The cultural 'studies approach that Miles takes provides her with useful analytical tools. However, the book has some internal methodological and conceptual inconsistencies. Although she claims not to treat film as text, she includes the category of film as text in the questions she lists in her appendix. The most troubling aspects of Miles's analysis, however, are her misrepresentation of current feminist film theory and her dismissal of the work of scholars who write on religion and film. To suggest that feminist critique does not take cultural contexts into consideration (139) is simply wrong, as is her claim that "the field of 'religion and film' has been burdened by several less-than-fruitful approaches" (xii). There is a considerable body of literature about religion and film that goes far beyond a Christian reading of Bergman's Seventh Seal.

Anyone who is even mildly aware of popular films probably shares Miles's negativity and frustration with the current state of affairs. In spite of her insightful analysis of particular films, this book adds little that is new to the general consensus among scholars and other critics of culture that popular film fails to offer a complex or nuanced representation of religion, women, underrepresented groups and the poor. Most people are also aware that Hollywood is driven by the bottom line. Had Miles provided a more balanced look at popular film by including more films that succeed and fewer that don't, she would have rendered a service to film goers. Although she claims that popular films exert an enormous influence on the construction of cultural values and that it is imperative to take films seriously, readers of Seeing and Believing are left with very little hope and few choices. In the end readers are tempted to ask whether her parents were right in their rejection of movies (xi).

IRENA MAKARUSHKA