In order to discover how to approach an audience, we need to understand who they are and what they expect. As content creators, we have an obligation to meet audience expectations on all levels (story, production value, genre, overall entertainment, etc.). Otherwise, the audience won’t bother listening to what we have to say, no matter how much we think they need to hear it. There are four questions we can ask regarding each audience that will help us understand how to reach them most effectively:
1) Who are they?
2) What is a reasonable Christian theme?
3) Why is this reasonable?
4) How do we reach our goal?
As promised last week, I am going to examine the audience I have labeled “uninterested” this week.
Who are they?
When I say uninterested, I am not talking about determined atheists or others who are hostile toward Christianity – or any religion, for that matter. I’m talking about people who don’t believe in much of anything and seem mostly content to stay that way. Agnostic describes them best, yet they may or may not describe themselves this way. They are apathetic, hold no strong opinion about any religion, and don’t really care what you and I believe. They are secular relativists all the way. As long as you aren’t “forcing your religion” on them, they think you’re pretty cool because they will neither agree nor disagree with whatever it is you believe. It’s all good.
What is a reasonable Christian theme?
The obvious starting point for this crowd is to show them that truth exists, that relativism isn’t going to cut it. We want to crack open the possibility for them that truth is not only real, but worth pursuing. Without first acknowledging that there is objective truth, this audience can hardly be expected to move toward any kind of belief in God or Christ. So that’s where we have to meet them. The only way to do that is to deliver a world-class film that entertains and conveys a meaningful truth.
Why is this reasonable?
This audience, like most of us, watches movies primarily to be entertained. They won’t watch saint movies, and they aren’t going to pay $12 per ticket for Christian apologetics or theologically dense content. They want entertainment, pure and simple.
How do we reach our goal?
As I said before, we have to be able to deliver on audience expectations. The uninterested crowd expects to be entertained when they go to the theater or stream something from Netflix. So our job is to tell an entertaining story. But not just any story. The story must convey some deep truth about humanity – some truth that resonates with the audience, something that will make them question the relativism they’ve (often passively) accepted for so long, a truth that they can recognize as truth.
Jesus tells one of his most compelling parables to the “tax collectors and sinners” – the parable of the prodigal son (see Luke 15). I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard an awful lot of homilies on this Gospel passage, so it’s easy for me to overlook the fact that Jesus never explicitly tells his listeners that the father in the story represents our Heavenly Father. There’s no mention of the kingdom of heaven, no mention of God, no religious language whatsoever. Nonetheless, the story contains a deep, resonant truth about the wild, tender, compassionate, irrepressible love of a father. But it also contains a whole lot more.
The story of the prodigal son (or forgiving father or angry brother) works on many levels. Some person so inclined could see the love of God in the parable. Some person not so inclined may ask himself as a father how he would treat such a son. Another may ponder when in their lives have they acted like the brother.
There was a rather successful film a few years ago that also told a story of a father’s love without ever mentioning God or any of the saints. In fact, it’s not even about humans. But it does tell a deeply human truth about a father who will never give up looking for his son, no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be. It’s called Finding Nemo.
Now of course most audience members, and I suspect the film creators, will never make a connection between Marlin (Nemo’s father) and the love of God our true Father (I am by no means arguing that Finding Nemo is a completely accurate analogy of God’s love for each one of us). But many fathers who watched Finding Nemo asked themselves a question following the movie: “Am I a good father?” How profound can a question like that be as the starting point of a long journey towards conversion?
So if Jesus provides an example, and Pixar can do it… why can’t we?
Next week: the RINO audience.
