Hollywood is a playground of ideas where tradition gets a spin and is formed into a new entity. The film Constantine (released 2005) is an example of this reworking. While the premise of the film lies on Christian theology, the film makers create a blended pop-culture religious experience. Visually stunning angels and demons roam free attempting to get the upper hand on Earth. Religion in film occupies a separate space than religion in a home, the individual is taken on a journey by the writers and has their emotions played with during the film. The hero in his own way resembles Christ, and viewers are presented with an onslaught of fantasy visual as a rebirth of Roman Catholicism unfolds before them. Problems with religion in film are ever present and religious pluralism makes for an interesting message. As well as the above, this essay is simply looking at where this multi-faceted movie fits in to the extremely complicated realm of religion in this modern and seemingly post-religious era and the popularity of such.
Hollywood motion picture Constantine follows a psychic occult specialist, John Constantine, through his hellish journey of ridding the world of demons and stopping the apocalypse. As a teenager, Constantine commits suicide, he dies but is revived after two minutes, these fateful two minutes found him in hell. Seeing where he would spend eternity he is attempting to gain an eternal place in heaven: Redemption via the killing of demons. The film follows Constantine, with the help of another psychic and police woman, Angela Dodson, narrowly avoiding the apocalypse. The Bible of Hell, according to the writers, has a different ending than that of the Christian Bible. Mamon, Satan’s son, attempts to gain entry to the earthly realm via Angela’s twin sister who knew this and sadly jumped to her own death, and then Angela herself. The angel Gabriel, armed with the Spear of Destiny, which was used on Christ at the cross and has been missing since World War II, is enlisted as the needed divine help for Mamon to cross over. All the while this is happening, Satan and God appear to have no knowledge of the events unfolding before them. After defeating Mamom, Constantine attempts to sacrifice his own life so another character can go to heaven, ultimately creating a Christ-like figure, like Anton Karl Kozlovic’s explanation of the cinematic Christ-Figure (2004), Constantine emerges disease free to continue his life of demon hunting.
Constantine is a blend of supernatural and theological concepts; including witchcraft, Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Satanism which form a dark portrayal of spiritual belief. Stanley Rothman (1966), an American scholar and professor, likens movies of this nature as having been transformed away from customary religious portrayal. He suggests that “conventional religious beliefs are presented but only to provide a recognizable background against which evil can be made more compelling and powerful” (Rothman, 1966, p. 273). Using religious themes can potentially upset viewers with both insider and outsider perspectives. Granted, most people choose to watch these genres, however, risk is taken when controversial themes are mixed. A viewer could experience alienation, regardless of their religious standpoint. As far back as the late 1800’s-early 1900’s, control over what religious messages were in movies was a hot political discussion (Foster, 2002, p. 799). An American Christian lobbyist by the name of, Wilbur F. Crafts, unsuccessfully attempted to convince Congress to censor what he deemed immoral movies (Foster, 2002, p. 810).
Within the first few moments of the movie, institutional Christianity is depicted as a tool used for evil. Two men are peacefully digging in the ruins of a Mexican church, once the hand of one of the men touches the Spear of Destiny, he is instantly possessed and only death and destruction follow. This negative light on any religion on the silver screen has such a potential to either strengthen peoples negative or incorrect knowledge about religious ideas other than their own, or alienate and set back inter-religious dialogue and relations. Often, these religious themes are employed by creators purely as a vehicle for “provocative narrative content rather than for their theological or ethical messages” (Lyden & Mazur, 2015). Anton Karl Kozlovic (2003, p. 2) argues that the abundant resource of films should be utilised as film-faith dialogue and religious education tools. One gentleman, Conrad Oswalt, incorporated religious films in his lecture hall because the appeal was so high students’ engagement was phenomenal (Oswalt, 1998, p. 3). The fascination of this type of film could be linked with people who experience what they personally categorize as supernatural or mystical experiences. The cinematic experience of Constantine could act as a “church” experience, highlighting both positive and negative religious themes. David Graham (1997, p. 302) explains that “perhaps the cinema for many people is the focus of their religious experience”. With so much negativity in the media regarding traditional religion, post-modern religious ideas seem appealing to those not following a specific religion.
Having Christian themes as well as notions of witchcraft and pagan mythology suggests the writers were hinting at religious pluralism. This can leave the viewer with thoughts of where they fit on the religious spectrum. While there is compelling evidence that religious pluralism does not result in religious participation (Chaves & Gorski, 2001, p. 274), the individual viewer who has experienced some manner of spiritual event may relate to or adopt a point presented in the film, therefor becoming grafted to the religious ideas put forth. In the film, Constantine exorcises a “soldier demon” from a young woman, before he says his incantation he holds up to sun light metal symbols on a keychain one by one to see which the demon reacts to, they all relate to different schools of religious thought. This suggests that many religions are simultaneously occurring within the storyline. Viewers who categorize themselves as having experienced a mystical or supernatural moment in their modern lives could be drawn in by this religious overlay, it is not subtle but it is not explicitly telling the viewer that they must worship a specific deity. It can make the experience either more real for them or make their otherworldly experiences more trivial if the experiences have been upsetting. It would be as though the experience of watching this film could reconnect them with reality and remove negative light from their experience, bringing them back to their modern and logical world.
Constantine presents a typical Hollywood theme, the incorporation of the natural and supernatural, periodically without clear boundaries between the two (Rothman, 1966, p. 273). Examples of this in Constantine are the sudden physical presence of flying demons in the middle of the street at night, and when one of Constantine’s friends is attacked and killed by bees. The attack is orchestrated by a demon; however, viewers never see him. One standout scene where spiritual beings are somehow out in the open in modern Los Angeles is inside the nightclub of owner and witchdoctor Papa Midnite, who claims to be neutral on the good and evil scale. The club scene today is portrayed as a place of debauchery and sin, where people go to let loose, consume and devour, much like common depictions of evil creatures. This hell on earth aspect is the opposite of the representation of hell, which entry can only be gained by either dying or being submerged in water as water somehow conducts and bends the two realms together so a being can pass through. Hell is represented to be places on earth, in the movies case Los Angeles, with a post-nuclear appearance with demons roaming freely around the carnage.
Meanings can get lost when religious fact is mingled with pop-culture, Michael Budde (1998, p. 77) directs readers to an estimation that Americans “take in more than 16,000 commercial messages, symbols, and reminders” each day, and explains the numbers are similar in other Western countries. The vehicle of messages that is pop-culture transforms traditional culture in an unprecedented way. Most Americans, however, are familiar with biblical concepts. It is only in the last 50 years or so that prayer and bible readings have been removed from public schools in Australia (Buckingham, 2010) and America (Waggoner, 2012). Coinciding with this, during the mid to late 60’s, religious movies, which were rather dominate, essentially disappeared (Rothman, 1966, p. 272). Currently this is not the case, movies and television shows like Constantine, packed with demons and hunters, witches and supernatural creatures, gods or references to external and seemingly uncontrollable forces, either binding everything together or hell bent on destroying everything, are exceedingly popular in this current time.
Film is a powerful tool which can be used to spread propaganda as well as to teach, whether the information being presented is true is up to the viewer to decide. Pop-culture creates a new kind of religion as it occupies a different space, this film Constantine creates its own world for viewers to visit but also brings them into the current time and leaves them thinking about what they may already know about religion. While the divine is present in this film, traditional religious thought is replaced with a multifaceted post-modern religious idea where humans have more power, creatures straight from hell could be around any street corner and God is in much less control. The film itself creates a new idea of religion, a post-modern blend of traditional religious ideas and a modern spirituality where we, the humans, have more power over our situation than our ancestors did.