Abstract
William D. Romanoswki,
Reforming Hollywood: How American Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies
, Oxford University Press: New York, 2012; 304 pp.: 9780195387841, £18.99/US$29.95 (hbk)
The title of William D. Romanowski's book, Reforming Hollywood: How American Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies, may challenge people's perception of this particular relationship, a relationship which has not usually been portrayed as one in which Protestants sought or promoted freedom. As Romanowski puts it in the Preface, ‘this book tells an altogether different story’ (p. xii). In a detailed, chronological narrative that ‘introduces extensive archival research, much of it based on previously unexamined primary material’, he demonstrates that this relationship is both long and complex; furthermore, to characterize it as one driven by the desire to censor films is a serious misapprehension, which fails to appreciate the importance American Protestants attached to freedom of speech (p. xiii). In fact Romanoswki shows that many Protestants were keen to avoid censorship precisely because freedom of speech was a prized part of their religious heritage. Romanowski does not deny that there were and are Protestants who advocate censorship on moral grounds but seeks to readress the way in which this ‘caricature’ has come to predominate in American film history. He goes so far as to say: ‘They saw legal censorship as unAmerican, undemocratic, impractical, unnecessary, and prone to political graft and corruption’ (p. 6).
He identifies two broad ‘motifs’, ‘pietist’ and ‘structural’, within the different ways in which American Protestantism sought to deal with film as a new popular visual artistic format in which some saw much potential for good (p. 9). The former, broadly coming from a theologically conservative position understood the reform of social problems to come from the reform of the individual; the latter, from a broadly liberal theological position, emphasized the need for structural and organizational change and improvement.
For a reader with little experience of Hollywood film the extensive description of the people, groups and committees may be somewhat overwhelming. For those with an interest in popular culture and its relationship with Christianity, in this instance American Protestantism, Romanowski's book is illuminating. It describes and illustrates the different personalities, interest groups, social perspectives, denominational and economic pressures which influenced this relationship and the problems that arose in trying to achieve and maintain influence with the film industry. The central tensions which Romanowski identifies for American Protestants in their relationship with the Hollywood film industry are ones which remain relevant for today, not just in relation to Hollywood and film, nor indeed for American Protestants, but for Christians in general as they seek to understand, relate to and even influence popular culture. How are individual freedom and community welfare to be protected and promoted alongside each other? In relation to popular culture in a pluralist society are there moral standards which can be set? Who sets them? By what criteria? How could or should Christians engage in dialogue with popular culture at the levels of creation, production, distribution and critique?