Harold Crick is ... Jesus?

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September 04, 2007

Harold Crick is ... Jesus?

I liked Stranger than Fiction. I think it was one of the few movies in the last year I watched twice. And I would watch it again. I liked the story, thought the cast was great, and even appreciated some of the implicit Christological references within the movie.

I also generally agree with the more recent push within evangelicalism towards a broader interaction with American culture, whether popular or otherwise. Yah, cultural engagement!

But something about this article makes me uneasy. Baker and Downing draw out one parallel after another between Crick and Jesus, arguing that the movie is making a "profoundly theological" point:

In The Mind of the Maker, [Dorothy] Sayers suggests that the relationship between the writer's idea and its fulfillment in the written word parallels the relationship between Creator God and the incarnated Christ. A quick read through the Stranger Than Fiction screenplay reveals that the writer, Zach Helm, may have intended just such a connection. Perturbed over being misunderstood, a flustered Harold says to a woman at a bus stop, "I … No. I'm … [Christ]" (the brackets indicate that the word is to be said under his breath). Reminiscent of Jesus' prayer of angst in the garden of Gethsemane, Harold pleads with Kay to spare his life. But Professor Hilbert, having read Kay's first draft, tells Harold that the story "is a masterpiece. You have to die." With agony, Harold responds, "You're asking me to knowingly face my death?" The answer, of course, is yes.

Not only is Crick an in-depth Christ figure, but the movie teaches us a great moral truth:

[T]hough we cannot know for certain how or when we will die, we can live our lives embedded in time, making the most out of the time embedded in us. As exhorted by the one who is himself the fulfillment of all time, we can love our neighbors as ourselves.

Like I said, I agree there are a few references to Christ - the willing near-death/semi-resurrection theme being the most obvious one. I'm not sure that it is as well thought out as Baker and Downing make it to be. Was Zach Helm consciously thinking of Crick as "a representative of divine life"? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose the apple could be a reference to Christ as the Second Adam, but it could also be a reference to The Beatles or (more probably) to René Magritte's The Son of Man.

Most of my unease is probably not so much from the Books & Culture article as it is frustration with a general overeagerness I keep seeing to find redemption themes underneath every cultural pebble. Pastors in churches with a special emphasis on staying relevant and ministering to a youth culture seem particularly prone to this. Yes, America is some sort of post-Christian culture and thus various forms of the creation/fall/redemption story will be found all over the place. But that doesn't mean you can or should pull the gospel out of SpongeBob or the Transformers. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is an inverted Christ-figure (virgin birth, death, descent into hell, resurrection), but that doesn't mean he should be the point of your sermon. Christ should.

Christians should interact with culture. They should highlight cultural themes, like those found in Stranger than Fiction, that echo an underlying desire for redemption. At a certain point, though, that interaction should be at least a little critical. The Church is to be a prophet to culture, not a fan-boy of it.

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