Gonzaga event explores the spiritual in secular film age, but even Barbie ponders life’s meaning

If some moviegoers think Hollywood has abandoned faith and spiritual themes, that’s all set for debate next week in a public series at Gonzaga University.

Gonzaga’s Faith & Reason Institute hosts its Faith, Film, Philosophy 2024 series on: “Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age.” Free nightly sessions begin at 7 p.m. Monday and run through Friday, including panels and talks among scholars and film critics.

Modern movies do tackle such themes, but often more subtly than in that era of “The Ten Commandments.”

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, a free showing of “Barbie” is scheduled in the Hemmingson Center’s theater, with a panel discussion to follow. Among pink plastic , Barbie has an existential crisis and travels to the human world to understand purpose and the meaning of life.

“My understanding is the filmmakers made ‘Barbie’ with the approval of Mattel, the owner of the Barbie doll,” said David Calhoun, director of Gonzaga’s Faith & Reason Institute. “A lot of people just expected, OK, what that means is basically a long feature advertisement for how wonderful Barbies are.”

There’s a moment in the film where Barbie asks about death, Calhoun added, “which is the strangest, most unexpected thing that you might associate with Barbies and fun, pink, joy, happiness. The film surprisingly takes a turn into the question of meaning, purpose and identity. Of course, it does this in a creative and fun way.”

“Barbie” panelists include Danielle Layne, of GU philosophy; Joseph Mudd, of GU religious studies; Matt Rindge, of GU religious studies and Mary Pat Treuthart, GU law emeritus. They’re expected to take questions afterward.

Other than Tuesday’s “Barbie” session, all other events in the series are scheduled in the Jepson Center Wolff Auditorium, also open to the public. Additional topics take deep dives into the relationship between movies and faith or spiritual significance.

“Faith, Film, Philosophy goes back about 15 years with some missed years due to COVID, but we started last year in really beefing up the public-facing components of the series,” Calhoun said.

Monday kicks it off with the 7 p.m. “I See Dead People: Spiritual Quests in the Films of M. Night Shyamalan,” led by Brian Clayton, Gonzaga University philosophy emeritus professor. Shyamalan’s early films from “Wide Awake” to “Lady in the Water” carry spiritual themes such as faith, grace and hope. He rose to fame with “The Sixth Sense.”

Shyamalan’s films often are perceived as thrillers with a twist, but his popular films often raise questions of a supernatural agency in the form of fate or even providence, said the event poster. Clayton also plans to discuss Shyamalan’s films such as “The Happening,” where spiritual themes seem notably absent.

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, a student panel plans to discuss the overview: “Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age,” against four film topics.

It has Caleb McGever (Whitworth), on “John Wick and Confession: Augustine’s Guide to the Movies”; Connor Mahoney (GU), “The Loss of Logos: an Analysis of Planet of the Apes”; Anna Nowland (GU), “Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring: From Secular Hedonism to Spiritual Interiority”; and Holden Smith (GU), “The Radical Charity of Babette’s Feast.”

Baylor University expert Michael Foley is set for 7 p.m. Thursday’s “A Secular Stage: Religion through the Lens of Hollywood.”

“The thorny relationship between Divine Revelation and the motion picture industry runs deeper than an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood or a current shortage of Christian screenwriters,” the program said. Foley plans to give a history of the tension between Christianity and the modern entertainment industry, along with recent developments.

Calhoun said Foley’s talk provides a broader picture regarding faith in films across the decades.

“He’s going to be talking about the changing way that Hollywood has treated religion over the last century, so he’s going to take a much bigger view of film, religion and Hollywood.”

The last 7 p.m. Friday event covers “The Displacement of the Sacred in Modern Film: Film Nihilism from Nietzsche and Heidegger to Barbie and Deadpool,” with Duane Armitage, a University of Scranton philosophy professor.

Nihilism has a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher who questioned the basis of good and evil, arguing that science and the emerging secular world were leading to the death of Christianity. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) as a German philosopher generally believed the meaning of life is to live authentically, using your own terms and not the expectations of others.

Armitage plans to tackle contemporary popular films and “an eclipse of the sacred” that reflects the secularism of the wider culture.

“Contemporary films such as ‘Barbie’ and ‘Deadpool’ illustrate aspects of Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s diagnoses,” and resort to imaginary worlds as an alternative to the metaphysical, Armitage wrote.

“Through Nietzsche and Heidegger, I argue that these elements represent distortions of metaphysics and morality that can only be grounded and made sense of in Christianity.”

For more information on the series, go online to gonzaga.edu/ffp2024.