The Modern Pulpit — Hollywood

The Craft

Every trick of the trade is an old spiritual technique with the serial numbers filed off.

Reels

A reel is a strip of still images wound tight and spun so fast the eye can no longer tell one frame from the next. That blur is the trick. Each study here slows the reel down, stops it on a single frame, and holds it still long enough to ask the one thing the whole machine is built to keep you from asking: what is really on it?

• 01 The Muse A spirit behind the arts — who the nine were, and where her name still hides. 1 John 4:1; 1 Cor 10:20 →
• 02 The Muse on the Screen Acting as channeling — the emptied vessel and the voice that fills it. Matt 23:27; Acts 16:16 →
• 03 Glamour Enchantment and the image machine — the spell that makes the false look true. 1 Sam 16:7; Prov 31:30 →
• 04 The Spell of the Script Storytelling as incantation — a tongue that shapes what you believe. Prov 18:21; Ps 101:3 →
• 05 The Oracle Delphi to the red carpet — the medium as performer, the performer as medium. Acts 16:16; Deut 18 →
• 06 The Bargain The price of the gift — the sold soul behind the crossroads legend. Mark 8:36 →
• 07 Amusement The switched-off mind — a house of distraction is a door left open. Come out. 1 John 4:1; Rom 12:2 →
• 08 Symbol Library The same signs, in film after film, generation after generation →