558 - Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories

Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories
By Bernard Brandon Scott
Minneapolis, Fortress, 1994. 297 pp. $17.00.

In this volume, Bernard Brandon Scott, Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at Phillips Seminary in Oklahoma, addresses the challenges the contemporary media pose for all institutions of postmodern society, including its religions and churches. The result is a helpful, thought-provoking book.

In our pluralistic age, says Scott, "conversation," is the appropriate model by which to conduct this investigation. "If the way we depict the world and humanity implicitly conjures up an image of God," Scott writes, "then the way movies depict the world, and humanity in the world, will mirror assumptions about God, whether present, absent, or even dead." In order to tease out and criticize those assumptions, Scott assays to set up conversations between biblical stories and numerous Hollywood movies, including those presenting such archetypal Ameri­can movie figures as John Wayne's "the Duke" and Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry." Scott is particularly adept at bringing Jesus' parables into conversation with the movies; in the parables we hear a fresh, engaging, questioning word that stimulates a response in us.

Bertram Atwood
Old Lyme, CT.