Messages, Meanings, Choices, and Propositions..but not really

Thursday's class was a lot more engaging to me, and it really made me want to assess why I want to be an animator. Mainly, I chose animation because I love beautiful aesthetics, diving into fantastical worlds, and telling stories. But more importantly, I want to use my love and passion of those for a purpose. No, I never set out to change the world, I don't think I could even if I wanted to. But I like message and purpose behind my work, I really do. I don't necessarily care if the viewer will get what I'm saying or what I was intending, just so long as it has some sort of meaning for them.

Now, that being said, I've equally done a lot of "experimental" work that is simply just exploration. Eventually, I'll find some sort of meaning or thought process I think I could shoot for, but at the same time, I like to keep media open. And I absolutely agree that there shouldn't be a blatant statement being bashed into a viewer's brain when they set eyes on work; but I still like meaningful stories behind media.

So, I might be setting myself up for some bashing here, but I do believe that there should some sort of meaning or a choice the audience can get out of a given media.

I think this statement I found on another blog can help sum this up:

"We can’t change other people. We have to want to change in order to do it. No matter how much we wish someone would act differently, it has to be his or her choice." -Tiny Buddha

*Disclaimer: I wouldn't recommend making Tiny Buddha's words a guideline for life, or becoming heavily involved with the site itself, but I thought the quote was something to think over, and found it kind of applied to my post.

This leads me to thoughts about the discussion we were having over the Christian films. I've always kind of wondered what would happen if one were to make a film that had Christian views and elements  at work in the film but didn't outwardly advertise it as such. This draws me to a book I read years ago but keep around because it's a favorite: Arena by Karen Hancock.

By reading the summary of the book, you'd never know it was a piece of Christian literature.
I found this on a book summary site; obviously, the author of the summary doesn't care for Christian literature (they are a humanist, that would be why), but I find it funny how they wound up stuck in finishing the book, because it's just that good.

"Cruci-fiction really ought to come with a warning label. It really chaps my hide when Christian propaganda masquerades as fiction, and only when it’s too late do you realize what you’re in for. If I’d been able to see the actual book beforehand, I might have known (perhaps the most surreal blurb in the history of jacket copy: “If you liked Pilgrim’s Progress and "The Matrix," then you’ll love Arena”), but all I had to go on was a brief plot summary that failed to mention the religious angle. And by the time I figured out what I was reading, I was trapped in the Arena myself." http://www.curledup.com/arenahan.htm

I feel like Arena really did propose a choice to the reader that could be applied to real life if they let it. While Hancock did really push the idea of Christianity in the end, never once was the word God or Jesus stated in the book, just the overall captured essence of a fatherly figure that loved and supported and was the only way to becoming free from the hellish Arena. In the end, it keeps the reader wondering what they would choose the entire time because following Elhanu (the overall God figure if you couldn't guess by just hearing the name) is not easy at all, in fact, it comes off as easier to get killed trying than to stay content living in the wicked cities of the Arena.

My hope is to one day make great media like that; not necessarily to the extreme Karen Hancock used in Arena when she employed "Christian propaganda", but be able to have a powerful moral meaning behind my work that is beneficial and identifiable--perhaps subtly--to the viewer. And even if the viewer doesn't get what I intended out of my work, if they just enjoyed it, well that's great too.