A Challenge to the Hallmark Channel
The romance movies aired endlessly on the Hallmark channel, cookie cutter though they be, have a fanatically loyal following. They are women’s drug of choice, just as DUIT[1] is men’s endless obsession. And to be fair, it must be a profitable product, and far more uplifting than most of the unwatchable drivel on networks. Even though the plots are cut out with a cookie cutter, it is a clean cookie cutter.
What is the challenge? Simply this: in life, only love that matures endures past the initial rush. C. S. Lewis put it this way [2]
I think the thrill of the Pagan stories and of romance may be due to the fact that they are mere beginnings—the first, faint whisper of the wind from beyond the world—while Christianity is the thing itself: and no thing, when you have really started on it, can have for you then and there just the same thrill as the first hint. For example, the experience of being married and bringing up a family cannot have the old bittersweet of first falling in love. But it is futile (and, I think, wicked) to go on trying to get the old thrill again: you must go forward and not backward. Any real advance will in its turn be ushered in by a new thrill, different from the old: doomed in its turn to disappear and to become in its turn a temptation to retrogression. Delight is a bell that rings as you set your foot on the first step of a new flight of stairs leading upwards. Once you have started climbing you will notice only the hard work: it is when you have reached the landing and catch sight of the new stair that you may expect the bell again. This is only an idea, and may be all rot: but it seems to fit in pretty well with the general law (thrills also must die to live) of autumn & spring, sleep and waking, death and resurrection, and “Whosoever loseth his life, shall save it.”
After the wedding comes a life of growth and change, or else failure. Positive dramatizations of marriage at midlife have typically focused on the children, in sitcoms such as Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, or The Brady Bunch. There are occasional shows that perhaps show the struggles of a married couple at midlife, and show the moral growth and maturing love that enables them to remain together. But they are few, and often hard to watch. Surely the creative genius of the producers and writers of the Hallmark channel can rise to the challenge of dramatizing struggle and growth in an appealing, compelling way.
Old age brings another type of challenge, as those who have matured in love deal with the gradual decay and failure of their bodies. Transcendent love emerges - the transformation of human devotion to focus on heavenly objectives and beings. The care and tenderness between those who have lived and loved for forty or fifty years is obvious to anyone who spends a few minutes in their presence. The outworking of all that God has done in their hearts over the years makes them almost a different kind of person. When the body fails, the soul is released. Sitting by the bed of affliction of such a saint, perhaps in hospice care, the Presence of God overwhelms the visitor, and the quality of His supernatural divine love is sensed. The Hallmark challenge is to convey this essence via movie and television. There is no cookie cutter for God’s activity in our lives.
[1] DUIT = driving under the influence of testosterone
[2] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 by C. S. Lewis
