“reborn..together”

Or: Advice to church leaders from AMC.

I am enjoying getting back to the movie theater again, but I am definitely not enjoying Nicole Kidman’s ads for AMC to which I’m subjected at every showing. I mean, they don’t make we want to jump up and scream, but I do find her extremely annoying and it’s such pretentious pap. But it does give me blogfodder, so there’s that.

The ad? A plea for people to come back to the movie theater. As far as I know it’s mainly being shown in movie theaters, so ..what’s the point? Sort of like advertising for RCIA classes only in the context of Mass.

Which is a valuable segue, since (of course) I’m going to make some…connections here.

I’ll post the video of the ad at the end, but here’s the text:

We’ve come to this place for magic

We come to AMC theaters, to laugh, to cry, to care.

Because we need that – all of us – that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim

And we go somewhere we’ve never been before. Not just entertained, but somehow reborn – together.

Dazzling images on a huge silver screen. Sound that I can feel. Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this

Our heroes feel like the best part of us and stories feel perfect and powerful because here……..they are.

AMC theaters. We make movies better.

Okay, Nicole. Calm down.

Of course, we are awash in the overblown value given to things of this world. It’s even more hilariously pretentious on screen than the script can convey, believe it or not. But that’s just marketing 101, isn’t it?

Well, she is Catholic.

I’m intrigued, though, by the spiritual, even religious undertones here. It’s part of what I do anyway, all the time: scavenging the culture for hints of the spiritual longing that’s at the heart of all human life and really, every one of our choices.

The scavenging has not been difficult over the past few years, as the results of the 2016 presidential election sent many into startling existential tailspins and then during these Covid-years when the very human desire to do something, to help, to be in community with others has been grabbed, developed, and wielded with deeply satisfied relish, and even – as is to be expected – exploited.

And now, in slow, gradual recovery, here we are again. The understanding of how deeply we are made for community bursts forth in the elation about being able to gather again, to be free to celebrate, to see each other face-to-face.

The AMC spot is cynically understanding of all of this, given that the ad exists solely to get us back spending money again.

But look at that text. It addresses the desire to begin again, to start over – even completely. To be reborn! Together! It admits the reality of pain and tells us that in the theater, enveloped by the experience of film, that pain can be transformed and even “feel good.” We are a part of “perfect and powerful” stories.

New life – reborn in community – O happy fault – He spoke to them in parables

Yes, this is what marketing does. But that doesn’t mean that the need the marketing discerns and exploits isn’t real.