Meaning and Art

In a 1999 interview with journalist Bill Moyers, George Lucas said that Star Wars is “a thin base for theology.” Lucas never intended for Star Wars to have a coherent theology; he didn’t want to evangelize anyone to some Force-based religion. Instead, he says, his intention was for Star Wars to have a theology in which anyone could see their beliefs represented. In another interview, George Lucas called himself a Buddhist Methodist.

I know people who won’t watch Star Wars because its theology is fuzzy. For them, the author’s intentions (to portray an ideal religion as a sentimental mix of ideas about compassion and working together against oppression) spoil the whole thing.

I want to provide another way of approaching art and authorial intent. I think Christians can get a lot of good from art even if the artist's intended message contradicts Christianity.

Here’s the assertion I want to defend:

 

In general, artists have control over what their art means, but their control is limited.

 

They can narrow the range of possible meanings by their creative choices, but they can’t keep their art from meaning some things they didn’t intend.

By art, I mean the whole range: written literature, movies, paintings, sculptures, music, architecture, you name it. I think the purpose of art is to depict some aspect of reality, and if an artist does a good job—if they depict reality as it really is—they’ll be depicting reality the way God sees it. Whether or not they mean to, they’ll communicate God’s truth.

If that assertion is true, it’s possible (in theory) that Star Wars communicates Christian ideas, even though the artist who made Star Wars didn’t want to communicate Christian ideas.

Is that assertion true? I think so. Here are two reasons.

1. Artists are limited by their skill level.

This is pretty obvious, right? 

I’m not good at drawing stuff. When I draw a human heart, it may or may not be recognizable. My low skill level creates ambiguity: you can’t be sure what I was trying to draw. What I draw might look like a stone, a muffin, a campfire, an alien—those are all possible interpretations of my bad drawing of a human heart.

My wife’s skill level is significantly higher. When she draws a human heart, it is recognizable. Her higher skill level creates less ambiguity. What she was trying to draw is more obvious.

An artist’s ability to say what they mean with their art depends (partly) on how good they are at their art.

2. Art is (somewhat) ambiguous.

Even if an artist says what they mean with their art, some other interpretations of their art are usually possible. You could argue that some art can only be interpreted in one way, but I think that’s rare. Most art can be interpreted in several different ways.

It’s pretty obvious that architecture can have multiple possible meanings, right? The J. Edgar Hoover building, for example, strikes me as a place where human souls go to die, a place where you don’t matter, where you’re a cog in a faceless machine. Maybe the architecture speaks to you of law and order, the inexorable strength of bureaucracy to maintain the status quo.

What the architecture of that building means is a little ambiguous; it could mean several things.

If artists are good at their art, there are some limits to what their art can mean. For example, there are some things the J. Edgar Hoover building’s architecture doesn’t mean. It doesn’t celebrate the beauty of nature. (It looks like it might actually be a celebration of pollution instead.)

Why does it matter whether art can be interpreted more than one way?

This takes me back to the beginning of this post. 

George Lucas made some art and called it Star Wars. It looks like he believes no one should claim to have knowledge of truth, and he has his characters preach that message.

But do the Star Wars movies actually communicate that message?

I would argue that they don’t. In fact, the films actually show that there is objective morality—there is real right and wrong, and you can know which side you’re on. You know who the heroes and villains are. Lucas’s story betrays him!

When it comes right down to it, I usually don’t care how an author interprets his/her own work. I take the work on its own terms, because what it means depends on what it says, not on what the author was trying to say. The author can make sure his/her art doesn’t mean some things, but they really can’t make sure their art only means one thing.

That means even an artist who's trying not to communicate Christian ideas might accidentally do it anyway.

PS: Scripture

I just said that I don’t really care how an author interprets his/her own work. There is one exception, one case in which the way the author interprets His own work is the only thing that really interests me. That’s the Bible. 

God is the smartest person who exists. His skill as an artist is unlimited, and the Bible is the result of His work (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21). 

I'm pretty confident, then, that (1) God's authorial intent will come through, because God is good at art, and that (2) what God intended to communicate is incredibly important.

Where there is ambiguity in the Bible, it’s because God intended ambiguity. 

When the Bible says, “He gives names to all of the stars” (Psa. 147:4), is that just poetic imagery? Do stars actually have names given by God? Are stars actual sentient in some way that we can’t observe, such that having names would actually matter to them? 

I don’t know. All three are possible interpretations. God didn’t narrow it down, and He could have if He had wanted to, so the ambiguity must be okay.