Christian Faithfulness in an Age of 'Babylon'
When the world of film criticism looks less worldly than the church
As a cinephile and amateur filmmaker, I’m a sucker for a good “behind the scenes” movie about the inner workings of the entertainment industry. That’s why I was intrigued by the 2022 film Babylon (by La La Land and First Man director Damien Chazelle) from the outset. Indeed, reports indicated there were some stellar sequences that showcase the challenges faced by filmmakers as they transitioned from silent films to talkies.
I also learned that the film provides an unflinching look at the “unbridled decadence and depravity” of the 1920s (to quote the film’s IMDb page). Now, contrary to what some might believe, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a film addressing unscrupulous and immoral behavior. It is possible to deal with debauchery without being prurient. It is possible to deal with sexual themes without being gratuitous. It is possible to deal with human objectification without objectifying actors.
Shedding light on immorality is not necessarily the same as endorsing immorality. It all depends on how the light, so to speak, is shed.
In the Spotlight
The light was shed for me as I started to get a sense of the movie’s tone by seeing how the cast and crew described the proceedings. For example, before filming began, Margot Robbie asked herself questions like, “Are we going to get away with this?” and “Are we allowed to show that?” She’s also mentioned how the film is “like ‘La Dolce Vita’ and ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ had a baby,” and that “There’s a dizzying amount of debauchery.”
Brad Pitt has admitted that it “was a bit shocking, even for me. I went, ‘Wow, wow, we’re really doing this. . . . a lot of nudity, a lot of nudity.’”
Tom Cross, the film’s editor, has commented on editing a “very voyeuristic” sequence in which Robbie’s character is dancing.
Damien Chazelle himself has said that when you “pack 300 people, half of whom are naked, into a room with music blasting,” and “you’re in there all day long,” you get “drunk and high as hell on just what [is] going on.”
As these interviews kept popping up in my news feed, my sense of alarm grew. Of course, that was before I read any reviews of the movie itself.
(Half of) Everyone’s a Critic
As evidenced by Babylon’s Rotten Tomatoes page, critics were fairly evenly split in their opinions. Some loved it, others hated it. As someone who writes extensively on the proliferation of hypersexualized entertainment, I read through all the major publications to see how the mainstream media interpreted the film’s handling of its sexual themes in particular. Below is a sampling of my findings, many of which address the especially explicit depictions in the film’s 30-minute opening sequence.
The Daily Beast: “Babylon plunges into a Bacchanalian shindig full of drugs, booze, and enough out-in-the-open screwing to make Caligula jealous. . . . Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie)…[commands] the dance floor like the uninhibited embodiment of sex. . . . [The characters] are little more than two-dimensional clichés embellished with brash, licentious affections.”
Entertainment Weekly cheekily notes that the movie is “three turgid, clattering hours of nudity, depravity, and mislaid alligators, but also, you know, art.”
The Guardian says Babylon’s “raunchy sex” and “outrageous party scenes” include “overhead shots showing the ecstatically unclothed women crowd-surfing” in such a way that “[Baz] Luhrmann. . .should be getting a royalty cheque.”
Mashable: “Babylon is a ghastly, sticky, indulgent mess of a movie, slinging shock value in lieu of anything interesting to say. . . . It’s as if even as he aims to indict Hollywood for its excess, Chazelle can’t resist employing its temptations.”
Movieweb: “Babylon pours gasoline on a lewd fire of cinematic excess like a gleeful arsonist. . . . The opening orgy sets the tone for depravity. Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land) leaves little to the imagination.”
The Playlist: “[T]here’s a palpably sweaty desperation of the opening [scenes] here, which work extra hard to shock us with a full-scale assault of tits, piss, coke, jazz, dwarves, livestock, and more. The title [of the movie] seems deliberate; you get the sense that Chazelle not only devoured Kenneth Anger’s notorious ‘Hollywood Babylon’ but believed every word of it (ill-advised) and did his best to reanimate its scandalous scenes.”
For RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico complains, “I felt as manipulated and deluded as the outsiders in this film who are eaten up by the Hollywood machine. . . . [There’s a] difference between pulling back a curtain and simply rubbing your face in elephant shit.”
Slant: “[T]he lunatic monotony of the film’s first 30 minutes…[includes] a writhing wall-to-wall orgy in the mansion’s grand foyer…coming off like a pseud cineaste’s imitation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. . . . Chazelle appears to be saying. . .we might as well just wallow in the excess like a pig in filth.”
TIME: “We’re invited to party with [the characters] and look down on them at the same time — the best of both worlds. . . . Babylon is a manic sprawl that only pretends to celebrate cinema. It’s really about prurience, dumb sensation, self-congratulation and willful ignorance of history.”
Variety: “[The] thoroughly debauched bacchanalia. . .owes as much to ‘Caligula’ as it does to Scorsese. . . . [The film] celebrates the brazen sexuality of the era, both on-screen and between consenting adults.”
Keep in mind: these are the responses of critics not tethered to a Christian sexual ethic. They represent a certain level of moral disagreement (if not outright disgust) with Babylon’s onscreen exhibitionism.
No One’s a Critic?
Truth be told, there are scant few reviews of Babylon in Christian outlets. One can presume this is because the sheer amount of debauchery in the film makes it an unlikely product for legitimate consideration by professing Christians.1
Below is a sampling of the Christian commentary I found on the film, taken either from mainstream publications, prevalent podcasts, and/or film critics with a verifiable membership in an American film critic organization.2
In the LA Times, Justin Chang says the movie is a “wild and pungent cinematic bacchanal” that he endured—but also enjoyed. He later clarifies that he “found much of ‘Babylon’ mesmerizing.” In fact, he says, “coming from a filmmaker who until now has been precociously well-behaved, [‘Babylon’] can be a welcome blast of impudence and sometimes just a blast.”
Writing for Vox, Alissa Wilkinson doesn’t address the raunchiness of the film’s proceedings, except to ambiguously say, “Sex is everywhere.” She ends her review like this: “I cannot quite decide if Babylon is a good film. But I’m entranced, and moved, and frustrated, and transported — which is what Hollywood has built its business on accomplishing from the very beginning.”
To his credit, Josh Larsen (editor of ThinkChristian) points out how Babylon “[rubs] our noses in the exploitation that is also a part of Hollywood,” and that the film is a “red-band trailer for itself.” Yet, while he finds its “love letters to the movies” vibe somewhat “cloying and inert,” he still thinks it would “be too dismissive to call Babylon…a ‘giant swing at mediocrity’” because it “is better than that.”
In Christ and Pop Culture’s “Seeing and Believing” podcast, Kevin McLenithan and Sarah Welch-Larson agree that, from an artistic standpoint, Babylon doesn’t quite land. Their problems with the film relate more to how things tie together (or don’t) in the latter half, whereas they seem more fine with the first half.
In the Cinema Faith podcast, Jonathan Butrin and Tim Nelson agree that the film is “too much,” and Jonathan says, “I enjoyed the film, I enjoyed so many individual parts of it, I just don’t think it works as a whole.”
Artistry and Morality
In the book Movies, Morals, and Art, Harold C. Gardiner writes that “the total artistic judgment, the complete critical evaluation of a piece of art, includes a moral dimension” (p. 103). For the Christian especially (in theory, at least), a film should be evaluated both artistically and morally. To evaluate one while ignoring the other is to leave one’s job incomplete.
Now, on the one hand, I wish to echo Gardiner when he says, “I do not want to seem to have the answer all wrapped up in a neat formula” (p. 104). Exactly how a given film’s artistry and morality should be evaluated isn’t an exact science. There is ample room for debate on the matter.
On the other hand, one would expect that Christian critics should uphold a higher sexual ethic than their unbelieving counterparts. And if a considerable handful of mainstream publications pointedly note the “licentious” and “raunchy” and “ghastly” and “lewd” and “scandalous” and “thoroughly debauched” proceedings in Babylon—and at such a gargantuan level—it would stand to reason that Christian critics would demonstrate an even stronger moral response to such material.
And yet, that is not what has happened with Babylon. If anything, the film’s obscene immorality has been largely obfuscated or ignored by some of the most prominent Christian critics.
The issue wouldn’t be so bad if we were talking about a film where there was, say, one ambiguous scene or plot point that could be interpreted different ways. But what we are talking about here is an “assault of visual maximalism,” with—among many other things—“graphic simulated sexual acts” that are “pornographically explicit.” (And let’s be clear: the adjective “simulated” applied to many onscreen sex acts is often a dastardly misnomer.)
Films that utilize a porn aesthetic to such a great degree—and which are called out by secular sources for their prurience—shouldn’t be treated with greater moral laxity by those who profess adherence to the Lordship of Christ.
Beacons in the Darkness
Thankfully, there were at least two positive exceptions to the trend.
Striking a notably different tone for Catholic Review, film critic John Mulderig writes that, while the film has an “undeniable artistic intent,” nevertheless “its considerable aesthetic strong points are overshadowed by both overt content and an underlying tone that viewers of faith will feel compelled to reject.”
Furthermore, he says, “although it occupies only a small percentage of his vast canvas, Chazelle’s depiction of Tinseltown’s behind-the-scenes decadence takes needless explicitness to the point of obscenity. Combined with the nostalgic tone the narrative eventually adopts toward these freewheeling antics, such degrading sights bar endorsement of his movie for any age group.” After weighing the film’s artistic and moral qualities, Mulderig summarizes the film as being “unsuitable for all.”
And possibly the most clear and explicit (so to speak) denunciation of Babylon from a Christian perspective comes from film critic Jeff Huston:
Babylon’s true raison d’être is to revel in excesses both cinematic and carnal, and in equal measure. . . . [T]he auteurist indulgence of Babylon. . .would make Quentin Tarantino blanch. . . .
[T]he decadent opening orgy party. . .makes the masked ball in Eyes Wide Shut look chaste by comparison. The sea of bacchanalia is akin to the kind that likely led to the smiting of Sodom and Gomorrah.
(It’s inexplicable how this received an R rating over an NC-17, except to say that the MPA apparently cuts slack for Hollywood studios, insiders and their big budget boondoggles in a way that it doesn’t for abrasive renegades like Andrew Dominick and his controversial Marilyn Monroe portrait Blonde.)
. . . . The all-star cast and a thousand extras simply pimp themselves out for. . .what, exactly? Babylon, indeed.
These two men give a stellar example of what Christian faithfulness looks like—clear, careful, and courageous. In other words, being true critics of the art form, with a film’s artistry and morality taken into consideration.
Lights Under Bushels
Even though I’ve written some pointed critiques here, I would not presume to know the state of any of the above critics’ hearts. I most certainly will not project motives onto their written works based on my own limited perspective.
Nevertheless, motives are not the only factors at play. In fact, we don’t need to know motives to condemn certain actions. The obvious disparity between the “worldly” reviews of Babylon and many “Christian” reviews of Babylon is condemning in and of itself.
It could be argued, I suppose, that the reason for this disparity is that “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure” (Titus 1:15). In other words, a Christian film critic might be able to notice nuggets of truth in places indiscernible to unbelievers.
But I don’t buy that excuse. To the pure, pornographic material is still impure. “Pure porn” is an oxymoron. A Christian finding and sharing “the gospel according to a porn aesthetic” nuggets of truth has wandered beyond the bounds of orthopraxy.
I am reminded of the time when the Apostle Paul condemned a specific form of immorality based purely on hearsay, because immorality is immorality, whether you see it with your own eyes or not. In his case, the immorality was “of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans” (1 Corinthians 5:1). He then contrasted the Corinthian church’s moral lenience with how they should have responded: “And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn?” (v. 2).
The onscreen immorality of Babylon seems largely tolerated by Christian film critics—but it’s a form of immorality less tolerated even among pagans. Ought not the Christian response be one of mourning rather than indifference and tolerance—regardless of what Amazing Moral Point might have been lost along the way?3
To be sure, determining what constitutes as “gratuitous” and “unnecessary” is not always clear—not even among faithful Christians. But if a professing follower of Christ waffles on making a moral judgment of sexual exhibitionism (like that included in portions of Babylon), he’s not giving evidence of being a faithful ambassador for Christ’s heavenly kingdom. Rather, he’s giving the appearance, if not the reality, of going native—and in a way that not even the natives are comfortable with.
Of course, film content review sites (both Christian and secular) reviewed the film, but that’s what anyone would expect.
There is more commentary on Babylon in the Christian blogosphere (including reviews that are quite positive, fairly positive, and adamantly negative), and on Christian content review sites (like MovieGuide and PluggedIn). For my purposes here, I limited the examples above to Christian film critics (and not simply bloggers) whose reviews are not predominantly content-based.
As I have written elsewhere, “A Christian can—and should—condemn pornographic material without having to engage each instance on a case-by-case basis.” One need not view pornographic content before judging it as evil.