Today I read a news article which argues that the box office results of two upcoming high-profile films, Brokeback Mountain and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, will be an excellent barometer of America's current political and cultural direction.
The two movies could not be more different: Brokeback Mountain is a love story involving gay cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, while Narnia is a celluloid adaptation of C.S. Lewis's Christian-allegory fantasy novel. Certainly each film has its core audience, but the article posits that if either or both break into the mainstream, it will greatly indicate America's preference regarding public expressions of Christianity and/or homosexuality.
Is this an accurate assessment? And if so, how will these films likely fare?
First of all, I strongly believe that Narnia will top the charts in the $300 million range, while Brokeback will greatly flop. Not only are Americans far more Christian (about 80% of the population) than gay (perhaps 3%), but as I have discussed before, they overwhelmingly prefer family-friendly movies over edgy leftist films. Furthermore, Narnia's PG rating appeals to kids (something Brokeback's R does not), while its swords-and-sorcery setting will draw many Lord Of The Rings fans who savor such content regardless of religious underpinnings.
This same crowd, though, will likely inflate Narnia's box office take to such a degree that the final dollar amount probably won't be a truly exact measure of the acceptance of public-sphere Christianity. But regardless of how much overstatement it contains, many more Americans will almost certainly prefer Narnia over Brokeback, and Hollywood should well take that as a broad indication of the greater moviegoing public's general tastes.
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