Learning Communication from the Transformers

1 comments | Aug 24, 06:13 PM | best-of-earl | by Earl Creps

A few nights ago I attended a preview showing of the Transformers movie at the invitation of a group of students from our seminary.

Having grown up watching Superman in black and white I was almost totally ignorant of the robot-as-Swiss-Army-knife genre. But the mostly twenty and thirty-something crowd that packed the darkness around me did have this memory. So I started interviewing Ryan and Joel, the two students seated on either side of those clever, drink-holding armrests that locked me into a reclining seat.

My initial question was how eight of us had ended up attending a screening that was not advertised. In response, Ryan described how he discovered the preview on Yahoo Movies (which I have never used) and quickly spread the good news to his peers who purchased tickets online and then invited me to go. (I still owe Jordan $6.75.) So there it was, another set of lesson in culture from my young mentors…

1. Buzz marketing really works when the product is highly valued

2. Film is the grammar, the default language, of younger adults

3. The internet is a cultural symbol; to find something exclusively there raises its value

4. The purpose of a preview is to get people to the premiere, further accelerating #1. The movie made one million dollars an hour on its first day.

And then the movie started. For two hours and twenty-four minutes I watched the emotions of the crowd rise and fall like waves. They laughed, gasped, shouted, applauded, went silent, and stood up and cheered at the end.

I get it—sort of. The film is big fun.

But there was something else going on. Several hundred people sitting in rows not unlike pews had crossed a line into another world for a while. Part of this effect doubtless stemmed from the way the film recalled their childhood devotion to Transformer comics, toys, television, etc. Now, with the help of mega-millions of dollars in CGI, alien robots on screen transformed them by inviting the audience to become temporary citizens of an alternative reality.

Driving home from the theater I reflected on how seldom preaching (including my own) has this effect on people. Announcing the arrival of the Kingdom of God offers a new reality like no other, yet I find that a lot of the speaking I hear takes the form of lists of ideas about God, solutions for the problems in my life, or really long stories.

All of these are fine, and all have their place, but none of them makes me feel like the people in that theater felt.

I used to think that making my communication more visual (e.g., slides, clips) was the answer given the “postmodern” priority which young adults place on media. I was wrong. It’s that feeling of being gripped by something transcendent, something outside yourself that moves people. The visual is mainly present by coincidence.

Perhaps this explains why preachers using video clips are delivering messages all over the country with no more effect than their pre-video sermons.

I have to believe that hearing Jesus speak must have touched people in this transcendent way. He perplexed them by using parables that almost no one could understand. He baffled them by posing questions instead of answers. He amazed them with signs and wonders. Everything he did suggested the in-breaking of a reality beyond anything we have experienced. His crucifixion and resurrection were the ultimate statement of what was possible in this new world.

I watched the theater audience being caught up in something powerful, but temporary, during the preview. And I read in the New Testament about how Jesus moved people in inexplicable ways.

What would it take to preach the good news in this way today?