The Movies & Us: What the Academy Award Nominees for Best Picture Tell Us About Ourselves

Why do we enjoy talking about good films so much? Many reasons come to mind: because we like a good story, an engaging character, a trip to an exotic place that can take us out of ourselves for a few hours and give us an experience that stretches us. But movies also help us to recognize the problems our society faces and the benefits it enjoys, and they give us a platform to discuss these with friends, fellow workers and even strangers on a bus. The idea of film as a significant shaper of society has become commonplace in cultural discussion in the last half century.

This popular lecture, delivered annually for twenty-two years in a variety of church, school, and other public settings, seeks to understand this phenomenon and contribute to it. Dr. Trotter makes a case for the Academy Award nominees for best picture as both a barometer of, and an influence on, current moral and intellectual standards. He looks at not only common themes in the nominated films but also specific techniques used by some of the great artists of our day to express ideas and values we all need to be able to discuss.

Dr. Drew Trotter is the Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers. He was previously Executive Director and President of the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, VA. Drew has written on film and popular culture for over thirty years in such publications as Books & Culture, Christianity Today, and Critique, and in the field of Biblical studies published Interpreting the Epistle to the Hebrews (Baker, 1997).