Fear Plus Persuasion
Allow me to ruin the classic film "Footloose" for you
Before Tuesday night, I had never seen the film Footloose[1]. I know, I know. It boggles the mind. Steph captured the absurdity of the situation moments before we pressed play, “How have you not seen this? It has everything you’re into: dancing and preaching and politics.”
It’s true. Plus Kevin Bacon. And an amazing soundtrack. It truly has everything.
Needless to say, I loved it. Two thumbs up. I concur with the 71% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes, as opposed to the 55% the critics gave it. C’mon critics.
But this is not a movie review—I’ve always known I’d be bad at writing movie reviews because I am not nearly critical enough. I go into a movie wanting to be won over. Most of the time I am.
Rather (and here comes the killjoy), the thing that struck me most about Footloose—even more than the music and the dancing and the hairstyles—was how little has changed in the exactly 40 years since the film was released. While conservative preachers like the Rev. Shaw Moore, portrayed brilliantly by John Lithgow, are not railing against dancing so much (as far as I’m aware), the spirit of fear that motivates his and the townspeople’s actions is very much still in play.
A quick synopsis is necessary here: five years before the events of the movie, there was a horrific car crash in which, among others, Rev. Moore’s son died. Apparently, there was drinking and dancing involved. So, in an effort to prevent such a tragedy from happening again, Moore convinces the town to pass laws banning drugs, alcohol, and dancing. Then, Ren (Kevin Bacon) moves to the small town from Chicago, makes some friends, falls for Rev. Moore’s rebellious daughter, dances with his car, plays chicken on a tractor, dances some more, and makes a compelling speech to the town council advocating for a dance to be held. Then, of course, more dancing. Kick off your Sunday shoes, indeed.
If it is not abundantly clear, I’m most interested in what we don’t see, in the event that leads to the town adopting such strict laws. What would compel a community full of seemingly reasonable people in the year 1984 to ban dancing? Fear. Well, and compelling oratory—we are told, and shown, several times throughout the film that Rev. Moore is a persuasive preacher (though his people skills leave something to be desired according to his wife).
So, seen through this lens, you could say that fear plus persuasion equals repression, a loss of freedom. There’s a scene in the film in which the townspeople storm the library, literally burning books. That felt familiar not just in light of contemporary book-banning initiatives, but it also called to mind a lost memory—a Christian youth conference I attended sometime in the late 1990s where we were encouraged to destroy our secular CDs. I’m ashamed to say, I did. My collection wasn’t particularly extensive then, but wrapped up in the moment—fear plus persuasion—I destroyed what few I had.
Fear plus persuasion. It's a powerful weapon that Trump wields better than most. It works because, as moral sentimentalists know, we make decisions primarily based on our feelings and we rationalize them later. In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt (who, I know, I bring up a lot), describes the metaphor of the elephant and the rider to explain how people make moral decisions. In short, we are motivated by our emotions (the elephant) and we later try to justify our decisions using reason (the rider). Fear plus persuasion moves the elephant every time.
While much of my experience of Christianity when I was young was marked by this formula, I’ve known better versions, too. I’ve been part of churches and communities that play to different emotions, that call on love and empathy and care to motivate parishioners. While these, I believe, are truer to the heart of Christianity, they are not nearly as motivational as fear. I’ve long thought that the reason why, for a while, mainline denominations were shrinking while evangelical churches grew, was precisely because they appealed to different emotions. There’s nothing like the fear of hell to put people in pews.
But fear plus persuasion is like going for cheap laughs. The other night, my family played the game “Cards Against Humanity” (we have the family version; it’s PG as opposed to R). If you’re unfamiliar with the game, the premise is simple: you get a black card with a fill-in-the-blank, like “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and there is _______.” Then, every other player selects an answer from their white cards, some of which are simply silly, others are nonsequiturs, and others are straight-up potty humor. Then, the person with the black card chooses a winner. When you’re playing with a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old, the strategy is easy—you pick potty humor every time. In the above example, “a steaming pile of poop” would win, hands down. You go for the cheap laugh.
That’s fear plus persuasion. It’s a simple strategy, and it never fails. All we can do is be on the lookout for it. Ask ourselves, what is motivating this belief or decision? And remember what follows the equal sign in this equation—fear plus persuasion equals a loss of freedom, or, you know, no dancing.
[1] The 1984 version. Until moments ago, I didn’t realize that there was a remake in 2011 starring Dennis Quaid. I’ll have to watch it and get back to you.