Things that can't be said about The Transformers (and some things that can be said about Philip K. Dick and Martin Luther)

I would love to tell you that The Transformers is thoroughly enjoyable. I'd love to tell you that it's moderately intelligent. I'd even love to tell you that the robots look cool. Sadly, I can't tell you any of those things. Transformers is largely dull, certainly overlong, and packed to the gills with dangling plotlines and disappearing characters. Most frustratingly, the robots—you know, the robots that are the point of the whole thing, the ones that are supposed to look like they turn into cars and the like—look more like piles of scrap metal than anthropomorphic vehicles. In short, by any standard, Transformers just isn't a very good movie.

Nevertheless, it did get me thinking. What follows isn't really about The Transformers film that was released this week—it's about the Transformers movie that could have been, and the religious themes it could have explored.

Philip K. Dick, who once wrote a novel inspired by his daughter's collection of Barbie accessories, would have loved the idea of Transformers. The theme of hiddenness would have thrilled him—aliens disguised as everyday objects appeared in "Colony," one of his better early stories. Things become even more interesting when you take into account the Zoroastrian setup, which loosely resembles that of his early novel The Cosmic Puppets: two armies of alien creatures waging a secret war over the fate of humankind. The idea that there is a hidden world, that the true meaning of our universe is obscured, that things are not as they seem—this has always struck me as one of the defining concepts of Christianity, if not of religion in general, and it is certainly key in Dick's theology. It's well-expressed in Martin Luther's theology of the cross, as explained in The Heidelberg Disputation:

The manifest and visible things of God are placed in opposition to the invisible, namely, his human nature, weakness, fool-ishness . . . Because men misused the knowledge of God through works, God wished again to be recognized in suffering, and to condemn wisdom concerning invisible things by means of wisdom concerning visible things, so that those who did not honor God as manifested in his works should honor him as he is hidden in his suffering. . . It is not sufficient for anyone, and it does him no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise, as Isa. [45:15] says, “Truly, thou art a God who hidest himself.”

The means of our salvation is the discovery of this hiddenness, looking beyond our temporal vision—"through a glass darkly"—to see cosmic reality "face to face." Dick expands this idea of a humble (humiliated) disguise for the omnipotent to include not only the crucifixion, but everything debased, right down to "the trash in the gutter." In a 1978 entry in the Exegesis, his theological journal, Dick writes that

“the true God mimics the universe, the very region he has invaded; he takes on the likeness of sticks & trees & cans in gutters—he presumes to be trash discarded, debris no longer noticed. Lurking, the true God literally ambushes reality and us as well.”

Dick’s God slowly infiltrates our world at its lowest level; in rubbish, pop songs, and pulp novels, he reaches out to save individuals without being detected by the forces that wish to destroy him.

Dick saw confirmation of this theory with the release of the film Star Wars in 1977, as he explains in a letter from that year:

“God speaks to us from popular novels and films; here is a supreme example. Names and creeds and doctrines and dogmas and formulations are not important; what is important is the living Word. And it is that which Lucas depicts and describes in ‘the force,’ as he calls it. And people everywhere are responding.”

Dick saw the hiddenness of God’s message in popular forms as a modern version of Christ’s hiddenness. Christ, incarnated as Jesus, hid his saving logos from the authorities both by incarnating himself at the lowest level of society and by hiding his message in the form of parables. Dick speculates in a 1975 Exegesis entry on the secret meanings of Christ’s teachings:

“Mark 4:11 says that the parables were intended to confuse and not inform everyone except the disciples, the latter understanding the esoteric meaning, the outsiders getting only the exoteric meaning which would fail to save them; this was especially true regarding parables about the approaching Kingdom of God. . . The written gospels record probably mostly the exoteric parable meanings, not the inner core.”

Jesus, in addition to hiding his true nature by appearing—even if it was only appearance—as a powerless person, rather than an infinitely powerful manifestation of God, hid his true message within parables. In the same entry, Dick further speculates that there may be a new manifestation of God that will eventually encompass not only the elect who choose to understand God’s message, but rather all creation. This New Covenant must begin somewhere, however, and Dick came to believe that it would begin, as it did in Jesus’ lifetime, at the lowest levels of society. Dick states that God

“is found at the outskirts or trash or bottom level of this world, as far from the imperial omphalos of power as possible. This would adequately account for the way Jesus appeared at the First Advent. But the Second Advent. . . will consist of a direct & successful attack on the inner fortress of imperial power itself.”

The teleology of God in the universe points to a time when God is no longer hidden, but rather makes his omnipotence wholly apparent in all levels of existence.

An intelligent approach to the Transformers would explore the idea of noble humility, or at least of unexpected importance, with a moderate degree of follow-through, and might even incorporate a tinge of this theology of obscurity. (Admittedly, Michael Bay's film tries to do this in a couple scenes, but the themes fall apart as soon as the plot does, which doesn't take long.) In an alternate world, through a glass or a scanner darkly, Philip K. Dick lived long enough to see the original Transformers, and saw some of the wonder that the toys' concept can reveal. In our world, though, we're stuck with Michael Bay.

{A portion of the above adapted from my book Pink Beams of Light From the God in the Gutter: The Science-Fictional Religion of Philip K. Dick.}

P.S. A brief caveat: putting the phrase "To punish and enslave" on the side of the Decepticon police car was admittedly inspired.

P.P.S. The best part of my Transformers theatergoing experience was the trailer for the yet-untitled J. J. Abrams project currently known by the fake title Cloverfield. It's a giant monster movie set in New York and told from the POV of a normal person with a video camera—it's the view from underneath Godzilla's feet. I don't like to jump to conclusions based on teasers, but speaking as a dedicated kaiju fan, this film has a very good shot at being the best English-language film in the genre. Just sayin'.

For some reason, the studio has been trying to keep the trailer off of the Internet (don't they realize people wanting to see a commercial for their product is a good thing?), but if you manage to find it somewhere, be sure to watch it—and mind the falling debris.

Comments

[Ragle Gumm]

Here's a cellphone capture of the trailer for Cloverfield.

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