The Ark of the Cinemate

While watching the movie King David, I was surprised to the find the audience greet the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant with hoots, laughter, and cries of 'They're using old stuff." It was puzzling, because the Ark was, by the standards of Biblical plot devices, a good one, and the moment not intended as comic or ironic. One filmgoer behind me explained to a befuddled compatriot, 'That's from Raiders of the Lost Ark, you dodo."

The incident encapsulates a moment of cultural change. For those who read, the Ark of the Covenant derives from Exodus, where its description is quite specific. In Exodus 25, the Lord tells Moses to build an ark "after [the] pattern which was shewed thee on the mount." Indeed, the ark is described in sufficient detail for both Steven Spielberg and Bruce Beresford to have depicted it with great accuracy in their respective movies. Maybe it even is the same ark, since both Raiders and King David were made by Paramount.

What is remarkable is that many filmgoers do not see the Ark as a fundamental part of their religious and cultural heritage but rather as a prop that has moved from one movie into another. The audience's point of reference is not the Pentateuch but a Spielberg megahit. The Ark of the Covenant is in Raiders of the Lost Ark and King David because it is in the Bible; but audiences think that it is in King David because it was in Raiders. For them it is not a cinematic use of the Judeo-Christian tradition but an incident of studio economy caught by shrewd moviegoers.

George Steiner asserts that the future belongs to the numerate - those who understand numbers, cash flow, percentages, computers, spread sheets. But it is arguable that the present, at least, belongs to the visually literate - the cinemate. Though Time magazine used the term in the Sixties, and...