Greta Gerwig’s Aslan And The Coming Faith-Based ‘Gender Culture War’
(ANALYSIS) The internet broke with the announcement that the highly-anticipated Greta Gerwig-directed Netflix adaptation of "“The Chronicles of Narnia” was eyeing Meryl Streep for the role of Aslan. Many Christians were up in arms. Aslan is, in the beloved C.S. Lewis book series, a representation of God. particularly in relation to Jesus. Gender-swapping his character not only smacks of unfaithfulness to the source material but, in this case, sacrilege.
Whether or not this gender swap actually happens in the final film, this should not at all be a surprise. Hollywood is moving toward a full-scale change in how it treats faith that looks little like previous eras. There’s a new holy culture war taking over our screens. Instead of elevating secularism over faith,
Hollywood has adopted faith as good when it is driven by women, but religion as bad when it is driven by men. This change is putting it on a collision course with a growing alternative media, which is increasingly pro-men and pro-religion, setting the stage for a new, specifically religious and gender-coded culture war.
First, it’s fairly obvious watching many of the recent films that have come out of Hollywood that it’s heavily shifting its emphasis toward a view of spirituality that is positive if it is female-centric. So many recent films have shown this pattern. Amazon’s “Hazbin Hotel” rewrites Christianity so the angels are the sexist bad guys and Satan’s daughter is good. “Nosferatu” portrays the woman as more spiritually attuned than her male counterparts and the only one who can stop evil. "Presence" (as I wrote about before) presents women as the most spiritually astute brings, downplaying the relationship the religious have with God compared to the natural giftings of the female psychic.
“Death of a Unicorn” portrays the teenage daughter listening to her gut as the wise one over her dad, while rich people using reason and logic. And when she researches unicorns, she highlights that the "true" myth likely predated Christianity before the church co-opted it as a metaphor for Christ. "Sinners" (as I also wrote about before) portrays Annie and her folk spirituality as wiser and more powerful in fighting the vampires than Christianity, which is both ineffective and oppressive. The latest episodes of “Andor” have reintroduced the force with the female characters shown to have greater openness and sensitivity to it. Upcoming films like “Honey, Don’t” only give good reason to believe this trend will continue.
As I’ve written before, Hollywood has long had a bias toward the moral superiority of women (particularly single women) even as it's given greater representation to men. Hollywood has long portrayed the women in movies as the moral conscience of the male hero, from Pepper Potts in “Iron Man” to Chani in "Dune: Part Two.” This is likely in large part because Hollywood is largely politically left-leaning and single women are the most reliable Democratic voting bloc.
What’s different now is that the movies are elevating spirituality over secularism. Instead of secularism being good and faith being bad, or the secular woman being wiser than the secular man, women are now “spiritual,” while men are “religious.” Note the difference. It’s also not just positive when women are running the spiritual realm. This is the type of spirituality women gravitate toward. Women tend to want a faith that is more based in intuition and feeling, whereas men like a faith built on reason and structure. This is reflected, as Simon Baron-Cohen writes in "The Essential Difference," the general differences in men’s and women’s brains when it comes to "empathy" vs. "systems.”
This should not surprising given changing demographics. Despite what atheists thought would happen at the beginning of the millennium, religion has not been replaced with secularism. There are more people today who believe in life after death than there were in the 1970s. Instead, religion has been replaced by "spirituality" — that is, belief in spiritual things like God, heaven, angels and more traditionally pagan/New Age beliefs such as magic, tarot cards, ghosts, and the like. These women specifically call out the dogma ("systems") and oppressive (conservative politics) structures as what they’re running away from.
Moreover, this phenomenon has dep political roots based on gender. Gen Z is the first generation in America in recent memory where more men are going to church comparted to women. This is primarily driven by a mass exodus of women from church and a slight uptick of young men going attending church. Women are leaving the church because it’s not left-wing enough; men are joining because it feels more right-wing than the rest of the culture.
This is why Gerwig potentially casting a woman as Aslan makes so much sense — whether it ends up happening or not. Aslan is a religious male authority figure. But Gerwig is part of the trend of formerly religious women who still love spirituality but have rejected the church because of its supposed oppressive nature. I called this out after "Barbie" premiered that Gerwig wouldn’t be a good choice to direct "Narnia" because all her movies have shown hatred for male authority. I never expected to be proven so unbelievably correct.
But it takes two sides to wage war. So, how is the “other side” — the masculine religious conservative side — waging war in the media space? Through faith-based film and growing right-wing media spaces, primarily through podcasts. The podcast space has been utterly dominated by conservative-coded, male-coded and religious-coded voices over the past several years. Look at the rise of figures like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan and organizations such as The Daily Wire. All of these podcasts are designed to appeal to men, are pro-religion (or at least friendly to it, like Rogan) and pro-conservative (or at least anti-woke and friendly toward right-wing politics).
Likewise, the faith-based film industry has reached an unheard-of level of success, with shows like "The Chosen" and "House of David" gaining critical acclaim and growing viewerships. These shows are also becoming more male- and conservative-coded, and even in some cases, directly blasting female pagan spiritualism the way Hollywood does with masculine-coded religion. “The Chosen” has focused more on the conflict between Jesus and his enemies than on feel-good stories of healing, and its creator, Dallas Jenkins, sat down with Peterson and praised him as a big influence.
Meanwhile, “House of David" is a straight-up masculine war epic where female sorcery is portrayed as evil and contrary to the will of the good, masculine God. The series is also co-written by N.D. Wilson, the son of the controversial right-wing Christian figure Doug Wilson. Also, Mel Gibson has become an open Trump supporter and is getting ready to film a “Passion of the Christ” sequel later this year. This sets up an interesting Gibson’s Jesus vs. Gerwig’s Jesus fight in 2026 that symbolizes my entire thesis.
Finally, right-wing media is starting to make its own movies. The Daily Wire has put out documentaries like “What is a Woman?” and "Am I Racist?" in addition to movies like "Shut In" and "Lady Ballers” to much successes. Their upcoming fantasy Christian epic series "The Pendragon Cycle" is a highly anticipated conservative answer to Amazon’s "Rings of Power." Likewise, movies like "Reagan" starring Dennis Quaid, and platforms like LOOR and media empires including Angel Studios making right-wing-friendly content to major success, show a growing potential entertainment counter to Hollywood.
Add this all together and we can see a growing media-driven holy war. Female, left-wing spirituality on one side, and male, conservative religion on the other. Who will win this war? It’s hard to say. It all depends on a few questions being answered.
Can religious conservatives hold onto the podcast space? This is the space where they’ve been most dominant, but that dominance is precarious. Most of the most popular podcasters like Rogan are not conservatives or Christians, but have simply been friendly to them because of their anti-woke bonafides and because they’ve been willing to sit down and have conversations. Jubilee founder Jason Y. Lee explained that the reason they’ve hosted conservatives for the majority of their sit-down conversations is that people on that side of the political aisle have been the most willing to have conversations with people they disagree with.
We’re already seeing political progressives starting to break that barrier: Gavin Newsom has started a podcast where he sits down with conservatives and Pete Buttigieg joining the "Flagerent" podcast for a sit-down with the boys. Podcasts have become a very “male-coded” space because cross-culturally since the male way of handling conflict tends to be more direct. If liberals make a move into that space and break the stranglehold on conservatism being the only place that’s masculine-coded, then conservative domination there is certain to end.
How right-wing and faith-based projects be in the near future? Right now, conservative messages and anti–female spirituality are fairly light. There’s some movement in that direction with "The Chosen," and the most with "House of David” — but the majority of faith-based industry projects are still geared toward Christian moms and are therefore not oriented toward the "male/religion/conservative politics" market at this point.
Can conservatives break into movies and TV? This is the biggest unknown. If conservatives could create their own “counter-Hollywood” (even though it would likely never be quite as big) while retaining even a solid portion of the podcast spaces, their cultural domination is almost assured.
If they can’t, podcasts simply do not make as lasting an impact as movies and TV do. And it’s not at all certain that conservatives can or will make an impact in this space. Angel Studios is reluctant to truly be known as a right-wing company.
The Daily Wire has had the most progress — and the most success — so far. But they seem to, for no apparent reason, be falling apart at the seams. Their much-hyped “Pendragon Cycle” has yet to be released. Their announced "Snow White" and "Atlas Shrugged" projects have never happened, the company’s CEO Jeremy Boreing stepped down and they shut down the kids-oriented "Bentkey" division.
Can churches retain men? If churches can retain men, there’s a good chance that they win. This is true since male-driven institutions tend to grow and female-dominant ones tend to shrink (see the "male flight" phenomenon). Children whose father is enthusiastic about their faith tend to keep their faith.
Conservative Christians, it should be noted, have the most children. So if the churches can retain men, they have a chance of simply outpopulate liberal spiritualism. This is particularly true if they have religious conservative entertainment and podcasts for those kids to take in.
It’s not clear that churches will retain these men. Churches have been built around appealing to female tastes since, at least, the Industrial Revolution. It remains an open question whether or not they can shift.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.