Ark Encounter
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Ark Encounter

The Making of a Creationist Theme Park

James S. Bielo

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eBook - ePub

Ark Encounter

The Making of a Creationist Theme Park

James S. Bielo

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About This Book

Behind the scenes at a creationist theme park with a mission to convert visitors through entertainment Opened to the public in July 2016, Ark Encounter is a creationist theme park in Kentucky. The park features an all-timber re-creation of Noah's ark, built full scale to creationist specifications drawn from the text of Genesis, as well as exhibits that imagine the Bible’s account of life before the flood. More than merely religious spectacle, Ark Encounter offers important insights about the relationship between religion and entertainment, religious publicity and creativity, and fundamentalist Christian claims to the public sphere. James S. Bielo examines these themes, drawing on his unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the Ark Encounter creative team during the initial design of the park. This unique anthropological perspective shows creationists outside church contexts, and reveals their extraordinary effort to materialize a controversial worldview for the general public. Taking readers from inside the park’s planning rooms to other fundamentalist projects and diverse Christian tourist attractions, Bielo illuminates how creationist cultural producers seek to reach both their constituents and the larger culture. The “making of” this creationist theme park, Bielo argues, allows us to understand how fundamentalist culture is produced, and how entertainment and creative labor are used to legitimize creationism. Through intriguing and surprising observations, Ark Encounter challenges readers to engage with the power of entertainment and to seriously grapple with creationist ambitions for authority. For believers and non-believers alike, this book is an invaluable glimpse into the complicated web of religious entertainment and cultural production.

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Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2018
ISBN
9781479852956
1
The Power of Entertainment
The Trailer
September 2012. I had visited the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum numerous times. But today was different. Instead of moving methodically through the teaching exhibits to make careful observations and absorb the museum’s many dimensions, we hurried with a singular purpose. We walked against the current of visitors reading signage and managing children. Five of us—myself and the four core members of Ark Encounter’s creative team—snaked through exhibits on the fastest route out of the building and into the parking lot.
We were there to preview a sixty-second video trailer for Ark Encounter (Figure 1.1).1 The team had designed the physical set and written the script for the trailer, but the labor of filming and postproduction was completed by the ministry’s audiovisual team. The trailer was an important product; it was used initially as a fund-raising tool and in subsequent years featured prominently in the park’s publicity materials. The script was crafted to be exactly sixty seconds, which allowed for the trailer’s potential future use in television advertising. The team members devoted a month of overtime summer days to building the set, the filming was completed in a single overtime day in August, and today was their first chance to see a rough cut.
Seeing the trailer on this particular day was a surprise for all of us. The members of the creative team had not been given a firm date for when the first cut would be ready, and they were waiting to see the fruits of their creative labor: patient, but eager. When I arrived at the design studio in the morning, the team was disassembling the set. The creative director, Roger, was in his office working, while Tyler, Kevin, and Emily (the three lead artists) took the set apart piece by piece.2
Figure 1.1. Scene from the Ark Encounter trailer.
Everyone was excited about the look and feel they had created with the set. Emily, who had trained in theater design at the California Institute of Arts, was especially pleased; this project was close to her heart. Spatial design was her primary area of expertise, and she described working on the trailer as “being back in my element.” Her primary design inspiration was a weeklong research trip the creative team had taken to Morocco in 2010. Roger wanted the team to see the region, in particular its architecture, to stoke its imagining of a re-created biblical village at Ark Encounter. The trailer’s main setting is a small house: Noah sits, drawing schematics for the ark. Emily based her portrayal of the dwelling on her recollections and photographs of a particular Moroccan hallway that she had seen on the trip.
As Emily explained all this, Kevin added: “With the lights, you stepped in and were somewhere else. It was cool.” Throughout the morning of disassembling the set and reflecting on the design process, the team members made repeated references to “Hollywood.” This was not unusual. I had become accustomed to their citing Hollywood as a standard-bearer for quality, and particular films as creative exemplars. But the frequency of references that morning was notable. Creating the script, building the set, overseeing the filming—the team members relished the sense that their creative labor was akin to that of working artists in the movie industry.
The news came just before lunch: the rough cut of the trailer was ready. The audiovisual team invited everyone to come over in the afternoon for a viewing in Legacy Hall, the museum’s main auditorium, with theater-quality projection and sound. We took separate cars for the short drive from the design studio to the museum. Roger and I arrived at the same time, and we walked in together to meet the others. I noted how full the parking lot seemed for a random Friday in September. Roger agreed favorably, adding that the summer had been busy despite “the economy.” I silently observed a few bumper stickers as we walked: “Don’t Tread on Me,” complete with a coiled, hissing snake, and “We’re Taking Dinosaurs Back,” an Answers in Genesis trademark.
Although I was familiar with the museum exhibits, garden, and petting zoo, I had yet to attend an event in Legacy Hall. I noticed immediately how comfortable the cushioned seats were. I sat down without much care as to where, so long as I was near the team. The team members targeted seats more strategically, commenting on features like how far back you needed to sit so the stage podium did not block your view of the screen. They settled in, joking about obscuring one another’s sight lines. Roger signaled upstairs to the audiovisual team that everything was ready, and the lights lowered. Sixty seconds later, without a comment from anyone, the team asked for a replay. Sixty seconds later, the lights rose, and a critique commenced.
It was all very polite, with no indication of resentment, anger, or frustration. The critique was brief, no more than five minutes, but it was relentless. Quick, back-and-forth observations were traded, with nods and exclamations of agreement. It was a collaborative cataloging of changes that needed to be made before the trailer could be released to the public.
Some comments were quite specific. Emily asked why the voice-over stopped at the words “found you righteous,” even though scripture says Noah was “righteous in his generation.” Roger disliked the sound editing, saying it was “too loud at first, then too soft at the end, won’t be good for an older crowd.” Tyler rattled off a series of criticisms: the “cuts to the props, like the tools,” were “all wrong”; the blur effect when Noah looks out to the ark construction happened too slowly; the ending cut to the Ark Encounter logo was too abrupt (it “doesn’t stay on the ark long enough—if you didn’t know the story you couldn’t make the connection, you need a breath before the logo)”; and the voice at the start came in too quickly (it’s “not mysterious enough”). Emily disliked the voice-over altogether, saying, “It’s just too BRAH, you know what I mean?” (I wondered silently, if that is not the right voice, then what is? How should God’s voice sound?)
The team’s specific critiques were united by a general description of the whole thing being “off,” including the “rhythm,” “mix,” “transitions,” and “cuts.” One moment was “not fluid,” the next was “disjointed.” With the exception of Emily’s comment about ending the scripture reading too early, the entire critique scrutinized matters of aesthetics: the “feel” created by the postproduction editing of sound, color, and flow. Still, the discussion was all very calm, with no sense of overexcitement.
Roger mobilized us to go upstairs and share the team’s notes with the audiovisual producer. We couldn’t find him at first, and Emily joked that he was “probably hiding; they know us too well.” After a few minutes a tall, handsome man in his early thirties emerged from an office full of AV equipment. His appearance contrasted sharply with that of the team members. They were casual as usual, with T-shirts and jeans, sweatshirts, and unfussy hair. The producer wore stylish dress slacks, a silvery dress shirt, and a narrow tie; his dark hair was slicked back. He was more Mad Men than disheveled artist.
He asked how everyone liked the trailer. After a polite and positive, but brief and generic, response, Roger, always the leader, said they had “notes” to share. “Oh, I’m sure it’s a mile long,” the producer teased. For several minutes the team repeated, nearly verbatim, the exchange from downstairs. The producer nodded along but did not appear to be listening very keenly. He promised to take a second look at the sound but said that “everything else is pretty set.” In a tone that was almost dismissive, he said, “It is a teaser, after all,” in response to the suggestion that the trailer should linger on the ark construction scene longer before cutting to the Ark Encounter logo. Roger asked why the words “in his generation” had been left off from the scripture reading, explaining why the absent qualifier conjures a different meaning. The producer responded that “Ken approved the final script, so there shouldn’t be any theological issues.” (He was referring to Ken Ham, cofounder of Answers in Genesis and a creationist celebrity.) In response to a comment that the voice-over was too jarring, he noted with visible delight that the ministry had recruited one of Hollywood’s most popular voice actors for the reading.
Abruptly, the vibe changed. The producer informed the team that the trailer had already been released and was being shown that afternoon at a fund-raising event. Emily was standing to my right, so I missed her facial expression, but it must have registered unambiguous disapproval. The producer blurted out a stunned “uh-oh,” and the mood transformed from polite and constructive to assertive and corrective. Soon after this revelation, Roger concluded the discussion, thanked the producer for his time, and led us on a beeline into the parking lot. Moving briskly, I asked Tyler if he was disappointed. He confirmed in a decidedly serious tone that he was, about both the “quality” of the trailer and not being consulted before its release for public viewing. Emily and Roger walked ahead of us, out of earshot but talking in obvious displeasure.
When we reached Tyler’s car, the team members resumed their critique, with all politeness drained, having been replaced by frustration. They repeated much of what had already been said, looping in a few new observations. Roger mocked the round pegs that were visible in the scene with workers building the ark, saying that “they look straight from Lowes,” with no attempt to fashion a “handmade” look. Kevin thought the “color wash” was “way off”; it was too dark and needed bright contrasts. Emily admonished herself: “I should have been more insistent about the hallway.” She had been suspicious throughout the process of construction and filming that the dimensions were too wide and too tall to re-create her Moroccan inspiration. Kevin wondered if the voice could be dropped altogether, citing the latest Batman trailer as a bird’s-eye view of Gotham’s cityscape with no dialogue. Tyler and Emily spoke to Roger in unison, in an uncommon tone of forcefulness, telling him, “You have to put your foot down,” referring to their getting bypassed on final cut approval. Roger did not respond, returning instead to the critique. The whole thing was “too linear,” he said. “It’s not interesting or fun. Noah looks like a mannequin.” He was not convinced by the “teaser” response for this same reason: teasers should be “immensely interesting.” Tyler attempted a constructive conclusion: “All the right pieces are there; it just needs some love.” Unmistakably strident, Roger summarized what had animated their entire critique: the trailer was “just not Hollywood quality.”
***
This scene from September 2012 occurred about a year into my research with the Ark Encounter creative team and was a revealing fieldwork moment. It was the first time I had been with all the team members outside the design studio and the first time I saw them galvanized as a collaborative unit. I had observed numerous moments of tension in that first year, but this was an especially candid moment. Even more, their creative labor of building the set and performing the critique crystallizes the major themes of this book.
There is the prizing of immersion. The team members’ frustration owed partly to the fact that they wanted the trailer to transport viewers “somewhere else.” At its core, this book is about how entertainment strategies and imperatives structure the production and consumption of Ark Encounter. Related to this, team members were concerned with how historical plausibility was treated. The round pegs Roger criticized are visible for only one second on-screen, but the failure of authenticity exceeds the moment. For the team, small artistic details could make or break the immersive effect and the demonstration of scripture’s historicity. We also see the pivotal role of materiality in the team’s aesthetically driven critique. Sensory elements of sound, color, light, physicality, and “feel” were decisive for generating an affective response for viewers. We see the team’s commitment to professionalism; only “Hollywood quality” has the potential to convert a skeptical public. Anything less threated to undermine the ambition to bolster creationism’s public legitimacy. Finally, this vignette provides a glimpse of the team’s collaborative dynamic. The team members’ mutual frustration was a moment of artistic-bureaucratic clash; demands of financial need had usurped creative control.
In subsequent weeks, a few adjustments were made to the trailer. It was nothing close to the extensive revision the team members wanted, but their anxiety about a fundamentally flawed product circulating in public was quieted. They moved on to other projects, other creative dilemmas. After all, this was a sixty-second trailer; they had an entire theme park to design.
A Different Set of Questions
When I began this project, my anthropological curiosity was captivated by the promise of getting behind the scenes and cap...

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