Tag: entertainment as self-education

A Misplaced Faith

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

In regard to the guy in Pensacola who crashed his car into first one shop and then another, saying he was trying to drive through a “time portal” (see yesterday’s post), reader Marge Hofknecht observed, “I have met individuals who take certain aspects of science fiction as the gospel truth…”

Yes, I know what kind of individuals she means. The kind who tell you, in all seriousness, “Jesus was a hybrid. He was half-extraterrestrial. That’s how he was able to do the things he did.”

Think about it. We have the vastest, most expensive education system ever devised by man, with more schools, colleges, and universities than have ever existed and millions more people in them, sitting in classrooms for many more years than is good for them… and what have we got to show for it?

I don’t even like to guess how many people believe categorically in space aliens, in super-intelligent ET philosopher-kings secretly manipulating history on earth, in planets where the native super-race is just waiting for the right moment to help humanity over the top, and on and on, without a single scrap of evidence.

We may not spend much time in the Bible, or in church, but we sure have time for science fiction movies and TV, comic books, video games, and all the other apparatus of self-instruction.

I’ve grown up loving science fiction. It’s fun. Years ago it was even more fun, when you had all those wonderful magazines like Galaxy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Analog, and others. But we didn’t take it seriously!

Or did we?

I’m beginning to wonder. I really am.

Much Ado About Movies

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As part of an assignment for my employer, The Chalcedon Foundation ( http://www.chalcedon.edu/ ), I have to read and review a bunch of books about movies. I’ve just finished the first of the lot, Hollywood Worldviews by Brian Godawa, a professional screenwriter who used to write movie reviews for our website. It’s a book about “how to watch movies with your eyes open”–that is, with understanding and discernment.

Every movie tells a story, and every one of those stories is shaped and informed by a particular worldview. Among the most common worldviews shaping modern movies are existentialism, postmodernism, fate, neopaganism, and a few others–including a very few in which the worldview is explicitly Christian.

Funny, isn’t it? The human race plodded along for thousands of years without a single movie until the 20th century came along. Now we have thousands and thousands of movies, and I can’t even make a guess as to how many I’ve watched.

They say it’s only entertainment, but watching movies is also a form of self-education, and God only knows how many hundreds and hundreds of hours we spend doing it. Movies get poured into our minds, and what’s in our minds comes out as our culture.

Well, that explains a lot about the current state of our culture, doesn’t it?

Most modern, mainstream movies subtly teach lessons that, when expressed in bald and simple terms, are ridiculous. There is no reality, there’s only what each of us thinks is reality. Whatever you sincerely believe is right, is right. “Love” is the only thing that counts. And so on. Maybe that’s why I don’t watch many modern, mainstream movies. I can’t stand the banality.

It really is interesting, to watch a movie alertly enough to see what it’s actually saying to us. Most of what most movies have to say is twaddle.

But, boy, if you’re not aware of that, you wind up teaching yourself a lot of stuff that simply isn’t true.

Another Red-Hot Sex Book for Me not to Review

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From that dopey old movie, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, or whatever they called it.

I don’t know what some of these publicists must think of me. They’re always trying to get me to review books that I wouldn’t read if you put a gun to my head.

Yesterday a publicist invited me to review a novel about “open relationships”–the kind of thing we used to call being a slut, or being a horn dog–written by “an expert about sex and relationships” whose actual background is in the restaurant business. He was once in a punk rock band, too.

In this novel, which I will not name because I refuse to give it free publicity, a married couple in their late 30s go to this hotel somewhere in the Carribees, “a resort that provides sexual fantasies for couples.” You know the whole thing’s fiction because they don’t meet Bill Clinton there.

Anyhow, they get involved in a threesome, and “it breaks your heart to watch the devolving of what was a successful, loving marriage with two children into the hell it becomes,” because of “that one act.”

What have we got here? I could read the book and find out, but I don’t want to find out that badly. It does sound like the ex-restaurant guy is trying to sell us morality and porn at the same time. Is he saying, “If you break the rules, the moral law, you’ll wreck your marriage and mess up your life”?

But there are probably better ways of delivering that message than a story that tries to titillate the reader and get him thinking that maybe a few nights at that special resort might be the most fun he’s ever had in his life.

This is our culture, boys and girls.

When we read, it’s a form of self-education.

This is what we’re pumping into our minds and into our souls.

On the whole, I think I prefer 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

We Can Poison Adults’ Minds, Too

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I was going to review a movie called Diary of a Teenage Girl, but instead I think I ought to review a review of this movie–this gem written by one Helen Murdoch ( http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/08/movie-review-the-diary-of-a-teenage-girl-2015.html ).

The Synopsis tells us everything we need to know: “A teen artist [huh?] living in 1970s San Francisco enters into an affair with her mother’s boyfriend.”

Gee. My mother’s boyfriend was named Dad.

Helen Murdoch turns cartwheels over this movie.  Of the girl she writes, “Minnie is unapologetic about her sexuality and her drug use which is refreshing to see.” She finds in this movie “an honest portrayal of what it means to be a teenager discovering sex, drugs and love.” Do those three always go together?

Oops. Forgot to mention the boyfriend is 35 years old. Minnie is 15. In most states, this is against the law.

Okay, movies have always had this certain streak of idiocy. I remember The Summer of ’42, about a teenage boy who gets his first sex from a beautiful woman who takes him into her bed because her husband is away at war. This used to be called adultery. Anyhow, the movie’s advertising slogan was, “In everyone’s life, there is a Summer of ’42.” As a young, single man who never got his Summer of ’42, I felt ill-used.

Gone are the days, I guess, when a 35-year-old man who took advantage of a 15-year-old girl could thank his lucky stars if he wasn’t lynched. And the new virtue is to be unapologetic about living like a moral imbecile.

This is the stuff we pour into our heads. This is a big chunk of our popular culture, which, as Henry Van Til said, is “religion externalized.”

God help us.

So You Want Your Teen to be Reading… This?

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I’ve been saying we all have to be careful about the entertainment that we stuff into our brains. Especially our children’s brains, and that includes teenagers–who are smart enough to get in trouble, but not yet smart enough to avoid it.

Which brings me to I Hunt Killers, by Barry Lyga–which, not too long ago, was an amazon.com “Kids’ Daily Deal” of the day.

One reader described it as “like Silence of the Lambs for kids.” Lovely. Reviewer Joe Hill waxed even more enthusiastic, likening it to “an out-of-control hearse with one busted headlight, blood on the grille, a madman at the wheel, and laughter pouring out of the open windows.”

I Hunt Killers is about the teenage son of a prolific serial killer. The boy’s name is Jazz–somehow “Jazz” has become a popular name for exceedingly disturbed teenagers. Jazz’s old man has taught his boy everything he knows about being a serial killer, in hopes that Jazz will grow up to murder even more people than he did.

Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer on the loose in their hometown. Could it be Jazz, following in his pappy’s footsteps–or will Jazz have to use his special knowledge to stop him?

This could turn out to be pretty unwholesome.

But this is the curriculum material we’re using to educate ourselves and our children.

If it’s what you want, you’re welcome to it. But I wish you lived farther away.