Not Just a Movie: To Watch or Not to Watch
PART 2 IN AN 8-PART SERIES
"It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."
—Alex, in A Clockwork Orange
Every now and then, someone will tell me to lighten up.
"Dude," they’ll write. "Are you, like, obsessed with counting curse words? You’re going to dis the movie for showing a little cleavage? I see worse at church! C’mon, man. It’s just a movie."
Dude, I get it. Really. My standard for what’s OK in a movie isn’t always your standard. Plugged In’s standard isn’t Christianity Today’s. We have come to different conclusions about what we can (should) tolerate and what we’re sensitive to. So thump me and my colleagues all you want for what you might see as hypersensitivity.
But let me stress something: I firmly believe that the words just a movie have no place in a Christian’s examination of cinema.
Schizophrenic Spirituality
We Christians are all over the map when it comes to movies. Most of us watch ’em, but we have very different ideas on which ones are watchable: Is violence OK, but not sex? Is the f-word better or worse than an abuse of Jesus’ name? If a movie has a strong moral message at the end, does that make all the decapitations before we get there sort of disappear?
Behind those nattering questions lurk larger ones. Do we completely reject problematic movies? Or should we try to embrace and redeem them? It’s a little—very little, mind you—like trying to decide whether to invite a scary-looking, possibly drunk panhandler over for dinner. On one hand, you feel like maybe you can help this guy by showing the love and grace of Christ. On the other, you don’t necessarily want him leering at your teenage daughter or casing the joint.
"When someone says they are a Christian moviegoer or a Christian film critic, that gives me no information whatsoever except it tells me they probably go to church on Sunday and they believe in Jesus Christ," says Christian author and film critic Jeffrey Overstreet. "It doesn’t tell me anything about what they think of movies."
All of this heartfelt indecision, I think, can throw Christians into a place of avoidance. They don’t avoid movies, mind you … they just avoid thinking about them. They don’t reject movies. They don’t try to redeem them. Instead of inviting the panhandler in or locking him out, these folks just leave the door open and wait, rather languidly, to see what might come in.
There is no such thing as just a movie, either for good or ill. Craig Detweiler can tell you that.
The Story’s the Thing …
Detweiler, a Christian pop-culture analyst, first grew interested in Christianity by watching Martin Scorsese’s R-rated Raging Bull.
"As the film ended, Scorsese offered a curious counterpoint," Detweiler writes in Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century. "The credits read, ’All I know is this, once I was blind, but now I can see.’ I recognized the blindness in Jake and me, but I wondered, ’What did it mean to see?’ A violent, profane R-rated movie had provided the spark to a spiritual search. Film forged theology."
Overstreet, for his part, believes that Christians sometimes spend so much time fretting over content that they lose sight of the bigger picture. They miss the forest for the swear words, as it were.
"Sermons are important, but stories are different than sermons," he told Plugged In. "Their purpose is different, their function is different. … In our rush to point out bad language or violence or nudity, sometimes we miss the fact that there is a whole lot more going on here, and that maybe the movie is actually criticizing those things in the context of the story rather than condoning them."
Scorsese, Overstreet argues, is a good example. The director says that the only way to make responsible movies about gangsters (or unsavory boxers) is to show the consequences of their lifestyles so that, as Overstreet says, "the wages of sin inevitably come about, and if he doesn’t show the wages of sin, then the allure of those lifestyles will persuade his audience to pursue such lifestyles."
… But Content’s a Problem
Even if a director was trying to be a responsible, show-the-repercussions filmmaker, though, doesn’t the very depiction of violence somehow glamorize it anyway? If a director uses nudity to show the depravity of prostitution, doesn’t it still titillate? If a screenwriter inserts profanity to shock, doesn’t she also place another brick on the road to desensitization?
"God can use anything to bring people to Him, even the movie Raging Bull," says Christian media expert Al Menconi. "I don’t deny that. However, is it worth the content you’re shoving into your brain?"
Menconi, in his work with teens and their parents, takes a cautionary approach to media. The movie-watching experience is, by design, overwhelming: The huge screen, the massive sound systems, the score, the action … it’s all there to help moviegoers lose themselves in the story. And Menconi says that losing yourself in some of these stories can be dangerous.
"The Bible says to guard your emotions," he says. "Don’t give your emotions to anything. So you have to guard yourself against getting lost in it."
Menconi believes in protecting his emotions so much that he—even as a Christian media expert—rarely goes to a theater. "If I’m going to have to subject myself to a movie, I don’t want it to be 20 feet tall. I don’t want it to overwhelm me," he says. "If I have to see if for myself, I typically like to wait until it’s on TV."
Menconi says it’s also important to follow Shakespeare’s truism: Know thyself. Thus, he (Menconi, not The Bard) won’t go to films that have involved sex scenes. "I’m very cautious of that element," he says.
Agreeing that problematic movies can contain positive concepts, Menconi warns that finding them can be more trouble than it’s worth. He compares it to dropping a small, golden nugget in a pile of sewage. Do you dig around for it? It becomes a question of how important that nugget is to you.
But he also believes that moviegoers—particularly parents—need to remember that it’s not about keeping score on a tally sheet.
"Your goal isn’t to protect your child from filth," Menconi says. "Your job is to teach your child to think on her own when you’re not looking over her shoulder." While asserting that parents should set strong, clear guidelines for their kids very early on, he cautions parents that they can’t protect their kids from every bad influence—not in this day and age. So it’s critical for parents to talk with their kids a lot about what they do watch.
"Those discussions are huge," he says.
Overstreet agrees. In fact, he believes some (seemingly unobjectionable) onscreen issues deserve more scrutiny than they’re currently getting.
"Sometimes I think that, as Christians, we actually have far too narrow a list of things we should be cautioning each other about," Overstreet says. "Some of the G-rated Disney films have been, in my opinion, just as deceptive and influential as the R-rated films because they are implanting in young people these ideas that they need to be glamorous, or that their happiness depends on finding Prince Charming. It just sort of programs you to desire certain things that Scripture doesn’t tell me we need for satisfaction."
No You Can’t Get to Heaven … With a Movie Ticket
Plugged In assumes a pretty conservative stance when it comes to film. We count swear words and note nudity because, well, because lots of our readers are trying to decide what’s OK for their kids to watch. The R-rated Gran Torino may have some spiritual heft to it, but that’s not going to appease a mom who sees it with her 15-year-old, who ends up learning a whole bunch of new racial epithets from it.
Plus, we believe that the stuff we watch really does influence how we act—even if we don’t notice it at the time. We don’t go so far as to say all movies are bad for you. But we do suggest people treat media as they would an unfamiliar dog: with caution.
But even within the circle (or should I say squares?) of Plugged In’s office-place cubicles, we can have some pretty interesting debates about where we should come down on a certain cinematic offering: Is the movie with bad theology better than the movie with no theology at all? Is the simple, saccharine G-rated cartoon really better than the meaty—though more profane—PG-13 one?
We differ at times on the individual issues, but we never doubt our shared sincerity for our mission. So I’m left with this capstone of a thought: What Christians "should" or "should not" watch is an excellent thing to discuss, but if our end goal is a list of do’s and don’ts, a sheet of paper divided into columns of OK movies and Awful movies, then we’ve missed the point completely. I don’t think anyone gets spiritual bragging rights in heaven for watching or not watching Raging Bull.
So let’s agree on these four rules of cinematic engagement:
1. Be aware—and be wary—of your own strengths and weaknesses. If you know a certain movie tempts you wrongly, don’t see it.
2. Don’t ever passively absorb a movie. Chew on it. Talk about it. Think about it. Remember: There is no such thing as just a movie.
3. If you’re a parent, set clear, cautious guidelines for what you’ll let your children watch. And when you approve of a film for them, make sure to talk about it with them. Movies can trigger grand teaching opportunities—and if you take advantage of them, you cement in your kids’ minds that you really do care about how they spend their time.
4. Let Scripture be the tie-breaker when something lands close to the line.
In Part 3 of "Not Just a Movie," a cooking craze gets started by a movie. Or was it a book? Or a TV show?
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8