Of Star Wars, Storytelling and Christmas
A long time ago … In a galaxy far, far away … … there was a movie unlike anything anyone had ever seen before: Star Wars. George Lucas’ space opera would recalibrate our cultural expectations of what a movie can do. And with its arrival on May 25, 1977, the era of the modern blockbuster […]
Bale’s Take on Moses: Schizophrenic, Barbaric, Mercurial
Every time a big-name Hollywood director announces he’s going to tackle a familiar biblical story, I hold my breath. On one hand, it’s exhilarating that these scriptural epics are getting mainstream screen time—not to mention eye-popping budgets and special effects to retell these tales on the grandest cinematic scale possible. On the other hand, when […]
Kim K.’s Unlikely Invitation to an Important Conversation
I spend a lot of time in my job on the Internet, observing what’s happening in the news and popular culture. Here at Plugged In, we pay especially close attention to how entertainment is influencing our society in general and young people in particular. Sometimes that means we have to engage—or are at least be […]
Less Stuff-ing, More Thanksgiving
I really like stuff. Always have. I’m a natural-born materialist. That tendency is one of my biggest spiritual struggles: being content and relinquishing the impulse to consume, to have more. And I’d like to talk a bit about that tendency today, especially as it relates to Thanksgiving … and the day of materialistic bingeing that […]
Movie Monday: Mockingjay – Part 1
Under normal circumstances, a movie that raked in an estimated $123 million in its opening weekend—the biggest debut of 2014—would be considered an unqualified smash-mouth success. But The Hunger Games is not a normal franchise. And neither are the sky-high box office expectations that come with it. So even though Katniss and Co. pulled off […]
What in the World Did He Just Sing? Or, How Plugged In Reviews Music
Each week here at Plugged In, I review at least one music track and an album. And that can actually be kind of a tricky thing. Because music is such a deeply personal medium—in fact, I’d argue that music might just be the entertainment category that fans identify with the most fervently—we regularly get questions […]
When Your TV Watches You
One of the most famous scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey involves astronaut Dave Bowman’s attempt to convince an increasingly paranoid computer named HAL 9000 to open up the mothership’s docking bay so Dave can land a smaller craft inside. Here’s a snippet of the increasingly tense exchange between them: […]
Exposing the Cartoon Consumerism Industrial Complex
Earlier this year I had the privilege to begin writing the High Voltage column in Focus on the Family’s Clubhouse magazine. If you’re not familiar with it, Clubhouse is Focus’ mag for 8- to 12-year-olds. Each issue is packed with games, inspirational stories and faith-infused content to help young ones grow in their Christian convictions—and have […]
Who Me? Desensitized? But I’m a Parent!
Over the years, Plugged In has spent a lot of time cataloging studies about how media and popular culture influence youth. I think it’s safe to say there have been far fewer studies—in fact, I can’t think of any—focused on how the same culture might be influencing parents. Until now. Researchers at the Annenberg Public […]
Of Commandments and Smartphones
I was sitting in church a couple of weekends ago when our pastor quoted Deuteronomy 6:4-9, a passage that follows on the heels of God giving Moses the Ten Commandments: “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your […]