File this under the dangers of reality television: A homemade cannonball careened out of control during a taping of the popular Discovery show MythBusters a few days ago, wreaking havoc in a San Francisco-area neighborhood. No one was hurt, but from what Lisa de Moraes writes in The Washington Post, the projectile made quite the, um, impression.
The cannonball—which was between softball and cantaloupe in size, according to various reports—missed the water vats and blew through a cinder-block wall late Tuesday afternoon.Then, according to news reports and statements from the sheriff's office, the errant cannonball stormed off the set and headed over to a residential neighborhood, bounced off a sidewalk, tore through someone's front door, zipped up the stairs and through an occupied bedroom, blew out the back of the house, blasted over a six-lane thoroughfare and skimmed the top of another house, before brutally attacking a parked Toyota minivan.
I’ve heard of temperamental television performers before, but this really takes it to a new level. As combustible as the cast of Jersey Shore may be, Snooki’s never (to my knowedge) barreled through a concrete wall before.
Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident, and the folks from MythBusters were incredibly apologetic. I’d imagine that homeowners will be compensated for property loss and have a fantastic story to tell around the dinner table, and Discovery learned a valuable safety lesson.
But we, too, can learn a (slightly forced) lesson from all of this.
MythBusters is one of my favorite shows. My family and I have watched the thing for years—partly for the science, partly for the witty repartee, and partly (mostly?) for the explosions. And if you’ve watched the show as long as I have, you know how careful these folks are in setting up their experiments: They seem incredibly cautious about this stuff, doing their very best to make sure that no-one gets hurt (though admittedly, on-camera personnel do sometimes get a little motion sick).
And yet, whatever precautions the crew took for this episode of MythBusters, it wasn’t enough to keep this errant cannonball from making a sneaky getaway.
The same thing can happen to us. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you don’t just enjoy entertainment—you’re constantly sifting through movies and television and music to figure out what’s right for you and/or your family. You read reviews like ours, ask friends, screen Disney shows before allowing your 8-year-old to set his little eyes on them.
And yet, for all our precautions, sometimes things go awry. Sometimes, an entertainment cannonball lands right in your living room or smashes into your Wii. You did everything you could to prevent such a thing from happening (and who knows how many cannonballs you’ve avoided by being diligent!), but it found its way in anyway. And now you gotta deal with it.
Discernment isn’t just about avoiding bad entertainment (though that’s obviously importantit). It’s about dealing with bad entertainment when it—despite your best efforts—comes a’calling. And how does one deal with it? Well, you talk about it, of course: You discuss the entertainment with your kids to make sure they’re not drawing the wrong sorts of lessons from it, to make sure they feel safe and loved. You sift through it yourself—maybe with the help of a friend or two—and glean whatever you can from the thing before discarding the rest.
Ask yourself a couple of questions—simple ones: How did what you see or heard make you feel? Did its premise or content make you feel uncomfortable? Why? Sometimes, those poor pieces of entertainment can be lessons in and of themselves—of your sensitivities, your temptations and even your relationship with God. And when you get smacked with a cannonball, you can put more safeguards in place to ensure you’re better protected next time.
Have you ever been hit with an unexpected entertainment cannonball? How did you deal with it?
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