Movies, Money and Morality
When I was a kid the Movieguide newsletter would arrive and, if I was quick enough, I could hide it before my mom stacked it on our bookshelf near the encyclopedias. If I failed, there it sat as an arbiter of what movies were "morally uplifting" (which, for Movieguide, meant pro-Christian, pro-capitalism and anti- just about everything else) and which films would send us spiraling down into moral turpitude.
After dinner our table was often transformed into ground-zero for the Culture Wars. My older sister and I were instructed to read aloud the movie reviews that categorized and rated the sins of each film in face-reddening detail. The exercise would end when my father issued a ruling as to which films we'd be allowed to see that weekend. Movieguide was a few thin sheets of paper that separated us from Hollywood's anti-Christian, anti-values propaganda.
A recent Religion News Service article picked up by the Kansas City Star suggests that not much has changed in Hollywood; the entertainment industry remains allergic to religion. Pointing to the lack of religion-based content in successful television shows, the RNS piece highlights a few cases of canceled programs to lend credibility to the common-sense claim that Hollywood is the oil to religion's water. But is that the whole story?
Read the full post at Trans/missions, the USC Knight Chair in Media and Religion blog.
Photo by ABC.