Choosing a movie to go see?
(Click to enlarge.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think I was among the last to hear about the novel Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em>. \u00a0It was already a publishing phenomenon when it first swam across my radar screen.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never leafed through it. \u00a0I\u2019ve never held it. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever so much as seen<\/em> a copy.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s made its author wealthy, and now a film based upon it is about to premiere.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nothing of the little that I\u2019ve heard about either the book or the forthcoming film has suggested to me that I ought to support them in any way. \u00a0The odds that I\u2019ll ever read the former or see the latter are about the same as those of my converting to Sikhism, suddenly sprouting a third arm, or taking up whiskey distilling as a hobby.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, people out there have consumed the novel in mass quantities, and it\u2019s virtually a foregone conclusion that the movie will earn dumpsters full of cash for those behind it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
With that in mind, I invite \u00a0you to consider\u00a0a short mini-essay on the topic that was recently written by a good friend of ours:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFire! Fire In The Theater!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBianca Palmieri Lisonbee<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe all know our right of free speech does not include yelling \u201cFire\u201d in a theater just for the fun of it, but it\u2019s amazing to me what kind of soul-singeing toxic waste we can witness hundreds of people being exposed to in that same theater without even a whisper of \u201cfire.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis month, thousands of people (willing victims) will file into theaters and for two hours subject themselves to the immoral smoke inhalation of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em>. You don\u2019t have to know too much about the story to deduce that it glorifies a character who supports violent sexual behavior including sadomasochism, the de-humanization of sex, and the idea that women secretly like the idea of being helpless victims of a sexual predator just as long as he is handsome and has a lot of money. If someone were to tell us that they wanted to make a film that supported all of the above, most of us would be appalled at this moral insanity. And yet, many of those same would-be-appalled people will be standing in line for this movie, feeling quite self-satisfied with their level of sophistication and sexual progressiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAt what point does our moral smoke detector sound the alarm that we have gone too far for our own good in what we are not only willing to view but to endorse with the most powerful kind of endorsement there is\u2014our hard-earned money, for the price of a ticket to see this trash.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMy biggest fear isn\u2019t that we are ignoring the alarm sounded from our moral smoke detectors, but that we as a society have long since forgotten to replace its batteries. And you know what happens: We get tired of the annoying beeping sound it makes warning us before it\u2019s too late to pay attention and replace the batteries so that it can continue to function. How many of us really do that? I fear that as a society we have instead opted to unplug it totally. I mean, who wouldn\u2019t want to stop that annoying beep beep beep! \u201cHey, if you can\u2019t stand the heat, just get out of the kitchen (or theater).\u201d Beep Beep Beep. \u201cNo one is forcing people to go to this movie so all you religious prudes just need to stop griping about it.\u201d Beep Beep . \u201cIt\u2019s just a fun movie, for heaven\u2019s sake.\u201d Beep. \u201cIt\u2019s ok to see all that moral deprivation because the character in the film starts to improve.\u201d No more beeps.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf this movie succeeds, which we know it will, it will be evidence that as a society we have shoved our no longer functioning moral smoke detectors into a junk drawer. We have forgotten their existence, and we now find ourselves not only in danger of fire, nor do we even have a fear of it, but instead we have developed a perverse desire to play with it. And we all know what happens when we do that.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I think I was among the last to hear about the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. \u00a0It was already a publishing phenomenon when it first swam across my radar screen. \u00a0 I\u2019ve never leafed through it. \u00a0I\u2019ve never held it. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever so much as seen a copy. \u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Movie-going](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/02\/800px-Dumpster_diving_in_Russia.jpg\")
<\/a>