More Lies Hollywood Tells

            In my last article I talked about the lies frequently communicated by the industries of mass media. Here I finish that list.

1. All Families are Dysfunctional. Kids never love or obey their parents…ever! See Grounded for Life, Now and Then, Malibu’s Most Wanted, The Breakfast Club, and any other high school teen angst movie.
2. The Greatest Virtue is Cool. Anything not hip, cool, now, relevant, is disastrous. All movies and television foster this by showing sets and costumes in the latest designs. Some churches are very much in danger of caving in to the virtue of “cool” out of an excessive concern for being culturally relevant.
3. Ugly People are Non-people. The only movies or TV that feature ugly people are those about how ugly people really are people too (Shallow Hal, Bench Warmers). In movies and TV where that’s not a theme, all the people are beautiful, photogenic. You’ll never see heavy, plain, or old people on a beach in Baywatch, though they’re sure to be found at real American beaches.
4. All That Matters is Celebrity. We consider the most pathetic people in the world to be former stars who can’t find their way back onto the screen. Why? The vast majority of us will never be famous, but we’re far better than the has-beens. Whole Reality TV shows are devoted to them (Surreal Life, Celebrity Fit Club, Living in TV Land), and the more pathetic their lives are, the better the ratings. The reason is that a mass media culture comes more and more to value celebrity (being famous for the sake of being famous) than for achievement or character.
5. Marriage is as Throw Away as Last Year’s Fashions. Here it is not so much in movies and television as it is in the lives of celebrities. A sadly hilarious one liner in an early nineties Saturday Night Live edition of “Weekend Update” noted that Macaulay Caulkin, then nineteen, had up and married a girl of the same age. Said the anchor, “And this will be the first of his failed marriages.” Unfortunately, this turned out to be true.
6. Patriotism Equals Blindness. See A Few Good Men, Lord of War, Wag the Dog, Born on the Fourth of July, and with rare exception most Vietnam movies.
7. The Greatest Evil is Intolerance. Intolerance is the one thing Hollywood won’t tolerate—a major theme in movies like Philadelphia, I Heart Huckabees, and Pleasantville.
8. It’s Important to Have Faith but Not in Traditional Religion. In fact, every Christmas we learn that believing in Santa Claus matters more than believing in Jesus (Miracle on 34th Street, The Polar Express, The Santa Clause—pretty much all of the classic Christmas stories, save for that one brief spotlight shining moment when Linus tells the gospel story to Charlie Brown).
9. On the Other Hand, Doubt Everything and Never be Taken In. Question all conventions, have faith in nothing, doubt even your senses. Question your parents’ values, find the hypocrisies of religion, find conspiracies in everything.
10. Be a Non-conformist. And of course the best we to “be yourself,” “be original,” and “think outside the box,” is to do so by acting and dressing like all the other non-conformists being advertised to you (disguised as entertainment) on MTV—don’t forget to buy their music as they rage against the evils of money and materialism.
11. Break the Rules. All cop movies feature a guy who succeeds where others fail because he breaks the rules (he can usually only solve the crime after he’s been suspended). Same with most war movies. Same with most movies about amazing teachers. Same with lots of kids’ movies, especially Harry Potter (and I consider myself a fan) where Harry (and Hagrid and even Dumbledore in the later books) constantly saves the day by breaking the rules.
12. You Deserve Happiness. See Hitch, Under the Tuscan Sun, and most Meg Ryan movies.
13. Take Control of Your Life. We’ll show you how (it usually involves going off roading in an SUV, going on a shopping spree—including changing your hair style/color—or climbing a sheer-faced cliff with a sports drink belted to your waist).
14. Beware the Evils of Propaganda. We, the mass media, will point out its sources: government, religion, Republicans, but certainly not us.
15. Television, Movies and Music Do Not Affect Society, They Reflect Society. That’s right, a one hour TV drama featuring violence and sex will not have an effect on you, but the thirty second commercial you watch in between will—in fact so much so that it warrants charging two million dollars plus for a spot on the Super Bowl. But the constant bombardment of materialist, sexual, violent, and otherwise outlandish images will have no effect at all.

            I’m still a firm believer that God can be found in pop culture if we’re willing to look. I equally believe that warning and ranting and raving can no longer be the primary Christian response to film, television and music in our culture. Every now and then, however, a little ranting is good for the soul.