Popular Culture and the War Against Standards

Family Life in the Lord

The "Imprimis" is a periodical produced at Hillsdale College, a liberal arts school in Michigan. In February, 1991 they printed an edited transcript of remarks made by Michael Medved, a reknowned television film critic for the Public Broadcasting System. Bro. Glen & Sis. Julie Anderson noted the article and passed it along realizing it could be useful to the "Tidings" readership. Ex-tensive sections are here cited with permission of the "Imprimis."

Isolation no longer possible

There may have been a day when we might assume Bible believers could isolate themselves from the influence of contemporary entertainment. In fact, as Mr. Medved notes, that is one of the rationales used by the entertainment industry: “Nobody’s forcing people to see these movies,’ they’ll say. ‘If you object to the messages that you’re getting from a piece of creative work, then you can exercise your right to avoid that film, or to switch that channel on your TV set, or to turn your radio off. If something offends you, then it’s easy to tune it out.’

“Unfortunately, they’re wrong. Popular culture is an overwhelming and omnipresent force in this society; not even the most determined and conscientious efforts can effectively insulate you — or your children — from its powerful reach.”

He illustrates his point by describing a family outing that was overwhelmed when “a group of teenagers, mostly 13 to 15 year-olds, arrived at the lake shore. They were carrying a ‘boom box,’ and coming out of that shiny chrome machine was a rap song with the foulest, ugliest language I have ever heard.

“The point is that you can say to yourself, ‘I’ll just tune out the messages of the media,’ but it’s not possible today…Modern technological advances have brought us boom boxes, and Walkmans, and VCRs, television and MTV. The messages, the images, are everywhere around us, and seep into every corner of our lives.”

We are affected

While we must not be “of” the world, we do live “in” it, as do our children. It would be totally unrealistic to say we are not affected by what is going on around us. And it is sim­plistic to contend we can be exposed to powerful images without being affected by them. To again quote Mr. Medved: “Ironically, the leaders of the entertainment industry regularly down play the significance of their own work, insisting that the fantasies they have created have no influence on anyone. The networks and the studios have commissioned expensive studies from various experts to support their appallingly illogical contention that violence on screen has no connection to violence in real life, and that intensely sexual material does nothing to encourage promiscuity.

“This same industry then turns around and asks advertisers to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for thirty seconds of air time in the hope that this fleeting exposure will directly alter the public’s buying behavior! Don’t they grasp the internal contradiction here? On the one hand, we’re told that an hour of television programming has no real-world consequences whatsoever, and on the other we’re led to believe 30-second spots which occasionally interrupt this program are powerful enough to change public perceptions of everything from canned goods to candidates.

“I happen to believe that the industry is right when it touts the impact of media images, but I can’t accept the contention that motion pictures, and song lyrics, and music videos and TV shows are somehow less influential than commercials.”

We feel these points are correct. Furthermore, we suspect that there is far more viewing of and listening to the output of the entertainment world than we may be prepared to forth-rightly acknowledge. Therefore, we feel it is useful to further note the observations of this industry insider as he exposes some current trends in that industry.

The glorification of ugliness

“Everywhere around us, in every realm of artistic endeavor, we see evidence of the rejection of traditional standards of beauty and worth. In the visual arts, in literature, in film, in music of both popular and classical variety, ugliness has been enshrined as a new standard, as we accept the ability to shock as a replacement of the old ability to inspire.

“This tendency has reached absurd extremes with the recent efforts to elevate the banging and shouting of rap music into some sort of noble art form. Consider, for a moment, the recent obscenity trial of [a current group]. One of the expert witnesses who helped secure the group’s acquittal was a professor of literature at Duke University named Henry L. Gates. Under oath, mind you, he testified that these poetic souls, whose lyrics exalt [some gross examples] had created a ‘refreshing and astonishing’ body of work. Professor Gates went on to compare their achievements to those of Shakespeare, Chaucer and James Joyce. (As the late George Or­well once commented, ‘There are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them.’)

“In film, the process of degradation has already reached levels that should lead all thoughtful critics to despair for the future of the medium. Indescribable gore drenches the modem screen, even in movies allegedly made for families. And the most perverted forms of sexuality — loveless, decadent, brutal and sometimes incestuous — are showing regularly at a theater near you…

“This kind of work is regularly described as high art, along with another sort of ugliness that is even more commonly celebrated on movie screens today. Film after film centers on characters who are, fundamentally, despicable — amoral losers.”

The assault on the family

The author obviously has some appreciation of the value of the God-ordained family unit for he goes on to comment:

“The second front on the war against standards involves an attack on the family that seems to gather new force with every passing year. For thousands of years, society has acknowledged the fact that a permanent partnership between a man and a woman, for the purpose of nurturing children, offers the best chance of human happiness and fulfillment. This fundamental notion has not only been challenged in recent years, it has been assaulted with unparalleled ferocity by some of the most powerful forces in our culture.

“The popular music business, for instance, has become a global enterprise of staggering proportions that generates billions of dollars every year through the simple-minded glorification of animal lust. Nothing could stand further removed from the selflessness and discipline that are essential to successful family life than the fantasies that saturate MTV 24 hours a day….

“Another message of the music that is ceaselessly reinforced by television and movies is the perverse but pervasive idea that ‘kids know best.’ Teenagers are regularly portrayed as the source of all wisdom, sanity and sensitivity, while their parents are shown as hopeless, benighted clowns…

“Movies today focus overwhelmingly on single people…With its single-minded focus on unmarried characters, the movie industry conveys the idea that it’s exciting to live on your own, but boring and stifling to live within a marriage. The unspoken assumption is that married people never experience anything that’s interesting enough to be dramatized in a feature film.”

Hostility to organized religion

Mr. Medved is Jewish and his observations in the following comments are insightful as to some basic points made in the opening chapters of Genesis as well as exposing trends in the influences which surround us.

“This brings us to the third front in the current culture wars, and perhaps the most crucial battlefield of all, and that is the attempt to undermine organized religion. A war against standards lead logically and inevitably to hostility to religion, because it is religious faith that provides the ultimate basis for all standards. The God of the Bible is not a moral relativist, and He is definitely judgmental. The very nature of the Judeo-Christian God is a Lord who makes distinctions. In the Book of Genesis, God created the world by dividing the light from the darkness, dividing the waters above from the waters beneath, and so forth. In traditional Jewish homes, when we say farewell to the Sabbath every Saturday night and prepare to move into the secular week, we recite a blessing that praises God for separating aspects of reality, one from the others — making distinctions. To the extent that we as human beings feel that we are created in God’s image, we make distinctions too — and we have standards.

“That is a position…regularly ridiculed in the mass media. One of the national television networks has chosen to promote its most popular show with a scene that mocks a family saying grace…”

A positive solution

We urge our readers to consider these matters. If the entertainment world is not on a deliberate campaign to elicit God’s destruction of this society, then it is accomplishing that end without trying. And if we think that we, our children and our young people are not being affected by what is happening around us, we are deceiving ourselves. What then should we do in these last days of the kingdom of sin?

If we read II Timothy 3, which describes the last days in which we live, we should carry on with II Timothy 4:1 “I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”

Give heed to the Word of God and be diligent at all times in every respect — when we feel like it and when we don’t feel in the mood. Be patient and root our appeals in the fundamentals of Bible teaching. In doing so we will save ourselves, our children and the whole family of God.