What is wrong with the world today? It seems like 95% of news reports have to do with violence, crime, and depressing topics. Sometimes its nice to escape from the depression and just spend some time together away from all of that. In our family we like to watch movies together. We don't watch regular TV, we don't get good reception where we are, and we are unwilling to bring cable TV with all of the sleaze that goes with it into our home, so we are TV free as far as network and cable TV go. We have a VCR, a DVD player, and a collection of videos. We also enjoy renting movies from our local video store. This has become increasingly difficult. Either the shows we are willing to rent are too boring, or too grown up for the kids, or too dumbed down for us. We usually end up renting two separate movies, one for us, one for the kids. We are limited in our scope of choices, because we don't rent movies with sex scenes, with a high rate of crass, sexual humor or innuendo, or with too much swearing. We don't watch rated R movies under any circumstance, and we avoid movies with immorality in general. Just going into the video store often makes me cringe, because at every turn there is the cover of some video depicting immorality, murder or other violence, or scantily clad women. My husband won't even go in to pick out a movie...that is all up to me. He doesn't want to see any of that either.
My question is...do we really live in a world where people find murder, rape, violence and immoral behaviour to be entertaining? I think we do. Reality TV has made a big splash, and a great many of those shows center around whoever can lie the best, and cheat the best winning. Yes, we reward people for lying, dishonest, and untrustworthy behaviour. We pay them money, and we send them to Letterman or Leno to be interviewed and praised for their lying abilities. There are a number of shows that center around crime, murder and etc, and there is plenty of fodder there for any number of plots involving those things. Does it desensitize us as a society to see murders, autopsies, muggings, etc glorified every week on the screen? I think it does. I think we can read about a brutal murder in the paper, and its just not that big of a deal anymore. Think about it for a minute...really think about it. How would you feel if all of those stories we watch for entertainment were true? Some of them are. Things like that happen every day. Is that entertaining?
What happened to the good, clean family films? Many of the films today that are touted as family films are full of double entendres that go right over a little kid's head, but slap their parents in the face. And what happens when a kid gets old enough to understand that something means more than they think, but they don't know quite what it means, so they ask? Well, I can tell you that its becoming a more common occurrence in our house as our kids get older, and its uncomfortable for us as parents. We want our kids to stay as pure and as innocent as they can for as long as they can. This also goes for swearing...why do so many good, clean movies have the Lord's name in vain? It's so unnecessary to the plot. I shouldn't have to teach, and then RE-teach my four year old not to take God's name in vain. So we are looking for those really clean, family friendly movies. There aren't many out there. We do own several DVDs and movies. We have a list of movies we enjoy as a family. We try to rent movies to add variety, but as I said, there are few out there that fit the bill.
I read a CNN report that said the following: "The average G-rated film made between 1989 and 2003 produced more than 11 times greater profit than its R-rated counterpart, $79 million vs. $7 million, even though the movie industry produced nearly 12 times more R-rated films than G-rated films" If you would like to read the entire report it can be viewed here... http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/07/news/newsmakers/dove_movies/index.htm
I would like to submit a challenge to Hollywood, to make a movie, (or better yet, many movies)that have a good plot, that don't have any unnecessary swearing (and pretty much all swearing is unnecessary to me), that are morally clean, that teach something of value, and yet, are entertaining. Please leave out the crass (and stupid) humor, and give us something worth paying money to see.
And now I will part this particular entry with a list of some movies that we enjoy at our house. They are not perfect...anyone can find fault with something if they look hard enough. But they are movies that we enjoy, and that we own as well.
National Treasure
Nanny McPhee
Sky High
What a Girl Wants
Princess Diaries
Harry Potter Movies
Chicken Little
Pride and Prejudice (both the Kiera Knightley version, and the Kam Heskin version-which is the modernized version found in the family section at our Video store and has ZERO swearing)
Princess Bride
Holes
Jumanji
The Kid
Remember the Titans
Secondhand Lions
Star Wars (4, 5, and 6)
Peter Pan (the live action version)
Lilo and Stitch
That Thing You Do
Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed
High School Musical (we all like this one a lot. Sure its not going to win best picture but we like the music, the dancing and it just makes us feel good...and there is ZERO swearing, and ZERO innuendo)
We also enjoy various Scooby Doo cartoon movies, What's new Scooby Doo TV series on DVD, Spongebob Squarepants, Veggie Tales, Doc Season One, The Cosby Show seasons 1 and 2, and more. We also own 7th Heaven season 1, and Smallville seasons 1-3 (we stopped watching after that season because they ruined the show with sleaze, and there are episodes in the seasons we own that we won't be watching again, this is also a grown-ups only show at our house).
Now I am not trying to sound better than anyone else. I have been known to watch shows that have some violence, that involve investigations into murders, and etc. I have my own shortcomings. But I would like to see more out there that I can watch with my kids, and that I can watch just myself, that make me feel good when I turn the TV off. Shows and movies that make me think the world is a better place, and not a nightmarishly scary one.
My question is...do we really live in a world where people find murder, rape, violence and immoral behaviour to be entertaining? I think we do. Reality TV has made a big splash, and a great many of those shows center around whoever can lie the best, and cheat the best winning. Yes, we reward people for lying, dishonest, and untrustworthy behaviour. We pay them money, and we send them to Letterman or Leno to be interviewed and praised for their lying abilities. There are a number of shows that center around crime, murder and etc, and there is plenty of fodder there for any number of plots involving those things. Does it desensitize us as a society to see murders, autopsies, muggings, etc glorified every week on the screen? I think it does. I think we can read about a brutal murder in the paper, and its just not that big of a deal anymore. Think about it for a minute...really think about it. How would you feel if all of those stories we watch for entertainment were true? Some of them are. Things like that happen every day. Is that entertaining?
What happened to the good, clean family films? Many of the films today that are touted as family films are full of double entendres that go right over a little kid's head, but slap their parents in the face. And what happens when a kid gets old enough to understand that something means more than they think, but they don't know quite what it means, so they ask? Well, I can tell you that its becoming a more common occurrence in our house as our kids get older, and its uncomfortable for us as parents. We want our kids to stay as pure and as innocent as they can for as long as they can. This also goes for swearing...why do so many good, clean movies have the Lord's name in vain? It's so unnecessary to the plot. I shouldn't have to teach, and then RE-teach my four year old not to take God's name in vain. So we are looking for those really clean, family friendly movies. There aren't many out there. We do own several DVDs and movies. We have a list of movies we enjoy as a family. We try to rent movies to add variety, but as I said, there are few out there that fit the bill.
I read a CNN report that said the following: "The average G-rated film made between 1989 and 2003 produced more than 11 times greater profit than its R-rated counterpart, $79 million vs. $7 million, even though the movie industry produced nearly 12 times more R-rated films than G-rated films" If you would like to read the entire report it can be viewed here... http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/07/news/newsmakers/dove_movies/index.htm
I would like to submit a challenge to Hollywood, to make a movie, (or better yet, many movies)that have a good plot, that don't have any unnecessary swearing (and pretty much all swearing is unnecessary to me), that are morally clean, that teach something of value, and yet, are entertaining. Please leave out the crass (and stupid) humor, and give us something worth paying money to see.
And now I will part this particular entry with a list of some movies that we enjoy at our house. They are not perfect...anyone can find fault with something if they look hard enough. But they are movies that we enjoy, and that we own as well.
National Treasure
Nanny McPhee
Sky High
What a Girl Wants
Princess Diaries
Harry Potter Movies
Chicken Little
Pride and Prejudice (both the Kiera Knightley version, and the Kam Heskin version-which is the modernized version found in the family section at our Video store and has ZERO swearing)
Princess Bride
Holes
Jumanji
The Kid
Remember the Titans
Secondhand Lions
Star Wars (4, 5, and 6)
Peter Pan (the live action version)
Lilo and Stitch
That Thing You Do
Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed
High School Musical (we all like this one a lot. Sure its not going to win best picture but we like the music, the dancing and it just makes us feel good...and there is ZERO swearing, and ZERO innuendo)
We also enjoy various Scooby Doo cartoon movies, What's new Scooby Doo TV series on DVD, Spongebob Squarepants, Veggie Tales, Doc Season One, The Cosby Show seasons 1 and 2, and more. We also own 7th Heaven season 1, and Smallville seasons 1-3 (we stopped watching after that season because they ruined the show with sleaze, and there are episodes in the seasons we own that we won't be watching again, this is also a grown-ups only show at our house).
Now I am not trying to sound better than anyone else. I have been known to watch shows that have some violence, that involve investigations into murders, and etc. I have my own shortcomings. But I would like to see more out there that I can watch with my kids, and that I can watch just myself, that make me feel good when I turn the TV off. Shows and movies that make me think the world is a better place, and not a nightmarishly scary one.
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