People are easily influenced by what they allow themselves to be exposed to. Perhaps the most vulnerable place for us is the TV/movie screen. Everything we allow into our minds has some influence on us, whether conscious or unconscious. We need to be very careful with what we allow ourselves to be exposed to and employ discernment in our choice of entertainment. That being said, it's getting harder and harder to do with the ever-decreasing morality in film and television. Film and TV creators are constantly pushing the boundaries in the ratings systems, and so the movie ratings we know today have really been skewed from their original intended meanings.
I'm going to give you an example of what I mean. A film I really enjoy is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which was released in 1960. Now, upon its initial release, the MPAA rating system that we know today did not exist. But when the film was re-released in 1983, the MPAA branded it with a rating of R, which we know is restricted to anyone under the age of 17 due to strong content considered to be suitable for mature adult audiences. Psycho contains only two scenes of violence, neither of which show the knife used by the killer actually penetrating any skin. There are also two scenes which show a woman in a bra (which was a little risque for 1960). The only other thing in the movie that made the censor board nervous was the use of the word “transvestite.” The word was used in the end of the film by a psychiatrist trying to explain (or denounce the police's immediate theory) why the main character dressed up like his mother. Other than that, there is no profanity whatsoever. Now, whether or not you agree with that film receiving an R rating, that's an example of what the standard was. Fast-forward to 2016....
To give a more modern example, let's look at the recent film Suicide Squad. The film is about a ragtag group of incarcerated super-villains who are used by the government to stop an evil character. First thing's first: our “heroes” are villains. Anyone see anything kind weird about that? The movie features a lead female character who is overly-sexualized. She is seen wearing only her underwear and being used by her former boyfriend. Is anyone seeing anything kind of wrong here? Not only that, but expletives and violence abound all throughout the movie. In reality, Suicide Squad makes 1960's Psycho look like a kids' movie. And do you know what rating Suicide Squad earned? PG-13, “some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.” Seriously?! And that's just one of many examples.
Let's look at TV now. The TV Parental Guidelines are enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and work pretty much the same way movie ratings work. This rating system was implemented in 1996. Let me give you an example of a particular show that was rated TV-MA (some content may be unsuitable for children under 17) in 1996. There was one episode of The X-Files entitled “Home” (this was the only episode rated TV-MA, all other episodes were TV-14) which was only ever aired once, and it never re-ran. The plot centers around a family who have been inbreeding since the Civil War. The episode depicts the incestuous family burying one of their children alive, and makes reference to (but doesn't show) the sexual relationship between a mother and her three sons. You can see this episode was rated TV-MA for a reason.
A show that currently runs on TV, Gotham, is rated TV-14. I'm a Batman fan, so I started watching this show when it first aired. There is some pretty graphic violence, intense sexual situations and more profanity than I would have expected for its rating. If I were the parent of a 14-year-old teenager, I would not allow them to watch this show.
The more time goes by, the worse TV and film content get with the ratings companies becoming more and more lax. This is the content that we are being exposed to and that our children are being exposed to. It is a frightening concept. Will we sit idly by and watch these things get worse and worse as generation after generation becomes desensitized to extreme sex and violence? Make your voice heard to the people that can make changes! If this scares you as much as it does me, I urge you to contact the MPAA and TV Parental Guidelines. Tell them we want moral TV and films back! Tell them to reinforce the ratings as they were meant to be! In the meantime, if you want a solid Christian perspective on the movies that come to theaters, I highly recommend Movie Guide. To show you what they are about, here is an excerpt from their website, "MOVIEGUIDE® reviews all movies from a Christian perspective and how movies affect children at different stages of cognitive development. We analyze movies using over 150 different criteria that cover the dramatic elements, the literary, the worldview, and the theological…and much more."
