Monday, March 3, 2014

Dangerous Backflow

The Oscars were last night. I didn’t watch it, and it appears I didn’t miss much. If the reports on the new are anything to go by, the highlight of the evening was that a bunch of actors huddled up for a group “selfie.” The Oscars, like all awards shows, are about people in the industry congratulating other people within the industry for how well they did. Why would they do something like that? Ultimately, it encourages people working within the industry to do a better job.

But for the rest of us, it is a reminder of how much influence Hollywood has. It is understandable that the people in the motion picture industry are interested in who won what, but why should anyone else care? By the time The Oscars happen, people have already spent the money they’re going to spend on the movies that have been nominated. You can attribute it to hero worship, glamour, fancy clothing or several other things, but the fact remains that Hollywood has influence.

Sadly, Hollywood has significant influence. The people with the most significant influence are the actors—the liars, the people paid to pretend to be someone they are not, the people selected more because of how they look and the sound of their voice than for the intelligence in their heads. Predominantly, the Hollywood people we see are well-spoken, attractive, likable people, so people listen to what they say, even when they are completely lacking in wisdom.

Cartoonist Gary Thomas showed it as the sewage of Hollywood being dumped into the minds of the American public. Though it wouldn’t help the cartoon any, a more accurate picture would show that sewage flowing back into Hollywood as well. Hollywood feeds on its own waste. The garbage that comes from the minds of those who have made it into the upper ranks of Hollywood feeds into the minds of the people who hope to make it to that level in their careers. The moral compass is broken. People define their own morals based on what seems good at the time and then they promote it like it is the truth. The people looking to make it in Hollywood listen to these people because their success is seen as evidence that they know what they’re talking about. By the time they do make it, their minds are full of the same sewage that fills the minds of the rest of Hollywood.

To make it worse, there are a lot of Christians who are turning to Hollywood as their source of truth, rather than looking to the real source of truth. And many don’t realize that is what they are doing.