"Masquerading Objectionable and Vile Ideas as Entertainment"

When did you last go to the movies? What did you see? No doubt you left the theater feeling spiritually refreshed. Sure you did. In this day and age, movies have become nothing more than a means of shocking your senses. After the Columbine shootings, filmmakers vowed to use more discretion in producing movies. Now, less than one year later, we examine the results of their promises and can only come to one conclusion: The films have gotten worse.

Consider the amount of immorality in most movies. Production companies continue to make a mockery of the Biblical outline for marriage. This year’s Golden Globe nominations for "Best Drama" present two prime examples. Both American Beauty and The End of the Affair depend upon despicable immorality in their plots. Aside from the critics’ favorites, we can point to many other recent films that exalt immorality, including South Park, American Pie, Eyes Wide Shut, and Magnolia.

Second, extreme profanity lives on in abundance in the feature film industry. Apparently a film cannot become a viable competitor for your entertainment dollars until it contains at least thirty-five curse words. This year’s winner, Magnolia, contains 189 f-words, along with over 100 other blasphemies. Several other films from the last twelve months also tally up f-word quotas greater than one hundred, including Any Given Sunday and Next Friday. According to Focus on the Family, "Literally hundreds of f-words and s-words ravage the dialogue" of the movie South Park. Unfortunately, as indicated by all these recent releases, vulgarity continues to thrive on screen.

Finally, violence has not decreased in recent films. Hollywood quickly jumped on the gun control bandwagon after Littleton. It then proceeded to release The Matrix. In this film, graphic violence flourishes while scenes of rage play in surreal slow motion. Another popular film, The Fight Club, glamorizes such things as putting a gun in one’s mouth and pulling the trigger. Other motion pictures built on excessive violence include The General’s Daughter and End of Days. Sadly, young people remain the target of many of these films.

Thus, the motion picture industry has done little, if anything, to improve the moral quality of its films. Near Christmas, several production studios released family films that continue to do well at the box office. Unfortunately, if the present film trend continues, these isolated victories for decency may soon become obsolete. Hollywood promised to change its ways. Instead, it has indulged in them, and Americans everywhere need to stand up and say, "Enough!"