No, it’s a Gen X thing. Millennials and Gen Z are the ones pushing Wokery, and Wokery is anything but ironic.
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Pedant alert: Tow is flax fibers ready for spinning. They are very flammable and were often used to start fires. They are blonde colored, hence blonde headed kids being called towheads. Naphtha can refer to pretty much any flammable hydrocarbon and probably meant some type of petroleum.
BTW - this is a great discussion. I am not ready to give up on film, but I have pretty much stopped watching anything that is “mainstream” from the past 30 years. Much of that is due to content, but I also just don’t find the films engaging. However, I remain a great lover of documentaries.
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I agree that a helpful prerequisite for having this discussion is a LONG hiatus from entertainment first. Like Joseph, I grew up without a TV, and I guarantee that contributes a lot to our distaste. I literally cannot stand TV. Never could. Not that there aren’t any individual shows that I have appreciated (thank you, BBC, for James Herriot) but news programs, commercials, the inanity of it all, I detest it. As so many have already said here, movies have become less and less tempting in any way, so we have been watching less and less. But what to do with kids when they become teens and suddenly want to watch more real movies? 
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I haven’t quite put my finger on it yet, but something I have noticed is that my interaction with movies in my adult life has had a lot to do with seeking a feeling of nostalgia.
With rare exceptions, we don’t watch any new movies. But there are movies that are old favorites from my childhood or teenage years that get watched quite a bit. When I ask why that is, I can only conclude that it has to do with how that movie makes me feel.
The Hunt for Red October is my favorite movie. I like the plot. I like the acting. I like the cinematography of how they did what they did with the settings of the various submarines, blah blah blah, fine.
But really, I think I like it because I have a distinct memory of being a little boy, sitting in the living room under a cozy fort I had made under my mother’s ironing board, while my dad – who rarely watched movies – laid on the couch watching it. Simply put, there is a feeling that the movie creates in me that makes me want to lay in bed and watch it when I’m sick, or want to remember simpler times gone by.
My wife grew up watching John Wayne movies on lazy Sunday afternoon, my father-in-law being a big John Wayne fan. We recently rewatched some of her old favorites. I’ve rarely seen her so nostalgic.
I could go on like this about a number of movies I cherish. Movies that remind me of my teenage years, when the world seemed big, when I was still naive, and had no real responsibilities. Movies that remind me of my dad. Movies that remind me of the sense of unmitigated joy of being a boy at Christmas time, etc.
An aficionado like @nathanalberson may be the sort of guy who sits and considers at length the form and artistic merit of movies. But I think more people are like me. We love movies because of how they make us feel.
I don’t think all nostalgia is bad. But I do think that many hours of my adult life have been wasted because I chose to go to bed and seek solace in the comforts of an old movie, when I ought to have sought Christ. I have seen how nostalgia can rob us of faithfulness and fruitfulness in the here and now. And for me, movies are not a small part of it.
And I am not really sure I know how to right the ship for the next generation. I think I can say with some integrity that I am being careful not to lead my children in the same level of entertainment addiction as what I have known all my life. For instance, the television was always on in my house growing up. It was the ambient noise behind our lives. It isn’t the case in our house. We haven’t had cable television for over a decade. There is no channel surfing. Moreover, my brother and I were allowed to have a computer and a TV in our bedroom. Such is not the case with our children. Moreover, we open the word of God as a family, regularly, and read it, and discuss it – a thing which was not done in my family growing up.
And yet boy, we still manage to watch a lot of movies, and play lots of video games. Even if we avoid some of the same excesses of my own past, I still see the maxim ringing true that children walk in the ways of their fathers.
Or maybe I know the way to right the ship but lack the courage do tear down the high places. I am undecided.
P.S. We bought a ping pong table recently (inspired by a recent blog by our dear Pastor Tim Bayly, in fact), as well as a portable basketball hoop to station at the end of our driveway on the cul de sac this summer. It may sound strange, but these purchases were something of acts of repentance for me, as I see the need to produce different activities for my children beyond what their entertainment-addicted father would otherwise be inclined to default to.
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I’m ready to opt-out of most forms of visual entertainment. It’s been a long process of progressive revelation. First I realized I could not treat women as mothers and sisters in all purity while viewing them naked as entertainment. Then I realized I could not in good conscience see God blasphemed. Those two convictions eliminated most entertainment options right off the bat. I can’t understand why films that present nudity and blasphemy are referenced or recommended by Christians, sometimes even by teachers. My rule of thumb is to check a movie’s content on IMDB before watching. But that no longer suffices. In recent years a more insidious corrupting influence has arisen in the form of symbolism. When I saw Frozen, I knew something was off but it was hard to pinpoint. Moana was more obvious in its subversion of morality. Jonathan Pageau does a thorough job showing just how extreme the subversion is in its symbolic representation. Since this new movement is deconstructivist in nature, even franchises built on somewhat traditional morality will be torn down. Gina Carano being fired from her role in the Mandalorian is an example of this trajectory. Future plots are sure to follow suit.
Besides overt and hidden corruptive influence, we should consider whether moving pictures are really improvements upon the written word. I can’t think of a single instance of a film based on a novel that was an improvement. The opposite is true. If I see a film based on a novel I haven’t yet read and later read the novel I’m disappointed by the ways in which the film distorted, truncated, or otherwise mutilated the novel. My indebtedness to the film is chiefly due to its introducing me to the subject matter. There is something soothing and attractive about viewing images. It can be addictive. Images stimulate the brain with less effort than words. Movies have become a substitute for authentic experience and even religion. It would be good to severely limit the consumption of visual media.
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Visual media in general and moving visual media in particular. The Puritans did not have to deal with the latter.
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Joseph, thanks. Great post. I got to do some rethinking. I wrestle with this quite a bit, remembering your dad’s post on Augustine and entertainment. You help put words in my thinking about modern entertainment.
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I think you’re right in one sense: even basic commitments not to feast our eyes on nakedness or violence, or to be intolerant of using our lords name in vain, would cut out a huge number of modern movies. And I think we should move in that direction.
That said, I do not agree about books being superior to movies. They are apples and oranges. The medium is so different, and so it’s not surprise that turning a book into a movie often doesn’t work too well.
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I’m curious about counter-examples (books that were improved by film adaptation). I’ve just read Midnight in Chernobyl partly because I’ve seen so many glowing references to the recent HBO series. The story is so compelling and relevant that I’m tempted to watch it. But I gave up my last attempt at an HBO series, John Adams, due to gratuitous disturbing imagery. However skillful the writing, acting, and cinematography, I’m simply not interested in having haunting images seared on my mind (if you are wondering, it was a graphic portrayal of a mob tarring and feathering tax officer John Malcolm). The Chernobyl disaster is highly suited to visual representation and some aspects are more readily comprehended through images than paragraphs of text. Nevertheless, I’d rather avoid the unpleasantness of shock and horror for entertainment sake. I don’t think I’ll miss much because the book gives such a complete account of many aspects of the disaster. For technical understanding, 3D visualizations are readily available on YouTube. For mood, there are videos exploring the site without the amped-up intensity of Hollywood.
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Both Time Machine films (1960, 2002) I’ve seen are improvements upon the book, which is awful except that it was essentially the first ever work of time travel. I haven’t seen either of these films in quite some time and I don’t recall that either were all that great, but the book… Shuey!
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Phantom of the Opera was a much more interesting musical than it was a book. The book was truly awful. (Do I need to hide now?)
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As long as you watch it on stage rather than as a movie. Actually enjoyed watching a stage production filmed at the Royal Albert Hall.
I leave this thread for a couple days and someone is arguing for Phantom of the Opera the musical.
I don’t know what case I rest, exactly. But I rest it. 
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Read and watched at recommendation of Alex Costa, a recent New Geneva Academy grad, who gave me the TV series on DVD as a Christmas gift. Decided to read the history first, and was impressed with how close to the book the series stayed, actually. But two things.
First, the science of the series is way off. The radiation didn’t do the things the series said it did. Way over-dramatized, and therefore not truthful. Nevertheless, keep in mind that no one knew how things would fall out (unintentional) back then. It was crazy scary, so the series does give a good view of what was thought to have been the danger and harm then and for many years after.
Second, the woman heroette is everything all the women heroettes in every last movie today perpetually are, which is fake propaganda. There was no such woman from out of country serving as the feminine conscience of record. Bogus. There was, though, a woman heroette who had all the maps and grids used for the evacuation, and that’s a nice thing to note. But no, that wasn’t enough for the series people. Thankfully, they admit their fake heroette (who actually is a sympathetic figure and cast well with femininity prominent) is something like a “fictional compilation” at the very end. But honestly.
Love,
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All I needed to realize I don’t need to watch the series is the parental guide on IMDb listing “Fairly long scene (1-2 minutes) involving full frontal nudity of dozens of male miners” under the Sex & Nudity section. Midnight in Chernobyl mentions a heat exchanger project undertaken by miners:
Temperatures in the tunnel reached 60 degrees centigrade, and the young men worked half naked until, at the end of each shift, they had to be pulled from the tunnel, spent with exertion.
Apparently, being half naked was not sufficient for the producers at HBO.
Besides gratuitous nudity, it’s obvious from even the thumbnail image of the trailer video on YouTube–depicting a man with a bloodied, swollen face–that the series would glorify violence and gore. Rather than honoring victims by covering up their disfigurement, as decent people tend to do in a funeral, modern historical entertainment attempts to heighten the sensations caused by violent imagery by slowing down the motion or exaggerating the effects.
The first woman heroine you mention I could not identify, but the second is surely Maria Protsenko, chief architect of Pripyat. She was a true hero who sacrifices her own health by being exposed to radiation while evacuating the city of 50,000 people. Glad to hear she was at least acknowledged in the film.
God be praised, you don’t have to watch these things any more. Just fast forward. You know they’re coming, so hit the button. No so easy with language and propaganda being ubiquitous in life and videos, as they are. Love,
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Here’s a man who has now reviewed 819 movies. He’s done with movies:
https://jayriverlong.github.io/2021/07/05/movies.html
One of his theories as to why he can’t stand it anymore:
- Passive Media Consumption is Fundamentally Bad. Many years ago, a friend tried to convince me that the passive consumption of any media – film or television, maybe even music – was bad for the soul. To unthinkingly let a wave of content break over you is to inundate yourself with noise, to be filled with other people’s mediocre thoughts and games. Certainly, passively consuming media usually leaves me disillusioned: time spent, but nothing gained. (Porn is the emptiest calorie of them all.) Film is passive consumption by definition, because it’s best when you’re fully immersed. I’m not sure if I agree that all media is thus fundamentally and inescapably bad, but much of it is.
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I’ve found something similar. Spent too many hours in the past watching crap movies. These days we don’t watch anything, really. We just have a collection of about 100 movies that we ripped to Plex. Saturday nights are movie nights, and all the media is controlled because we control Plex. Last Saturday night was the sound of music.
Once you’ve seen the greatest representation of the 6 archetypes, you’ve seen it all.
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Sheesh. Now I’m going to risk signaling my virtue. Puh-leeze, that’s not what I mean b the following . . .
I really can’t remember when my wife and I started “abandoning” the movies. It was well before the Covid stuff. But the reasons are still there in memory, namely (a) the gratuitous sex and graphic violence, (b) the thinness of the plots and shallowness of the characters, (c) the repetitiveness of the narratives. We’d often leave the cinema marveling that we could have written such a screenplay ourselves! Why were we still living in obscurity??
We still have this attitude toward most of the offerings on the various video-streaming services. We avoid HBO entirely, because it insists on putting the most raunchy sex scenes in its offerings, which have absolutely no bearing on the plot. Even if they did, why must we dive into others’ sexual escapades in order to get to the next plot advancement?
It is still possible to find entertaining, even edifying cinematic/video entertainment. But, you have to search for it. You need to crowd-source recommendations. My brother, for example, touted Foyle’s War. We found it on Acorn TV via Amazon Prime Video. I agree with my brother. What a fantastic dramatic series!
So, what is a good alternative for visual entertainment? The answer is really very, very old - imaginative entertainment delivered by voice. The monuments of human literature were bardic - not only in the sense of their poetic features, but also in the simple fact that they were auditory. They were spoken aloud to an audience who listened, an audience which participated in the story by contributing their own imaginative responses to what they were listening to as the narrator delivered his tale.
The narrator, of course, was often mother. Or grandmother. But if father or grandfather got into the act - well a whole 'nuther dimension of imagination might be evoked in the listener.
I’m not claiming that today’s narrators need spin the tales out of their own heads. All they need to is learn to read out loud in a way that is free of ticks, monotones, and verbal flaws. It’s worth the effort.
And there is a crowd of fantastic story tellers out there - both modern and ancient. But, I’ll stop here to avoid topic drift.
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I know a lot of Christians don’t have a problem with acceptable violence or even graphic war-film violence (I think John Piper has made this argument before), but I’m not as comfortable with this as I used to be. I’m no longer sure that realistic violence is any less gratuitous than purely gratuitous violence. There’s that line in Gladiator, ‘are you not entertained?’ Well, yes, I find the film very entertaining. But how is that any different than Augustine’s friend who found the games absolutely enthralling, even against his better judgment?
As for war films, even stuff like Band of Brothers doesn’t sit well with me anymore. I think someone here might have made this point before, but older generations came home from war and kept the war stories away from those who hadn’t fought. Deliberately. It was something that they didn’t want the rest of us to ever experience. Do we really think that watching Saving Private Ryan or The Hurt Locker is anywhere close to experiencing the trauma of storming of Omaha Beach or modern combat? And for many, is it any less ‘purely entertainment’ than the Roman games were?
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