Sex and Violence in the Movies

Since 1995 was the centennial year of the invention of the motion picture, I'd like to explore with you the impact of motion pictures after more than 100 years of their being a part of our lives.

Movies are a nearly universal entertainment medium today. Except for those religions that ban movies for being sinful, almost everyone watches a movie now and then, either on TV or on the big screen in a theater.

There's a lot of hue and cry over the effect of violence in movies. Certain politicians and religionists object to the portrayal of sex in the movies. All of our culture's ills are sometimes ascribed to the debilitating effects of watching too many sexy, violent movies.

But are we missing the point? Could it be that the real messages hidden in movies today aren't incitements to violence and/or wild sexual abandon? Is it possible that many movies' hidden agenda is political, intended to make us receptive to bureaucratic government solutions to problems rather than technological or free market solutions?

Here are some questions you might ask yourself:

  1. Can you think of a recent movie that portrays a businessperson as caring for their employees and concerned for the impact of their business on the world? If not, why not?
  2. Any movie based on Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" portrays the employer and businessperson named Scrooge as a skinflint pennypincher whose only lust is for money and more money. Why do you think Dickens portrayed Scrooge so unsympathetically and how has this affected our attitudes toward businesses like Banks and Savings and Loans?
  3. The movie "Wall Street" has a charcter in it named Gordon Gekko, a businessman who proclaims, "Greed is good" and whose name implies a small green lizard that lives in Viet Nam. Is this portrait accurate for most businesspeople? Even a very small percentage of businesspeople? Possibly even the businessperson named Oliver Stone, who made untold millions of dollars off this movie?
  4. In the movie that's a 90's update of the 50's TV series "The Fugitive," the source of all evil is a huge drug company making billions of dollars off drugs that kill people instead of healing them. Why do you think the moviemaker distorted the reality of drug companies' actual situation today?
  5. The alltime blockbuster "Jurassic Park" has at its center a businessman who is trying to provide educational entertainment for families. But he fails in a big way because his park is lethal instead of educational. What does this tell you about the moviemaker's attitudes toward businesspeople who engage in the science of genetic engineering?
  6. In the movie "Terminator 2", the source of evil is an afroamerican computer scientist creating a supercomputer that will, without human intervention, send nuclear missles and start a devastating nuclear war. Why would the filmmaker portray computers this way? Why was the scientist an afroamerican?
  7. In the movie "The Return of the Jedi" a tribe of indigenous furry creatures use all sorts of sticks, stones and other nontechnological objects to defeat the evil white-clad, laser-wielding soldiers of "The Empire." What does this tell you about the moviemaker's attitude towards technology?
  8. In the movie "2001, A Space Oddysey" Stanley Kubrick portrayed a computer with more soul than the humans who tended it. What do you think he meant to say about what happens to humans whose lives are dependant on complex technology?
  9. In the movie "Blade Runner" Harrison Ford portrays a rent-a-cop whose job is to "retire" (kill) a group of near-human robots made by an obsessed businessman living in a pyramid-shaped colossus in a future Los Angeles covered with a pall of smoke and lit by hellish refinery fires. What do you think Ridley Scott thinks of businesspeople? Of any possibility of less smog in L.A.? Of the desirability of machine intelligence?
  10. In the TV Series "Star Trek Deep Space Nine," one of the few businesspeople in the series is a large-eared, sharp-toothed character named Quark. Quark is a greedy little rascal who lives by a list of "Rules of Acquisition," all centered around "profit." Why would the makers of this series want to portray one of their minority businesspeople like this?

 

To learn more about Libertarians and Libertarianism check out the Future of Freedom Foundation

 

W. Earl Allen's home page:  http://www.allmax.com/wea