“Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.” – Walt Disney
Happy October!
I hope you’re having a fantastic start to your month! I’m sitting at a lovely, quaint café here in Corpus Christy, enjoying a latte and lots of vivacious kicks from the precious baby girl growing in my belly! (Did I tell you I’m welcoming a little turkey around Thanksgiving time??)
Annnywhooo… This post is my third and final installment in my Myths and Movies series, and in it, I’m aiming to answer the question I posed in Part I:
“What if the Marvel movies, along with countless other Hollywood-produced films and TV shows, aren’t purely entertainment, but carefully crafted pieces of programming meant to ensnare and deceive?”
I’m taking a deep breath right now. Mainly because, in my pregnant state, breathing isn’t as easy as it once was, and secondarily because the question above is a BIG one, one that could very well be answered not in a single blog post, but rather an entire book. Please accept my answer as an overview of sorts, rather than a detailed dissertation.
You probably are well aware of this, but movies are far, far, far from being mere entertainment. They’re also one of the most powerful brainwashing tools available, able to reach millions of people and capture their attention for two to three hours while strategically inoculating them with the director’s, writers’, and producer’s thoughts and agendas. (I say “them,” but being a moviegoer myself, I of course mean “us”…)
Decades ago, before the government outlawed their use, advertisements were inserted into movies, featuring dancing foods and drinks, like hot dogs, soda, and popcorn (remember the drive-in scene in Grease?), not so subtly encouraging audiences to spend money at the concession stand.
Nowadays, we don’t have commercials, or even split-second ads, in movies. We don’t have PSAs or special reports. Instead, and more insidious, movies are themselves the message, at least on a subconscious, subtextual level.
“The medium is the message.”
– Marshall McLuhan
You’ve no doubt heard of product placement, a marketing technique in which a brand or product is introduced visually or verbally. A few examples:
Ray-Ban sunglasses worn in the Tom Cruise movies Risky Business and Top Gun
The sexy cars of the James Bond films (Aston Martins, Bentleys, Lotuses, etc.)
The Nokia phone in the 1999 film The Matrix
Reeses Pieces (yum!) in E.T.
But all of that seems fairly innocent, right? I mean, it’s just stuff – commercialism, materialism. Sure, these products may not be great for our budgets, or our waistlines, but they don’t necessarily undermine or attack our moral convictions, or implant evil into our heads and hearts while our brains and occupied by tumultuous, heartstring-pulling love stories, riveting action sequences, and uproarious comedy…the implicit, seemingly innocuous, facets of movies.
Over the last few decades, Hollywood, has upped their propaganda game by baking their political, religious, and social agendas into the stories themselves and doing so in impressively stealthy ways.
There has always been propaganda in movies (refer to the 1934 pro-Nazi film Triumph of the Will, the racist 1915 film Birth of a Nation, and the 1905 anti-aristocracy and pro-revolution Russian film Battleship Potemkin), but the intended messages were glaringly obvious, and thinly veiled behind any pretense of a fictional or escapist narrative arc. Over the decades of filmdom’s existence, modern propaganda has evolved to become incredibly, terrifyingly sophisticated.
Here are a few “innocent” movies and the messages many media critics see baked into their clever and highly commercialized cakes (please note that I have not seen all of these):
Finding Nemo
Message: humans are evil and take terrible care of animals and the environment
Ice Age: The Meltdown
Message: modern-day global warming/climate change is a serious threat
Cars 2
Message: Energy (“big oil,” in the words of Pixar bigwig John Lasseter) is the villain
Turning Red
Message: It’s okay to disobey and rebel against your parents if what you want is extremely important to you. (Many, many Disney movies carry this sentiment, such as Moana, The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Finding Nemo)
13 Hours and Rocky IV
Message: pro-American, anti-foreigner propaganda
Gattaca, Limitless, RoboCop, The Island, Iron Man
Message: Transhumanism and cybernetics are the future; God’s design can be improved upon
The Lego Movie
Message: freedom is best; those in power (in the movie, it’s the character President Business) don’t know what’s best and often act according to their own best interests
As someone who loves to study eschatology, literally translated as the “study of last things,” I was especially intrigued by the final Avengers movies, Infinity War and Endgame and their allusions to biblical end-times teaching. From Thanos’s rapture-like removal of 50 percent of humanity, to the ensuing all-out war against him, there were clear parallels (clear to me, at least, ha!) drawn between the Marvel universe’s supervillain and Christ Jesus, who will one day gather up millions of people to “meet [him] in the air” and be warred against by those in league with the Antichrist (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17; Revelation 19:19).
Do I think the writers of the Avengers were necessarily aware that they were alluding to Christian eschatology? No. But I do believe that ages-old fallen spirits, the agents of Satan who have been influencing humans since our original rebellion in Eden, are heavily involved in the entertainment industry. Ephesians 6:12 tells us we “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” These forces of darkness inspire and even enter and possess people, influencing them to spread the messages they do.
Thankfully, there are wholesome, good, God-honoring, freedom-loving movies being produced by good and godly people, or by unbelievers who still respect and uphold traditional, Judeo-Christian values. My point today, as I hope you’ve gathered, is that the vast majority of Hollywood movies are teeming with anti-Christ, anti-family messages, and the onus is on you and me to wisely choose what we allow ourselves and our families to watch and support with our hard-earned, and influential, dollars.
Food for Thought:
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” – Jean-Luc Godard
“I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earlier people who made film were magicians.” – Francis Ford Coppola
“Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.” – Robert Bresson
I hope you enjoyed this little series! Going back to Parts I and 2 in which I wrote extensively about myths, I wanted to share the cover of my upcoming new book, Medusa’s Wish. You can click HERE or on the pic to pre-order it on Amazon!
Summary:
In the time of gods and goddesses, mighty heroes and hellish beasts, the house of Phorcys is notorious for its fearsome monsters, from Ladon the hundred-headed serpent, to the withered crones known as the Gray Ones.
Of all their siblings, Medusa and her two sisters are, from all appearances, much like the fair and noble princesses produced by revered mortals and Olympian gods. To the suitors coming to win Medusa’s hand in marriage, there is nothing monstrous about her. And in Medusa’s mind, she and her sisters will never enter into legend as the cruel and grotesque villains her siblings have proven to be.
But as legend attests, Medusa’s name becomes synonymous with words like “witch,” “monster,” and “murderer.” What the stories don’t say is how, and why, she transformed into the snake-haired Gorgon who could turn a person to stone with a single look into their eyes.
Medusa’s Wish tells the whole tale. Well, the beginning of it, anyway…the part that was long ago lost to the swift-changing tides of myth and the soon-forgetting hearts of men. The end of it, the part you know well, may strike your heart differently after you read these pages and discover that all Medusa wanted was to be loved by the very ones who would betray her.
With vivid, passionate characters, rich language, and page-turning suspense, Medusa’s Wish is a gripping tale of sibling rivalry and devotion, love and loss, as well as a poignant glimpse into humanity’s universal desires for purpose, truth, and belonging.