Idiots and the Entertainment Industry

So today, I get to work and my Assistant tells me to go view this video promo of a documentary shot by one of the instructors at school. I go and look and it is wonderful. He was a survivor of the Tsunami and had gone back to do the shoot. It can be viewed at http://www.culturalfilmfund.com. Anyway, part of the documentary showed actual footage of the Tsunami which showed people being drowned and the aftermath where bodies were washed up onto the shore and the workers as they tried to gather the bodies into a central location. My assistant had never seen any of this because most networks sanitize the news to make it palatable to the public. This is where my rant begins.

My understanding is that the news is supposed to be a representation of what has occurred. How in God's name do you sanitize the death of 300,000 people? How do you sanitize the awesome destructive power of nature when it chooses to exert its will and might over man? There is no way, we are raising a generation and apparently live among a generation who seem unable to cope with the vagaries of life and they believe that to make it appear better or less traumatic than it really is is beneficial. My question is - beneficial to whom?

Then this lead me into yet another annoying issue - that of the sanitation of films. There are now companies who take R rated films and remove the violence, sexual content and colorful language so that it becomes a family film. They claim they wish to be able to sit with their family and watch a film without those items in it. Now my question is this - if you take out half the content, then it isn't the film that the film maker intended. If you wish to watch a certain kind of film - then watch that film...don't clean up a film so that you feel comfortable watching it. Not all films are created for younger viewers - some films are meant for adults.

Case in point is the Passion of the Christ. Now, I've never watched the movie because I knew that because I get really involved in films I'm watching, I'd be one of those people weeping and in agony over what I was seeing. My choice, therefore, was not to watch the movie until I was truly ready. And being ready meant, having it on DVD at home where I could pause and walk away and come back when I was calm. I know that Mel Gibson wanted the film to have a very visceral effect on his audience because for those of us who are christians, he wanted us to understand the enormity of the sacrifice of Jesus' death and resurrection. How then do a group of people determine that they wish to water this down. How do they make a determination that it is okay to alter the intent of the filmaker so that they can feel comfortable watching the film.

The sad part is that there is legislation that will actually begin to allow this. Filmakers do allow the altering of their films to fit into TV viewing timeframes and for dubbing over foul language and removal of some sexual content to make it viewable on television which has stricter codes for content. So it seems to me that they are taking this to the extreme. The filmakers point is that while they do allow this - they retain control over how the editing is done and that these other editors for clean films .... are simply hacking their work to pieces. I think the courts should consider this keenly. We are slowly being taken over by the right wing element who is choosing to bully everyone so that they can have things their way. It ain't right and somebody should put a stop to it.