(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
That’s because the more you identify with characters in a show, the easier it becomes to see things from their point of view.
“If somebody’s lecturing or giving you facts in a documentary, your mind produces little responses,” Fleishman explains. “Somebody pushes, you push back. Entertainment isn’t pushing, it’s attracting — it takes you inside a new world.”
That power is precisely what makes TV so dangerous. It makes it a lot easier for TV writers and producers to seduce you into adopting a certain point of view. And the majority of their viewpoints are influenced either by secular humanism or a desire to make lots of money, or both. Either way, the result is pretty much the same. By using characters who are sympathetic and funny, Hollywood can lead people to question their own moral convictions.
That’s why the entertainment world made such a big deal about Ellen DeGeneres’s character announcing she was a lesbian a few years ago on Ellen. Finally, a homosexual lead character in a mainstream show! What an education for the masses! What peace and love and understanding would result!
Except that the big announcement didn’t help the show’s already tepid ratings. If anything, it lowered them even further. Suddenly the show was all homosexuality, all the time, and viewers got tired of it. Ellen’s eventual cancellation was seen by many as a sad example of American bigotry — but seen by others as evidence that viewers were sick of having people’s sex lives shoved in front of their faces.
Give Hollywood credit for learning from its mistakes. On Will and Grace, the next TV series with a homosexual main character, the male lead was a smart, likeable, regular guy who just happened to be homosexual (and a lot more stable than his ditsy female roommate). No fuss, no fanfare — the whole issue was handled very casually. Once the show’s creators got people interested, they could introduce a much more outrageous homosexual character, Will’s friend Jack, who was so funny that viewers took to him right away. Suffice it to say that Will and Grace has been earning the kind of ratings that Ellen only dreamed about.
Still another strategy is “catch ’em while they’re young”: Get teenagers rooting for homosexual characters and portray any objections to their behavior as, you guessed it, bigotry. This is the approach used on Popular and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among others. (The latter show basically argues — no joke — that if there’s nothing wrong with a human dating a vampire or a werewolf, what could be wrong with a girl dating a girl?)
Such strategies can be more effective than we realize. When TV consistently feeds us one view and forbids us to even think that there might be another one, it’s easy to go with the flow. As writer Marshall Allen remarks, “I found myself laughing or benignly accepting [TV’s] stories, situations and experiences when I should have been crying. I didn’t agree with [its] philosophy or [its] theology — but this isn’t what really bothered me, because I’ve never insisted that everyone agree with my worldview. What really irked me was that Sony was an alluring siren that lulled me into complacency.”
Do the shows you watch lull you into complacency? Are they showing a pretty picture of homosexuality and ignoring its often tragic consequences? If they are, it’s time to think about turning them off. That can be hard, especially since it doesn’t leave you a whole lot to watch. But as Catholics, we have to guard our hearts and minds from temptation — especially the temptation to think that we know better than God does what’s right and wrong.
And when you do find yourself confronted with issues like homosexuality on TV, don’t take Fleishman’s advice: Go ahead and “push back.” Think critically about what’s being shown and why you don’t agree with it. You could even write to the networks (politely), let them know what’s bothering you, and make the case for morality. After all, who gave Hollywood the right to make up your mind for you?
