Dear TV and Movie Producers and Advertisers of same,
I grew up watching television. But now I find myself completely disgusted by what you are giving me as entertainment. May I please offer a few suggestions?
I am not a prurient adolescent, so please dispense with the sexual innuendo and bathroom humor. I am far more mature and sophisticated than that. Most of the people I know are. I am relatively well-educated, so please come up with words with more than four letters. They have already worn out their shock value, and what other use are they? All they do is turn me off, which means I turn the knob off.
Please give me role models I can identify with, admire, or aspire to. Give me a father figure who is not an idiotic doofus, one who can make rational decisions and does not need his wife, and certainly not his children, to pull him out of the messes he makes of their lives week after week. Give me a mother figure who does not treat her husband like a child or demean him to her friends, but respects him; who is not a preacher for the ultra-liberal left, who understands that selflessness and sacrifice for her family is not a fault to be overcome, and can communicate with her family without a martyr complex. Give me children who respect their parents and obey them without eye-rolling, sass, and deeply heaved sighs of frustration.
Tell my children the truth not the fairy tale of “happily ever after.” Show my children that one talk about condoms does not make teen pregnancy a breeze. Show them that drugs are not that easy to overcome once they are hooked. Tell them that there is no such thing as “safe sex” outside of heterosexual monogamy, that AIDS is not the only, or even the most common, sexually transmitted disease out there, and that they could easily end up living the rest of their lives in relentless pain, unable to marry and have children till the day they die. Tell them that the same self-control we expect of them in regard to stealing and murder is just as viable when it comes to sexual self-control.
Teach them something called integrity and character instead of looking out for number one and doing what you can get away with. Teach them that whatever they do affects someone else. Do you know how many times my probation officer husband has sat across the table from inmates who were shocked to hear that their shoplifting raised the prices that their dear old grandmothers had to pay? No one taught them simple economics. No one told them that what they did was a reflection on the women who raised them. “I don’t know your mother,” he often says to them, “except what I see in you.” You would be surprised how many hardened criminals sit there with tears running down their cheeks at those words. Too bad you didn’t say any of those things a long time before he did.
And tell me this—would you ever pepper dialogue with the phrase “Oh my Allah!” or “Oh my Buddha!” or “Oh my Vishnu!”? Or would you never dare in this age of political correctness to cause offense to someone’s religious beliefs? So why must I listen to you disrespect my God? Or is it, as seems to be the case over and over, that discrimination against Christians doesn’t count?
Speaking of Christians, show me practicing Christians who are neither fire-breathing, insane radicals nor hypocrites. Show me people who live what they believe—quietly and selflessly serving others and living moral lives. I can show you hundreds of families in just my limited circle who do. Why can’t you find any?
I am not the only one out there who would like these things. A good many of us are tired of seeing sex used to advertise hamburgers and shavers, and suave urbanity to advertise liquor and beer. Let me tell you—the most interesting man in my world is not an arrogant, beer-swilling womanizer and no man should expect me to come running just because he gave me the eye across a boxing ring. My standards are much higher than those. My friends feel the same way. We’re tired of having to battle an entire culture in order to teach our children how to be decent people. Not a few have turned their TVs off. They have made the decision to boycott businesses who promote themselves in such irresponsible ways, businesses whose only interest is the bottom line.
And to those who are saying amen, I am calling on more of you to do something tangible to show your displeasure--not violent, not illegal, but something that will make an impact that businesses care about—their profits. Write a letter, using calm words, good words, not indecent ones. Don’t become what you are opposing. Then follow up. Turn off that television, stop watching those movies, don’t buy those products or patronize those establishments. You know who and what they are as well as I do, you’ve just been ignoring this issue because it would put a crimp in your style. Maybe it’s time you sacrificed something. You know who it’s for. Aren’t they worth it? Isn’t HE worth it?
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead reprove them. Eph 5: 11.
Dene Ward
I grew up watching television. But now I find myself completely disgusted by what you are giving me as entertainment. May I please offer a few suggestions?
I am not a prurient adolescent, so please dispense with the sexual innuendo and bathroom humor. I am far more mature and sophisticated than that. Most of the people I know are. I am relatively well-educated, so please come up with words with more than four letters. They have already worn out their shock value, and what other use are they? All they do is turn me off, which means I turn the knob off.
Please give me role models I can identify with, admire, or aspire to. Give me a father figure who is not an idiotic doofus, one who can make rational decisions and does not need his wife, and certainly not his children, to pull him out of the messes he makes of their lives week after week. Give me a mother figure who does not treat her husband like a child or demean him to her friends, but respects him; who is not a preacher for the ultra-liberal left, who understands that selflessness and sacrifice for her family is not a fault to be overcome, and can communicate with her family without a martyr complex. Give me children who respect their parents and obey them without eye-rolling, sass, and deeply heaved sighs of frustration.
Tell my children the truth not the fairy tale of “happily ever after.” Show my children that one talk about condoms does not make teen pregnancy a breeze. Show them that drugs are not that easy to overcome once they are hooked. Tell them that there is no such thing as “safe sex” outside of heterosexual monogamy, that AIDS is not the only, or even the most common, sexually transmitted disease out there, and that they could easily end up living the rest of their lives in relentless pain, unable to marry and have children till the day they die. Tell them that the same self-control we expect of them in regard to stealing and murder is just as viable when it comes to sexual self-control.
Teach them something called integrity and character instead of looking out for number one and doing what you can get away with. Teach them that whatever they do affects someone else. Do you know how many times my probation officer husband has sat across the table from inmates who were shocked to hear that their shoplifting raised the prices that their dear old grandmothers had to pay? No one taught them simple economics. No one told them that what they did was a reflection on the women who raised them. “I don’t know your mother,” he often says to them, “except what I see in you.” You would be surprised how many hardened criminals sit there with tears running down their cheeks at those words. Too bad you didn’t say any of those things a long time before he did.
And tell me this—would you ever pepper dialogue with the phrase “Oh my Allah!” or “Oh my Buddha!” or “Oh my Vishnu!”? Or would you never dare in this age of political correctness to cause offense to someone’s religious beliefs? So why must I listen to you disrespect my God? Or is it, as seems to be the case over and over, that discrimination against Christians doesn’t count?
Speaking of Christians, show me practicing Christians who are neither fire-breathing, insane radicals nor hypocrites. Show me people who live what they believe—quietly and selflessly serving others and living moral lives. I can show you hundreds of families in just my limited circle who do. Why can’t you find any?
I am not the only one out there who would like these things. A good many of us are tired of seeing sex used to advertise hamburgers and shavers, and suave urbanity to advertise liquor and beer. Let me tell you—the most interesting man in my world is not an arrogant, beer-swilling womanizer and no man should expect me to come running just because he gave me the eye across a boxing ring. My standards are much higher than those. My friends feel the same way. We’re tired of having to battle an entire culture in order to teach our children how to be decent people. Not a few have turned their TVs off. They have made the decision to boycott businesses who promote themselves in such irresponsible ways, businesses whose only interest is the bottom line.
And to those who are saying amen, I am calling on more of you to do something tangible to show your displeasure--not violent, not illegal, but something that will make an impact that businesses care about—their profits. Write a letter, using calm words, good words, not indecent ones. Don’t become what you are opposing. Then follow up. Turn off that television, stop watching those movies, don’t buy those products or patronize those establishments. You know who and what they are as well as I do, you’ve just been ignoring this issue because it would put a crimp in your style. Maybe it’s time you sacrificed something. You know who it’s for. Aren’t they worth it? Isn’t HE worth it?
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead reprove them. Eph 5: 11.
Dene Ward
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