JustAdvice

Dur­ing the past 50 years movies have really changed, but I haven’t kept pace. Men­tally I’m still perched on the edge of my the­atre seat, legs dan­gling, a mouth­ful of jujubes welded to my gums. The other kids and I are still gasp­ing at uncom­pli­cated cliff-hangers on Sat­ur­day after­noons and the big screen and I are on the same track.  We stayed there too — until the 1960’s, when we parted ways. Pro­duc­ers and direc­tors some­how no longer knew how to make actors por­tray bad behav­ior with­out rub­bing my nose in it.

Some time ago my hus­band and I rented an award-winning movie, sup­pos­edly one of the best films of the year. It was also a genre we pre­fer, so we were look­ing for­ward to see­ing it. I should have known bet­ter. Every­thing was fine until — bang! I was plopped down in the mid­dle of a tor­rid sex scene that not many years ago would have been rated obscene. I got through that one fine, but the third time it hap­pened, I got mad.  I know, I know, I should be used to it by now, but isn’t that the prob­lem?  We’ve become used to it.

I’m not ten years old, so I wasn’t shocked or con­fused, but my vehe­ment reac­tion star­tled even me. I don’t know when I have been so furi­ous and felt so insulted.

The insult wasn’t so much the scenes them­selves, although they cer­tainly weren’t nec­es­sary to the plot. I was, truth be told, offended by the movie-makers’ assump­tion that I am, at heart, a voyeur. Oh sure, like most human beings, I have a nat­ural curios­ity about other people’s behav­ior, but, con­trary to the pro­duc­ers’ assump­tions, I have never had the urge to hide behind the cur­tains in bed­rooms, nor drill peep-holes in bath­room walls.

And another thing …  Besides the implied per­mis­sion to peep, what hap­pens to the idea of pri­vacy in the minds of kids who are brought up on this stuff? Our movies are chock full of unnec­es­sary scenes in bed­rooms and pub­lic restrooms, to name only two, and each is try­ing to outdo the other in its “real­ism.” The prob­lem for me is that none of it is any­thing we would “real­is­ti­cally” do any­where other than behind closed doors, so why are we mak­ing it so pub­lic? You can’t, after all, get much more uni­ver­sal than the big screen, and a lot of kids learn how to behave, at the cinema.

I hope we aren’t encour­ag­ing our chil­dren to parade all of life’s inti­ma­cies before oth­ers. We have enough prob­lems with self worth with­out encour­ag­ing them to expose every act. In order to achieve our high­est call­ing, we really need to behave bet­ter than the lower ani­mals, who con­ceal noth­ing from each other and have no notion of any­thing beyond impulse and instinct.