New and Updated Moral Rating System

The rating system we've been using up until now has been very simple (a Moral Value score of 1-5), but it's been hard to be consistent on our ratings given that we just looked at a list of criteria and assigned a score that we felt fit best.  We've recently developed a formula for a Moral Value score to help us be more consistent and hopefully make our ratings a little more useful.  We appreciate all the inspiration and feedback we've received from family and friends on this.

The new formula is:

Good Entertainment vs. Evil Entertainment

While reading in our church's guidelines for youth on the subject of Entertainment and the Media, I was inspired to broaden my study. In Moroni 7:12 it says, "Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil." That seems pretty straightforward and obvious in how it applies to media, but what about movies that aren't evil, but also can't be considered to be from God?  Is there a spectrum of Good movies and Evil movies or just a simple dividing line?  Could it be displayed in the fashion of RottenTomatoes - FooBar movie is 78% Good (or 22% Evil)?  (That's what we try to do here, more or less, with our less-than-perfect rating system.)  I think that there is value to this system, but would it also be necessary to categorize all movies into two separate categories of either Good or Evil?  Let's look at how we could define Good and Evil first.

Elder M. Russel Ballard, Quorum of the Twelve in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, stated, with regards to Good media, that we can

"find movies and TV comedies and dramas that entertain and uplift and accurately depict the consequences of right and wrong."  

He then continues by defining one aspect of evil media,

"Often media's most devastating attacks on family are not direct or frontal or openly immoral. Intelligent evil is too cunning for that, knowing that most people still profess belief in family and in traditional values. Rather the attacks are subtle and amoral—issues of right and wrong don't even come up" (emphasis added).

According to Elder Ballard, then, if a movie doesn't "accurately depict the consequences of right and wrong" it is evil. In Orson Scott Card's A Storyteller in Zion, he says divides evil into three categories: Evil depicted, advocated, and enacted by fiction.  Regarding the depiction of evil,

"Freedom of speech ... includes the right to speak about evil.  Our own General Authorities [of the Church] devote a considerable amount of time to speaking about evil, from the evil of Communism to the evil of child abuse, from the evil of non-attendance at sacrament meeting to the evil of forgetting to pray."  

The advocation of evil is also a right we're guaranteed under the Constitution.

"Any speaker may advocate any evil act.  In America, a speaker may advocate revolution, crime, cowardice, dishonesty...  In any society, what seems evil to one person may seem right and just to another -- and i na free society, the government is forbidden to silence one and promote the other.  Instead, each individual is expected to listen to all and make up his own mind."  

Lastly, enacting evil,

"The traditional example is the person who shouts "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  He can call it a joke; he can claim that his freedom of speech allows him to lie; but in fact his lie, his joke, may cost people life or limb in the panic that ensues...  There are times when some rights conflict, and a free society, to preserve itself, must place limits on its own freedom." 

Card then helps us better understand how these evils are different and why enacting.

"All fiction depicts evil, but the mere depiction of evil is not wrong.  And, because all fiction unavoidably expresses the moral convictions of the writer and because every writer will have different moral convicitions, some fiction is bound to advocate things that at least some readers think is evil.  But even that advocacy is protected.

"It is only when the fiction actually enacts evil in itself that it becomes dangerous, and the government of a free society can begin to consider limiting it.

"Pornography is the obvious case of fiction enacting evil.  It is designed to give direct or indirect sexual gratification...

"The problem arises when the untrained reader finds a passage [or scene] describing a sexual event or a violent one in a work of fiction [or on screen] that is not aimed at the pornography-consuming market.  Unaccustomed to reading at all, this would-be censor can only understand that he sees a sex act and cannot see what purpose that depiciton of evil might serve in the rest of the book [movie]."

Very few movies are moral or Good from beginning to end.  If any "subtle" or "amoral" issues exist in the film and seem to overshadow any Good, it probably isn't worth seeing again or recommending to others (no matter how funny or well-written it may be). Reading further in Moroni we find that,

12 ...the devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually.

13 But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God.

14 Wherefore, take heed, my beloved brethren, that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the devil.

15 For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night.

Verses 14 and 15 are a bit disconcerting.  Judging the good from the bad isn't always as plain as night and day, dusk and dawn can be easily mistaken if we don't know the direction the light is coming from.  This brings us to verse 16, which tells us exactly how to make this a "plain" process,

16 For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

When we are clean and pure and able to house the Spirit of Christ, being able to judge good from evil will be "as plain ... as the daylight is from the dark night."

Now, to bring you back to the main point of this article, what is a good way to analyze the evil in film?  It may serve useful to use Card's categorization, though I'll definitely need to read through it some more and think about how I would apply it.  The one difficult category for me is "enacting evil."  I understand what pornography is and realize that there is some pornography that is obviously pornography, but there are other images/text that aren't quite as definite (as well as similar discrepancies in classification of violence, profanity, etc.).  I'll save this topic for a separate post.  In the mean time, what do you think about what's been written here?  Is it ok to rate the morality of a movie on a scale?  Should it be divided into good or evil?  Perhaps a mixture of the two would be good - maybe a show has somewhat of a moral message, but a stand should be taken to either recommend or not recommend it for others to watch.

Seven Pounds: On Suicide

I've been giving this movie a lot of thought lately, given the comments I received on the original post and the conversation it has fostered in my family. Ben Thomas gave of himself, literally and entirely, and that act of charity could be considered a Christ-like act. He gave his life so that others could live and live more fully. He seemed to feel so guilty and depressed for all the damage he caused and the loved one he lost, that allowing others to more fully live their lives was more important than living his own.

The one problem I have with this is that Christ already suffered everything so that we could live more fully; the troubles we experience in this life are for us to learn by. I understand that we are also here on earth to watch over humanity and follow Christ's example by giving of our substance (which is in actuality His anyway) so that we can achieve ultimate happiness in our lives through serving others. But God gave us life and we have no right to take it ourselves. Whether we die because of others' misuse of their agency or of natural causes, we are to live our life to it's fullest until that time - though "fullest" varies in meaning from person to person.

I understand this issue isn't as black and white as I make it sound. I don't know if it's right/necessary for someone to give their life for someone else in a hospital/professional care situation (as in Seven Pounds). But, not all situations are like that. What about rushing out to save a child from being hit by a car, saving the child but killing yourself? I wouldn't call that suicide per se, and acting in that kind of a situation doesn't give you enough time to rationalize if it's right or not and I believe God will take that into account in our final judgement. I think Ben's mental state could be called into question as well, because of his traumatic experience and the visible after-effects, was he fully capable of making a responsible decision regarding his life?

Just because the film depicts a suicide does not make the film an immoral movie. I do believe that suicide is wrong no matter the circumstance, but I do not pretend to know the consequences of such an action. It could be argued that Christ gave his life up for us, choosing to die, but he had the power to save all mankind, his death was necessary for our eternal salvation.

As far as the morality of the movie is concerned, it depends on how the "evil" is portrayed that makes the movie moral or immoral. I think that Ben's suicide wasn't portrayed with the appropriate consequences (keep reading before you start jumping to conclusions on my reasoning). You see the devastation of his legal counsel/friend Dan, and you can pretty well guess the feelings of Emily, but because I feel that suicide is wrong, I think that is the feeling I should have at the end of the movie. I shouldn't come away from the film wondering if killing myself or donating all my organs to people I love (because I no longer have any will to live) might actually be better than continuing to live my life and, with God, better understand the work I need to complete in this life.

As hard as it may have been for Ben, perhaps he should have been asking why he was the one that survived. Surely he was preserved for a purpose. If he was supposed to die, wouldn't God have taken him with the others? Or did God save him so that Emily and others could have a lengthened and richer life?

One Step Toward Fewer R-rated Movies

I really loved Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.  When I saw the previews for The Watchmen, I was super excited to see that a similar movie was coming out.  That excitement all but got deflated when I saw that it received an R-rating from the MPAA.  I checked my normal resources to find out what exactly kept it from getting a PG-13 rating like the vast majority of other comic book movies.  Most comic book film adaptations (with exception to movies like 300) that get an R-rating (e.g., The Punisher) end up underperforming.  Maybe it's because the younger audiences are a better target, or it could be that for more people a movie is more enjoyable to watch (one of the main purposes of the cinema) without the gratuitous violence and sex.

I know that this is a pretty popular analysis, but I thought it would help to see in writing how much movie studios waste on R-rated movies (numbers came from the the-numbers.com).  Over the last 15 years (1995-2009)

• 22.6% of all movies were rated PG-13 and each movie brought in about $40 million
  
• 3.2% of all movies were rated  G and each movie brought in about $36 million
  
• 10.9% of all movies were rated  PG and each movie brought in about $35 million
  
• 41.5% of all movies were rated R and each movie brought in about $14.6 million
  

I've read comments by Orson Scott Card that pointed to the snob factor of the cinematic elite as the reason for so many R-rated movies and the reason they tend to drown out the decent movies in all the award ceremonies.  The Oscars, Golden Globes, etc. are not influenced at all by the average people who go to the movies, they are obviously influenced by the Hollywood society of nitwits.

Going back to The Watchmen, according to IESB, Warner Brothers has decided to stop making R-rated Superhero movies.  The Watchmen just didn't make enough money to make R-rated comic book movies worth it anymore.  Marvel made a similar comment when seeing the success it had with Ironman.

Commenting on the difference between The Dark Knight and The Watchment, decentfilms.com said, 

"Last year’s brilliant The Dark Knight showed how effective implied violence and menace could be without spurting blood or unnaturally draped limbs. The R-rated Watchmen is more explicit, but much less effective.

That quote pretty much spells out the fact that "less is more."  We don't need to see every gritty detail to understand good versus evil, to know that two people love each other, or that somebody died.  Is there any value to having an R-rated movie?  Does editing the film make it any better?  What about movies like Amistad or Schindler's List (two of which I've never seen but are on my to-see list), should those types of films be marketed to 13 year old kids?  Or are there some movies that should be reserved for audiences with a more mature understanding?

The article that spurred this post was linked off of Slashdot.