I don’t take time to watch much television. I do make it a point to be
abreast of the news and weather and watch a football game now and then, when one of my favorite teams
may be playing. It’s rare I watch a movie from beginning to end, even the good ol’ timers.
I found a channel recently that gives good home and gardening tips and
it’s taught me some interesting things, though I am not a consistent viewer.
But as I surf those channels in which I have some interest or watch the
commercials, I am affronted with previews of movies or TV programs that are going to be
showing. I am increasingly noting that many programs deal with the monstrous, the scary, the horrendous,
the hideous.
Why are so many of these programs attractive to the public? How do they
lift up the human spirit and give hope? Why do people love to be scared out of their wits? How can
parents let their little children watch these horrific, bloody, ugly programs? What is so wonderful
about them?
I remember as a very young girl seeing a preview of a movie in which
there was a terrible earthquake. In the movie the ground opened up, people fell into the
crevices, and the ground closed again upon them. That scary experience, to my young and impressionable
spirit, has remained with me. I can remember it as though I saw the movie preview today.
I could not understand then and still do not understand today why people
like to be scared out their minds. Don’t they have nightmares? What is so wonderful about the
monstrous? What is it about our modern society that people need the horrendous to be
entertained?
Could part of the reason be that most of us today haven’t really lived
through terrible societal times? I mean we in this country have not experienced war on our land, concentration
camps, near starvation, being refugees. I wonder how many people in Kosovo or Bosnia would like to
watch those monstrous movies? They’ve LIVED horrible experiences, did not find them entertaining,
nor, I would bet, ENJOY or be entertained by the horrific.
I think sometimes we have things way too easy here. Not that I wish
anything terrible to happen to anyone. It’s just that in our comfort zone and with our conveniences, we
haven’t lived through really scary times in real life, and scary experiences are not in our world of
realism for most of us. It always happens to someone else. It couldn’t happen to us. People can watch a scary
film and leave the theater knowing it was a fictional experience.
But our minds are sponges. Whatever goes into them, stays there. Are
there people who cannot leave the “fictional” in the theater and keep it separate from their real
living? Considering the growing number of shootings in schools, places where
people gather, etc., it makes one wonder. What is real? What is fictional? Why are the gruesome
and monstrous so attractive?
Hell is a monstous place and it’s not fictional. Those who go there are
not in the least entertained.
I want to watch programs that lift up my human spirit and give me hope.
Lord, have mercy on us and help us! We are in such need to love what is
good.
God’s peace and love be with you, dear reader!