Watercooler Wednesday - The Dilemma Of Entertainment
When does entertainment stop being entertaining?
For this post, I’m referring specifically to video…movies and television. I enjoy movies. I like sitting in front of the TV to relax. But I’m discovering that I find more and more things less and less entertaining.
Examples?
- I love my wife. I want to honor and respect her in every way. I can’t do that by sitting in front of a movie that shows me other women’s breasts, or finds most of its comedy material in sexual innuendo. You can easily figure out how many movies that takes out of my Blockbuster queue.
- Our marriage has gone through many struggles. Storylines that feature infidelity aren’t entertaining. Sex outside of marriage with no negative repercussions isn’t entertaining. That takes out quite a few TV shows, don’t you think?
- Anna recently lost her brother in a tragic accident. Recently, I’ve seen trailers for three movies that I was looking forward to seeing, but for some reason the movie apparently has a train hitting a vehicle. That’s not entertaining. Maybe I won’t see them after all…or maybe I’ll try to find out exactly when those scenes are, and plan a trip to the bathroom.
Do you struggle with your entertainment choices conflicting with your personal situations and ethics? When I was younger, it didn’t bother me one bit. It does now.
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Comments
Funny, I had a similar discussion recently based around the list of academy award best films. Some of the films I did not find entertaining to watch for various reasons. I believe very much in the rubbish in rubbish out rule.
ML and I have a sort of “code” when it comes to movies, namely: if either of us read a review that a movie is in any way “uplifting,” then we usually shun it as there invariably is a death involving a major cast member. “Hope Floats.” Nope, Sandra’s dad is an Altzheimer’s patient (ML’s mom died of that). “Message In a Bottle.” (The movie is great until the last 5 minutes.) “Pay It Forward.” (Ditto.) We usually stick to the lightest of fare, needless to say… “The Notebook?” No way.
Hey Paul, you may be on to one of the reasons that I shun movies. I hadn’t thought about it in the way you described, but the entertainment factor is definitely not there for me. (And consequently answers the question of how can I sit in front of the TV and watch college football for 3-4 hours without a second thought).
See you sunday.
sc
If you saw a movie in the 80’s, you could always scram to the bathroom whenever the saxophone music started. That was a guarantee that some lovin’ was about to happen…
Paul, thanks for sharing this. I feel exactly this same way. In fact, my famous “mom” tagline while watching TV or movies with my kids is “I’m not entertained.” Then I get up and walk away. Maybe I do take life too seriously sometimes, but I really do want to have the heart of God and to love what He loves and to walk away from all else. My personal convictions on this have grown a lot lately. It’s difficult to watch Leno or Letterman or SNL without feeling overwhelmed by mostly sadness not anger, not judgment. These shows definitely have hilarious moments and not everything is offensive. But then they cross that line - I suppose that line is different for everyone and I seem to have a lower tolerance than most of my peers, but when they cross that line, I turn it off and probably miss out on some more of the good stuff interspersed in there. And don’t even get me started on movies!