Reflecting an important spiritual insight, a one frame cartoon appeared during the holidays ending the year 2013 and beginning 2014 illustrated the difference between illusion and reality in human beings. The implication we can take from the cartoon is that illusions may be made facts for living – proved by public opinion polls. In point-of-view (related to values in society) and reality of character (related to values in the individual person) may offer undeniable different scenarios about values. The combined scenarios become contradictory, and may be reported differently as perceived in the orientation of the poll evaluator. In reporting to society the illusion may become evidence and objective reality may be disregarded. We gain from the cartoon the sense of duplicity in persons that relates to common human condition and context. The context of the cartoon offers a story touching on paradox and contradiction in mankind. The cartoon has a group of persons, male and female, watching a film in a theater, a film that includes crime, murder, sex, wealth and cleverness in the bad guys. Viewers are presumed to deplore the depravity seen in the show. (In a side-panel this is labeled: The Hollywood Effect: What we should be thinking while watching ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’ What a bunch of greedy morally reprehensible prison-worthy crooks!) Another side-panel within the cartoon representing the silent thoughts of the individuals in the theater group refutes the Hollywood Effect values they may, after the show, verbally express to each other. The whole implies a scenario of serious game-playing. The real point, as noted in the cartoon, relates to what the persons in the audience are really thinking – not what the film producers say they are thinking. (That panel reads: And what we’re really thinking . . . Nice Car! Hot Babe! Cool Yacht! Awesome Party!) Which of the two is the truth – what the producers say they are believing, or what the film is reinforcing in the minds of the audience? Is the cartoonist on to something about human reality?
Herein is an illustration of the chasm between the high road that leads to better things that point to God offering a future in values, and the low road that condemns mankind to the darkness of uncertainty about life values and the hereafter. Here is an illustration of a collision of concepts in common grace that clutters the way to evidence, to understanding, to wisdom in the functioning of mankind in common grace. The makers of the film argue that they are illustrating the problem in showing the degradation of values, values to be faced by society. What they may be doing is making a film that will attract persons paying to see a film that enhances carnality. This is found in their business meetings in which they determine what profitable films may be made as those films attract a paying audience. When wholesome films sell, they will make wholesome films. That this film will play to the prurient inclinations and negative interests of human beings is not acknowledged. For the industry the issue is: What can we do to get an audience so to advance our success as filmmakers shown in profit and mass of attendees? (Certainly there are films made for the affirmative value contribution they offer to the viewer, but the gratuitous appeal to the negatives of human beings holds greater force for general business.) In reviewing the films referred to in the TV digest for the day of this writing, January 6, 2014, I found those related to crime, murder, divorce, prurient interests greatly out-numbered the affirmative or neutral emphases by the titles and notes related to the entries. There is much more evidence and explanation that belongs here, but I must get to my purpose.
All media is in some way educational – reinforcing, changing, introducing, ideas and processes for those creating or consuming the substance programs of the media. That means the sender is somehow responsible for the content and nature of the communication as it impresses the listener or viewer. One does not fault the David sculpture which casts David in a standing nude position. Would a loin garment change the art? Modern media seems to play less on the artistic as on the moral, for good or ill. I do believe that life is captured in faithful art, but lost by artful distortions playing life games that may miss-form others. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020