Wallowing in moral ambiguity

WALLOWING in moral ambiguity. That, I'm afraid, is what characterizes many of our movies and shows these days. They may be exciting or dramatic, colorful and artistic, but insofar as their moral quality is concerned, they more than not are simply confused, ambiguous, or even openly offensive.

This is unfortunate, really unfortunate! Commanding a vast following of people all over the world, they should be produced and treated with utmost care and sense of responsibility. But what do we have?

Shamelessly primitive and childish attitude toward their art! That's what many in the film and entertainment industry seem to be still stuck with. Really ironic, given the many amazing developments in the different fields of our life!

They often cite artistic freedom and creative license to justify whatever they like doing with their films, failing to see the glaring anomaly involved in contrasting creativity with prudence, freedom with responsibility.

Artistry to them is reduced to mere self-expression, completely detached from any consideration of an objective norm or law. Freedom becomes an entirely personal affair, with no reference to any other authority. Real madness!

I shudder at the thought of what we will likely find when we start probing into what inspires them. You see, artistic inspiration can only come from two sources: God or the devil. There's hardly any in-between, let's be clear about this.
They fail to realize that their freedom and license are never absolute: just like anything else in our life, they need to exercise them within the purview of morality.

Sorry to make this reminder, but our human acts always need to reinforce our dignity as children of God. We are not just our own being. We are creatures, made children of God, and so we have to behave always as such. Many movie producers appear to want to treat us more as brutes, whose hormones should constantly be titillated. Man with a soul, with a supernatural end, what's foolishness is that, they can ask.

Our Catechism teaches: "Like any other human activity, art is not an absolute end in itself, but is ordered to and ennobled by the ultimate end of man." (CCC 2501) And man's ultimate end is God, not himself. Yes, dear! Instead, many of our film makers continually engage in self-justification. They can even go to the extent of revising morality. The extreme case is when they declare themselves above any law or nor or authority.

Sometimes, this delusion can become invincibly incorrigible. Worse, it can become so widespread that it's not just a personal thing, but a social phenomenon.

Of course, with this basic flaw in the understanding of their art, many other deficiencies and mistakes follow. The proper order of the different aspects and parts of human life is destroyed.

Thus, the material aspect of human life often smothers the spiritual, the here and how takes away the consideration of what lies beyond.

The flesh and the body, as in sex, violence and frivolity, snuff out the proper aspirations of the soul. Man becomes a tangle of sorts, thanks to some of our so-called creative and artistic people.

A worse scenario is when we start talking about unscrupulous people, their consciences chilled and muted, who have no qualms pandering on the weaknesses of others just to make money.

Given this significant picture of our current movie industry, we can see how big the work of evangelization, of apostolate, of sanctification and conversion involving this sector of our society, is.

Our problem is that hardly anyone dares to pursue this kind of work in the entertainment industry. We seem to prefer that one day, some divine intervention would just happen making our movie makers as meek as lambs, as good and holy as the angels.

There are many things that need to be done yet in this area. The media, for one, can lend their facilities to initiate, foster and sustain some kind of dialogue where the truth about man and our vocation, about true artistic freedom and inspiration, etc., can be amply ventilated.

As it is, we are still awfully stuck with an almost adolescent attitude toward the movies and shows, and toward most forms of art. This does not speak well of us as a people.