Christian movie critics are pushing new codes and ratings to pull the movie industry back in line with traditional values.

Jodie Foster, the one-time child actor of family-friendly films, clutched her Oscar and screamed, “No way!” as she learned the film she starred in was only the third in history to sweep the top Academy Award categories.

The Silence of the Lambs, a film about two cannibalistic psychokillers, one a transvestite and the other a demented psychiatrist, had just trounced the animated Disney tale Beauty and the Beast, thought by many to be a legitimate contender for top honors. Beast had scored impressively at the box office, grossing $82 million, but it flopped with the academy’s membership. And in the eyes of several Christian film critics, the outcome of Oscar night provided a vivid portrait of what they say is wrong with Hollywood today.

Ted Baehr, chairman of the Atlanta-based Christian Film and Television Commission, and John Evans, president of the Richardson, Texas-based Movie Morality Ministries, say the last threads of moral fiber are unraveling in Hollywood, leaving it almost completely out of touch with the values of most Americans.

“[Hollywood insiders] are a unique group from the rest of the country because they are so overwhelmingly devoid of religious or traditional values,” Evans says.

Both critics cite statistics to prove their point. A 1989 General Media/Associated Press poll of 1,084 adults showed 8 in 10 people believe today’s films are too violent and profane, and 7 in 10 think they have too much nudity. Yet 45 percent of Hollywood’s 1991 product was excessively violent, up from 40 percent in 1990, according to Baehr’s ratings. And 73 percent in 1991 had at least some immoral sexual content.

Armed with such figures, evangelical movie critics are sounding an alarm both to Hollywood and to Christians about the content of today’s movies. Several film guides are being published that monitor the movies’ morality word by word and scene by scene. And an ecumenical delegation, led by Baehr and supported by Roman Catholic Roger Cardinal Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is calling for the revival of something similar to the old “Hays” film code, which from 1934 to 1966 supplied an ethical basis that most of Hollywood’s elite voluntarily followed.

Who’S To Blame?

Most evangelical and secular conservative critics agree that Hollywood is on top of its game with regard to cinematographic quality. But Baehr, a Dartmouth College graduate, former Emmy Award nominee, and weekly radio talk-show host, is plain about why Hollywood has slid morally. “Hollywood didn’t abandon the church,” Baehr routinely asserts, “the church abandoned Hollywood.”

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He cites the closing of the Protestant Film Office in 1966 and the Catholic Legion of Decency two years later as watershed events. Since the 1940s, the two offices had screened virtually every Hollywood movie, giving feedback on moral content to attentive studio executives, who regarded the offices as their hotline to mainstream American values. The offices closed as a result of decisions by the Roman Catholic Church and the National Council of Churches to reorder their priorities. In 1968, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), introduced the current ratings system, which he said represented America’s “revised morality.”

That same year, Baehr notes, movies such as Rosemary’s Baby, Midnight Cowboy, and The Wild Bunch set new precedents for graphic sex and violence. Since then, evangelical film critics say, matters have gotten worse. The Wild Bunch pushed the envelope for acts of violence (89 fatalities) in its time, notes Baehr, but it now pales in comparison with such recent movies as Die Hard II (264 fatalities).

So Baehr, who inherited the records from the Protestant Film Office, updated the old code of ethics. And in early February of this year, he and Cardinal Mahony became the whipping boys of the Hollywood press when they asserted at a press conference that the current code had failed and called for reviving the old ethics code.

Said Mahony: “When we consider that the typical American teenager views 50 R-rated films each year, and that motion pictures, television programs, and music videos are more graphic every year, it is no wonder that we are suffering a breakdown in our culture.”

In short, the new code urges that “the basic dignity and value of human life shall be respected and upheld”; “evil, sin, crime, and wrongdoing shall not be justified”; “detailed and protracted acts of brutality, cruelty, physical violence, torture, and abuse shall not be presented”; and “indecent or undue exposure of the human body shall not be presented.” It also condemns “illicit sex relationships,” “obscene speech,” the demeaning of religion, acts of racial hatred, and excessive cruelty to animals.

The proposed code aroused the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which ran an ad in Variety magazine poking fun at the code and crying censorship. “We have enough censorship now,” the ad said. “Let’s not add a list of moral rules that would return us to the 1950s.”

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The MPAA’s Valenti, who did not return CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s phone calls, told Daily Variety magazine, “I do not believe there is anybody of sound mind and common sense who wants to turn over the molding of his children and their behavior to some self-appointed group.”

Such comments perplex Baehr, who notes that the press and the ACLU praised studios as “sensitive” when they recently changed scenes in White Fang after animal-rights groups complained, and in The Last Boy Scout after the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation protested.

Mahony, Baehr, and others say they are simply asking Hollywood to realize the influence its products have on society. For example, Mahony points to a study by the National Family Foundation showing that 72 percent of junior-high school boys polled want to imitate what they see in sexually oriented, R-rated films.

Film critic Michael Medved, cohost of PBS’s “Sneak Previews,” says Baehr’s code is unrealistic and dated in parts but has raised important discussion in Hollywood. Medved believes movie executives talk in circles to avoid accepting responsibility for the social impact of their films.

“The notion that television has no impact on the people who watch it directly contradicts the basis on which television executives solicit thousands of dollars for 30 seconds of time,” Medved told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. “Don’t they see the inconsistency in arguing that a 30-second commercial for floor polish will change people’s behavior at the supermarket and then turning around and saying that a 30-minute program showing violence and rape and horror has no influence on people’s behavior?”

Hear Evil, See Evil

Perhaps the perceived trend that most disturbs critics like Medved, Baehr, and others is that many Christians and other cultural conservatives do not seem to alter their own viewing habits in response to immoral content.

A straw poll taken by Evans of a group of single Christian adults was revealing. Three-fourths of those polled said “movies containing vulgarities, explicit sex, nudity, and antibiblical messages had an adverse effect on their moral and spiritual condition.” But at least half of those surveyed approved of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which had numerous vulgarities, and Dirty Dancing, which had extreme sexual content. Over half of them had seen Lethal Weapon, with extreme violence, and Fatal Attraction, which includes sex, violence, and vulgarities.

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Notes Evans, “The tendency is to become so ‘used to it’ that one hardly notices [profanity] when it’s used.”

In an effort to counter perceived apathy, several Christian-based groups are publishing film guides that monitor every dirty word, sex act, and violent scene in the movies and report them in empirical fashion to readers.

Among them, Baehr publishes Movie-guide and Evans publishes the Preview Movie Morality Guide. Those reading Entertainment Research Report, edited by Dave Winston of Boca Raton, Florida, before attending the 1990 movie Goodfellas would have known in advance that the movie contained 282 expletives.

Another ratings approach comes from the Washington D.C.-based Dove Foundation, headed by Brad Curl. The group has created the “Dove Family Approved Seal,” which has currently been applied to 600 films and videos. The organization is arranging with major distributors such as Blockbuster Video, Walmart, K-mart, and Target to carry the Dove-approved video line. And according to Curl, some Hollywood studios are considering producing Dove-edited versions of their films.

All these watchdog groups share a similar philosophy: the Christian public speaks loudest with its pocketbook. “The more we show Hollywood that there is a strong demand for family-friendly films, the sooner we will see them available throughout the country,” says Curl.

Getting The Message

While Hollywood’s product seems overall to be getting dirtier, there are signs that studio executives are beginning to tune back in to what many Americans want. They worry about statistics in an MPAA study showing that the number of frequent moviegoing adults dropped from 36 percent in 1989 to 28 percent in 1991, and the number of total frequent moviegoers dropped from 38 percent to 31 percent.

At the same time, executives are noticing the strong return that family films produce at the box office. For instance, in 1991, 36 percent of the top 25 grossing movies were rated G and PG, though 73 percent of all movies made that year were PG-13, R, or NC-17.

In response, Paramount studio last November said it would start producing more “family-oriented films” and Warner Brothers has announced plans to start a new division called Warner Brothers Family Films.

But even with its new commitment, one Warner Brothers executive was frank: “Hollywood filmmakers may not understand Middle America,” admitted Bruce Berman, president of Warner Brothers theatrical production, in the Hollywood Reporter. “They’re not very well equipped to deal in that context.”

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That is where the church comes in, evangelical watchdogs say. In one Dove-sponsored forum, Dean Jones, former star of such Disney classics as The Computer That Wore Tennis Shoes, and an elder in Jack Hayford’s Church on the Way, said America needs a “national conscience” to speak to Hollywood. “How antifamily, antifemale, antifidelity, provident can a film be before we as a country say, ‘Okay. That’s it.’? I don’t think that the message has been delivered to us as an industry. I don’t think it’s completely [Hollywood’s] fault.”

The finger, says Baehr, is pointed at the church. Is there hope for Hollywood? “I think it is going to turn around,” Baehr says. “I think the question is, ‘Is there hope for the church?’ ”

By Joe Maxwell.

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