Immorality in art doesn’t have to be a bad thing

Kevin VanAntwerpen

I have a guilty pleasure.

Sometimes, on those nights when nobody’s home, I bring my computer into my bedroom and I turn off the lights. Then I cuddle up under the blankets, and I type “pluggedin.com” into Google Chrome.

No, it’s not porn. But it is pretty funny.

Pluggedin.com is a “Focus on the Family” website which hosts reviews of film, television, music and video games. Only they don’t review the quality of the artwork like most publications — instead, the purpose of Pluggedin.com is to “shine a light on popular entertainment.” How do they do this? By watching a film, and scouring it for negative social content from a religious perspective (and occasionally praising positive content, such as the factuality of the demonic possession and exorcism in “The Devil Inside”), then writing a “quality report” of sorts to examine how likely the film is to corrupt you. Oh, and believe me — they can find something you should fear in any film.

This is a website that lists Simba and Nala’s nuzzles and licks in “The Lion King” as “sexual content.” (In their defense, I can’t even count how many times a girl has asked me to role play that scene in the bedroom). This is a website list’s Alvin’s use of “gosh” in “Alvin & the Chipmunks” as “crude or profane language.”

Frequently, the site’s articles complain about violence, dishonest conduct and sexual immorality. It lists those things as negative content, suggesting that their mere presence can soil your moral stamina the same way letting your friend crash on the couch after 16 shots will soil the cushions. There’s a point I think the crew at Pluggedin are missing, and it’s not “guns and sex are fun!” Art imitates life.

For instance, I’m a huge fan of the TV series “How I Met Your Mother.” In the show, Neil Patrick Harris plays a smooth talking, womanizing playboy named Barney Stinson who, at least at the outset of the series, cannot see women as relationship partners, and instead just as prey for his one night stands (and a good portion of the series’ jokes are based around the extravagant lengths Barney will go in order to get a girl into bed).

The Pluggedin.com review of the show refers to Barney as “an excuse to wrap funny in a soiled blanket.”

But through the show’s story arc, Barney is seen to slowly realize that he is capable of being in a relationship (despite how often he ridicules his friends for their emotional dependence). In between bouts of no-strings-attached sex, occasionally Barney is love struck — something he swore would never happen. Eventually it is revealed via flash forward that his wedding is not far in the future.

This is character development. This is art imitating life. It shows a flawed, immature character growing and maturing.

Contrary to Pluggedin.com’s concerns, this sort of story telling isn’t going to corrupt your morals — it’s simply giving you an accurate perspective of real life.

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