Hollywood (7 of 7) "The Last Crusade" - Russian language documentary

http://forerunner.com/predvestnik/hollywood.html

The following won the "Best Documentary" at a Christian Broadcasters' Awards in Moscow. I produced the video with LOZA-TV in 2000. Victor Victorov narrates a script that has been translated and adapted from Reel to Real's HOLLYWOOD series written by Eric Holmberg.

PART 6
THE LAST CRUSADE

In this last section, we will examine what should be our response to our culture's fascination with wickedness on film. Are we simply to kill our television set or quit watching movies all together? That may be the response of some people but I want to present something else for you to consider the problem goes much deeper than what is happening in Hollywood. The problem I submit to you is with in us.

Films, television, music, drama and, in fact, all art will express the very heart and soul of the culture that produces them. This is what God intended for art to be used to express the personality of the artist and also to reflect the glory of God the image of God born in the hearts of His people. But when a culture or a person rejects God the art it produces will soon follow that way also. Our culture's obsession with increasingly ungodly entertainment finds instructive parallels throughout the Bible.

[Proceed with Ezekiel 8 drama; man sitting in chair with cigar watching the television.]

(VICTOR)
While there were no televisions, movie theaters, or CD players in biblical times, as King Solomon wisely observed, there is truly nothing new under the sun.

(VOICE)
For example, how different are we really from the contemporaries of Noah a culture whose obsession with wickedness was so complete that Gob was moved to wipe them off the face of the earth? It was said of them: ...that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

(VICTOR)
Significantly, the Hebrew word used here for imagination points directly to the underlying presuppositions that frame human consciousness. And some of the most profound influences in this arena are the stories, songs, and other works of art that a culture develops and embraces.

(VOICE -- a bust of Plato.)

This is why Plato could say with confidence that he didn't care who wrote the laws of his nation just as long as he could write the songs.

(Dissolve to Dore etching or some other work of art)

Perhaps it is this same sentiment that is being suggested by sacred scripture when it mentions, almost in passing it seems, one man who ended up playing a major role in the development of the culture that was to become Noah's condemned generation: And Adah bore...Jubal. He was the father of those who play the harp and the flute. (Genesis 4:21)

In a time when men began to build communities and cities, Jubal became the father of the arts. Mankind, for good or evil, now had a powerful new tool with which to express his deepest and most profound thoughts. And the testimony of Noah's generation is that those thoughts, and no doubt the art that helped convey them, became corrupt. How different is that from our culture today?

How different are we from the Israelites who sang and danced around the golden god of Egypt? It was said that they, too, were a nation that sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play (Exodus 32:6) -- a people, in other words, who were obsessed with entertainment and satisfying their lust. They, like us, had the commandments of God; knowing from the very mouth of Jehovah what they should and should not do. And like us, forgetting their redeemer who had gone up to God with the promise to return, they embraced what was forbidden, turning back to the idols of this world and paying homage to them through their entertainment.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Hollywood
• Russian
• language
• video
• documentary
• sex
• sexual
• immorality