Whatever You Do, Don't Read This

I was surprised at how much I got into writing this letter to my Hebrew teacher. I tried to be nice, but direct and really tell her how I felt. I have a lot to do right now, but I thought a lot about this letter and revised parts of this over and over again. If you want to understand more about my experience in watching this movie, see my post entitled, "So Desensitized" from a week ago or so.


March 31, 2010

Shalom,

Pesach semeach. I have been thinking for awhile about sharing with you some of my concerns with watching the movie, Be and Become for your class. I haven’t been sure how to do this exactly and I feel like there hasn’t been a good time to bring it up with all of the stressors your family has been through recently. I am writing a letter so that I can express better than I could in person some of what I felt while watching the movie and how I am affected. If you have any questions for me or would like to discuss it further in person I am willing to do that.

I was unpleasantly surprised by a couple of parts in the movie—two parts in particular. I’m guessing you are fairly familiar with this movie and know what scenes I am referring to. Both are sexual in nature. One involves the adoptive couple in bed together and is rather brief. The other one is considerably longer. It involves a scantily clad female seducing the main character in the dance club by helping him take off his clothes in her private room, touching him, and exposing herself enough so that he would give her money. This scene was especially disturbing considering that these characters in the movie don’t know each other at all prior to this interaction. The brutal violence that follows their interaction only makes it worse. I don’t even know all that happened because I was averting my eyes for half of the scene.

To be completely honest, I was shocked that a movie assigned by a BYU teacher would have such content. I honestly felt like I was betraying BYU and its standards by watching this movie in a classroom that is set aside for the important purpose of learning. I felt like I was watching trash that would hinder anyone from learning truths about life. I realize that people have differing levels of sensitivity to media content. I think males in general may be more affected by sexual content than females. I know I felt disturbed watching these scenes and felt very uncomfortable with them. This bad feeling didn’t just leave right after the movie was over unfortunately. It was lingering. I now have scenes etched in my mind that I wish were not there. As a result, I want to strongly encourage you not to show that movie to students in the future, or at least to edit out parts of it.

I admire your interest in refugees and immigrants and some of the plights that they may experience. Your humanitarian spirit is impressive and encourages me to be more humanitarian minded. I really mean that. I can glean some value in learning about and seeing some of the difficulties of immigrants or refugees though saddening and disturbing they may be. Depictions of poverty, communication frustrations, cultural misunderstandings, or societal difficulties may help me and others have more compassion and understanding for God’s children when these depictions are not obscene in nature. However, I cannot see any value in watching depictions that desensitize viewers and hinder compassion rather than fostering it. Watching immoral behavior of others normalizes so much of what modern day prophets warn us against today and does not increase faith, hope, or charity to help others. I understand that people may be taken advantage of or be put in difficult situations that are part of real life for them. However, I believe that seeing obscene depictions of such tragedies does not help anyone to assist others. Seeing it may increase pity, but not compassion because such content brings the viewer down and makes them less able to lift others up. We can really only understand and help others when we are sensitive and susceptible to be influenced by God’s love, not when we are hardened or desensitized by obscenity. Please do not encourage your future students to watch this movie unedited. Todah.

With a lot of forethought and feeling,


Eliyahu
(Jason Burningham)



I'm curious to see how many people read this post with the title that I gave it. I'm performing a little personal pyschological research : ), so if you read this post will you please leave a comment telling me you read it? Even if you don't have anything to say about it, just say "I read it." Thank you.

Sexual content in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?

Here's my sexual content assignment that I've been saving to post for this really busy week of school.

1. What programs did you choose?
I don’t watch TV and the assignment instructed to not change my habits. I e-mailed Dr. Coyne asking her what I should do for this assignment, suggesting I could maybe do the shows I need to watch for our content analysis project. She suggested that I watch a movie. So, since my wife wanted to watch, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” that’s what I did.

2. How much sex is in the programs? Keep a running tally for each program and write it below.
There wasn’t any sex in the movie thankfully.

3. What sexual messages are portrayed in each of the three programs?

The figure of the primary female character in the movie was ridiculously thin (she’s a clay figure so they can do that) and had really long legs, and big eyes. I think they tried to make her attractive or something. Her and the primary male character attempt to kiss each other without knowing each other very well or very long. There are several ensuing scenes of unsuccessful kissing and in the final “happily ever after” scene, the movie closes with a successful kiss between the main characters.
One random camera shot in the movie gives a close up of the buttocks of the police man. I’m not really sure what the point of it was, but it shows his skin tight shorts that reveal his crack and all, covered by blue shorts. I guess there are several shots of one character clothed in nothing but his underwear. It was harder for me to pick up on things like this that involved males rather than females. I notice more easily when females are clad scantily I guess. Go figure.

The all-powerful PowerPoint

What did we do before PowerPoint? I mean, how did teachers teach anything? This week I have used a couple of simple PowerPoint slides in seminary lessons I've taught. It has made certain activities much more convenient and easier to do with the class. Today I went to a little presentation about buying a home (not that that will happen anytime soon). I don't know how the presenter would have communicated his ideas very well without PowerPoint slides. Seriously, since when have people been using PowerPoint and what did teachers do before that? Is PowerPoint used in junior high or high school classes now? I can't think of it ever being used in my classes until BYU. I guess people used overheads, but that just seems harder to make and less effective for learning. What would the world be like without PowerPoint? Ponder that one over your next bowl of cereal.

So desensitized

As part of an assignment for my Hebrew class I had to watch this movie about an African refugee in Israel. My teacher told us it was her favorite Hebrew movie she had seen so I had high expectations for it. A group of us watched it in the basement of the JFSB one evening and I couldn't believe what was in the movie. I felt like I was somehow desecrating BYU's building or something by watching it. I had to look down during two sexual scenes--one quite short, and the other for what seemed like a really long time (but was probably only a minute or so--so as to not see what was happening on the screen. The student in charge of getting the movie for us from our teacher and playing it was indecisive about whether to fastforward it or not. She said she thought "it doesn't show anything" but I couldn't believe that she could classify what was happening with people taking off their clothes and what not as not showing anything. I think she realized when it was too late that she should have fastforwarded the movie. In any case, I felt like my spirit was offended and I was surprised that a BYU teacher would have us watch this movie. I feel like I should talk to my teacher about it, but I'm not sure how to go about doing it. It made me realize more how our society is so accepting of such depictions and that people as a whole are so desensitized to sexual scenes and suggestions. It honestly makes me sad when I think about it.

TV and interacting with my in-laws

I was at my in-laws house for most of the day today in West Jordan because my wife's brother's family is in town from Colorado. Although I would say that my wife's family isn't big into watching TV, because of the NCAA tournament the TV was on most of the time we were there today. I couldn't help but notice how much it drew everyone's attention, including my own, and seemed to sort of limit really meaningful conversations. We were there to see my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their daughter and son since we only get to see them once or twice per year, but we were all distracted by basketball games on TV. Also, my sister-in-law was intent on playing games on her ipod during part of the time as well. As we were driving home to Provo I couldn't help but feel like we had all missed out on opportunities to build relationships. Media is an interesting facet of our lives.

Disney Channel

I just had the wonderful experience of watching one episode each of "Suite Life on Deck" and "Sonny with a Chance" on the Disney Channel for the content analysis project. I must say that I wasn't too impressed, but what can you expect from shows like that? At least they were pretty much clean. If I had my "sexual content assignment" cap on I wouldn't have had much to go on, but there was one weird part in "Suite Life on Deck". One of the main characters practices using a whip. As he's whipping, the whip goes off screen and comes back with a women's bakini top or bra or something. You hear a little female scream off the screen and the whip recoils with this article of clothing. I think it was supposed to be funny. I'm not really sure how they thought of that one. Also, in "Sonny with a Chance", there is some young adolescent hand-holding, snuggling and one kiss. It seems like the whole goal of these shows is to make the viewer laugh. They definitely try to appeal to adolescent-minded audiences.

Our Family's TV History

In the 20 months that my wife and I have been married, we have owned three different TV's, all of which we have received for free from various people. In fact we have two TV's right now. The funny thing is that we don't hardly ever watch TV. We thought each successive TV was an upgrade, but this hasn't necessarily been true. Our second TV was bigger than our first, but the picture sometimes would have a green tint, and some channels didn't come through very clearly. We received our third and latest TV probably about a month ago from my wife's sister and her husband. So, I think the only three things we have used our TV for in the month that we've had it is test it out the night we got it by watching our wedding DVD, watch a Tuesday devotional once (usually we're on campus to do that), and watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the sexual content assignment for this class. That's the extent of our useage of it. It's bigger than our other one that is now sitting by our door waiting to be taken to DI or something, but we're a little hesitant to take it away after our experience last night. We turned on the TV around 10:30 to see if we could find the BYU basketball game score, but for some reason all but of a few of the channels on this TV were fuzzy. We eventually had to settle for listening to the end of the game on the radio as we fininshed our game of "Lost Cities" (card/board game). I didn't realize this TV was like that. I'm not sure why it is. Oh well.

Annoying online ads

This morning I was rushing to finish this big assignment for my Hebrew class and I needed to use an online English to Hebrew dictionary. Well, I know a really good online dictionary for Korean because I have taken lots of classes for that, but since this is my first semester of Hebrew I didn't know where to go. I found several dictionaries, but can I just say that online dictionaries are sometimes not worth it for the plethora of ads that appear on them? Sometimes the ads give me a headache because they're moving and shaking on the screen. Other times they give me knots in my stomach because they're approaching pornography. One dictionary I went to probably had 10 new ads for every word I looked up. The page was really busy and annoying. I didn't use that dictionary for long because of all of the ads. I found out that Google translate doesn't have ads and that was nice.

Media Malfunction at Stand for the Family Symposium

Media can be a powerful tool in instruction. It can enhance learning and illustrate a point poignantly. However, when media is a primary part of a presentation, instructors run the risk of that media malfunctioning or not working properly. This happened to me one time when I was teaching a short ten-minute lesson that determined at least in part whether I would be able to continue on a path that could possibly lead to being a full-time seminary teacher. Today I witnessed another media malfunction that, although handled well by the presenter, seriously limited the understanding of what was being presented. This was at the Stand for the Family Symposium and the presenter was discussing pornography's effect on the brain. His PowerPoint slides probably could have helped the audience understand what he was talking about regarding the brain. He still did a nice job though.

Your blogs are distracting me

So, now that I finished part of a test for my Hebrew 101 class, my first priority in school is to study for the media test. Unfortunately, I haven't done more than a little yet. There is a lot of information to know that I do not know well at all. It's a little overwhelming. Well, I need to study a lot for the test, but what did I just do for 35 minutes? I read classmates' blogs! In my head I justified it because I was doing homework for this class. I have to make two comments a week, right? And I like to read through several posts or several people's latest posts and comment on the posts that most interest me. I'm generally a pretty low media use guy, but I got sucked in by the blogs. That doesn't happen very often. Good job. You are captivatingly interesting blog writers.

Netflix--a source of conflict?

If you read my last post you'll know that I don't like people feeling they deserve something or their entitled to it, when they haven't done anything to earn it. I'm guilty of this attitude too though. I am ungrateful for a lot of things, including things like nice computer labs and technology resources across campus, the use of our church building's basketball court, relatively well kept roads and a free country. If any of these things were changed, I would probably be unhappy about it, even though I am not really doing much to deserve a lot of those things. Well, I want to write about another experience with something that was "free", but actually caused some temporary hard feelings between my wife and I.

My wife and I receive a Netflix ad in the mail probably once every month or so (not to mention all of the Internet ads for them). The ad offers a free trial of Netflix for a given period of time (two weeks maybe?). If you cancel your trial after that time and return any video you have then you don't have to pay anything. Well, my wife signed up to do this awhile back and she ordered a DVD to be sent to our house. Neither of us our big movie fans, but I especially have a hard time not feeling like I wasted my time when I watch a movie. Most of the time I watch movies is because my wife wants to watch something with me on a weekend night. But we probably only do this once a month or so.

The way the free trial works is that you can order any movie they have to be sent to your house in the mail. As soon as you watch it and send it back to them they will send you the next one you order. You can do this as many times as you want in the two week trial period. They are pretty fast to respond. I think we got our next movie two days after we sent our first one back in. Well, with this program you could watch several movies for free if you wanted to or had time to watch the movies and return them soon after you received them. However, I didn't feel like I had more time to watch movies just because they were free. My wife, however, motivated by the "free"ness of the movies, wanted to get our "trial's worth" of movies. When I told her I felt like I didn't have time to watch more than one movie per week on the weekend, she had a hard time. She wasn't too happy that I wouldn't make more time to watch free movies with her, and I wasn't happy that she was expecting me to. I thought it was interesting that this media promotional could become a source of misunderstanding between us. We had different expectations I guess about how we were going to use the free trial. I have since sworn off of free trials (just kidding, but I am a little wary of them).

Disclaimer: I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing my wife. It's really not meant to. I tried to be open and honest. My wife is great--seriously.