Four decades ago Jack Valenti implemented, on behalf of the Motion Picture Industry, a ratings code for the movies. Three decades before that the Hays office tried to self-police motion pictures, censoring inappropriate content (if you doubt the need of such measures take a look at the skinny-dipping scene in Tarzan and His Mate 1934 – then again, don’t look – it’s a skinny-dipping scene). Both the attempt to regulate content by the Hays Office, and the attempt to inform by the ratings system proved to be qualified failures.
Although the viewing public didn’t see Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weismuller swimming in the buff after stricter censorship standards were applied – films were still full of prurient content, and decadent behavior was still glorified.
Take what is yet (by some measures) the most successful film of all time: Gone With the Wind (1939). Much was made of the Hays office allowing Clark Gable’s last word, ****, as he walked out Scarlet O’Hara’s front door. It caused an uproar, and became a cultural phenomenon. If there is a single line from a movie made before 1950 that everyone knows it is the line about what Rhett thinks of Scarlet’s predicament. I saw the movie for the first time when it was re-released to theaters in1976. I saw it on the big screen (and I mean BIG - the screen of the old Keith-Albee) -having heard all my life about the curse word at the end of the movie. What no one told me was that the movie features a woman who sleeps with multiple men for money and power (albeit after marriage), and that the movie contains an attempted rape, and a quasi-rape scene, and a prostitute with a prominently featured décolletage. The content of the movie was more shocking to me then the coarse language of the last line. The Hays office kept nudity out of the pictures, but not sin-as-entertainment (I mean no disrespect to my mother and all the other millions of life-long fans of this land-mark film).
Jack Valenti’s rating system is supposed to inform the viewer if a film is fit for family viewing –most of the time it serves as a decent guide, but we know that is not always the case. I have, on more than one occasion, been shocked and embarrassed by the language in a PG/ family film - and by the suggestive, and immoral behavior in G-rated animated films. Then again there are movies (Saving Private Ryan, or Schindler’s List for instance) that are rated for more mature audiences, and I am not ashamed to have seen them. Spike Lee’s fine documentary on the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, Four Little Girls, is one I watched perhaps 10 times (I show it in the college course I teach) before I noticed it had an R rating. I investigated why it was so rated – there’s no nudity, graphic violence, or any foul language in it – and found that it got the R rating because of the coroner’s photographs of the girl’s faces.
My point is that we do a poor job of it when we try to come up with our own standards. We draw lines, arbitrary lines – If you put 3 #@**#!s in a movie you get a PG-13 rating but if you put a fourth one in you get an R. The Pharisees were this way about everything from hand-washing to Sabbath-keeping. What Jesus points out in the Sermon on the Mount is that when we draw lines, we use them, not so much to prohibit, as to allow. “Love your neighbor/but hate your enemy,” the rabbis taught. “Don’t kill/but feel free to be hateful.” “Don’t commit adultery/but look all you want.” These are some of the lines drawn that Jesus rejects in Matthew 5.
What Jesus demands is that we know the will of God by knowing the Law of God. Based upon that Law, and the Will it communicates, we make moral distinctions, and thus live obediently. God’s Law will not pass away (Matthew 5.17-19), and our response to it must be superior to that of the Pharisees (v.20). The command against murder includes hatefulness generally (vv.21-26). The command against adultery includes lust (vv.27-32). We are not allowed the laziness of lines. We are responsible for knowledge of the will of God, and for thoughtful, deliberate, obedient response to that will.
Ron Higginbotham is teaching a class about applying the moral distinctions Jesus makes in Matthew 5 to our daily lives. It meets Sunday morning in the fellowship room. I want to recommend it to the reader. Beyond that I hope we all will see the maturity Jesus demands we strive for as we seek to be obedient to God.
