Wednesday, January 30, 2008

An Untraceable Saturday Night Fever

Since my Friday meltdown, I've been working on the things my counselor told me to do: write down 3 achievable goals and do one nurturing thing. Today, I sat in on a software Beta testing session all day at work. It was fun to be learning a new product, but the teacher is definitely a grumpy, impatient guy.

At 5 p.m., I decided that my reward would be a trip to the movies with popcorn and everything. I wavered between racing across town to see "The Great Debaters" or staying near work and seeing "Untraceable." I figured that racing across town and wrestling with parking would be a drag, so I opted for Untraceable.

I'm sorry I went.

The acting was fine and the plot held my interest, but it greatly disturbed my soul. Untraceable is not so much a thriller, but one of those sadistic voyueristic torture films, like the Saw franchise. As I started to watch the movie, I knew, as a Christian, I shouldn't be there. I shouldn't support this kind of entertainment. But I stayed because I'd already paid my money and was too embarassed to ask for it back.

And I started to think about how horror movies have changed over the years--starting with supernatural monsters like The Mummy, Frankenstein, and Dracula and moving to the villian being your sociopathic neighbor. There's something weird about our culture because a lot of us love murder as entertainment, whether it's something as simple as CSI or Law and Order or whether it's suicide videos available for download from the Internet.

Where are we going with all of this violence? With our preoccupation with violence and our penchant for reality shows, I wonder how many years will go by before we have shows like the executions and animal hunts held by the ancient Romans in the Colosseum. The ghoulish blood lust that was in them is the same as the one in us.

But I can't completely point my fingers at "society." I chose Untraceable over The Great Debaters. And my soul is less for it. When I left the theater, I was not lifted up. My soul felt as though it had crawled over into a corner to hide. It made me remember that, back in 1977, my Dad insisted on going with me to see Saturday Night Fever because it was originally rated R. After he left the theater, he said he would rather have been dipped in the gutter than have seen that movie because "at least you can wash that kind of filth off."

I didn't understand what he meant then. At the time, I thought he was a prude. But I understand him now. Thirty-one years later, I can still remember the scenes from Saturday Night Fever that made my Dad so disgusted: the disinterested stripper dancing on the bar, offering her breasts to the patrons; Tony's gang taking turns with Annette in the backseat of Bobby's car; and a guy stepping out of the backseat of a car turning to ask the girl, "What was your name again?"

And so, I hoped I've learned my lesson with Untraceable. What I put into my mind might stay there forever. There's no real way of knowing what I'll remember and what I'll forget. And what I put in my mind affects my soul. And just as I would be careful in what I would feed a child, I should be more judicious in what I feed into my mind and soul.

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