NHF series on worship. After the sermon on music, now we turn to media. around 20060416.
Matrix : Description of the Matrix
Neal Gabler
Life: the Movie
We live in a movie dreaming of celebrity... rather than shared moral values and traditions
No longer just about the movies, but the lives of the stars.
70s: just one show: ET
now many
Matrix: an environment in which something develops, a surrounding medium or structure
Noam Chomsky: manufacturing consent
Big organizations: politics, corporation, etc converge in Mass Media, forming a more complex matrix
The product is you
Everyone is isolated, having media images wash over you.
Systematic propaganda
TV programming defined entirely by rations, marketing, and product selling
Corrupting and trivializing power of media:
Edvard Munch: The Scream - angst
Yet even great art like this is trivialized with the pillows, mugs, and dolls. Even done to Starry Night, an almost holy image.
Comedy: is it only a joke?
Ayn Rand on humor:
Too often humor is used as the camourflage of moral cowardice
... bring men to defile their own values and self esteem, for fear of being accused of lacking a sense of humor.
Seinfeld, Episode 172 The Burning
Make mockery out of the concept of hell
best reason not to watch something is that there is no way to un-watch something. It will be internalized.
Jesus saved you, make you to be holy. Difficult for us to experience it.
Either watch media for the glory of God, or to watch it just to satisfy your sordid primal inclinations.
Why are these base movies made? To search for justification for our based instincts. i.e. It is not just me.
Michael Medved, a movie critic:
Does your religious commitment affect how you evaluate movies?
"A powerful negative movie can really make your spirits sick. e.g. Basic Instinct, so evil. I felt like a worse person coming out."
2 Timothy 3:1-5
Have nothing to do with them.
We absorb fantasies and become brutal. Callousless, insensitive. DIfficult to put off the old nature.
Psalm 101:1-7
2 Cor 3:18
Your redeemed eyes are for looking at Jesus
OT: As you make idols, you become like them.
NT: think of the good. Look upon Jesus. Phil 4:8
Active remote: CJ Mahoney, Joshua Harris
change the channel when something not appropriate shows up.
David Wells, Theologian: God in the Wasteland
Secular writer and media ... force us to read the world in which God's value, ... , is never the criteria.
TV stats.
Still we feel that its more pleasurable than real life.
In The Matrix, Cypher's betrayal: Know what is real and virtual, yet decide: Ignorance is bliss.
Many of us avoid the rigors of real life, and escape to world of media.
Weakens our focus, ability, and power to deal with the issues in reality.
Peter Weir: not for finding the spiral
Dead Poet Society
Jeff Bridges Fearless
Truman Show
media as God
Matrix as conglomeration of corporationg, media, porducts, ...
Last 4 mins of the Truman Show
people are so plugged in that they jsut go for the next show.
Unplugging from the matrix.
Best solution: simkply to take it off
(even to take an extended fast)
Living in the reality of your real life, with everything you have or have not, ... requires a profound sense of faith
Psalm 31:14
Trust God for all the good and bad that is present in your life.
Times are in your hands, Lord.
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