No Coincidences

Tag: movies

  • Hook

    Hook

    I watch a lot of old movies from my childhood with my daughters now. I think Ivy has already started not taking me seriously when I say, “This is one of my favorite movies ever.” But Hook is really one of my favorite movies ever.

    Sometimes you forget that others did not live your childhood. When I heard Beth had seen Hook maybe one time through in her life, I was shocked. I’ve probably watched it from beginning to end at least 3 dozen times. Back in the day if you had a VHS of a movie it became an automatic watch at least a dozen times.

    For those who aren’t familiar with the movie Hook, it tells the story of a Peter Pan that left Neverland to marry Wendy Moira Angela Darling’s granddaughter. Peter is grown up now and has forgotten who he once was. It has Robin Williams as Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Hook, and Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell. I never realized it was a Steven Spielberg film.

    I watched it recently with my girls. It’s been a while since I’ve watched it. This was the first time I’ve seen it since having kids. Some things stood out to me in my new “dad of three” mind. 

    In the movie, Peter Pan has become an important person. He works in “mergers and acquisitions.” It sounds like he works in major corporate takeovers. As Jack, Peter’s nine-year-old son, describes what Peter does for work, Wendy, who is now extremely old, mutters, more to herself than to anyone, “Peter, you’ve become a pirate.”

    Which led to the first thing from the movie that made me think, the first major theme. In Neverland, there are two main categories: Pirate or Child. A pirate steals, plunders, and is generally bad. The children, while not perfect, are, well, children. They are kind, playful, and forgiving. The children are good. Everything is a game to them. The children are filled with joy. The pirates are filled with hate. The Pirates and the Children in Neverland are diametrically opposed.

    There is a moment where Captain James Hook is considering suicide. He is musing about how he has no purpose and no meaning and just can’t take this life anymore. The film makes it clear this isn’t the first time this has happened. 

    The children on the other hand, despite their meager existence, have joy simply from living.

    There is a statement made throughout the film, “Death is the last great adventure.” We’ve all heard this statement. The movie emphasizes that it is the Pirates, the adults, who dwell on and obsess over death. The children never talk this way. To them life is the adventure. Every day for the children is filled with joy and fun. They’re not looking forward to death, they are too busy thinking about life.

    Adults as “bad” and children as “good.” But why? As a stressed out, often frustrated, often impatient husband and father, I heard what the movie was telling me. I am a pirate. The three little girls I’m surrounded by every day are pure joy, adventure, and curiosity. I am not bad. But my pirate tendencies are. My girls are good. 

    There’s a moment in Neverland when Peter’s kidnapped daughter starts singing out over the pirate city. She’s singing a lullaby that her mother used to sing to her. The pirates have forgotten their mothers. The pirates have forgotten what it’s like to be a child. As the young girl sings, the hardened, mean, tough pirates stop. They stare. Some weep. 

    Be ye as little children. The pirates had forgotten what it is to be a child. 

    The movie is about finding joy despite the mundane nature of life. The movie reminds us to not be pirates. Be children. Play, run, laugh.

    Finally, at the climax of the movie, Peter needs to remember who he was, or he’ll lose everything. He needs to have a happy thought. He’s been so obsessed with work and success for so long, he doesn’t remember where true happiness lies. He remembers being a father. He remembers the births of his two children. This is his happy thought: being a father. This is what allows him to fly. This is what allows him to defeat the pirates and be Peter Pan again. It’s this thought that allows him to be like a child again. 

    In the last scene of the movie, Wendy is standing at the window with Peter and his family. She says, “Your adventures are over.” Peter replies, “Oh no, to live, to live will be an awfully big adventure.”

  • Craftiness of the Devil

    Sometimes I marvel at how sneaky that doggon devil is.

    One example is how kids are bombarded by inappropriate images. The most childish of cell phone games are interrupted by scantily clad cartoon (or real) women. It’s the craziest thing.

    Another example occurred to me recently.

    When I try to search for the rating of a movie, it often takes me 4 or 5 searches to find out if it’s R, PG-13, etc. I always get the Rotten Tomatoes rating!

    This, of course, is the product of a bigger issue. That issue is all the garbage that exists in the media.

    The LDS church has a cultural policy that I’m not interested in looking into the history of. That “policy” for lack of a better word (“suggestion” or “guidance” may be better words), is to not watch Rated R movies.

    Growing up, I HATED this rule, and pretty immediately rebelled against it. It may have been the first LDS thing I rebelled against, actually. Remember, I’m the kid who dumped out my mom’s Coke because it had caffeine and was against the Word of Wisdom, or so I thought. I’ve been watching Rated R movies for as long as I can remember. I distinctly remember watching Chucky Halloween night when I was under 8 years old. It was made for TV, but still not meant for a 6-year-old.

    That is where my point is leading. Made for TV murderous doll OK because it’s TV-MA?

    For as long as I live I will never forget the movie I watched that made me decide I was done with Rated R movies. That movie was The Hateful Eight. I will say no more about that. Luckily for me, Beth came to a similar conclusion from her own movie. Her movie was Hereditary. We concluded around the same time that we were done with rated R movies for very different and yet oddly similar reasons.

    They made us feel icky.

    That’s what I remember about the Hateful Eight. I finish all movies I watch. I treat movies the same way I treat books. If you start it, you finish it. I was watching Hateful Eight when Beth came over (before we were married). I finished this scene. I left with Beth for whatever we had planned. I remember not being able to get this grotesque, gross, vile stuff out of my mind. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt dark. I felt dirty. I finally asked myself, why am I doing this to myself? I don’t have to finish the movie. I didn’t finish the movie. It was the last rated R movie I “watched.” That was 2017 or 2018.

    Has it been easy cutting out rated R movies? Nope (some of you will get that reference). There are inevitably movies I want to see sooo bad, but they’re rated R. This has led to discussions with friends. I’ll hear things like, “Well it only swears this many times and the violence and sex isn’t that bad.” My thinking is, you draw a line and you stick to it. End of story. But by the way, pretty much every movie is rated R. So this change has led to basically watching 95% less movies. A fortunate side effect.

    If you doubt that, check movies in theatres right now. You might find a couple that aren’t rated R. They’re either cartoons or Marvel, and even that is changing.

    So here’s my even bigger point about the craftiness of the devil.

    That guidance to not watch rated R movies was never about rated R movies. It was about what we consume and let enter our minds. I’ll never get that image from Hateful Eight out of my mind, but it taught me something, and it made me grow. It made me learn what I do and don’t want to enter in through the light of my body (Matthew 6:22-23).

    So you cut out rated R movies. But what about TV MA? What about murder dramas? What about all this media out there? Where do you draw the line? I’ve started cutting out TV shows mid-season. Remember, me, the person who tries to finish whatever I start. I was really into (a stupid show) Love Craft County. Then it got bizarre and disgusting. I stopped. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones. My favorite show ever is Breaking Bad. How do we figure it out?

    My point is, you can’t even search and find out if a movie is rated R anymore. The devil is crafty. We consume more and more trash more and more often. I say this as someone who also consumes trash.

    And what’s happening around us? You look up and your 13-year-old brother has seen something like 150,000 violent acts depicted in media. How crazy is that? Is that OK? Do we really have to wonder about depression and all this crap kids are dealing with? It’s insane.

    The devil is crafty. He blurs the line everywhere we turn. It’s so much harder to protect ourselves. He never stops working.

    I don’t know how to conclude this so I’ll just say, I took a step by cutting out rated R movies. I’ve been happy with that decision, even though I’ve probably had to miss out on some good movies. I think I’m better for it though.

    *Posting this years after writing it and on one hand I’m proud of my continued commitment to avoid rated R movies. On the other hand, I’m disappointed with my continued viewing of TV-MA material. But I’m also proud of the overall amount of television I’ve cut out of my life. There’s just not enough time to watch TV anymore.

    So I’m proud and I’m disappointed. But that’s life. God knows our efforts and He knows I’m trying. I’m not meant to be perfect in this life, though I’ll try, and fail. That’s why I’m grateful for Jesus Christ.

    The devil seeks us. We need to be hyper-vigilant to make sure we stay on the side we want to be on. Every day is a battle.

  • Content and Media

    Sometimes members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are weird.  If you’re a member of the Church and haven’t fully embraced this, it’s time to get on board.  Peter stated,

    “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  

    1 Peter 2:9

    Peculiar, weird. Same thing.  So, take comfort in this if you haven’t already.

    I have many nonmember friends that thought I was weird long before I started going back to church.  That’s mostly because I am weird.  We won’t go into more detail on that.  Since coming back to church though, my nonmember friends have found tons of other reasons to find me weird.

    I will quickly list through some of them:

    1. I don’t do anything on Sunday anymore (not even basketball)!  This comes up all the time.
    2. I stopped listening to a lot of music I used to listen to.
    3. My language changed; the words I use drastically changed.
    4. I started inviting friends to church and dinner with the missionaries almost constantly.
    5. I stopped partaking of some beverages.  Luckily, I never drank coffee.  But when I tell people I don’t drink coffee they almost fall over in shock every time. 
    6. I stopped wanting to go to certain places – like bars.
    7. I slowly stopped gambling.
    8. Finally, and what I’ll talk about here, I recently stopped watching rated-R movies.

    Yeah, this is one I didn’t think we actually followed.  For nonmembers out there, yes, we’re advised to avoid rated-R movies.  I’m going to elaborate on how I came to respect and appreciate this counsel.  It wasn’t until very recently that I started this and I’ve been going strong for a few months.

    My decision to stop watching rated-R movies starts with a particular movie.  It is called Hateful Eight.  I’m not going to go into detail about this movie because that defeats my purpose.  The gist was this. I started the movie and then there was a particular scene that unfolded about midway through.  The end of the scene left me feeling… icky.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  I had to leave my house at that moment and decided I was going to finish the movie later.  It took me some time to get back to the movie.  I started to realize I didn’t know if I wanted to finish the movie.

    For the record, I’m the kind of person who tries to finish something once I start it.  Miserable book?  Gotta get through it.  Boring movie? Maybe the ending is good.  But I started asking myself, do I REALLY want to finish that movie?  I talked to my roommate Chris about it.  He seemed to actually understand where I was coming from, which surprised me.  “Hateful Eight…” he said trailing off, “yeah… there’s a lot in that one.”  I went on to talk about it and learned the part I came to wasn’t even the part he thought I was talking about.  Apparently it got worse after that!

    So, I decided I didn’t want to finish that movie.  Since I was cutting movies off midway through for the first time, I started to think more about that icky feeling I had experienced.  What was it?  I started to realize that particular movie made me feel dark and dirty.  There was an image stuck in my mind I couldn’t get out.  It was unpleasant.  It wasn’t something I wanted in my mind.

    My favorite book, Visions of Glory has a whole section about the entertainment we choose to take in.  What we view and listen to alters us.  It either brings light or darkness to us.  That’s what I felt after that scene. Darkness. 

    I know to many people this may be strange.  I know to some people, cutting some of these things out of our lives seems impossible.  The point I want to make is that it can be done.  I didn’t get rid of all of those 8 things listed above overnight.  In some cases it took years actively going to church to change habits.  The biggest point I want to make is that I’m much happier since making those changes.

    I’m not saying everyone has to cut out rated-R movies. But I am saying that if you did, you might be surprised that first, you’re capable of doing it, and second, how you feel about doing it.  The same goes for Netflix and the endless streams of content we take in.  There are good things and there are bad things.  Sometimes the bad is hard to see. You don’t realize it’s “bad”.  That’s why I appreciate this guidance with rated-R movies.  Why chance it?

    There’s a quote from Visions of Glory about spiritual gifts.  It reads,

    “I observed that there are many people who are governed by the voice of Jesus Christ, who are like lanterns being carried through darkness.  They push darkness away by their approach, and the dark angels must depart.  Evil beings are powerless to penetrate it and are compelled to depart.”

    At some point I decided I wanted to be a lantern.  The idea of being given a chance to provide light to someone’s life and missing that opportunity because my light was dimmed, hurts me.  I don’t want that to happen.  I’m not perfect, but I’m trying.  I’m not judging what anyone else chooses to watch or listen to. However, I am telling you what you watch and listen to is important.

    We in the Church are peculiar.  We must be.  The world needs more lanterns.