Posts Tagged ‘NG36B’

Why I hate Christian movie reviews

Posted: July 3, 2021 by ng36b in catholic
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I love movie critics. My YouTube subscriptions include a host of movie critics like Filmento and The Critical Drinker (the last of which is not appropriate for younger viewers), and its enjoyable to watch them expertly diagnose where a movie goes right and where it flops. Their reviews and criticism help me understand the different elements of a movie, what a character arc is and really unveil the “why” behind a movie just feeling right. It’s this learning that I’m using as I write my book (more on that later), and it helps me appreciate good camera work and music while I’m watching a movie.

Movie critics are a dime a dozen, and with the expansion of “wokeness” in the movie world, it is hard to get honest assessments on movies. Plus, everyone and their brother’s soy latte barista friend is trying to sneak in elements that advance the LGBTQ+, BLM and other causes, even when it doesn’t align with the movie. Nothing says “I hate you” to your movie watchers like subverting their franchises to preach about some woke nonsense.

Well, when you get preachy with LGBTQ stuff, guess what happens? Image from rottentomatoes.com

Knowing that, you would think I would welcome the reviews of Christian and Family based movie critics. These people would warn me to the dangers of watching a movie with my kids, so that I, as a parent, wouldn’t have to explain human sexuality the poor choices people make in life to my children at an early age. Well, you would think that, and you’d be wrong. To illustrate this point, I’m going to pick two movies, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and compare their reception.

To set my credentials, I’ve watched both of these movies. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, and a decent Lord of the Rings fan. And, much to everyone’s shock, I’ve let my kids, including my two year old, watch both movies. But let’s imagine I’m none of these things, and I want to get an honest review that tells me not just whether the movie is good, but if its Christian or Family Friendly enough for my kids to watch.

Let’s start with Dove.org. Dove is a label I first saw on a DVD cover for Studio Ghibli. It approved of My Neighbor Totoro, but didn’t have a rating for one of the other Ghibli Studio works. My brother-in-law made the comment “Well, maybe we shouldn’t watch it,” to which I quickly scoffed and said “When did this Dove icon become the mark of the devil.” To give Dove its due, they’ve been around a while and have done some awesome work, like bringing a family friendly movie channel to the Ronald McDonald Houses. So, let’s see what they think of my two movies

What?

What is going on here? How does a movie based on a novel written by a devout Catholic not get the “coveted” Dove rating, yet a poorly written work with plenty of woke-ism to go around gets the nod? Let’s break it down.

Rise of Skywalker (RoS) has a long integrity bar, which when I highlight it says “due to fantasy violence.” OK, there is LOTS of fantasy violence in RoS, with plenty of blaster and lightsaber deaths. But why is that not in the violence section? Oh wait, it is, but it gets downgraded to a 2 instead of a 4. The Two Towers (TTT) has violence too, with plenty of orcs and men meeting their doom at the hands of the Nazgul, random swords or even flying rocks. Yet it gets a 4. Given that swarms of people are killed in each film, this seems a bit unfair.

Dove also seems to have a huge distaste for magic. If you’re a wizard casting spells, Dove.org will give you significant thumbs down. But “the force” is totally ok, because its not wizardry in the magical world that Dove.org raters work in. Also, the lesbian kiss in RoS…totally fine, called a “girl/girl” kiss to downplay it, despite the fact that Singapore, Dubai and others are requiring deletion before the movie shows in their countries.

It’s not just Dove with which I have a bone to pick. Looking at pluggedin.com, the TTT review says “But the often dreary onslaught here may be more than some families want to endure (this is not a film for children).,” yet the RoS review states “The violence, while largely bloodless, can feel more visceral and even grisly than it did in some earlier segments (though, admittedly, even the earliest allowed our heroes to spill the ropelike guts of a tauntaun in The Empire Strikes Back).” It seems like if you choose to show blood, like TTT does, then its over, but if you hack people up with a lightsaber, that’s totally OK.

After delving into these and other websites for too long now, I think I’ve come to three main conclusions. First, you should never trust composite ratings. Dove’s blanket “seal of approval” doesn’t mean anything. Some types of violence are OK, some are not. Remember that 2 vs 4 rating? A 4 rating on anything means you don’t get a Dove seal. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the Dove rater for RoS was a Star Wars fan, and wanted people to be able to take part in the movie, hence the weird classification.

Second, I’m really tired of this focus on magic. Every rating site I went to had this odd hangup on magic. If any character used magic, it was an automatic down vote. Take the Harry Potter series, which are well made movies set in a world where magic exists. Dove does NOT approve of these, and their hangup is all about magic. This point makes me wonder why. I simply explain to my kids that magic is fun in movies, but its not real. Is that really so hard to do? I can’t be the only father to do this. Sure, some kids grow up believing in stupid things like Slenderman and even acting on them. But these cases are rare. Most kids understand the difference between magic in the movies and the real world.

Which brings me to my third, and most important point. These ratings dumb us down and don’t challenge us to think. The Lord of the Rings movies are excellent movies that stay true to the book and challenge us to think about deep topics. Tolkien’s Catholic influence is very much alive in the work, but its not so over-the-top that you can’t apply it to a variety of world situations. The characters are real, have real struggles, and don’t always make the right decisions…kind of like real life. When these characters are challenged, they often have to dig deep within themselves to find the strength to fight great evil…kind of like real life. The last few Star Wars movies far pale in comparison, giving us Mary Sue characters that don’t have to struggle physically, mentally or morally, which makes them completely unrelatable to any real person.

Maybe that’s the real point. The raters at Dove, PluggedIn and others can best identify with Mary Sue characters like Rey and Captain Marvel, who don’t struggle or have to grow to overcome challenges. Maybe these raters have it all worked out, and its simply a matter of them telling us, poor uninformed Christians that we are, of what to watch. I could make several points here about how this talks down to people, or how similar this is to how the BLM or LGBTQ+~ people talk to normal human beings, but I won’t. I’ll leave you with some screen capture of Dove reviews and let you decide for yourself.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

This man left Facebook for 6 months. Here is his compelling story

Posted: June 26, 2021 by ng36b in blogs
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How’s that lack of Facebook going?

At the beginning of the year, my wife and I dumped our Facebook accounts. We pulled off our pictures and then selected the “Delete Facebook” button, which is not conveniently located in the Settings menu. After a brief “cooling off” period, Facebook finally deleted our accounts.

So, now that its almost July, how has that worked out? Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

The biggest downsides is there are many places that only communicate with their patrons over Facebook. My girls very Christian ballet studio is one of them, which is ironic because Facebook is becoming more and more anti-Christian everyday, and its likely just a matter of time before their Facebook page will get suspended due to “hate speech.” It seems that people forgot how to use a website, blog, email, or text messaging to communicate with their customers, and instead of these relatively private methods, instead picked an application that hates their beliefs and sells their private data.

The other big downside was losing Messenger Kids. No Facebook account, no Messenger Kids. My kids used the crap out of that to talk with their friends. Now we’re looking at Duo and Signal, but its hard because so many people can’t think of using anything but Messenger.

In the “plus and minus” column is the number of people my wife and I lost contact with. I still use LinkedIn, and I had a lot of people reach out to connect with me because I had dropped off Facebook. We’re now getting more friends texting and talking on the phone, but if anyone had only connected on Facebook, we don’t have much contact with them now.

The upsides are pretty huge though, and the first is time. I spent a LOT of time scrolling on Facebook, and with pretty much no positive gain. I couldn’t even say I was “reading the news,” knowing that Facebook was significantly filtering my feed. I now have a lot more time for other pursuits. I put in 1,700 square foot garden this year, hosted a few maskless parties, finished writing my book, and expanded many other pursuits. It’s hard to realize how bad of a time-suck Facebook is until you are removed from it for an extended period of time.

I also feel better. Facebook had become increasingly negative. Between “Orange Man Bad” and the preachy woke mob, it wasn’t free of politics and it wasn’t particularly friendly when you expressed anything remotely conservative. We had a close friend lose her mind when we pointed out that Trump, as un-Christian as he is in other matters, had a better record on abortion than most Presidents. There’s nothing untrue in that statement, and you don’t have to like Trump to agree with it, but she took it as a personal attack, and we haven’t talked this whole year. Honestly, I don’t miss it. I avoid personally attacking people, and I’m happy to debate a topic, but if you get so riled up thinking you’re woke position is 100% correct, well, I can’t help you.

The last big benefit is privacy. While there are still plenty of ways people will steal or sell my data, I’ve certainly turned off the biggest offender. At least now I have to exchange real functionality (like Google Maps) for private data. Facebook was just happy to hoover everything up and tell you to suck the big one if you didn’t like it.

Right now there are still many people that “can’t survive” a loss of Facebook. Six months later, I don’t understand that. Yes, you lose some functionality. Yes, there really isn’t a full-on replacement app. Parler, MeWe and Rumble all have aspects of Facebook, but aren’t the full package. But there have always been better ways to interact with people electronically. Facebook, for all its advertising about “bringing people together,” is happy to tear apart the fabric of society when it suits its liberal agenda. The benefits of not being there, whether its time or mental health, far outweigh the fake social interactions I had before.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Open carry makes me feel safer

Posted: June 19, 2021 by ng36b in tips, Uncomfortable Truths
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Image courtesy of Lucio Eastman, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There I was, running last minute errands like most of us do in Walmart. I had my two-year old son in a cart, and thankfully no masks to impede my breathing as I raced around grabbing last minute items for our weekend party. When I was satisfied that I had enough chips, salsa, sausages, and glow sticks for the six families visiting us that day, I dutifully lined up to have everything scanned.

That’s when I noticed the guy next to me with an open carry pistol. I couldn’t have felt safer.

I want to first note that it was a rather large pistol. My concealed carry pistol, a Kahr PM9, is small. It’s not even as big as my hand. I can put it in my pants pocket and you’d never notice it. Kahr ran with the “Slim is sexy” and “Thin is sexy” for their PM and P series pistols for a while. They are a great pistol if you need to get yourself out of a jam.

The authors carry pistol, from Kahr Arms
Yes, those are some beautiful guns she has there

The Walmart guys pistol was not small. It was more along the size of a 1911. He did have a nice, very sturdy holster, so it wasn’t going to fall off. The guy had a second clip on his belt as well. I was trying not to stare, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to take a picture.

What I continue to find odd is that people are frightened by this guy. I much prefer that law abiding citizens wear their pistols in the open. For starters, if you walked into Walmart thinking you’re going to shoot the place and the people full of holes, and you start seeing guys and gals walking around with guns, you might think twice about that. Even better, in the time leading up to that, you might see enough weapons every time you go out that you stop even planning such a crime. Knowing that someone could stop you right away from achieving your goals, even if you didn’t care about your own life, might be enough to make you reconsider your decisions.

But further still, if there was an actual incident, I’d rather have the open carry guy there. I don’t know how good of a shot he is with the pistol, but even if he simply shoots back at a would-be criminal, that’s enough for me. Unless you’re in the military, police or a hardened gang member, you tend to run and hide when people shoot at you. Standing up while bullets fly by you is a chilling experience that causes impulse reactions unless you have experienced it multiple times. That would easily give me enough time to leave the store with my kid.

I’m also not worried about getting accidentally shot by this guy. His holster was solid, much better than my first holster (which ironically dumped my pistol on the floor once in a Walmart checkout line…thankfully, the clerk didn’t bat an eye!). The accident rate of pistol holders seems to be dropping steadily, thanks in large part to the availability of professionally run pistol orientation classes. It was significantly harder back in the day for a new shooter to get a class on using their weapon unless they had family members already versed in shooting. Now, nearly every large gun store offers classes that teach you everything from maintenance to the laws on protecting yourself from criminals. Even young people carrying on campus have significantly lower rates of mishaps than before.

We need more open carry to make us feel, and be, safer.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

BrainPop is totally OK violating the law

Posted: June 12, 2021 by ng36b in education
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If you’re not familiar with the education website BrainPop, then I’m guessing you don’t have any school age children. BrainPop is a website with a collection of short educational videos. It’s pretty popular in middle schools, and its had a fairly solid reputation among educators. So when my daughter said she was concerned about a BrainPop video she watched, I was a bit surprised.

So I watched the video on Jim Crow, and for the most part, it was pretty good. It discussed Plessy vs Ferguson, Truman’s desegregation of the military, the NAACP lawsuits and the events that lead up to Brown vs Board of Education. It handles the events pretty well, not sugar coating details over what is a difficult subject to discuss.

Sadly, the video fell apart for me right at the beginning and at the end. The video opens with the protagonists stuck in traffic due to a protest. But that is OK, we’re told, because the protestors are protesting for a good cause. Never mind that impeding traffic is a violation of the law, and the protestors could have easily protested without blocking traffic. But hey, its a good cause, whatever that means, and I say that because we don’t ever really know what the protestors stand for. Rather, its presented as a “protesting for more rights” sort of thing. Remember that point, its important later.

At the end of the video, we get a taste of progressive BrainPop. We’re told that all sorts of groups are protesting for their rights. What do these groups look like, you may ask?

Image capture from BrainPop Jim Crow video

My, that’s a pretty diverse set of protestors! Seems to be mostly from one side of a political aisle. But I have some questions. Why not include protestors from the pro-life movement? Why no reference to other discrimination, such as the rampant discrimination against Irish Catholics? And what exactly are immigrant rights? I thought rights belonged to citizens, or maybe I read that part of the Constitution wrong.

Apparently we forgot about this very real discrimination in American history

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. There were indications BrainPop would get a bit more, progressive, dating back to 2016. It looks like I’m not the only one to notice this either. What’s sad is that you can already see this won’t end well. Once you pick sides, or appear to do so, you immediately turn a situation into “us vs them.” When I search for LGBT on BrainPop, I get 4 results, including one for Harvey Milk, but no results for abortion, pro-life or other related terms. Is BrainPop choosing sides? It sure appears so.

I wrote the following email to my daughters teacher. My hope is that he can perhaps put some of this material into more context, and given his past record, I think there’s a chance for that. I also think many teachers aren’t aware of the creeping progressive themes in BrainPop and other educational materials that used to just focus on delivering good content instead of pushing an agenda. If your kids use BrainPop, and had to watch the Jim Crow episode, I’d encourage you to send an email like mine below.

Dear Mr. (name),
I’m a fan of open discussion about American History, both the good and the bad. My daughter Cecilia recently watched a BrainPop video on Jim Crow, and for the most part, the video was pretty accurate. I especially liked the reference to Plessy vs Ferguson, which is important to establish the proper way that the Supreme Court can correct past wrong decisions.

However, there are two disturbing points in the video I feel must be addressed. The video opens with the two protagonists stopped in traffic due to a protest. The one protagonist, a non-speaking robot, gets visibly angry at the disturbance, but the other protagonist, a young white male, tells him to calm down because the protestors have a “good reason to protest.”

This portion of the video is absurd because it overlooks key portions of the Constitution and settled law. The First Amendment of the Constitution allows the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This right, like all rights, is subject to restrictions such as noise ordinances and safety concerns. While the Supreme Court has struck down attempts at vague restrictions, such as the attempt to shut down “annoying” protests in Coates vs City of Cincinnati, it has upheld arrests of people who engage in violent behavior and who block traffic.

To use a close to home example, there was a scheduled protest down (nearby road) in the summer of 2020. The protestors obtained a permit and had police protection during their protest. Traffic was restricted to one side of (road), which allowed for proper flow of normal and emergency vehicles during this time. This is a great example of what is supposed to happen. 

The video, however, is OK with an illegal blocking of traffic, which begs many questions. Are the protagonists OK with workers losing pay because they arrived to work late? What would they say to the loved ones of someone who died because their ambulance was stuck in unexpected traffic interruptions? What about someone who inadvertently injured a protestor because they weren’t aware of the protests because it wasn’t scheduled? These aren’t hypothetical questions, as each has happened in real life, yet the video glazes over these points like they don’t matter.

The other disturbing section was near the end, which implied that groups of different Americans needed to have “their rights” secured. It’s disturbing because it presents rights as something unequally distributed based on color, gender, sexual orientation, or a variety of other ways we can divide people into different blocks.

Rights exist for all Americans. Abolishing Jim Crow laws was done to allow black Americans to exercise their American rights. Rights aren’t given based on people’s beliefs or how active their melanocytes happen to be in their skin. Rights are given because we are people. That’s the part about “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, or in the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” It’s pretty heady and exciting stuff when you think about it, and something we should be proud of, because it’s not present in many parts of the world, even today. 

When we separate rights into blocks based on arbitrary divisions of human beings, we put ourselves into an “us vs them” scenario. This implies there are winners and losers, and encourages people to fight those that don’t look like them. I can’t imagine a more cynical and cunning way you could destroy unity than this. The ending of the video encourages people to lump themselves into categories and fight for rights for “their side,” rather than fighting to ensure all Americans have the same exercise of American rights.

I apologize for the length of this email, but I think it’s important to point out where misinformation is hurting our education. We should be encouraging students to study US History, including the parts that aren’t the most flattering. But that study doesn’t mean we overlook laws, and it certainly doesn’t demand dividing us into different, competing blocks of people. We’re better than that. I hope you can provide a counter to this messaging that encourages our children to both learn from the past and create a better future for America.

From my email to our daughters teacher

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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