2.28.2005
Poster child for the New Morality
With two Best Actress Oscars in as many nominations, Hilary Swank has entered a rare pantheon in her craft. However, the bigger news is the message the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is sending the rest of us with these (and other) Oscar awards. That message is that your grandmother's morality is no longer relevant. We can make heroes out of wounded, hurting individuals who justify aberrant life (and death) choices by virtue of their victimization at the hands of "God" and others. The rest of us are expected to blindly develop the "compassion" that blesses these abominable choices as not only understandable, but even necessary, responses to personal tragedy.
In this climate of humanist pedantry, few will dare to closely examine how the choices made by these "heroines" Swank has portrayed so skillfully contributed to their eventual untimely demises. Such is the culture that it seldom crosses the mind that Hollywood's obsession with gender-bending might have dramatic and unpleasant consequences in people's lives.
Teena Brandon, the pathetically confused young woman who was murdered in 1993, along with two others, was a liar, thief and emotional predator. A victim of sexual abuse for several years as a young child, Brandon made the self-protective choice to adopt a male persona as a way to protect herself from ever being touched by a man again. Understandable? Certainly. Harmless? Hardly. Passing bad checks and pursuing intimate relationships with women while disguised as a man are reflections of bad character, not gender confusion.
I can already hear the rising chorus of the indoctrinated raised up in protest. "Desperate people do desparate things!" Or, "If society was more accepting of people with different identities, then they wouldn't have to lie!" Like the terrorists in the Middle East, personal suffering and deprivation excuses the harm they inflict on others.
Do I believe that Teena Brandon deserved to die for her sins? No more than do I. And no less. Oh, did I forget to mention that I believe that ALL sins deserve death? At least that's the perspective of a holy God. But it's also the reason that Jesus said to the group of men ready to stone the woman caught in adultery, "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." Of course, I don't advocate murder for any reason, but there was more than a history of sexual abuse that put Teena Brandon in the company of the men who would eventually kill her.
No, my objection is to Hollywood preaching its own version of the Gospel. The Good News from Hollywood is that the more outrageous, deviant and tragic the story of your life and death is, the more of hero they can make out of you. Not to mention the more money they will make doing so. These are the martyrs of the new faith and the doctrine of all-acceptance. Their deaths are immortalized so that society can be persuaded to allow anything in the area of personal conduct, without regard to millenia of history which points to the contrary.
I have much less to say about Ms. Swank's most recent trophy winning performance. I've heard the plot outline, which attempts to glorify the choice of assisted suicide in the face of a life lived in a wheelchair. If you read my last post re: the 'brave' death of Hunter S. Thompson, you know where I stand on that issue.
About the only thing I have to say based on my limited knowledge of the story is that of all the career choices available to women in this society, boxing has to be about the dumbest and least suitable. Before the femi-Nazis get started, let me say clearly that I also believe it to be a pretty stupid choice for men. Volunteering for brain damage just strikes me that way.
Of course, Clint Eastwood could have chosen to do a real heroic story about someone in the same situation -- a young, beautiful, athletic woman who was put into a wheelchair for life by a tragic accident. However, this woman made a totally different choice, and 30 years later, she is still living a vibrant, meaningful and purpose-driven life in Christ. But I guess the life story of Joni Earickson Tada might not have sold tickets or won him multiple Oscars. And it certainly wouldn't have delivered the message the Academy (and the Hollywood machine in general) so desparately wants us to get.
As I bid farewell to the mind poison that is TV, I am starting to wonder if movies can be far behind, based on this evident agenda from those who make them?
This world is full of Teena Brandons and Maggie Fitzgeralds who have been so cruelly hurt by life and by others. What they need is not to be made to into icons for the New Morality, but the compassion and hope of Jesus Christ to find the promise of healing and restoration from their wounds. Being wounded doesn't justify deceit, thievery or violence. Especially to oneself.
I have been challenged in recent days to balance empathy for the pain of hurting people with the true compassion of Christ which understands that the only lasting relief from these types of wounds lies in speaking the uncompromised truth in love. Out of concern for the inevitable tragedy that looms when such a person tries to take care of their hurts "by any means necessary".
- posted by The Drake @ 9:25 AM
