Media, Morality, and Fantasy

I've heard people complain about how movies and television are full of immorality. Many Christians in particular are disgusted, and cite Psalm 101:3 ("I will set no vile thing before my eyes") as reason not to have cable, nor let their children see "R" rated movies. From listening to my elders, I have come to a realization: where media used to be a tool to reinforce common decency and morality, it is now more than ever an escape from reality--including moral behavior.

The operative word in media is fantasy. Fantasy, of course, has two common uses. The first use is in the sense of the term "fantasy violence," it's a grown-up way of saying "make-believe." The second use is to express a deep desire that someone imagines and dwells on but doesn't expect to live-out in reality.

When media becomes a means of escape (as opposed to mere entertainment), it fulfils both definitions.When someone watches a movie purely for entertainment, they engage in an act of make-believe. When someone watches a movie to escape their reality for a while, they engage in the second form of fantasy whereby they pretend to live out what they see. Rather than enjoying a story, the viewer lives vicariously through the characters and pretends to live another life, distant from what they know and experience on a daily basis.Media as escapism is not inherently bad. Everyone needs to get away for a while, and it's cheaper to go to the video store than it is to fly away on vacation. Where we get into trouble with escaping through media is when we escape to a world whose morality does not reflect reality. To the Christian, morality is best defined in God's Law, and especially in the Ten Commandments. Even an atheist sees the merit of morality and the value of the Ten Commandments as a moral document. Nevertheless, we find that morality is forsaken in many of today's story lines. We are left to question why this is.

While media have been used as propaganda for morality (yes, it is propaganda; no, propaganda is not always bad, despite the stigma surrounding the term), today's writers largely rely on society apart form media to enforce morality and use their stories to offer alternative realities. Where we used to look for the moral to the story, we now hope the immoral protagonist escapes the consequences of his or her actions and continues to live out our sinful fantasies. Whether art imitates life or life imitates art is a question for the philosophers, but when fantasy becomes reality, what will the world look like?