I have great Evangelical Christian parents. So, growing up that meant I experienced a certain amount of media censorship. My mother often wore dresses and whenever there was a sex scene on TV, or in a movie, she would jump up and cover the screen with her dress so my brother and I couldn’t see.
To be honest, this never really bothered me. Probably in part because our Christian peers had it much worse—some would not even be allowed to watch R-rated movies until they were seventeen. Also, my parents let us watch as much violence as we wanted (I would have been pissed if my mom jumped up to block images of someone’s head getting blown away).
When I was twelve, to keep my eyes and soul holy (albeit not for God but for a girl at church) I started self-censoring my TV and movie watching by looking away during sex scenes. This habit would last all through high school.
In middle school I was not allowed to watch South Park and wasn’t allowed to see American Pie. I wasn’t really interested in seeing either of them except for the fact that many of my peers at school thought they were the coolest things ever. In fact, not seeing the “Pie Scene” made me some sort of cultural outcast even into high school.
In high school youth group I would hear a talk every now and then about the dangers of watching TV and movies. They would always piss me off for four reasons.
First, in long standing family tradition, I abhor being told what to do by anyone.
Second, I mainly watched the Lakers, and from a content perspective I was convinced that was not a problem—what’s less sexual than seven-foot tall sweaty dudes?
Third, by the time I was sixteen almost all of my friends were involved in having real sex, or drinking real alcohol or doing real drugs and the consequence of me not doing that stuff was isolation, depression and my first suicide attempt. That my youth group was mired down in not swearing and TV and movie censorship was the worst form of pettiness (and yes, that’s part of why I use swear words in this blog).
Fourth, the one normal teenage weekend activity that was not partying was watching movies together. So, I watched a lot of movies because I didn’t party (at least not until the end of high school). To have adults telling me to loose the one token of normality I had infuriated me—I felt like I was already doing enough.
Upon writing this post I think it will be helpful to point out two realizations. First, rehearsing this history makes me want to break my current TV fast—luckily there isn’t a TV in the house anymore. Second, I find it shocking that I haven’t been involved with TV or movies since June—this never would have been possible in high school. Life certainly takes some strange twists.
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