Editor's note: Dr. Tom Snyder contributed to this column. Dr. Ted Baehr is founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE?: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment and founder and chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission. Dr. Tom Snyder is editor of MOVIEGUIDE?.
They tried to tone down the politics at the 78th annual Oscar ceremony last night, despite the controversial, leftist, secular nature of most of the nominees and winners. Though they didn't quite succeed, they failed completely at making the show family-friendly or Christian-friendly.
Crude sex jokes, including jokes about homosexuality and sex-change operations, pervaded a good portion of the pre-planned speeches from the stage, including Jon Stewart's emcee work and the beginning of the show. The beginning of the show is the most likely time that impressionable children might be watching. Yet, it was during that time of the show that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their emcee chose to make most of the homosexual jokes that evening, even to the point of claiming, tongue in cheek, that the famous westerns of yesteryear were full of hidden homosexual messages.
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Of course, by shutting out the best family movies with godly, Christian messages – like "The Chronicles Of Narnia," "Dreamer," "Madagascar" and "Chicken Little" – the Oscar ceremony ensured that it would get the lowest ratings ever from the TV audience, the vast majority of whom are families and Christians with TV sets in their living rooms.
Indeed, overnight ratings reports show a 10-point drop in ratings for the Oscar show compared to last year's already low ratings.
As usual, only one of the winners gave God or Jesus Christ any thanks or credit for their blessing. That was one of the artists behind the winning song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp."
It's hard to see how such a tone-deaf song even got nominated, much less win the award. Jon Stewart had the best quip of the night after the song won the Oscar. "I think it just got easier out here for a pimp," he joked.
As expected, the sexually explicit homosexual movie "Brokeback Mountain" took a couple major awards, and George Clooney walked off with an Oscar for his supporting performance in "Syriana," a radical, anti-American diatribe.
Someone "Crash"-ed the party for "Brokeback," however, when the provocative and sometimes worthwhile "Crash" beat out "Brokeback Mountain" for Best Picture. Even so, "Crash" contained the highest amount of foul language of any of the major nominees, and the movie had other moral and political flaws.
Paul Haggis, the writer-director-producer who picked up two Oscars for "Crash," and George Clooney, exposed the neo-Marxist agenda of most of the nominees at the Oscar ceremony.
Haggis quoted Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, saying, "Art is not a mirror held up to society, it is a hammer by which to shape it."
Clooney, responding to Jon Stewart's point that many people think that most leaders and celebrities in Hollywood are "out of touch" with America, said, "It's good to be out of touch. I'm proud to be out of touch." Clooney then mentioned the involvement of some in Hollywood in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and in promoting awareness of the deadly homosexual sodomy disease, AIDS.
Clooney didn't respond to Stewart's point that many people think Hollywood is "too liberal." Nor did Clooney respond to Stewart's joke that many people think Hollywood is an "atheistic pleasure dome."
The four best movies, and most conservative and Christ-centered movies, receiving any nominations – and pretty minor nominations when you think of it – "Pride & Prejudice," "The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe," "Sophie Scholl" and "Merry Christmas," didn't win any of the major awards.
Thus, although the members of the Academy balked at giving "Brokeback Mountain" the big award of the night, the Oscar ceremony overall proved exactly what Stewart was talking about in his monologue.
Not only are the Oscars out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, they have indeed become an "atheistic pleasure dome" ruled by neo-Marxist liberals and cultural pimps who hate the traditional American family and its Christian values.
Their hatred stems from the communist influence of the Frankfurt School in Germany. The Frankfurt School was started in 1923 by a group of Marxist intellectuals and modeled after the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in the Soviet Union. When Hitler came to power in 1933, these Marxists fled to the United States to teach at famous colleges like Columbia University, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley. Eventually, they became founders and powerful leaders of the counter-culture revolution in the 1960s. This revolution started the movement for "political correctness" in America.
America's education system, not to mention its government, its popular culture, its military, its business community, and its news media, have been transformed by this insidious Fifth Column of "Cultural Marxism." We are now suffering the consequences of this quiet, politically correct invasion. This is what the current Culture War in Hollywood and America is all about.
There is still some good news coming out of Hollywood, however. Several of the most powerful people at the six major studios are excited about the chance to reach the vast potential audience of the 177 million Americans who go to church regularly.
The financial success of such movies as "The Chronicles Of Narnia," "The Incredibles," "Finding Nemo" and "The Passion Of The Christ" have convinced them that there is a big audience out there that is hungry for the kind of positive and redemptive family and Christian values that these movies represent.
They are now trying to reach this audience. Not only that, but they and many other people behind the scenes are working with our two non-profit organizations, MOVIEGUIDE? and the Christian Film & Television Commission? ministry, to understand and satisfy the concerns of parents, Christians and moral conservatives.
It has taken us 21 years to reach this kind of positive influence in the entertainment industry, but much more needs to be done. We still have a long way to go, and we hope you will join us in that effort.