The Media-Wise Family
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REVIEW BY ANDREA R. HUELSENBECK
Did you know that most children spend more time with the television set before the age of six than they will spend with their fathers during their entire lives? The Media-Wise Family is loaded with statistics like these. Author Ted Baehr, active in the entertainment industry for decades, has thoroughly researched the impact of popular culture on society. Although concerned about violent and sexual content in television, movies, and music, Baehr counsels against throwing away the TV set or abandoning the theaters entirely. Instead, he demonstrates how to be a discriminating consumer of the best the media has to offer. Baehr says, "If violence was removed from all movies, television programs and other mass media, there would never be a documentary series such as The Civil War or important movies such as Schindler's List. Portrayals of violence are necessary to tell stories that send anti-violence messages. The issue is not the mere presence of violence and other offensive elements, but the nature of these elements and the context in which they occur." In Baehr's opinion, as detrimental as violence and pornography is the promotion of false worldviews. TV, music, games, and movies that revolve around occultism, humanism, atheism, pantheism, or nihilism can subtly dilute the Christian world view and lure us away from biblical truth. Most helpful are a hundred pages of techniques and activities parents can use to train their children to be discerning viewers of mass media products. They include process-journaling, writing reviews and jingles, writing a script, and filming a video. The statistics are in -- the American public supports high-quality family entertainment. Yet family-oriented movies continue to earn megabucks while R-rated movies flop at the box office. If only Hollywood would get the message. Andrea R. Huelsenbeck is a freelance writer in Tempe, AZ.
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