Kristi Kane
Do you ever look forward to the weekend because you know an outstanding movie is coming out? I haven’t felt that way in a very long time.
The 86th Academy Awards which took place on the first Sunday of this month, left me feeling as nauseated as I have been for the past 20 years when I dare to take a peek at what’s happening during the Oscars. There’s always inappropriate innuendo from the master of ceremonies, and sometimes from the nominees themselves. This year was no different. Has Hollywood fallen from it’s golden pedestal? It has its moments, but for the most part, it rates alongside ancient Sodom and Gomorrah for content.
Take for example one of the films up for “Best Picture” this year. The Wolf of Wall Street contained over 414 F-words. That did not include the 82 scatological terms (sh*t), or the 53 anatomical terms. On the scale of profanity, it was a ten out of ten. This picture was exactly 180 minutes long, and contained over 549 profane words (I’m not accounting for all of the “religious” expletives either). I will not touch the amount of prolific sexual content. But its sex/nudity content was also a 10 out of 10. Please do not imagine. Reading over the content made me want to vomit, literally, and I was only half way through. The message after wading through the garbage and having to figuratively scour your brain with a Brillo pad: “white collar criminals get off easy and they are usually still rich when they go free.”
Another nominee for “best picture” was the Dallas Buyers Club, a movie about a homosexual man suffering from AIDS in the ’80s and looking for a cure. The content of this movie, also up with the Wolf of Wall Street, had an 8 out of 10 for sex/nudity, and a 10 out of 10 for profanity (only 104 F-words here). Its message: “fighting against all odds can lead to change.” Wow. How profound. 12 Years a Slave won best picture, (8 out of 10 for sex/nudity and 5 out of 10 for profanity). To wade through its message, you had to endure 133 minutes of several rapes, whippings, degrading behavior of all kind to get the message that: “Slavery in the American South was thoroughly horrifying. Enslavement is immoral.” Yeah. No kidding. I got that message when I read Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of A Slave.”
Should you leave it up to Hollywood to entertain your family? Do you trust their ratings system? Do you trust Hollywood’s idea of best pictures? The studios are happy to create this kind of garbage, but the Academy actually seemed embarrassed by Matthew McConaughey’s mention of God as he accepted his win for Best Actor when he said, “he’s the one I look up to.” His acceptance speech was temporarily unavailable for viewing on “YouTube,” following the Oscars. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. You can’t make this stuff up. In Hollywood, it seems that right is wrong and up is down. Hollywood does have its moments. But in the world of hits and misses, it generally misses. My opinion, look to a better source to entertain your family.
(My source: the Kids in Mind app, a free app, which I highly recommend everyone have if you’re thinking of seeing a movie….caution: this app tells it like it is, and sometimes its reviews are very raw!)