Hollywood and sexuality.

The entertainment industry has a ready response to complaints about gratuitous sex and violence. The portrayal of both, industry apologists say, reflects social realities.

Film critic Michael Medved noted this response in Hollywood vs. America, which he subtitled Popular Culture and The War on Traditional Values. Often, he found, the apologists say that movies and TV programs are more sexually explicit and violent than ever because their creators mirror powerful social trends.

This is partly true. Popular entertainment reflects some social realities. However, it virtually ignores others. To a large extent, it is out of touch with reality, not reflective of it.

Consider how movies and TV shows deal with sex. In these productions, having sex is a lot like having pizza. I'm hungry, he says or signals. So am I, she replies or indicates. And away they go. The idea that sex initiates and symbolizes a permanent commitment rarely comes through. The idea that this commitment is not just for the sake of the participants, but also of the offspring which sex is apt to generate, seldom surfaces.

Now if these ideas were uncommon, unusual, or unpopular you could perhaps understand why the entertainment industry largely ignores them. But they happen to be popular with tens of millions of Canadians and Americans, not to mention billions of others throughout the world. Lifelong marriage with children is a universal ideal. Diverse peoples everywhere aspire to it. In light of this ideal, tens of millions of Canadians and Americans consider non-marital sex to be immoral. Many base this moral stand on faith, many others on reason. Some base it on both.

I have yet to see a Cinema Canada or modern Hollywood movie that adequately reflects this moral reality. The narrow reality they and the TV networks generally reflect presents sex with severely limited moral implications. When have you seen movie or TV characters valiantly resisting sexual temptation because they thought it immoral or unholy? When have you seen them conscience-stricken because they yielded to this temptation? When have you watched them agonizing over the damage that forbidden sex has visited on their relationship with God.

And yet temptation, grace, sin, and repentance are fundamental realities for tens of millions of North American viewers. Because of the limited perspectives of the entertainment industry, these viewers rarely see themselves in contemporary shows. On the contrary, they continually see characters who revel in irregular sex with a clear conscience. What is more, these sexual romps are so graphically presented that they seem intended to arouse viewers and turn them into voyeurs.

Instead of depicting characters who are tempted and struggle, much of modern entertainment tempts viewers and they struggle. Christians used to call persons, places, or things that led them into temptation occasions of sin. As a child, I can remember being counselled to avoid the near occasions of sin, the ones I was liable to give in to.

The entertainment industry's portrayal of homosexuals is rigorously exclusive. It excludes those who for religious motives choose to remain celibate and battle courageously to control their inclinations. Unfortunately, you are unlikely to see this battle played out in a theatre or TV screen near you, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Conflict is a principal element in drama. You cannot, in fact, have drama without it. The ultimate conflict, between good and evil, is waged in the human mind before it erupts in the world outside. Shakespeare understood this and in portraying crises of conscience in such characters as Hamlet and Macbeth, he created dramas that have entertained and edified ordinary people for four hundred years and show no signs of declining in popularity. Can we realistically expect that the contemporary dramas we see on large and small screens will fare as well?

Why, one wonders, does the entertainment industry dismiss the riveting moral conflicts that a huge segment of viewers experience in coming to terms with their sexuality? You would think that these conflicts, the very stuff of good drama, would have wide and lasting appeal, because they confront basic human realities.

Are entertainment leaders so isolated in their post-Christian ghettos that they are unaware of mainstream values and the conflicts they entail? I think not. I suspect, rather, that the reason for their selective treatment of human sexuality is encapsulated in Medved's subtitle. They are helping to wage war on traditional values, the ones that countless numbers of viewers embrace.

These values include respect for persons and property. This respect is at variance with the graphic violence that the movies and TV shows disdainfully and jeeringly glorify. We have come to the point where sadistic characters, who consider it funny to wantonly kill and destroy, are presented in a positive light. The bad guys are the good guys.

Society has experienced increased violence since I was a boy. However, it has failed to keep pace with the movies, in which violence is vastly over-represented.