1. Growing Up. Born in 1947 and growing up in post-war South Africa, I was raised in a home where my parents were not devout, church-going people. My father, a product of the nomadic ‘depression-era 1930s’ and a ‘poor-white’ tour of 35 different schools over only 10 years of formal schooling, was an ardent movie-fan spending his leisure time watching cowboy-westerns and reading the likes of Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour. Those were the days when South African cinema-goers, then a British 'dominion', still have had to rise and stand at attention while ‘God Save The Queen’ was played at the end of the feature film.
My father used to regale me with stories of films he had seen as a kid, e.g. 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' and 'The Man in the Iron Mask' etc. (films I am well-acquainted with today thanks to the DVD re-releases of nostalgic movies).
2. The Cinema. Like my father I developed a liking for his kind of action and adventure movies during days when Hollywood was still pushing the theme of law & order, justice, bravery and cowboy versus crook in the typical ‘Dodge & Tombstone’ culture where the marshall or sheriff always got his man; it was an era of no-nonsense heroes and glamorous heroines in an orderly world of (thesis) right/noble/decent versus (antithesis) wrong/bad/evil.
3. Then things 'evolved'. Over time and, as if by some alien witches' brew or diabolical warlock’s alchemy, things suddenly took a turn for the worse when a generation of producers and scriptwriters emerged from the woodwork that had transmogrified into a new ‘avant garde’ society of leftist neo-pagans spewing their smut and filth all over cinema screens and our defenceless little suburban television sets … the ‘New Hollywood Elite’ with their incessant hi-tech 'special effects' and space-age filmatography have arrived of which 'Star Wars' would be a good (better/more decent) example, i.e. all (5-star) special effects combined with a juvenile, superficial, boring teeny-bopper (1-star) 'WhatsAppian' script and storyline straight out of Marvel comics.
4.The new ‘Hollywood Elite’. Gone were the days of Cecil B. de Mille, i.e. days of honour, respect, and decency; like a malignant boil, out popped an avalanche of vulgarity, profanity, filth and blasphemy from a generation of ‘artists’ (sic) devoid of any discernible moral com-pass and with a ‘progressive’ disdain for traditional, time-tested Judeo-Christian values and principles.
This generation, of apparently pagan stock and today hailed as ‘stars’, cannot even speak properly and without a formal script in their hands appear at a total loss, their public utterances during interviews or chance 'off-the-cuff' encounters invariably pockmarked with all and diverse kinds of disgusting diatribes, vile cusswords and cynical, narcissistic (anti-Christian) profanity (and in some cases blasphemy), i.e. hopelessly overpaid moral illiterates of a special kind with no idea how to responsibly handle fortunes more than $1million or what the difference is between indecent, vulgar and uncouth (vs. decent, tasteful and refined) on screen. The Bible warns:
"For the time of life which is past is enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, having gone on in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, parties, carousings, and abominable idolatries. In these things they are surprised, that you are not running with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming. But they shall give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead." [1Peter4:3-5].
5. The real ‘Stars’. Scratching off the fake Hollywood tinsel one runs the risk of (as they say) discovering the real (genuine) tinsel underneath ... but still all tinsel all the way. In contrast the Bible promises those who love God and righteousness and win souls for the Kingdom of God will one day be the real stars on the firmament of Heaven:
“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” [Daniel12:3].
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