Hollywood is kidnapping our children?
by: Dr. Samori Swygert
It’s imperative that we become vigilant stewards and guardians of the quantity, and most important the quality of entertainment that our children ingest. Outbreaks of violence have become almost predictable and clockwork. However, as concerned citizens and family members we must take a proactive position in the intervention of the fate of our youth.
Routinely we hear about a massacre, a mass shooting, gang shootout, new recreational street drug, some new lewd and inappropriate dance, or behavioral trend. We must ask ourselves, “where is all this coming from?”. We can no longer expect the entertainment industry to have a moral conscious in the production of their material.
We are in an era where the family infrastructure is being redefined on a daily basis. Traditionally, we were accustomed to mom, dad, sister, and brother. Currently, these roles have been usurped and hacked by this digital age contagion. This has substituted the TV for mother, Computer for father, Cellphone for brother, Radio for sister, and has eroded the family bond. These new mediums consistently inundate and bombard our children with messages that are repeatedly proving to be hazardous for the youth.
The world has morphed into a narcissistic, attention driven, and instant satisfaction society. The entertainment industry is culpable in the deterioration of society, but rarely is the entertainment industry reigned in for responsibility of material and palatability of content.
Take a sober view and assess the covers of the magazines in your grocery store lines, the video games advertised, the movies featured, the records in rotation, reality shows aired, music videos produced, new age books published, and tell me if you see a recurrent decadent and destructive theme.
The entertainment industry is profiteering hundreds of billions of dollars off the demise of our children! Sexually explicit videos, movies, and books have pushed adolescent sexual promiscuity, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases to a new plateau. When we fail to regulate, monitor, filter, and talk about this material with our children, we allow the entertainment industry to subconsciously impose hazardous behavior into our children’s psyche, and the children passively accept it as innocent entertainment.
Hollywood makes the profit, and we are left with the byproducts to deal with ( early pregnancy, teen abortion, STDs). The oversaturation of sex in books like 50 Shades of Grey, and other lustful ghetto street literature induce a dangerous curiosity into the minds of adolescents that are not yet mature, or responsible enough to manage all aspects of adult behavior by themselves. Sex is a beautiful thing with the right person, and most importantly in a marriage.
However, the ubiquitous and omnipresent emphasis of sex has to contribute to the scores of young children sexually abused, raped, digitally abused on the internet (via compromising videos and pictures) and trafficked.
Do you remember the Steubenville rape case, where these young men engaged in raping an unconscious high school female, and then posted the pictures all over the internet via cellphone pictures, and destroyed this teenager’s reputation and physically violated her without consent? The allure of trying to become famous by asserting their male sexual prowess got these young men serving jail time.
Look at videogames like: Grand Theft Auto, Black Ops Call of Duty, Thrill Kill, and Soldier of Fortune and observe how pervasive gun violence, and brutality are interweaved in the plot. Think about movies and TV shows like : The Purge, Blow, Kill Bill, Breaking Bad, Lock Up Raw and a plethora of others and ask yourself “why is drug culture, prison life, and random acts of violence so celebrated now?”.
We have arrived at the clichéd fruition of, art imitating life and life imitating art. When shooting episodes like Virginia Tech, Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado, Columbine High school, and Jonesboro, Arkansas occur, think about what the youth are consuming. Think about what they are being conditioned and indoctrinated with under the veneer and alias of entertainment. We arrest adolescents on the streets for drug dealing and incarcerate them for the violent acts associated with the drug culture. However, we give Emmys and Oscars to the producers of shows that prompt youth to experiment with this dead-end lifestyle. NPR published an article this week detailing a research study in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study revealed that as of 2009, PG-13 movies have more gun violence than Rated-R movies.1
The music has become the soundtrack to self destruction. When we can turn on the radio and they are rapping about shooting, killing, drugs, sex, and frivolous wasting money, we have a few seconds left before its all over. The music videos have become soft porn, and encourage our young daughters and sisters to mimic the mannerisms of strippers.
Reality shows teach our women nothing but raucous, ratchet behavior. Think about shows like Real Housewives of Atlanta , Love and HipHop, Bad Girls Club, and others. The shows basically demonstrate and instruct young women how to scream, argue, and instigate violent conflicts without any modeling of positive, mature, lady-like conflict resolution. The emphasis is this ultra-diva like female that is money hungry, argumentative, irrational, and self-centered. This is not the type of woman any man wants as a wife, but these shows have our young women believing this is the path to womanhood. The men depicted in these shows are just as bad. Routinely the males are father to multiple baby mommas, absentee, consistently delinquent, players with excuses and stories to explain poor decisions they made.
Ironically, I can express what I’m saying by using a movie. A movie came out a few years ago called, Inception. The plot involved an agent that performed a psychological manipulation called, Inception. While performing Inception on his target, he was able to implant thoughts into their mind without them knowing, and the person would then execute the desired goal.
What am I saying?
We need to press the reset button and return to family and community. We need to have regular communication with our family members and neighbors and redevelop concern about what our kids are doing. We need to actively and regularly review our children’s phones, tablets, computers, TV shows, radio shows, and videos on Youtube, World Star HipHop, and any other electronic/ digital forms of social media, because our kids are under attack. The results are devastating and the devil doesn’t leave his fingerprints at the scene of the crime. He just leaves you with the tragedy to clean up, and the bill to pay.
Who profits?
The financial profit lies in high yield earnings for the private prisons for those that engage in illegal drug activity, pay day for drug companies that get new patients on Plan B abortificient pills, Antibiotics, or Antiviral medication from high risk sexual activity, a stimulus plan for gun and ammo manufacturers. Every time a mass shooting occurs, gun sales skyrocket because people feel the government will ban firearms, and people buy as much as possible to avoid being gunless.
The fashion industry makes a killing from young teens purchasing clothing to mimic and emulate the characters or stars in movies, music, and magazines. The movie industry and gaming industry makes more for the production of more films and games. The whole time we as a community are suffering the collateral damage of reckless indoctrination of our youth. It’s 2013 do you know where your children are?
People are to scared to speak up and call BS (bulls$it) when it happens. Benefactors of the industry say it’s “creative and edgy”. That’s a lie, it’s self destructive BS, and people are scared to be called a hater for voicing real concerns. These actors won’t complain, and will call you a hater because you are interfering with their paycheck, reputation, endorsements, and contracts. I don’t care about these bought and paid for minstrels, the posterity of our black youth are not for sale!! I may be on my soapbox, but so what, somebody has to speak up! Like Gil Scott Heron said, ” we got to do something to save the children”. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!!!???
Reference
