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Movie Viewer Extraordinaire  |
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Teri Haux enjoys watching movies, but she’s a parent whose priority is insuring a safe viewing environment for her family. That’s why she wrote Movie Viewer Extraordinaire: Discerning the Influences of Movies on Your Freedom, Family and Happiness (BookSurge Publishing, 2009), to help other parents, who like her, are concerned with the messages coming out of many Hollywood movies that have the potential to negatively influence viewers, particularly children who do not have the ability to discern the right and wrong of what they’re seeing. The book is also for anyone who is interested in the effects movies can have on individuals and even entire cultures.
As a movie enthusiast, Haux has been studying and watching films for over a decade while pursuing a career in screenwriting. She studied films in college and now has a new perspective on the influences of movies in her own home as she observes her children’s responses to them. Due to her concern with the kind of content that can negatively influence becoming more prevalent in movies, she has developed five guidelines by which parents can preview movies and determine the view ability of them for their own families. Both her experience as a screen writer and her Christian faith shaped the five guidelines.
Beginning with an expose on the exciting qualities of movies, Haux explores what makes a great movie, the kind that draws in its audience and makes them part of the whole experience. Haux explains movies capture their audience’s emotions and the truly great movies generate a shared emotion with its viewers, leaving audience members on an emotional high days after their viewing experience has ended.
Next she traces the beginning of movie guidelines that were put into place by members of Hollywood called the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) intending to police the content of movies and block harmful content from reaching audiences. When this group formed in the 1920s, the first movie-making guidelines adopted in 1930 were called the Motion Picture Production Codes. There were 15 codes and many of those had several sub-rules. In 1968 the MPAA suddenly stopped enforcing the codes and the new ratings we see used today for movies began to be used, which instead are simply an age guideline for viewers.
Haux’s concern stems from her opinion many movies being made today are agenda-driven by their backers who desire to influence viewers to accept their own beliefs and opinions despite what their viewers my think. Some of these are harmless to everyday life, but others Haux fears could put many American freedoms at risk. As one example, she traces the use of propaganda through film by Soviet dictators and Hitler in Germany to create passiveness in citizens and sees many of the same tactics being used by Hollywood movie makers.
At a short 156 pages, plus appendix, Haux does herself a disservice by not providing a reference section citing the many historical references she makes and book and articles she quotes. Instead, her arguments are more anecdotally based rather than backed up by concise research.
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