Sleazy movies, sleazy culture

No one spends $100 million to make a movie intending it to lose a heap of money. They expect to make money. They expect a lot of people will pay to see it.

Soon to be released, “Fifty Shades Darker” is the sequel to “Fifty Shades of Grey,” a movie celebrating and promoting the perversion of “bondage and domination”—in which one partner, usually the woman, gets her jollies by being tied up and smacked around by the other. In the “Fifty Shades” franchise, it’s always the woman. Somehow this is supposed to be liberating, and feminists are too busy protesting in favor of abortion to devote any time to protesting against this. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

According to a review by The Express, this sequel is “far kinkier than the original” and “almost pornographic at times.” Almost? What do they have to do to go beyond “almost”? Never mind, I don’t really want to know.

It used to be that, if you wanted stuff like that, you had to get it furtively, sneak it into your den somehow. Now you take your date to see it at your local nabe. Stand in line, buy a ticket. You won’t blush if anybody sees you there.

True, there is a fair to excellent chance that this turkey will bomb at the box office; but Hollywood is betting that it won’t. And they’re willing to take the risk because this is what they do: this is their own piece of the fundamental transformation of America.

At one time, to release a movie like this would have been unthinkable. But our culture has been changed, drastically, and not for the better. What with our teachers’ unions, our colleges and universities, and Democrat politicians pushing and promoting transgenderism—or “gender fluidity,” as they sometimes like to call it—as if their very lives depended on it, what was once seen as perverted and bizarre has been pushed at least into the borders of the cultural mainstream.

To cite just one example: an Italian priest is in the soup now for “holding orgies on church property” and arranging visits to “naturist swingers’ resorts.” “Naturist” means they take their clothes off. Police caught him with a briefcase full of “sex toys” and similar paraphernalia; and he also got up to other tricks which I will not mention here. They had him dead to rights, so he broke down and confessed—and not in a confessional booth, but in a police interrogation room.

The Church seems determined to boot him out of the priesthood altogether, but questions remain. What made him think he could get away with this? What made him decide to do it in the first place? They say he had upwards of “30 lovers.” Who were they, and what made them look to a priest to be their pander?

There have always been corrupt and wicked clergymen. Read Dante. Read Boccaccio. We also have schoolteachers, professional people, and public officials every bit as slimy as this single priest. Are they learning this from movies, or is Hollywood just making movies that reflect the state of our culture? Probably a bit of both.

We want prosperity. We want liberty. But in order to have those things, you also need to have the family, a free market, religious faith—and decency. We can’t wallow in sleaze and hope for stable families, a rational economy, and a personal code of behavior that allows others to trust you and expect you to treat them as you would want them to treat you. If you want to see what happens to a society when the family breaks down, the market doesn’t work, and nobody bothers to obey the law—well, that isn’t hard to see. Spend a few nights in the worst parts of Chicago.

It’s a very good thing that we won a presidential election against the party that boos God at its national convention. But our culture has a long, long way to go before it’s healthy again. Winning an election won’t help us unless we can win back our culture from the culture-killers.

They’re the moral imbeciles who educate and entertain our children; and we mustn’t let them do it anymore.

I have discussed these topics, and others, on my blog, http://leeduigon.com, throughout the week. Please stop by and read! All it takes is just one click to get you there.