Kevin & Bill Ruin Family Movie Night

Movies are the most powerful teaching tool in our culture. In the 60s and 70s, a small group of studios led the West by the nose into moral revolution — and the Academy Awards continue to reward films romanticizing evil. But Americans’ embrace of moral relativism has flatlined in the past 10–15 years. Hollywood has lost its grip on the American mind — and now there is a great opportunity for independent Christian filmmakers. Will we seize it?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

This is Generations. My name is Kevin Swanson, and folks, the Academy Awards Ceremony 2026 just occurred over the last weekend. And the award ceremony has preferred R-rated movies for Best Picture Award now for the last 20 years. 17 of the last 20 best picture awards went to R-rated films. Back in the 1980s, seven Best Picture Awards went to PG-rated films. One was PG 13 rated, the other two R-rated films. It's a shift from 20% to 85% since the 1980s, just a data point. The 98th Academy Award ceremonies, this time awarded more R-rated movies with top prizes. One battle after another took the best picture award this year. It's a film celebrating revolution, killing ice agents, murdering pro-life legislators. The film garnered six Oscars and played with moral ambiguity and satire while encouraging revolutionary activity in society. Another R-rated movie, Sinners, collected four more Oscars. The film glorified demonism, African animism, murderers, adulters, and hoodoo witches while condemning Christianity for its legalism and white oppression. Now they call them adult themes. That's why R-rated. Evil is presented as an adult theme. Because adults are supposed to be evil, or at least embrace that which is evil, I guess. The Academy prefers what they call moral ambiguity if the film will receive a top award. Now, they prefer authenticity and realism, especially when presenting that which is evil. One battle after another is supposed to be satirical. Sort of. But there's a thin line between sati satire sati satirizing. Let me try it more time. But there's a thin line between satire and romanticizing or celebrating violence. Satire depends on signals the audience may miss. The creator sort of intends the audience to recognize that the portrayal is critical and not really approving of it, but the cues are subtle. Is the filmmaker portraying a violent revolutionary? Is ridiculous? Or does he allow certain viewers to accept a bold anti-hero fighting the system? So which is it? It's the same scene, just different moral readings. Audience interpretation then plays a large role. Now questions to ask ourselves if we are going to view these films. Things like are violent characters punished, destroyed, or vindicated? Is the violence tragic, comic, thrilling, or heroic? From the camera's perspective, does the story invite admiration or distance? Do any characters challenge the behavior of the anti-heroes? Are the violent characters treated as admirable? If the story consistently frames a violent character as cool, brave or charismatic, audiences tend to admire them, even if the writer claims the work is satire. Well, given that the audience members have a heart that is drawn into the deeds of the flesh, which is what we assume as Christians, and that's our anthropology, could the audience wind up approving of the evil characters in the film? Does the audience mainly think about imitating the character in the film? Are there meaningful consequences for the evil that's done? Do innocent people suffer because of the progenist? Does the character face ruin, judgment, or tragedy? Or do the bank robbers and revolutionaries emerge largely successful and appearing triumphant? And does the story provide moral distance by a moral narration, maybe condemnation of the immoral behavior or tragic consequences in cases of moral failure? In this movie, one battle after another, the director sets the far revolutionary left against the far nationalistic right, but he tips his cards by presenting the far right as that which holds political power with the far left, the underdog, reacting to this extreme unsavory use of that power. So this moral ambiguity is the more fundamental worldview that is passed along to the participants. Man prefers total moral relativism over the screams of his conscience, having to deal with his position under the condemnation of Almighty God. It's just really uncomfortable to be in that position. Movies will present this moral ambiguity in different ways. Take Deadpool or Pirates of the Caribbean, the immoral character draws sympathy from the audience. Celebrated, the corrupted hero still wins at times, as in the case of Scarface and The Dark Knight. Sometimes there's no hero in the story, or one evil is presented as a solution to another evil. Sometimes pragmatism wins out, torture is acceptable, moral lines give way to pressure. Sometimes characters draw our sympathy, but then descend into wrongdoing. Traditional moral categories collapse in the case of No Country for Old Men or Joker, where villains are framed somewhat sympathetically. The world is presented as morally chaotic and a product of random chance. Okay, so your metaphysic is playing into your ethics there. Reality and truth are driven into subjectivity, as in the case of inception and the social network. All right. So power, wealth, and success overshadow moral standards. In some films, like Wall Street or American Psycho, justice is uncertain or completely absent in the case of prisoners, Zodiac and Seven. God is a non-factor in the metaphysic, and that's a problem. See, because justice will ultimately collapse. Sometimes this relativism is presented in the metaphysic: everything everywhere at once, embracing absurdity and chaos with a last ditch hope we can somehow salvage meaning by kindness. But that itself is absurd given the worldview embraced. Or there's parasite presenting a moral problem without a solution and just surrendering to ultimate despair. Or Nomad Land, another fruitless search for meaning. Now these are the Academy's best pictures over the last few years. And the message is clear. No good winning over evil, no meaning, no clear moral laws. And now we are way, way, way beyond good or evil. That's the Nietzsche thing, right? All that to say this message is extremely dangerous. Well, first, there is a message. These guys are conveying, these directors and producers and writers, they're conveying a worldview, a religion. And people buy popcorn and coke while they're taught their religious lessons in the theaters or the church services. We don't offer popcorn or coke in our church services, but they do. The effects of all of this is obvious, a more self-consciously and self-consistently hopeless and amoral society. Now, all right, that's the bad news. Now here's the good news. It turns out that Americans embracing moral relativism has actually flatlined around 65% over the last 10 years. And I ask myself, why is that? The Gen Z generation is about 75%. But that means only 25 to 35% believe in absolute truth, moral absolutes, but that's flatlined over the last 10 to 15 years. Really extraordinary. Check out the Barna numbers when you get a chance. So Hollywood and the Academy has lost its grip on the American mind. I think this is what's going on. During the 1950s, I want you to think about this. 90 million Americans, or 60% of the population, were taught how to think at the movie theater on a weekly basis. That's right. 60 million Americans. 60%. Their instructors were actually five production companies. MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and RKO. By the 1960s, 75% of Americans or 110 million people were watching 440 commercial stations, almost all part of the NBC, ABC, and CBS networks. Now, these were the primary influences on the mind of Americans for generations. The churches, parents, politicians, far less influence on the development of the opinions, morals, and perspectives of the electorate. Thus, board members of a few production companies and networks. And my guess is no more than about 80 people had control over the minds of hundreds of millions of people over the last several generations. But here's the good news Oscar viewing was uh down nine percent year on year this year. Meaning we the nine percent drop on the number of people that watch the Oscars on Sunday. Over 50% of Hollywood movies lost money last year. Mental note uh don't invest in Hollywood. Hollywood has less than half the influence on the American mind than it did in 2002 when the box office collected 1.6 billion tickets. That number has dropped off to half of that in just the last 23 years. And by the way, the major networks have less than half the viewership they had in the early 2000s. Less than half. That's like 30% now. Whereas 60% of the US population used to attend the theater on a weekly basis in the 1950s and 60s. That's dropped off to 2%. And only 16% will catch a movie once a month. So here's the point the monopolized media, the lock hold held onto the minds of the American majority over all those years has now loosened. And the decentralization of the Tower of Babel media has already happened. Now, I used to say we're competing with ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN right here in this studio. And uh it's still the case. That's the best news in the world today. God has dispersed the Tower of Babel one more time. We're entering a new era and another opportunity to disciple the nations with the only worldview that's based on truth, hope, and a true view of reality, man's problem, and the only solution, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today we're gonna take some time at the movies with Bill Jack and yours truly, Kevin Swanson on Generations. So, Bill, wow, it's so important for us to be able to discern movies, and it's a sneaky thing. It's not always easy. And I'm guessing that there's a percentage of people listening to my opening comments, and they're thinking, what did he just say? Now, if you're asking that question, you probably need to study this a little bit before you just jump into that theater and just absorb everything that's coming at you. We're not just counting cuss words here. We need to get down into the foundational issues relating to ethics, the metaphysic that's concerned, um, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not sure people are quite ready for that as they enter the theater.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

And it's it's it's a worldview issue. Everybody understands that stories, novels, short stories have there's an element called a you know, a perspective. Everybody has has a point of view. The author has a point of view he's trying to get across. That also applies to film, okay. And uh with film it's one of the most powerful teaching tools in the culture because it includes the visual, it includes the dialogue, it includes the music. So all of that's wrapped together and you you tend to give your heart to it. Yeah, and once you give your heart to something, if someone criticizes it, you therefore have to defend it. We feel our way through a film rather than think our way through a film. Now, what's fascinating about this is that in the early 1900s, when when film became popular, the the Catholic priests began to address movies during mass to the point where the Catholic groups began to organize in leagues of decency. There was a Supreme Court case in 1915, Mutual Film Corporation versus Industrial Commission of Ohio. And in that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that free speech did not extend to motion pictures, and therefore, what happened is states began to introduce censorship legislation. Hollywood got the message. They began to court the Catholic Church specifically, because they had set up these leagues of decency. Priests were addressing motion pictures, warning their congregants not to go to certain films. And so what was born out of that was the motion picture production code. It was a voluntary thing. It was often called the Hayes Code because Will Hayes was president of the motion picture producers and distributors of America from 22 to 1945. And it was a voluntary thing, and they would submit their films voluntarily to a commission from the Catholic Church who would review and then make suggestions. They would actually change scripts so that they would take out not just what we would consider sexually explicit now, it was just anything that was suggestive, anything that glorified rather than vilified sin or criminal behavior. And Hollywood did this voluntarily.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

This is to say this to the Catholics. Yes. And the evangelicals and Protestants had nothing to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

We can't retreat from culture. That's why this is a worldview issue, because it's the most powerful teaching tool in the culture. Right. We're ignoring it until recently. Well, until recently. Well, there are there are Christian filmmakers who are doing an excellent job. Right. But I mean, when I grew up, the only thing we had for Christian films were the Billy Graham heavy-handed gospel presentations, right? So here's the here's the uh pledge that you would take.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures and those which glorify crime and criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise further to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy. They were death. They were death on going to a movie. On all movies. On all movies, and what we would call um fundamentalists, okay? Right. Those until TV came out. And when TV came out and the movies that were shown in theaters began to be shown in their living rooms, suddenly it was a different story.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah. And that would have been the 1960s, 1970s.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

This code was enforced from 1934 until 1968. In the mid-60s, it began to lose its clout. Hollywood began to ignore Christians.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Because Christians walked away. It wasn't that Hollywood said, I'm we're not going to thumb your nose. They walked away.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

What's interesting now is we have this new opportunity. Independent filmmakers, guys like us that do this little thing in our basements or wherever we are. Uh, we are making an impact on the ideas, uh the uh the idea exchange, the conversation that's going on in terms of worldviews as it affects the culture. And and to me, you know, we have a tremendous opportunity. I'm thankful for every Christian film producer that's out there and Kindred Brothers and a distinctive Christian worldview into the area of film or any form of media.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

And you're seeing a clear division in what people want. Hollywood celebrates the ambiguity of morality.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Which is what we just talked about.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

You just talked about that. They celebrate the perverse, they attack the virtuous, they attack Christianity. Whereas Christian filmmakers are now producing quality films that are drawing families and drawing money away from Hollywood. And now Hollywood has to take notice. As you said, Hollywood's losing money, but they still they don't they don't care. They really don't care. What they care about is forcing their worldview of moral relativism onto the American public. Christians need to invade every aspect of culture, from the arts to science, from philosophy to politics, because we are to have dominion. We are to inform from a biblical worldview every aspect of culture.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Well, by the time you get to the 1960s, you start to see these radical revolutionary moves. In fact, I would say the graduate of 1967, remember Mrs. Robinson, the the uh song sung by Simon and Garfunkel, as I recall. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Um we begin to see Do you want me to sing a few bars of that?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

We begin to see a radical revolutionary view when it comes to sexuality. And there you get an excellent example of adultery, and it is somewhat accepted. You know, you're you're getting to the point at which you're allowing for uh the protonist in the film to be somebody who's breaking God's law but doing so with impunity. Right. And uh this is a shift, this is a massive shift that's occurring. Um Bonnie and Clyde, 1967, Outlaws. Uh, there is there are unwarranted scenes going on here. Midnight Cowboy, some call it the first X-rated film of the modern era. So this is all part and parcel of the sexual revolution that's exploding on the scene. The contribution of Hollywood and the contribution of Nashville and the music industry, the pop music industry, is probably the most significant and powerful demonic force that's changing the mind and the culture of the American society. Right. I mean, who else would be doing it? It wasn't like Richard Nixon was changing the morality of the nation. Well, he didn't help.

unknown 19:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

But it wasn't like he was driving this vehicle. This is happening through Hollywood. It's happening through the graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy. Uh these are the movies that are revolutionary. They're changing the whole environment. Um so is Hollywood and the educational system. Well, that's happening at the same time, sure, because they've taken prayer out of the schools, et cetera. But when it comes down to it, you and I both know that the primary influence on the morality of a culture is going to be pop culture. It's going to be the movie theater. They led America by the nose into this moral revolution.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Unfortunately, Christians are always behind the curve. They're playing catch up, and Christians have not addressed this from a worldview perspective. For example, The Lion King, when it came out, it was touted by Christian organizations, including Focus on the Family, as the film that that families should go support because there was there were no curse words in it, no scenes of anybody smoking cigars, for example. You know, it was just, it was, and it was great, and they missed the entire worldview that was being promoted and this whole idea of the circle of life. And it was a reincarnationist, it was an eastern mystic worldview. Eastern mysticism was touted. You become one with the universe, you reincarnate, and you see it throughout the film, and yet they didn't focus on the family and other Christian organizations, did not address that. They were just concerned about the oh, the surface, you know, there's no sex, there's no drugs, there's no rock and roll kind of thing. Okay? And they miss the entire worldview. And so I still talk to students whose younger siblings have watched Lion King. And when I point out the worldview, I said, you may be astute enough to recognize this worldview, but your six-year-old sister or brother is not astute enough. And they memorize the songs, and it begins to have an impact in their thinking.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Bill, do you think that the church should be willing to step in and do some movie reviews? Do you think the pastors of a church should step in and say, you know what, guys, uh when the heroes or heroines are vampires, witches, homosexuals, and bank robbers, it's hard to commend them, even when they save the damsel in distress. And that's a comment I make in my book, uh The Tattoo Jesus, what the real Jesus would do with pop culture. Um Hunger Games, another example of you know a moral moral relativism that's attempted.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

It's and the movies are are geared toward tweens, not teenagers, but they tend to be. They tend to be geared. And so they're setting the standard. Setting the bar, they're laying the foundation for these worldviews to be adopted later in life. And so you end up with confusion among Christians, Christian teens who are trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

You know, I have an extensive thing on the Hunger Games in my book, The Tattoo Jesus. While scripture does allow some violence for the sake of self-preservation, the preservation of the lives of others is a higher value. Therefore, we find Abraham defending the life of Lot. We find Moses defending the life of a fellow Israelite, etc. But in the case of the Hunger Games, two deleterious and tyrannical conditions are placed upon the combatants simultaneously. First, the civil magistrate has deputized a citizen to kill other innocent citizens, none of whom have been convicted of a crime. Secondly, the civil magistrate has deputized others to kill the same citizen. Now, what is the proper ethical response to this? And I took my daughter to this film because a lot of her friends were attending this. And then we came back home and we worked through this ourselves. In fact, we did this on the program itself. So what is a proper ethical response? Well, first, the magistrate may re uh the Christian must never murder innocent human beings, even though the magistrate may require it of him or her. So this is the classic story of, you know, the Nazis saying, okay, shoot the Jews here. You know, if they're commanded to do so by a magistrate, they are still to disobey. The Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1, 14 to 22, serve as our example here. It's clearly testified to them in the historical record that these women feared God more than he feared the king, and they are commended for it. Second, the Christian may not kill the deputized magistrate, although she may attempt to flee in order to protect her own life. David serves as an example here in this scenario. On more than one occasion, he had the opportunity to kill Saul and his deputies as they had him down, yet he refused to touch the Lord's anointed 1 Samuel 24, 1 to 10. So I give an example of how to work out this quote unquote, you know, relativistic ethical conundrum that is placed upon, as you said, 12-year-olds, which is kind of a shameful thing. Throw a 12-year-old into the midst of that and have them work out an ethical conundrum that, you know, guys with masters in divinities or masters in biblical ethics are gonna, you know, have to grapple with a little bit. But see, that's the same thing. That's what it is. If you're gonna walk into that theater, you better be willing to sit down and work through these things and do it from a biblical perspective.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

That's why family movie night is so powerful. We do a we do a movie night at camp, at Worldview Academy leadership camps, wherever we are. One of the one of the stock lectures is we show film clips with alumni. We'll go through an entire film, and inevitably after camp, we get feedback from parents and they say, You have ruined movie night for our family. Thank you. They say, Thank you, because they'll say, We're we're watching a film, and they'll our our student who's gone through Worldview Academy will say, Stop it, pause it right there. Did you see the worldview?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Yeah, but you do that and you break the spell. Yeah. You drop off the movie. Exactly. You bring it to a screeching halt, you break the spell, and now you're gonna have to think through it. Not feel your way through it. Not feel your way through it, but think your way through it. And you know, but that's just not the way the Americans do it. But we should. Yeah, oh I know because we are to take every thought captive, including the thoughts that are generated in Hollywood movie theaters, movie uh studios and such. Well, friends, uh, we gotta wrap this thing up, but I I'd recommend to you the Tattoo Jesus, what the real Jesus would do with pop culture. And I would recommend Apostate, The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West. One of the reasons for that is because this recent movie that's just come out as uh one of the key Academy Award winners for the 2026 Academy Award ceremonies is this movie called Sinners. And in this movie called Sinners, it turns out that uh what is preferred is an African spirituality, more authentic, more pure, more freeing than the stiff, world-denying legalism of Christian religion. Um and so again, it's it's the hoodoo princess, it's the hoodooism, it's the uh the murderers, it's the adulterers that are preferred over this narrow, legalistic, uh white dominating kind of Christianity. And when I when I read that review of the Academy Award-winning movie Sinners, I I got to thinking of uh Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Because Hawthorne's real sin, as he defined sin, um was that he he would not acknowledge the sin of witchcraft as a true violation of God's law. As a humanist who thought and acted independently of God's law, he was accusing the Puritan magistrates of injustice by his arbitrary humanist standards. Occasionally he tried to explain away all supernaturalism with scientific naturalism, but woven into his stories is this surreptitious implication that the sin of witchcraft, homosexuality, adultery, or incest were more acceptable than whatever the Puritans were doing during America's early days. And that's the way humanist and liberal thinkers uh operate, and that's the way they've operated since Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Um there should be little debate on the central moral thrust of the Scarlet Letter, for example, because at the end, of course, what we have is a pitting of the the uh Dimsdale character against the Hester character. The Dimsdale character self-atones for his sin, whereas the Hester's character gets away with it, and she moves on to excusing her adultery in her later years. And so you have this conflict, you have this horns of a dilemma again between the two characters. Jesus, of course, never shows up. There is no redemption, there is no gospel, none of that. But at the end of the story, three times the author of the story, Nathaniel Hawthorne, says the whole idea is to be true, be true, be true. It's the highest ethic for the humanist. There's nothing here about obeying God, believing in Jesus, loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. The humanist ethic is simply don't hide who you are. Be yourself, be true to yourself. If you're a cannibal or a murderer or adulterer, just admit the fact. Don't pretend to be somebody that you're not. Um, Huckleberry Finn is another example I give in my book Apostate, The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West, uh, where uh Mark Twain puts Huck Finn on the horns of a dilemma again. Either he must support slavery or he must oppose the Christian God and go to hell. Now we understand what the Bible actually says about slavery and explain that in my book Apostate, The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West, but this is effectively what Mark Twain does. He creates one of the most powerful apologetics against the Christian faith that the world has ever known, and by the way, still using to this day. So at first, Huck thinks he should turn over his escaped slave friend Jim to the authorities, but then he decides against it. In this pivotal scene from the book, Twain depicts the American Christian God as a pro-slavery villain who would have Huck surrender his friendship for the cause of slavery. And so this contempt that Mark Twain holds for the Christian God is inescapable. Huck makes up his religion as he goes along. It's sometimes dualistic, uh, sometimes agnostic. As the story plays out, Huck is particularly given to the sins of cursing, blasphemy, dishonor, parents, stealing, lying, et cetera, et cetera, all presented as something that is kind of cool for Huckleberry Finn. The other characters in the story adopt different religions or religious perspective. Tom Sawyer believes the Bible's a bunch of fairy tales. Mary Jane is the most genuine believer in the story, though still misguided according to Huck's perspective. Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally are well-meaning Christians who support slavery and dehumanize the African Americans with their language. Huck's father is an unbeliever, an abusive drunk, and a scofflaw. Huck's friend Jim practices a religion that mixes pagan animism with Christianity. Uh but the Christian family that best represents the historical American family is the Grangerfoot family, chapters 17 and 18. Huck meets this family on his way down the Mississippi River. They're presented as a church members, and their home library consists of the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress and a hymnal, and these nice Christian families attend church on Sunday mornings, and then they murder each other on Sunday afternoon. And despite the fact that the old matriarch spends most of the day reading the Bible, this family engages in murderous activities on a regular basis. So Mark Twain's worldview, he considered the Bible as a repository of a blood-drenched history and a wealth of obscenity, and uh well unto a thousand lies. That's the way he looked at the Bible. And uh so the Grangerford family activities were obviously inspired by these scriptures. And uh Mark Twain's views are very much expressed in uh Huckleberry Finn. So what we find with the modern Hollywood movies, uh, like what we find with sinners, is a replay of what we find uh in Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter, where uh the these authors that have apostatized from the Christian faith present a straw man version of Christianity, and then they burn the straw man down. And this becomes the measure. I'm talking about a very, very powerful apologetic against the Christian faith for generations of kids that apostatized from the Christian faith in liberal arts schools, colleges, and high schools across America for the last 180 years. My friends, that's the way it works. And uh, and I explain it and apostate the men who destroyed the Christian West. And by the way, to properly understand the movies, encourage you to the Tattoo Jesus, what the real Jesus would do with pop culture. Both books available at generations.org. This is Kevin Swanson and Bill Jack inviting you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org slash media.