The Unintentional Selfishness of Using Content Filtering Services
In a pornified culture, VidAngel and its ilk should not be utilized unadvisedly or lightly
A while back, Randy Alcorn, an author and speaker whom I hold in the highest respect, published a blog post entitled Does Using VidAngel to Screen Offensive Content out of Movies Still Involve Financially Supporting Hollywood? As is his practice, Alcorn avoided dogmatism and sought to be nuanced and careful in his evaluations. That’s one of the reasons I love him so much.
However, that article provided one of those rare instances that compelled me to push back against his position. It’s not that I think Alcorn is wildly off-base, or overwhelmingly self-centered in his approach. It’s just that I think there’s more complexity than even he recognizes. And since I’m doing a short series on filtering services, I wanted to publish my critiques (originally posted on Facebook) here. Below are a few pull-quotes from Alcorn’s piece, accompanied by my own commentary.
If you go to see some movies in theaters that are appropriate, arguably you are indirectly supporting those that don’t and are making the theater profitable. If you buy milk from a store that also sells inappropriate magazines, is that acceptable?
While I disagree with some of his applications (more on that in a moment), I agree with the point behind his illustrations: purchasing one product from a business does not inherently make you culpable for that business’ other (and possibly immoral) transactions. Alcorn touches on an important principle: we must be careful not to condemn everyone’s use of, say, an online streaming service simply because some of that service’s content is problematic.
We live in a fallen world, where it is near impossible to avoid any financial transactions with companies that don’t utilize some unwise, unsound, or immoral practices. There is a difference between being “in the world” (doing business with individuals and companies of whom we may not entirely approve) and being “of the world” (personally and directly patronizing immoral products).
VidAngel is. . .taking mostly decent movies and removing what isn’t decent. (If a movie is mostly bad, and some certainly are, I wouldn’t use VidAngel with it. I just wouldn’t watch it at all.)
If I had to guess, I’d say Alcorn is an outlier here. Based on VidAngel’s marketing alone, there are plenty of people who use VidAngel specifically for watching movies and shows that wouldn’t be considered even close to “mostly decent.” As such, I think there may be a bit of a disconnect between Alcorn and his audience.
I am more concerned about what I take into my mind than what the movie industry makes money on. They are not making money on my choice to listen to their bad language or watch their bad scenes, because I’m not doing that. True, technically a handful of Christians who use VidAngel to morally screen a movie may at an extremely small level contribute to the financial success of that movie. But I think that’s negligible.
I would like to see Alcorn expand on what he says here. Does he mean that the movie industry makes less money from him (when he streams movie XYZ and filters it with VidAngel) than it does from the household across the street (when it streams the same movie, but without using VidAngel)? I don’t think that is his point, in part because it’s easily refutable. A film studio does not catalogue the various sources of its revenue stream based on how much each moviegoer likes or approves of the finished product. As I have written elsewhere, “From an economic standpoint, there is no functional difference between begrudging patronage and willing patronage.”
Is Alcorn saying that streaming a problematic show or purchasing one movie with, say, nudity and sex scenes is “negligible”? I’m not totally sure. At the very least, his statements here give the appearance of a problem I’ve noted numerous times elsewhere: we can too easily be overly concerned with our own personal purity as moviegoers, at the expense of considering the wellbeing of the actors we pay (indirectly) to entertain us. And when actors routinely experience a violation of their privacy, dignity, sexuality, and (sometimes) agency while filming nude and sex scenes, we can’t consider our contribution to be “negligible.”
Sure, our part may be small, but that’s true of anything we contribute to. Our tithes alone won’t support a church; our tip after a meal won’t supply a waiter’s full salary; our purchase of a good book won’t singlehandedly make it a bestseller. But if and when we do all these things, as “negligible” as they are, we do so because we are simply trying to be faithful stewards of the opportunities God has given us. A Christian ethic does not judge actions based on how momentous or insignificant they are.
In wisdom, we should never despise or belittle small efforts. In God’s infinite wisdom, he praises even the smallest and most “negligible” acts: “For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward” (Mark 9:41).
With VidAngel. . .I will never see a sex scene.
Maybe so, but the actors will have still filmed the sex scene, and their dignity may have still been violated, and their conscience possibly still damaged. There may have been tears onset and/or anxiety, and/or consuming alcohol to get through the scene. And if I stream or pay for a film with those kinds of scenes, whether I use VidAngel or not, I’m perpetuating the hypersexualization of entertainers—along with millions of others who are all doing their “negligible” part toward the same.
Of course, everyone has to make their own choices. It’s a matter of conscience, and if your conscience says don’t use a service like Vidangel, then don’t. But realize the consciences of others, such as mine, tell them that’s exactly what they should do.
Indeed, it would be legalistic to say no Christian should ever use VidAngel. While I myself don’t use it, I wouldn’t automatically consider someone else who does to be sinning. That would be uncharitable of me. What I can say, and what I have said before, is that using services like VidAngel to avoid sexual objectification only serves to honor the first greatest commandment (i.e., avoiding temptation out of a love for God). It almost completely ignores the second (i.e., loving our neighbor/entertainer as we love ourselves).
And that is a problem.
This is the second of a planned three-part series on movie filtering services. For the previous entry, see Three Popular Critiques of VidAngel—and One That’s Not So Popular. For the final entry, see The Hidden Cost of Filtering Sexual Content.