Dave Terpstra has an interesting post at Out of Ur about the contradictory way Christian react to movies. When the first Harry Potter movie came out, there was considerable debate about whether Christians should see a film featuring a wizard-boy hero. One local church here in Kingston put an anti-witchcraft Scripture on its sign that week. I have never heard of anyone protesting either Pirates of the Carribean movie on faith-based grounds. Yet Terpstra notes some commonalities:

The similarity in material between the two movies that should concern parents is amazing. First, both films focus on activities contrary to the teachings Scripture, piracy and witchcraft. Second, the hero of Pirates, like the hero of Potter, is practicing what is considered evil—not just battling against those who practice it. Third, there are dark forces involved in both. Harry Potter films are amuck with sorcery and the like. Pirates of the Caribbean films are full of curses and the undead. The list could go on.

More than this, the real star of the Pirates movies is Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, a conflicted hero if ever there was one. An important theme in both The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest is that a person can be a pirate AND a good man. Few parents want their little ones following THAT example.

The answer isn’t protests, which Terpstra shows to be mostly knee-jerk, but discernment. I haven’t seen the Potter movies (will there be one called Welcome Back, Potter?) but I love Narnia and The Lord of the Rings (the books are better) which could be criticized in the same way that the Potter films are. And I really liked the first Pirates movie (the second suffers from bloating caused by sequel-itis) but if I had kids, I’d want to talk to them about the moral ambiguities of Jack Sparrow. CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow, that is.

Blogged with Flock