Entertainment Overwhelming Reality

By Albert Mohler
Beyond The News

Media critic Neal Gabler has suggested that popular entertainment is turning the nation into a giant transcontinental soap opera. Individual citizens are creating "life movies" starring themselves, and the entertainment industry has become "a force so overwhelming that it has finally metastasized into life."

Gabler's assessment comes immediately to mind in light of the way Hollywood and the entertainment industry are repackaging reality--even when dealing with issues as intimate as the realities of family life and the institution of marriage. Critic Lee Siegel argues that shows like HBO's "Big Love" are fueling a moral revolution--by presenting lifestyles like polygamy as, well ... normal.

In other words, entertainment threatens to overwhelm reality. Popular entertainment has become an ocean of abnormality posing as normal.

Now that polygamy is presented as a natural theme for popular entertainment, what comes next?