Seven brides for seven sorcerers
I was a young man at Bethel about 30 years ago, back in the early 80's and the Governing Body came up with a really neat idea: Bethel Family Movie Night! Yes, the GB would hand pick a movie and show it to the entire Bethel Family through our video broadcast feed where we would watch it together. We could sit with our friends where we wanted to, dressed comfortably and be munching on our favorite movie treats. This was a great idea!
The first movie of choice was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Now, this would not have been a movie that I would have chosen to watch on my own. I was not really into musicals; I don't think many 20 year old males are. But, since we were all going to snuggle up and watch this thing together with our food and drinks and so on, well, I thought sure, let's do it. The Bethel family did it, many attended, and I have to say it was a huge success. Everybody who attended went back to their rooms in good spirits. Good times!
So, the GB set up a second movie night for us soon after that. It was going to be a Disney cartoon called Fantasia. Now this movie is a bit unusual in that it really is a clever way to expose children to classical music. If you haven't seen it, then let me describe the movie: it is a cartoon made up of separate small stories or sequences set to classical music. Each short cartoon story had a theme that was matched to the music of a different classical composer. Most of these stories are simple flights of fantasy about frolicking animals and various plants coming to life and so on. We all thought that this would be great too because we would see a Disney movie shown at Bethel and best of all the GB themselves picked out the movie. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, we all gathered together to watch. We were all enjoying ourselves as before until a sequence came up called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. When it came on, the Sorcerer was doing magic stuff that Sorcerers do, with smoke and fire and such and this started some buzzing in the Bethel rooms right away. Then, Mickey Mouse, who was his apprentice, gets hold of the Sorcerer's hat and starts to try to do magic using it. Basically Mickey is trying to get his tedious job of mopping and cleaning done by enchanting the mops and pails to do the work by themselves. Well, Mickey is not very good at magic and all heck breaks loose as everything goes out of control, and, well, that's the fun of the story.
Unfortunately this wasn't very fun for the Bethel family. This particular story sequence is near the beginning of Fantasia and it was only one small part of the entire movie itself because each story lasted only a few minutes. We had already witnessed a few other stories, so anybody watching this would know it would be over in a few minutes. Also they also had to know that this story was based on fantasy as most Disney movies were. You know, Disney: apples, witches, spells, princesses, talking animals and so on. This is not a new idea to anybody with half a brain that had ever seen anything by Walt Disney before. Still, this did not stop many in attendance from walking out of the movie! Yes, folks, you heard me right, the GB got a taste of their own medicine when they found out that their own subjects were more pious, more holy and more spiritual than they were because they wouldn't watch this GB sanctioned, hand-picked movie! This was all due to a cartoon mouse who pretended to do magic for a few minutes in an obvious flight of fantasy that Walt Disney was famous for.
Well, at first I was irked about this. I watched the movie anyway, regardless of the others who left in a snit. This was very confusing to me, but darn it, Bethel showed a movie and I was going to watch it because I had never seen it before and I had looked forward to it. I must say that I enjoyed it too.
Afterwards, in the ensuing days at Bethel, I witnessed and participated in many discussions on the subject of conscience matters due to the mass walk out this movie caused right in Bethel itself! I was amused at the extreme difference of opinion on this issue with people who otherwise almost always agreed on things, people who usually toed the robotic JW line and always said the same things in the same way as if reading them straight from the Watchtower. Now, these otherwise agreeable automatons were in heated dispute about this silly little cartoon!
These discussions went something like this:
Brother 1: We should not watch ANYTHING to do with magic, the Bible says... blah blah blah
Brother 2: It's a CARTOON for heaven's sake. It's fantasy, pretend. All Disney is like that. It's not real magic that we were participating in... blah blah blah
Brother 1: It doesn't matter if it is real or not, it has a demonic theme and overtones...blah blah blah
Brother 2: Look, the GB saw fit to show it and they thought it was OK, so they obviously don't think it's demonic... blah blah blah
Brother 1: It doesn't matter what other people think is OK, if it has images of spiritism or magic in it, then it is not OK with me and I won't watch it... blah blah blah
Me: [having fun butting in] Really Brother 1? It doesn't matter what other people think is OK? We're not talking about just any "other people", we're talking about the Faithful and Discreet Slave here. These are the very people that we live our every moment listening to and obeying. So, let me get this straight: you'll let a family member die for not giving them a blood transfusion because of what the "slave" says or you'll shun your own mother or father if they deem them unrepentant for something, but when these same men put a cartoon in front of you to watch, you are now in a quandary and you now have to object? Would you walk out of a Watchtower Study based on these same principles you are now holding if you were to not agree with what it was saying?
Well, we never really got anywhere in these discussions and this issue became a third rail of topics with emotions running high almost every time it came up. Most Bethelites, exhausted from the arguing, simply ended up agreeing to disagree on this and to put it to a "matter of conscience". Nobody wanted to touch this discussion any more because of its volatility. Of course, me being the smart ass I was, I took this as a cue that this should be the case for ALL matters of conscience, including my wanting to watch R rated movies, my wanting to go to college, or play sports at school or my choices in who and how I should date and many other personal things I thought were simply nobody else's business.
In the end, I was glad this Disney movie issue came up. You see, if anybody at Bethel ever again started to counsel me about something that was a matter of my conscience, I would simply remind them to "Remember Fantasia".
That would shut 'em up.
LivingTheDream