by keyser soze 47 Replies latest jw friends
YES ....We learned early on not to mention what movies we had been to ,because we too lived in a congregation of super ,ubbers with sensitive consciences .
Movies I could walk out of to keep the peace ,but I draw the line at concerts .Once we were at a Johnny Lang concert and the couple that came with were 'offended ' by the loudness ,and I do not know what else . When they motioned they were leaving I waved bye-bye and stayed put .
I wanted to watch the movie Practical Magic. I don't know why, but I just wanted to. I started the movie, and liked it, but kept feeling guilty. So I turned it off. As time went on, I started that watching the movie many times, but always felt guilty and turned it off. LOL. It took years before I finally got to see how it ended.
Toward the end of my term as a dubbie, I was 'secretly' watching, Buffy, Angel, Weeds, Dexter, Big Love, Californication, Nurse Jackie, The Tudors, and any R rated movie I wanted to see. But I have elders as neighbors, so I used to pulled my curtains tight as though porn was playing. LOL
I invited a family to my house to see a G rated movie. They were all adults. The children were ranged from their 20's to 40's and none had ever left home. The parents came too. Originally I had only invited 2 of them, but then they asked if the whole family could come. The parents watched over them like they were 11-year-olds. It was weird.
Anyway, after that movie had ended (Princess Diaries) they didn't seem to want to leave. So I took the daughter aside and asked if they would want to watch Shrek which was PG. She said, "It depends on what makes it PG!" Well, I told her if she had to ask that, then I wouldn't play it. They were like Amish JW's.
An elderly sister called round while my girls and I were watching "Love Actually" just at the nude scene. I was so naive I didn't even realise it was a porn film they were making but she enlightened me and in no uncertain terms informed me that Jehovah's Witnesses don't watch that type of film.
This same sister came with me to see "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Hamlet" and said nothing. She also was very anti Harry Potter but Lord of The Rings was ok.
Also, a neighbour in Spain was part of a drag act (gay as well but not sure if that's relevant or even the problem but anyway) we used to go and see his shows. An elder tried to counsel me on it and when I said I couldn't see anything wrong with the act as it was a family show, he just wore fabulous dresses his mum made and mimed to Shirley Bassey etc the elder conceded that if I couldn't see anything wrong with it then for me it was probably ok but I should consider that my going to them could stumble some-one else. I carried on going.
They are definitely the most judgemental people on the planet IMHO! Lol
Walked out of a movie theatre when I was younger as I wanted to get a refund and told the ticket clerk that the movie was "too spiritistic" and I had to explain what it was and she just looked at me funny and said " How bout we just write down, Too hot, AC not working, okay?"
Also went into a movie and walked past a elder and his wife from a neighboring city and when we got up to leave (language I think) the elder and his wife stayed.
NJY
No, but we found out pretty quick to keep our movies to ourselves after some began to complain about star wars. I know several elders and their familys that liked the pirates of the carribean series. You can't watch pokemon or narnia, but p.o.t.c. is o.k. I remember one elder and wife that let us check out their movie collection and it was full of R movies, we went -gasp-.
Yes, Top Gun. The bedroom scene. Me and another brother
took a group of young boys to the movie. I was a elder and
the other brother a MS, (he had retired from the Air Force) so
he was anxious to see it. Well of course me being a ass hole
elder stood up when the bedroom scene came up and demanded
that,s it, lets go. What a jerk. But I did take the boys to the
bumper cars rides aterwards.LOL
I loved Pirates Of The Caribbean and so did my girls. Our hall was sooooooooooo divided on this film. We watched it and listened to what was being said without admitting to actually owning it on DVD and keeping it hidden in the wardrobe!
I learned my lesson the hard way allowing myself prior to my baptism of being persuaded by a so called annointed sister that Disney films were demonic and getting rid of them all. Once I started going to visit other families and seeing they had copies of films I had been guilted into throwing away I was very annoyed.
When the movie Star Wars came out we were serving in another
country. A well known and respectable Elder moved in.
He was so excited about this movie, he saw it three times.
He told me you have to see this moive, it,s great.
At the time I was a MS. I am thinking, the wizards of oz, Snow
White and other Disney movies are bad, but Star Wars is
ok.
Star Wars is perfectly suitable because "the force" is just imagination!
It is rather amazing how divided congregations can be over this and how their opinions differ by region. The opinion in my cong. growing up was that people ought to have strong consciences, not weak ones that would be easily offended by something superficial. PG-13 was fine as long as you were discreet in not blabbing to everyone indiscriminately about seeing it later. One sister openly asked a room of us whether she should see "Lord of the Rings", and she appreciated my advice that the small amount of magic in the movie would not bother her, although the level of violence would (I seriously have no idea how all 3 films slipped by with a PG-13). Another sister was fond of pointing out that the R rating could be undeserved at times and therefore not an obstacle to seeing a movie.
Then we had a CO come through who informed us that having a strong conscience did not mean that you automatically could watch more objectionable material, and that "weak ones" were not the Witnesses who insisted on G/PG only. He then brought out "Titanic" as an example of a movie that had clearly unacceptable material. Well, let me tell you, our PO was not happy about this. I guess you could say he was POed. At a gathering later, he made a loud point of disagreeing with the recently-departed CO's opinion of the movie, saying it was really a conscience issue and we did not believe in a decreed "movie blacklist". He was open about having seen the movie himself.
Incidentally, this was a Hall near the headquarters, filled with zealous Bethelites. I still appreciate that, while JWs are indeed Pharisee-like, our Hall was pretty reasonable as Pharisees go :-) I have to say that it did indeed seem to me that the most easily-offended Witnesses were the "weakest" ones. They were usually the first ones to get their feelings hurt over some unintentional slight and create drama in the congregation.
Sorry, that was slightly off-topic. The only thing I've had happen that was close to a "walk out" was when a friend put on one of his DVDs for the first time and he was totally unaware that the version of the movie he'd seen before had a full frontal nude scene edited out. He fast-forwarded (probably sweating a little, as he was the elder in the room), while I began laughing nervously. Pro tip: Fast-forwarding is much less effective in covering over a scene on a DVD than on a VHS.
