In an article posted on the Gospel Coalition website, Cap Stewart (click here for brief info about the writer) wrote a piece that was first about whether or not Christians should watch movies, like Oppenheimer, that depict sexual acts even if they are "soft porn" scenes. (click here for the article). Spoiler Alert: he is against Christians watching any movies that have graphic depictions of sex. He uses the Oppenheimer movie as a diving board to jump head first into the subject.
BTW, a spoiler alert for this article: there will be no graphic descriptions of the sex scenes in the movie Oppenheimer.
After discussing his 2nd hand knowledge of the movie, he then discusses 5 excuses people, especially Christians, have used to justify watching what would be considered to be soft porn in the movies. Note that he considers immaturity to be the "real" reason why such is shown in the movies.
The first excuse he covers is that these soft porn scenes take up a very small percentage of time in many movies. Thus for a worthwhile movie, it is the good outweighs the bad argument. But Stewart considers the justification arbitrary because he considers showing any such scenes to be immoral. And thus no small amount of time could justify the showing such a scene in the movies.
The second excuse states that if sexually explicit material is art, it cannot be considered to be pornographic. After all we have some sexually explicit material in literature and even in the Bible. But Stewart has two problems he has with this excuse. First, we already live in a porn saturated culture so that it is difficult to distinguish what is 'narrative art' from what is porn. His second problem is that to reserve the label of porn to what is extremely graphic is reductionistic. Here it seems that he considers the showing of anything that could even be called soft porn to be immoral.
The third excuse is to include other explicit material, like nudity, to the same category as porn in order minimize its significance. Here, Stewart seems to be saying that we need to have higher standards for media that is closest to visual reality. And moving pictures, rather than still life, present too much when it includes soft porn material.
The fourth excuse is to use the theory of relativity by mentioning films that are worse. But Stewart is looking for standards that inspire us to do better than show a minimum level of depravity we should allow.
The fifth excuse is to 'minimize' the effects of soft porn sex scenes and one way by which that can be done is to criticize those scenes. Here, Stewart warns us about the temptations that even poorly done or boring soft porn scenes can present to a person.
Here, Stewart is worried about us being desensitized to what would be considered soft porn scenes. He worries about what that desensitization says about our society and culture. I get the feeling here that Stewart is worried about others not being as offended by those scenes as either he is or as he believes Christians should be.
Stewart concludes by giving examples of movies that dealt with sexual issues without showing soft porn level sex scenes. He does that to say that the showing of sexually explicit material, including what is considered to be soft porn, is unnecessary.
There are two points I would like to make in disagreeing with Stewart about the scenes in question from the movie Oppenheimer. First, we Christians need to realize that we have history of either setting the sexual standards too high for society and ourselves and thus teaching people to feel shame over some practices that there should be no shame for. We have a history that starts with outlawing masturbation and continues to any non-traditional sexual relationships or practices for sex between consenting adults. And we have deduced our brains out showing that the Bible is clear in teaching what we are afraid it might not say.
So, just perhaps, we need to check some of Stewart's sensitivity to sex scenes at the door while acknowledging the dangers of not being sensitive enough to what could tempt us to fall. Note that what can tempt us to fall is individual and thus the level of what is called soft porn scenes and nudity we should not watch is individual rather than universal. And in being careful here, we should be more sensitive to the pride and arrogance in our self-confidence that would cause us to be too causal with what we watch.
Second, we need to take a closer look at his 2nd excuse involving what is called art. For art just doesn't reflect life, it can be prophetic as it becomes first line of defense against individual or social injustices. Here we need to look at why an artist, a filmmaker and others, want to show scenes that are intimate enough to be considered soft porn. I can think of 4 such motivations.
The first motivation would be celebrate the sexual relationships and acts being shown. Part of that motivation would be not just to undo the traditional shame that has followed with what was shown, but to promote the relationships and acts as well. Whether that is a valid motivation or not depends on what is shown--here I am striving not to be graphic at all in what I am saying.
The second motivation would be to condone the sexual relationships and acts being shown. Here the motivation would be more to undo the traditional shame accompanied by what was shown more than to promote it.
The third motivation would be to reveal or expose sexual relationships and acts that are a part of the real lives of some people. This pushes the public to make its own judgment on what they witnessed rather than have the filmmaker try to push their own judgment on them.
The final motivation would be to condemn a given set of sexual relationships and acts. In condemning what they showed on screen, they are promoting their audiences to join them.
Having seen the movie, and being surprised by the presence of the soft porn scenes, I have to disagree with Stewart regarding his assessment of the soft porn scenes in the movie Oppenheimer. First, by calling them soft porn scenes, we have already prejudiced the Christian public and some others who would watch or have watched the movie.
Second, I don't think the audience could get a better idea of how Oppenheimer's wife felt when learning about her husband's affairs than showing the soft porn scenes shown. And so it appears to me that Nolan shot and showed those scenes in the movie out of the 3rd motivation listed above. He wanted to expose the public not just to the affair, but how knowledge of the affair affected Oppenheimer's wife. And here he could let the public reach its own conclusions. But my guess is that those scenes served more as a warning against engaging in such a relationship than provoking such a relationship.
We religiously conservative Christians need to change from the past. We must not push sexual repression on either ourselves or society. Neither must we even appear to condone an 'anything goes' approach to sexual morals. With either approach, we unnecessarily teach an all-or-nothing approach to sex that sometimes enables us Christians to switch from self-repression to too much self-liberation whether or not we hide what we are doing. In addition, both the 'anything goes' approach and sexual repression are signs of immaturity. The former is a sign because it shows a lack of self-control. The latter is a sign because it shows that we must be treated like children rather than rational adults how we behave sexually.
At the same time, we religiously conservative Christians do need to have high standards. But those standards must be realistic and we need to minimize the shame we might feel before others for breaking those standards without minimizing the shame that we should feel before God. Here, we must distinguish comparing ourselves with God's standards from comparing ourselves with others. Failure to do so could cause us to hide ourselves from others and thus making it more difficult to get the help we need to change.
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