The Mute Button
Ninety-nine percent of homes in America contain at least one television and most fundamentalists own a TV just like everyone else. The television watching experience in a fundy household is unique, however. For father (or sometimes mother) holds the remote in an iron fist and the mute button is his weapon of choice against the combined forces of bad language and worldly music.
Rock music is not to be tolerated in the fundamentalist home and the opening theme to the A-Team is no exception. With a flick of the thumb this temptation of the flesh is banished. Songs that are too peppy meet the same fate. No fundamentalist child ever makes it all the way through any Disney movie since Robin Hood without at least one song being either muted or fast-forwarded.
Likewise, bad language must be dealth with in the harshest of terms, lest children be tempted to say words such as “golly” and “dagnabit.’ Some fundamentalist go so far as to construct a “bleep book” complete with timestamps of the exact moments to mute and unmute the dialog. Purity must be maintained not matter what the cost to the plot.
One may be tempted to ask why fundametalists bother to watch shows at all if they find so much in them worthy of censoring. But you’ll have to ask it later, we’re almost back from commercial break and the TV is about to regain its voice.
Posted by Darrell
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Interesting observation. I remember a missionary who once lent me a DVD copy of the film Time Changer (Soon to become a perennial watch night service favourite, if it isn’t already!) and told me that I should turn the volume off during one scene in the film (The comedic scene where the protagonist, Russell Carlisle, becomes acquainted with the modern world while cheezy dance music plays). However, despite admonishing me to mute the music, he did state the music was in that part of the film “for a reason.” Very peculiar. He was a nice man, though.
Oh man, I needed a good belly laugh this evening. Well done!
what about the G-box or whatever it’s called that automatically censors out the profanity – one of my classmates had one, lol
I’m part of the 1% of household that doesn’t own a TV. Does that make me super-duper fundy or just plain weird? Of course, we watch DVDs on the computer and don’t mute anything in Robin Hood. Perhaps I’m a back-slider.
Is there an option in that quiz for “all of the above?”
This was so my experience growing up! We just about wore out that poor mute button
I attended an IFB Bible College, and MUTE was burned into the television screen in the student center because they muted all commercials. Watching the Super Bowl sure sucked! But at least we got to watch t.v. at all …
My younger sister had told me that when she was attended a local IFB school (I had already graduated by then), she had mentioned a similar muting of the music while her softball team was watching a DVD while on a road game (though in this case, the movie was “Facing the Giants”).
my mother loves her tv guardian. it automatically mutes any bad language and uses closed captioning so that you’re not missing any important dialogue. guess how long it took to figure out that “hugs” was the replacement word for “sex”.
My dad made it easy . . . he just muted ALL the commercials! But he loved to watch football games, complete with all the beer commercials, which seems awfully worldly to me.