Hollywood, as we all know, is full of godless liberals who are intentionally trying to disintegrate America’s moral fiber through their bloody, sacrilegious movies about sex and breaking the Sabbath. At least according to the Anti-Defamation League, which released a poll today called “American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values, and Hollywood” that found that “43% of Americans believe there is an organized campaign by Hollywood and the national media to weaken the influence of religious values in this country.”
But we think there’s a distinction to be made between attacking religion and attacking “religious values.” It’s one thing to pull a Bill Maher and trash every creed and church, and quite another to blame mainstream movies for picking on religious values — values that are actually quite present in many films’ moralistic undertones.
Looking back at the year’s top-grossing films, it’s hard to ignore that this year’s Hollywood heroes were mostly law-abiding, trash-collecting, world-saving individuals who might as well have been sporting W.W.J.D. bracelets.
See for yourself after the jump.
The Dark Knight ($528.54m): The “vigilante” who just wants to keep his city safe can’t even bring himself to kill anyone in the process. Two boatloads of people choose dying over killing the people on the other boat — even the criminals have a conscience! Bonus: The Joker just wants to put a smile on that face.
Iron Man (318.30m): Tony Stark sees the error of his weapon-building womanizing ways and uses his intelligence for good instead of evil. Hmm.
Indiana Jones 4 ($317.01m): We didn’t see it, but hear that there’s a warm and fuzzy father-son reunion? That counts, as does trouncing some Soviet spies.
Hancock ($227.95m): Will Smith as another superhero, one who reforms and eventually chooses to save another person’s life even if it costs him his strength. Also, he’s an angel. Is this clear yet?
Wall-E ($223.00m): An abstinent, hard-working robot who wants to commit himself to one woman for the rest of his life and save thousands of people from eternal damnation in space. Seriously…
Sure, farther down the box office list, Sex and the City ($152.64 m) corrupts our moral heroes theory (although Carrie Bradshaw is surending her single girl sex life…), but Prince Caspian ($141.61m) more than makes up for it—isn’t that story all about spreading Christian values? If anything, there’s an overload of popular moral-core in supposedly sophisticated blockbusters, and ADL can start holding screening nights when the Dark Knight (mark your calendars, if they aren’t already) comes out on DVD on December 9th.