Movies, Series & Young People

1. Movies, Series & Young People

2. Numbers and Impact We are happy when: • We have 200 people to a meeting, • We have 3,000 people to a great conference that takes a couple of years to be organized; • A book sells 10 or 20,000 copies. • An internet page is seen by 100,000 people. The power of cinema and television is mainly in the number of the audience, that is non comparable to any other medium.

3. Numbers and Impact In Europe (E.g. In Italy & Spain …) every night the TV series on a main channel can easily have 6,000,000 viewers. 6 Million is like having 100 football/soccer stadiums full of people, every night, on a normal day. The capacity of Kasarani Stadium for e.g. is 60,000. This is normal, every night in most countries in the world.

4. Numbers and impact If the products are international, they reach 100 million or up to 1,000 million or more in a few weeks. A film like 007 Skyfall orSpectrecan easily reach hundreds of millions, and when re-released in DVD or in TV, probably more than a billion people in one year.

5. Numbers and impact "Avengers: Endgame" can legitimately claim to have vaporized Hollywood's record books. More than 100 million people went to see the MarvelSuperhero epic Avengers: Endgame during the film's worldwide opening and left all Hollywood records far behind. 

6. Changes in mainstream culture • More equality in dignity between man and woman • Atheistic communism and its regimes almost disappeared. • Less racism • A more nuanced and complex view of abortion by “radicals” (less ideology on this). In the last 40 years, big cultural changes. Some positive aspects:

7. Changes in mainstream culture Some negative aspects: • Less people want to commit themselves in a marriage as an institution. • Yes to pre-marital sex and living together in a marital way without marriage. (in some countries: ) • Yes to civil over church marriages • Yes to homosexual «marriage» and the adoption of children by homosexual couples • Gender ideology In the last 30 years, we have also been facing a big change in perception of love, marriage, family and its nature, in many countries in the world.

8. The agents of change How could these changes happen? Big changes in media culture: television and cinema have become heavily «liberal» in some issues. Especially American and English media, which have a huge impact all over the world

9. Mainstream cinema We could trace a history of the acceptance and promotion of “free” relations and of homosexual lifestyle: Out of Africa(7 Oscars) 1985 Love is pure if it is lived without bonds. Philadelphia (2 Oscars) 1993 In favor of homosexual relations

10. More explicit movies Brokeback Mountain (3 Oscars) 2005: gay romance. The Danish Girl (1 Oscar and many other nominations and awards) 2015: story of a transsexual.

11. Some movies with a positive image of family A Beautiful Mind (2001) The Incredibles (2004) Marley & Me (2008) The Blind Side (2009) Up (2009) The King’s Speech (2010) Inside Out (2015) …

12. The power of stories At the heart of stories there is an exploration of human life. Stories are like condensed and extremely powerful experiments of morality. The moral theme is the nucleus of the development of a good and successful story.

13. Personal relation with stories Literature, cinema and television are mass media that can reach an extremely large audience, but the spectators do not feel anonymous viewers. They feel deeply and intimately connected with the characters. All this products offer an intimate, personal relation to the viewers, although it is a mass product. A story well told can change one’s life.

14. Hollywood Which is the source of the stories that go all over the world? HOLLYWOOD A community of less than 10,000 people (probably people who really matter are less than 500) who tell to billions of people what is worth living for, fighting for, suffering for…

15. Other than Hollywood Korea TV drama for Asia and a very strong national cinema Some countries have developed a particular market for entertainment products. Most of them are national or regional. No one, at the moment, has a global reach, as Hollywood has. Japan comics (manga) and animation (anime) India Bollywood (huge but mainly national) China national cinema that they want to be international (strategy to develop soft power).

16. Hollywood Hollywood is very liberal, but the necessity of appealing to audiences all over the world has made its products necessarily connected with the common experience and values of millions of people in the world. The top box office titles of last season are Black Panther, Incredibles 2, and Avengers Infinity Wars. Contents and values that are good, although not very significant for culture in general.

17. Differences with television Television: Cable and pay channels: These make it no longer necessary to reach a high number of viewers. They have the freedom to become edgy, extreme, aggressive – i.e. the power to go against common values … ability to change perceptions and views. Made by a cultural minority, they have a strong cultural agenda.

18. Differences with television Sex and the City Six Feet Under In Treatment Modern FamilyGirls Orange is the New Black The New Normal Transparent … & many others…

19. Few exceptions

20. The capacity of seduction TV Series, far from being “empty” and “trivial” entertainment, are the result of a huge creative investment. For example, 15 top screenwriters for every season of The Simpsons.

21. What is the solution? • Education of taste, intelligence and feeling: • Finding and proposing good content. • 2. (For the future ... but not so distant future): • Training professionals in the world of entertainment.

22. 1. Education: Find good content There is good cinema (hundreds and hundreds of films!!!) and there are good TV Series and they can have a positive educational impact. An educator must find instruments and time to know them and to find them.

23. Some good International TV series … Sherlock, The Newsroom, Band of Brothers, The Pretender, NCIS, Person of Interest, Falling Skies…

24. Content for teenagers There is very good content available for children. Also some good content for teenagers, but there is certainly a problem with content for this age group. It is much more difficult to find: we need to try and try again … and keep on exploring … The tastes of males and females also vary significantly…

25. Content for teenagers Information about good cinema and good TV content should circulate. Develop instruments that can help on this area. Networks of people that share information. Examples of good initiatives: www.commonsensemedia.org (From America) www.interaxiongroup.org (From Spain – for parents)

26. 2- Preparing the future The media narrative has been more and more central in our lives, especially for the new generations – the so called Millennials. BUT The presence of people with a correct anthropological view of man has been a very small minority.

27. 2 – Preparing the future A serious reflection about our way of communicating and promoting our values: • The importance of the use of stories. • They communicate to the mind and to the heart. • You cannot reach people deeply if you do not connect with their emotions.

28. Preparing for the future We cannot have a real impact on culture if we do not reach the world of stories (Literature, Film, TV Series) and especially the audiovisual media. It is one of the best ways to show how our way of life, our values, become flesh … become life. Otherwise people can think that the Christian view of man is abstract, does not meet the more profound wishes of the person. The moral law becomes an arbitrary and abstract imposition, without connection with real life.

29. Final remarks: Some practical suggestions We need today to develop very well skills in two different fields: • Humanities: philosophy, anthropology, theology, sociology, psychology, literature. • Communication, i.e. a modern version of rhetoric and/or what today is called storytelling. Both things are necessary: • to be deep and answer the “big” questions. • but also to be able to connect with a high number of people and to wrap the ideas in convincing, subtle and audacious language that is capable of exploring themes deeply.

30. Final remarks: Some practical suggestions • Every group, association, institution, etc., which wants to promote and defend good content for young people (and for the general audience) should invest in communication (but much more in “thinking” the communication, not so much in producing) e.g. sometimes videos or other forms of communications are very expensive in producing, but very weak in concept, story, argumentation, development of theme… • It is crucial to promote vocations to professions of communication.