Brittni De La Mora, a Christian ex-porn star, has advised Kanye West not to pursue the self-destructive venture of producing adult pornography content. Kanye was previously thought to have embraced the Christian faith. She says that going that route would be like a dog returning to its vomit, alluding to a version of the Bible in which Jesus warns that once a person has decided to abandon their old sinful lives and follow him, anyone who returns to their old ways will not be fit for God’s kingdom.
At the height of her career, Brittni De La Mora was one of the most famous porn stars in the world, but today she is a wife, mother, pastor, evangelist, author, and passionate advocate for women involved in the sex industry. She spoke about how she got into the sex industry and how this was one of the darkest days of despair, leading her to survive by way of drugs, alcohol, and ultimately, failed attempts at suicide
She told Candace Owens that Jesus saved her on her way to a porn shoot by encouraging her to read the Bible, and one particular bible verse finally made her quit the porn industry.
She also points to the fact that former fans tried to pull her down and her newfound life in God by sending her porn videos to her husband, Richard De La Mora when they first started dating. But by the grace of God, her husband was able to overcome it,e and talks about how he came to overcome her sexual past
Brittni and her husband encourage couples to learn to overcome their partner’s sexual past and move on.
By the turn of the twentieth century, African American poets and other Negro artists were met with enormous cultural and racial barriers that threatened to compartmentalize them into an insipid group whose successes were measured by how effectively they could copy white people. Consequentially, James Weldon Johnson noted in 1921 that the Aframerican poets must create a “new and distinct form of expression,” unique to them (Mays 1050), characterized by truthful writing about the Negro life. This paper would argue that a comparison of the historical-cultural background, structure, figurative devices, and imagery of Langston Hughes’ “Harlem” and Claude McKay’s “Harlem Shadows” would reveal that both poets, though differing in style, nevertheless satisfy the need that Johnson expressed in their own unique way.
To begin, the two poems were published at different times. Hughes’ “Harlem” is part of his collection of poems called “Montage of Dream Differed,” published in 1951 (Little), a period marked by civil unrest and activism against racial injustice in America. In line 1, Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?” and then suggests a series of possible answers in an attempt to understand the nature of the oppressive racism deferring the legitimate aspirations for freedom and equality of millions of African American Negros. On the other hand, McKay’s “Harlem Shadows” was published in 1922 (Lannamann) during the Harlem Renaissance, when Negro poets and artists migrated to the Harlem area of New York City, fleeing the burden of stifling racism choking them in the rural South.
According to Mars, the two poets were major characters of the Harlem Renaissance, the period between the First World War and the beginning of the Great Depression in America. The author argues that the Harlem Renaissance was a culmination of historical social and cultural factors that converged within 10 years and brought many talented American Negros to Harlem, who, individually, rather than as a group, spurred Negro poetic and artistic growth and stirred up Negro consciousness to become part of the American story, leading to many original Negro works of art (1031). It is significant to note that the Renaissance was neither planned nor organized but erupted spontaneously, caused by the savage effects of slavery, racism, and oppression and by the migration of sharecropping Negroes from the rural South to the urban North, where the war had created a vacuum and job opportunities in factories for the Negros (Mays 1031). Consequently, some Negros who migrated experienced separation from their place of origin and cultural and religious uprooting. This fragmentation was keenly felt by the more vulnerable groups, such as girls. McKay paints the picture of the broken and hopeless girls, destitute and roaming the streets of Harlem, forced into prostitution by the cruelty of poverty and alienation (Graham 157).
For Hughes, the cultural uprooting created a shallow and pathetic desire among Negros to imitate white people, while economically prosperous Negros were proposed as cultural models for less developed Negros and White culture as the ultimate aspiration and respectability (Barnett 853). The new Negro Renaissance instead proposes that the Negro should be helped to grow their own distinctive voice. Thus, Hughes created a new voice of poetry by introducing the popular Negro folk blues and spirituals into literature and integrating poetry and jazz (Hughes 00:09:25) and pledged to express this new Negro spirit, beautiful or ugly, without fear or favor, regardless of who disapproves, as the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance (Shawn 89). Amiri Baraka notes that Hughes and McKay’s focus on the everyday, ordinary Negro was irksome to quite a few black critics who would have preferred them to celebrate and write about upwardly mobile Negros and those aspiring to move up the middle-class ladder (Hughes 00:10:55). Hence, while McKay’s poem examines the lives of real Negros, Hughes uses the metaphor (Barnett 845) of “deferred dream” to highlight the bitter frustrations of racism breaking the spirit of Negros. In lines 1–2, he compares a “dream deferred” to a succulent and sweet raisin that dries and shrivels when left out in the sun. It can be argued that for Hughes, the mark of a disenfranchised people is their inability to protect their dreams, but for McKay, it is their inability to protect their girls.
Interestingly, since there is no use of any personal pronoun in the poem, the speaker in Hughes’ “Harlem” is impersonal, thus widening the scope of the poem’s relevancy to all afflicted by oppression, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. . would later adopt Hughes’ “Dream” in his address at Lincoln Memorial Park in 1963 to a massive crowd protesting racial injustice (Eschner). Likewise, Lorraine Hansberry would draw the title of her play, “Raisin in the Sun,” about an indigent Negro family, from Hughes (Miller). In contrast, McKay uses the personal pronoun “I” in line 1: “I hear the halting footsteps of a lass,” and identifies with the subject’s black race in line 16, a significant hint that he is the speaker: “The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!”(16) “Ah, little dark girls who have slippery feet” (5).
Essentially, the two poems differ in their poetic form since “Harlem” is a free verse with a unique form, while “Harlem Shadows” is a formal verse with a strict rhyme scheme that is quite predictable (Lannamann). Structurally, “Harlem” has an unusually irregular line length, with the first stanza having 8 lines, the second 3 lines, and the third 1 line that is italicized. “Harlem Shadows,” on the other hand, has 18 lines and 3 stanzas with ABABCC rhyme schemes. In addition, “Harlem” utilizes assonances and end rhymes, for instance: lines 3/5: “sun/run,” lines 6/8: “meat/sweet,” and lines 10/11: “load/explode.”. Additionally, the poem opens and closes with single-line stanzas that mirror each other: “What happens to a dream differed?” “Or does it explode?” (Sharma 4).
Hence Sharma argues that the complicated structure of “Harlem” reflects the complicated and troubled life of the Negros in 1920 Harlem as well as in 1950 America (4) and that it is conceivable that Hughes is deliberately rebelling against the strict rhyme schemes that dominate White poetry by creating a dissonant theme similar to Negro Jazz and Blues. On the other hand, the regular predictability of McKay’s “Harlem shadows” perhaps suggests that he is familiar with prostitutes and feels comfortable talking about them (Winston 34) in an age (1920) when prostitution and discussion about prostitutes were very much muted in society and the very idea of a girl selling herself in prostitution was an unspeakable topic among polite company. Understanding the social environment at that time makes clear the significant impact and radical nature of Claude’s poetry and his belief that by constantly highlighting prostitution as well as its underlying cause (racism), he would eventually put an end to it.
Further differences between the two poems are in the symbols they employ. In “Harlem Shadows,” the main symbol is the “feet.”. McKay writes that they are “halting” in line 1, “slippered” in line 5, “grey” and “no know rest” in line 8, “weary, weary” in line 17, and “timid” in line 15, yet they go on prowling through the streets by night and never give up. He also declares that they are “sacred” in line 16, hence suggesting that their violation is sacrilegious. His juxtaposition of the mundane and the sacred further highlights the dire circumstances of these young girls. In contrast, the main symbol of Hughes’ “Harlem” is the “Dream,” which can be understood as an aspiration, a goal, or a desire for achievement. The speaker does not specify whose dream it is that is deferred, but it can safely be assumed, judging by the title of the poem, that it is that of the Negros of Harlem, yet it can equally validly represent everyone’s dream, aspirations, or goals.
Similarly, both poets employ different imagery to underscore the Negro quagmire. Sharma argues that the imagery used by Hughes helps readers understand that a deferred dream is an unpleasant and disgusting sight, like a festering sore or the painful sight of a heavy load sagging down a man’s shoulder. He also uses auditory imagery when he compares it to an explosion or a bomb, and he uses nasal imagery when he likens it to the unpleasant smell of rotten meat. In the same way, McKay uses the imagery of the veil in lines 2–3 to describe Harlem nights: “In Negro Harlem, when the night lets fall its veil,”. Just like a veil covers the face from the scrutiny of strangers, night covers the young prostitutes, shielding them from the scrutiny of other individuals or from themselves, and under the veil of the night, they can carry on with their shameful acts. He also describes the night as long and lonely, bringing to the reader’s mind the image of fatigue and exhaustion because “the little gray feet know no rest” (line 8). Furthermore, McKay, wishing to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that men who batter for sex with young girls have lost their humanity and are controlled by lust, employs personifying “desire” in line 4: “To bend and barter at desire’s call.”. He implies that a twofold process is taking place: the lusting men regard the girls as “objects” of pleasure, while the girls are only interested in the men’s money.
Moreover, McKay’s use of repetition of “street to street” to end each stanza and repetition of “feet” after every 5 lines of each stanza adds lyrical beauty to the poem but, more importantly, draws attention to the hopelessness and danger that these girls are exposed to wandering dark, cold streets at night. According to Lannamann, the repetition of “weary, weary feet” makes “feet” a symbol of desolation and calls to mind scurrying nocturnal creatures like rats and rodents, images of misery. In lines 13-14 apostrophe, his anguish overflows in a heart-rending cry: “Ah, stern harsh world, which in the wretched way” (13) “of poverty, dishonor, and disgrace.”(14) His diction or register is cleverly chosen to soften the reader’s hearts towards these young girls, as well as evoke a tender feeling usually reserved for children, while at the same time preserving the reader’s anger towards the unjust structures responsible for their plight.
Finally, McKay’s use of the “feet of clay” in line 15 is a biblical allusion to the Babylonian king who erected a mighty golden image of himself that had feet of clay and hence came crashing down when struck by a small stone pebble (New Jerusalem Bible Daniel 2:41). Perhaps he is warning that these oppressed girls (Negros) are the “feet of clay” that could bring down American society, no matter how powerful and strong it may look unless racism and oppression are rooted out and the Negros restored to full citizenship. Similarly, a shift occurs in line 11 of “Harlem,” as the speaker finally compares a “dream deferred” to a bomb that explodes in violence: Or does it explode? This is the only metaphor in the poem, and by putting this last line in italics, the speaker is perhaps hinting that the conclusion that he has reached is that a deferred dream ends in violence. He may also be alluding to the Harlem race riots that exploded in 1935 and 1943 (Little).
In conclusion, comparing the poems “Harlem” by Langston Hughes and “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay reveals that they are two of a kind, and though published nearly 30 years apart, they identify with the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that sought, through art and literature, to bring to light the oppressive and unjust forces bearing down on the broken shoulder and bowed head of the Negro and thus help bring these injustices out from the shadows to the full nakedness of light to end them. Furthermore, a comparison of the historical-cultural background, structure, figurative devices, and imagery of these two great poems reveals that their authors are, as James Weldon Johnson proposed, the voice of the new Negro, unashamed to speak of the everyday life of the ordinary Negros in a manner that truthfully delineates the full racial relations between blacks and whites and thus enables the necessary changes to be made by those who have the power to make them.
Works Cited
Barnett, S., et al., editors. An Introduction to Literature: Fiction, Poetry and Drama. 15th ed. Pearson/Longman, 2008.
Christian, Shawn Anthony. “We do not teach literature; we are taught by literature: Building African American literature during the new Negro Renaissance.” 2003. search.proquest.com/docview/287881000?accountid=188730. Accessed November 20, 2020.
Eschner, Kat. “How Langston Hughes’s Dreams Inspired MLK’s.” Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Feb 2017.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-langston-hughess-dreams-inspired-mlks-180961929/. Accessed on December 6, 2020.
Langston, Hughes: The Dream Keeper, in Voices & Visions. Bourne, S. C. (Director). [Video/DVD] search.proquest.com/docview/2062853600?accountid=188730. Accessed November 19, 2020.
Lannamann, Taylor. “Harlem Shadows.” LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, June 12, 2020. litcharts.com/poetry/claude-mckay/harlem-shadows. Accessed December 2, 2020.
Little, Margaree. “Harlem.” LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 6 Mar 2020. litcharts.com/poetry/langston-hughes/harlem. Accessed December 3, 2020.
Mays, Kelly J., The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter Twelfth Edition, Norton & Company, pp. 1031–40, 2015.
Miller, Jason, W. “Dream Deferred,” 2015, 10.5744/florida/9780813060446.003.0004.
The New Jerusalem Bible. Edited by Susan Jones, Doubleday, 1985.
Sharma, Lok, Raj. “Stylistic Analysis of Langston Hughes’s Poem ‘Harlem’”. International Journal for Research in Educational Studies (ISSN: 2208-2115), Vol. 4, No. 3, Apr. 2018, pp. 01–10, gnpublication.org/index.php/es/article/view/199. Accessed on November 27, 2020.
Graham, Craig Barnes. (2017). The “New York state of mind” of Claude McKay: A literary biography of a Caribbean writer’s contribution to the Harlem Renaissance and the creation of the New Negro, 2017. proquest.com/dissertations-theses/new-york-state-mind-claude-mckay-literary/docview/2047581111/se-2?accountid=188730. Accessed December 10, 2020.
Winston, James. “Becoming the people’s poet: Claude McKay’s Jamaican years, 1889–1912.” Small Axe, (13), 17, 2003.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/becoming-peoples-poet-claude-mckays-jamaican/docview/195797764/se-2?accountid=188730. Accessed December 9, 2020.
The sexual revolution that began in the 1960s (3) appears to be reaching an endgame. A Twitter account called @LibsofTickTock recently re-posted videos of American kindergarten teachers talking about grooming kindergarten pupils, indoctrinating them with such concepts as a multiplicity of gender pronouns, and of non-binary genders, etc. According to Tucker Culson, these teachers posted personal videos with content such as:
TEACHER: Hi, my name is — and I’m a preschool teacher. Recently, we started wearing pronoun pins and the kids get to pick a new pronoun pin every day. We have something that picks she/her every single day and we have some that change it up.
TEACHER: So, I’m a non-binary preschool teacher and my kids know I’m non-binary. They know I’m not a girl or a boy. I use they/them pronouns in the classroom. We work on it. Not all kids get it. That’s OK and I go by Mx Gray in the classroom, not Miss or Mister.
These concepts are largely still incomprehensible to many adults, and hence foisting them on minors should rightly be considered an attack on children’s minds. This is not surprising because it follows years of attacks on adult minds by similar ideologies, disguised as pornography which began with the sexual revolution in the 1960s.
At the time, the mainstreaming of pornography warped the traditional meaning of sex as a noble means of unity and procreation between a married man and woman, distorting and perverting it as a means of self-gratification and recreation. This distortion opened the floodgate to every sexual perversion imaginable, same-sex union, and bestiality are but a few examples. As the reasoning goes, if sex is for pleasure and recreation, why limit it to heterosexuals? Why not homosexual or lesbian sex? Why not have sex with animals?
Hence, in the years preceding the sexual revolution, recreational sex is driven by mass consumption of pornography resulting in an epidemic of teenage pregnancy and abortions, and marital infidelity as the Catholic Church predicted. Furthermore, it gave rise to increased objectification of women and precipitated the erosion of marriage as a desirable institution in many countries. (3) As a whole, it has resulted in disrespect loss of dignity and value of human life. (4)
Furthermore, pornography consumption increased tolerance and was a driver for crimes such as sex trafficking, rape, incest, bestiality, and, of course, pedophilia. (1) Recent research reveals that major online porn sites feature videos of people who have been kidnapped and raped. The reason beings the addictive nature of pornography produces an escalating and desensitizing effect. Hence porn watcher needs increasingly more hardcore and deviant porn to get the same high as before.
Jeffry Satinover, a psychologist from the United States, believes that excessive porn consumption leads to the trivialization of sexual crimes, whether against women or children. (2) Child abuse expert, Michael Sheath, expressed concern about the fact that online pornography has become a “gateway to child abuse.” Porn producers were getting more and more people interested in child pornography. Most popular porn sites now have more images and videos of child sex.
Hence, pornography was consumed in large numbers by people privately in the 1960s but was shunned in public spaces. Today, however, porn has taken over public spaces and all forms of entertainment and, as a result, has taken over the grooming of society everywhere and in every medium albeit television, social media, cable games, and even the Disney Cartoon Network(6.
In fact, the grooming of society is now so complete that you cannot pick up a newspaper or magazine without coming across some pornographic images; even in a magazine for electrical engineering, which has pictures of a naked woman on the front cover instead of transistors and integrated circuits, there are pictures of naked women.
After successfully grooming adults for pornography, they are now after children. They are confident that their strategy will work as it worked in the past because society consists of a silent majority of decent people who do not want any trouble and are content to live a quiet life and hence cannot stop evil, even if they saw it. Their strategy worked because even though there are laws prohibiting obscenities, society doesn’t enforce them. For instance, the US Department of Justice has not enforced the Federal Obscenity Laws Regulating the Production and Distribution of Pornography laws as well as the Federal Obscenity laws regarding minors, which have been in existence since 1873 and in 2011, the Obama administration scrapped it all together; hence, the escalation of porn production. (1)
The groomers are very persistent and never give up. They call their goal “social progress” to make it seem like it’s a good thing, they claim that early grooming is vital to prevent the children from becoming homophobic adults. They know that most people in society will not fight back. They started by making pornography more mainstream. Then they made homosexuality, transgender, and LGBTI more mainstream, and now they’re going to make pedophilia more mainstream, with their main goal being kids in kindergarten.
Sheath says that pornography has caused a cultural shift. Before the year 2000, men who looked at child porn had mental illnesses and violent pasts and were often victims of abuse. After the year 2000, normal men who didn’t have a violent past or had a difficult childhood were now fans of online child porn. This means that these “porn-made pedophiles,” as Sheath calls them, grew up watching more and more depraved porn until they became pedophiles, which corroborates tons of research data confirming that porn changes the mind. (2)
Furthermore, Sheath argues that there is an undeniable link between easy access to deviant pornography and an interest in child molestation; the unambiguous link between strangulation- porn and sexual violence against women; and there are strong correlations between the erosion of protective taboos around incest and the prevalence of incestuous porn. (2)
In conclusion, these porn-made pedophiles are now coming after children in kindergarten. This is the end-game of porn-grooming that began in the 60s with the sexual revolution; they have infiltrated the very source, a game that would end with the warping of millions of young minds.
The Netflix movie “Cuties” is generating a lot of fury, and rightly so. Every sane person would agree that something is disturbing about watching a movie where minors are dancing seductively and sexually suggestively. It makes one feel uncomfortable. Even the name “Cutie” is resoundingly deceptive and is a reflection of dishonestly misappropriated language that has a clear meaning and attributes to something else. The word “cute,” according to the dictionary, is defined as something attractive or pleasing in a youthful, dainty, quaint, or fun-spirited way. This is not what sexually suggestive twerks by 10-year-old girls are, and people who think otherwise may rightly be suspected of harboring deviant desires, on the contrary, they are disturbing and offensive, and since they involve minors, they are criminal.
Why would a minor dance in a sexually provocative way? Is it to attract a mate? Minors aren’t legally permitted to mate, marry, or give birth. Why, then, would a minor be directed in a movie to perform sexually seductive acts? Is it to attract men? It’s a crime for a man to be sexually involved with a minor. People who denounce this movie for preparing the ground for criminal acts are on track.
Perhaps, Netflix, together with those who produced the movie, is aware of the hypocrisy that led to the success of Playboy magazine back in the 1950s. When Hugh Hefner launched Playboy in 1953, there was certainly a loud public outcry, and people lashed out against Playboy. Many families avoided going to a cinema advertising pornography, Yet astonishingly, even as protests were ongoing, private purchases of pornographic VCR tapes were skyrocketing, and thus Hefner, who was making big bucks, couldn’t care less about public protest. He saw the protest for what it was worth, worthless hypocrisy.
Perhaps, Netflix, like Hefner, is determined to ride out the storm, stay the course, and, in the end, make a lot of money. By being innovators of child pornography, they are rest assured that there will be plenty of bucks at the end of the tunnel. It may even be that Cuties is experiencing a windfall despite the pretense of protest. Thus, those of us who wish to resist the Cuties’ “new normal” must guard against curiosity, and hypocrisy and stop privately funding Cuties by watching it in private, or else we would be hypocritically cooperating in the triumph of sexual objectification of minors and would be no different from pedophiles for whom Netflix made this movie.
Furthermore, this is not an isolated incident. There is far worse content that we should all stand up against. The Internet is brimming with pornography websites, the chief of which is Porn Hub, a publicly listed company in the USA, with more than 40 billion visitors a year, where anyone can upload pornographic content, no matter how deviant. Research confirms that much of the content on these sites involves minors, and kidnapped or trafficked women and children. Society cannot afford to turn a blind eye to these extremely hardcore sites while fretting over Cuties because, again, that would be hypocrisy. Sadly, studies have it that pornography addiction is very high among Christians who attend church regularly, people who should be at the vanguard of the fight against pornography. Little wonder then that pornographers are getting richer by the hour. We all need to join hands together to fight this or else Netflix’s persistence will eventually lead to the normalization of films like Cuties.
It is doubtful if any self-respecting person would feel good peeping through the keyhole to watch other people having sex. Yet millions of people gladly consume on-screen sex. But there are hidden costs, and sometimes actors and actresses pay dearly for them. Marvel superhero Evangeline Lilly recently revealed that the nudes she did 20 years ago still haunt her.
Lilly did partial nudes on a hit TV show called “Lost” that ran from the mid-to-late 2000s. She claimed that when she was 20 years old, ruthless directors put pressure on her and told her flat-out to “bare it or lose it.” She added that she will never do nudes again now that she has control over her career. She said she hated those scripts casting her as a sex object.
“I did throw scripts across the room when I’d read them,” she scoffed.
And she is not alone. Famous actress Mila Kunis was once told she would have to pose half-naked on the cover of a men’s magazine to promote a film. When she refused, a producer reportedly threatened her by saying, “You’ll never work in this town again.”
With the executioner’s axe hanging over their contracts, young actors and actresses debase themselves on camera; years later, it returns to haunt and humiliate them, their families, and their friends.
Even though no one talks about it and no advocacy groups fight for their causes, there is no doubt that no one should be subjected to this shamefulness. Normal people cherish their privacy. Few sane men invite their bridge club to watch them make love to their wives or post videos of their bedroom antics online for every eye to see, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many actors and actresses deeply detest these roles.
“I can’t ever imagine myself doing nudity in a film,” superstar Magan Fox told MTV News in 2009. “It lives forever, especially now, with the Internet. I just can’t. I just can’t…Literally, all I have left are my private parts, and I don’t want to share them with the world. I’d like to keep them private. That’s why they’re called that!” Read more
It is funny that in backwater Africa, only criminals are paraded naked on the streets; it appears that in the more “civilized societies”, stars are paraded naked. Though they drape a cloak of glamour over it, when the wind blows, it exposes the wrecked lives underneath.
Due to the emotional distress and shame involved in shooting these sex scenes—the presence of an entire crew of camera people, set people, makeup artists, and directors barking orders at you while you’re butt naked and cavorting—many established actresses opt out, and many more insist on a “no nudity clause” in their contract.
Pundits scoff at the adverse effect of nudes. They claim it is just like any other job that most sex scenes utilize body double, computer-generated images (CGI), and nude-colored underwear to provide the illusion of sex, and that there is nothing wrong with it. But blockbusters don’t deny that sex scenes are CGIs, nor do they deny that in many movies, sex scenes involve real sex before the camera crew and that a body double is still someone’s body.
Actors and actresses are professionals, but they aren’t immune to the effects of nudes; they are humans with emotions and passions. It also disrupts social and family ties. Superstar Julia Robert, a mother of three, feels it is inappropriate for her to do nudes as a parent.
Nudes and sex scenes could account for the unusually high marital infidelity in Hollywood, with an average divorce rate of celebrities at 52%, which is two times higher than the general population. Females have a 62% divorce rate, while the divorce rate of males is 50%
When all is said and done, no one can deny the evidence that nudes add to the objectification and exploitation of women by the industry, as in the recent case of Harvey Weinstein, whose historic abuse of actresses working for him is still emerging. However, the millions of people who watch these movies without discernment contribute indirectly to this objectification.
Furthermore, studies show that watching nudes harms young adults as well. Teens and young adults who watch pornography do less well than their peers in school.
According to brietbiet.com, the Hollywood directors who forced Lily to undress have apologized, but this hardly goes far enough. Hollywood should take responsibility for what has been going on for who knows how long now.
They should thank Lily for bringing it to light, take a cue from it, and learn from their scripts: featuring nude scenes can and does violate people’s dignity! They should stop making box office earnings and profit their only consideration and encourage people to opt out of nudes without retribution.
The government and regulatory institutions shouldn’t be silent, either. They should see to it that movie directors and movie houses do the right thing and initiate changes, and those who don’t should pay punitive fines and have their licenses revoked—a good deterrent for those who wish to act like pimps and sex traffickers—brutally degrading the dignity of their employees for profit.
Perhaps next time you are tempted to watch a nude scene, you should look behind the scenes to see the tears and anguish of men and women scared for life, which is their forced debasement for your enjoyment.
The corruption of the best is said to be the worst. This is evident in the case of Miley Cyrus, a once adorable, chastely-dressed girl who attended church on a regular basis and wore a purity ring as a child. She became a teen idol with millions of fans when she was 11 because of her role in the Disney Channel television series Hannah Montana. She went from success to success, winning Golden Globes and being named the fourth best-selling female artist in 2009. Millions of copies of her Hannah Montana soundtrack were sold. She had her first taste of success when she performed for Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the British Royal Family at the Royal Variety Performance in Blackpool, Lancashire. Unfortunately, things went south in 2010. Her film “The Last Song,” based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel, performed poorly, and her studio album that same year was a commercial flop. She fired her old manager and hired a new one, who advised her to take a wrecking ball to her decent girl image, blaming her string of failures on her unsexy image. She took the advice and evolved from a wholesome woman to the highly sexualized woman we see today. She told her transformation story in a video interview in 2014. “It was always there.” Miley is boring, boring, boring, she said, revealing the unrelenting peer pressure that modern celebrities face. She didn’t need much convincing; she enjoyed being a celebrity, and if going bare would keep her there, so be it!
Against her mother’s advice, she abandoned her proper attire in favor of naked profanity. Her 2013 album “Wrecking Ball” featured a naked girl swinging on a wrecking ball. It received over nineteen million views on its first day of release and became the first single to top the US Hot 100 chart, selling over two million copies. Fame and power–honey she had once tasted and loved–returned in torrents to her tongue. She is now estimated to be worth around $200 million. In the same video, her mother stated that while she does not agree with everything Miley does, “We must understand that we are dealing with a 21-year-old girl, and this is what 21-year-olds do, Miley is just doing hers in front of the world.” However, private matters should be kept private. True, parents should give their adult children the freedom to live their lives, but they should never abandon their responsibility to correct them when they make mistakes, especially if they result from peer pressure.
Public nakedness is inappropriate because it can elicit either extreme revulsion or extreme attraction; the same parts of the body that attract sexually are also repulsive during excretion. That is why decent people prefer to be naked only in private and in front of people they trust. Exposed private parts can arouse lust or derision in strangers. Lust is the more dangerous of the two. Lust is a craving force that can lead to criminal acts such as rape and murder. When abused, sex has a devastating effect on society. “Someone who abuses sex may easily populate a whole village,” writes C.S Lewis.
It is therefore common sense to control and moderate this power through appropriate attire. Dressing modestly means living charitably with others because it is charity to avoid arousing lust or revulsion in others. Unfortunately, the modern entertainment industry is only concerned with making money. If they want money, power, and fame, today’s showbiz stars must dance naked in front of a camera crew. It is an echo of the ancient serpentine offer, “I will give thee all the kingdoms of the world.” If you kneel and worship me.” Although Jesus declined the offer, many celebrities are eagerly accepting it.
Yet, as the Bible says, “the canal cannot see God.” Miley regularly wears devil horns on stage and continues to devolve into vicious license, and things are quickly going dark for her. She is incapable of faithful lifelong love because she is a sex slave and selfish. After only 8 months of marriage, she left her husband, Liam Hemsworth, for a lesbian. She is now a fervent supporter of every sexual outcast. She is bent on sexualizing her teen followers, and she is a strong supporter of abortion and infanticide. She recently posted a picture on Instagram of her serpent tongue on an abortion cake. Her addicted fans adore her and, like puppets, imitate her excesses to their own detriment. Miley Cyrus performs a pornographic dance atop the chaste grave. On the other hand, Hanna Montana and her unscrupulous collaborators should be aware that what they are doing has a huge and devastating cost. According to researcher Patrick Fagan, internet pornography is killing families and is the cause of half of divorces, with over 40 million addicts in the United States alone. Porn addiction is linked to rape and other sex crimes, just as drug addiction has a strong tendency to use violence to satisfy cravings. According to FBI statistics, pornography can be found at 80 percent of violent sex crime scenes or in the homes of the perpetrators.” A large proportion of Miley’s 44 million Facebook followers are teen boys who struggle in school due to problems with problem-solving, reasoning, and comprehension abilities, all of which are required for academic success. These are real costs that ordinary people, parents, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, must bear. They would be wise to monitor the type of social media content their children consume in order to protect their homes and children from these disruptive influences. However, it is important to remember that Jesus did not come to save the righteous but sinners. The corrupted can be purified to shine brighter than diamonds through more energetic supernatural means of prayer and fasting. Let us not abandon this soul to her wantonness due to a lack of prayer and fasting.
Authors-choice: Hope & Revival 