Family Movies (what is a family movie anyway?)

I've been wondering lately, what does it mean for a film to be a "family movie".  More precisely I'm interested in what makes for a "good family movie".  What are the qualities it must have?  Here's the criteria I came up with (leave a comment and tell me what your criteria is):

Right and wrong must be portrayed as such

By that I mean that if there is a character involved in something immoral (dishonoring God) then it should be portrayed as such. Alternatively, righteousness should be seen as a virtue.  I don't mean to say that in a film the guilty must always be punished and good things should happen to those who have love for others.  Rather the tone of the film should be such that it causes us to desire those things regardless whether they happen or not.

Antagonists and protagonists should be so for good reason.  Movies where a lover who tears apart a marriage is also portrayed as the protagonist should be avoided for example.  Movies where you find yourself rooting for the thief to succeed perhaps.

Implicit in this first criteria is that it's okay to watch people portrayed doing wrong things.  If adultry takes place, the film should help us see how hurtful it is though.  If someone is portrayed as being a great parent then the film should portrary them as admirable.  Violence should not be glorified.  Divorce should not be played over lightly.

No family movie should wound a family member

I had to quickly put this criteria after the last one for obvious reasons.  Watching an adultery portrayed on screen and watching a sexual act on screen is two very different things.  There are some black and whites here.  For example, sex acts are meant for the exclusive privacy of a husband and wife and should never be shown or portrayed on screen.  However, there is also a lot of subjectivity.  We should be free to openly discuss sexual matters as a family in an age-appropriate way.  Also, what's wounding to one family might not be for another.  The age of your children is probably the biggest determining factor of what's inappropriate but other factors come into play also such as the parents' history or events in your childrens' past that makes them more sensitive than others.  Levels of violence, language, disrespectful attitudes, godlessness, etc.  All relative to your family's needs.  In the end whatever you watch, no matter how offensive it is, needs to satisfy the rule before this one or else that violent act portrayed is useless violence which ought not make it into any family movie.

Practically-speaking, never watch a movie with your kids (or allow them to get see a movie) that you haven't first looked up on iMDB.com's parental guide or on pluggedin.com.   I would even recommend doing so for movies you've seen before.  Sometimes we see movies through a different lens once we have kids.

Parents must enjoy the film as much as the kids

Too many children's movies don't fit this bill and as such they are relegated to the DVD player on long trips where I don't have to watch them.  There is definitely a difference between a children's movie and a family movie and it completely hsa to do with the amount of enjoyment the parent receives when watching the movie.  Animations are tricky.  They aren't necessarily "children's movie" automatically.  One good rule of thumb when deciding whether an animated film has gone from good children's movie to good family movie is this:  If it's made by Disney, children's movie.  If it's made by Pixar, family movie.  Done.

One thing about this mutual acceptance of a family movie is that all family members need not enjoy the family movie on the same level.  When I watched Hugo with my kids a few weeks ago, we all loved it but they didn't get some of the undertones in the movie (the motif of purpose and brokeness).  They were able to see that when we discussed the movie afterwards but they would have enjoyed the movie all the same had they not realized that the movie wasn't so much about fixing man-made machines as it was about fixing the lives of those men.

The film must give a family something to talk about afterwards

Movies not worth talking about are hardly movies worth seeing at all.  And family movies are no different.  Good movies ought to be discussed and shared among your family.  If a movie doesn't bring a family any closer together than they were before then... what's the point really?

I have enjoyed exposing my kids to many good films and by doing so have expanded their horizons.  They got a glimpse of what it was like to grow up in communist China in Mao's Last Dancer.  They'll see racism when we watch To Kill a Mockingbird or Look Who's Coming for Dinner.  Right before they leave our home and go off to college, I want to watch Citizen Kane with them so they'll be forced to graple with what's really important in life (and what's not).  I want them to see Gattaca with me so we can discuss how no one should limit their potential.

Not every film has to have this heavy of a moral.  Not everything has to be historical or even serious.  But there ought to be room for a conversation.  Questions like, "Why do you think the film maker choose to do this?" or "What was the funniest part to you?" will do fine.

Here is a very random list of films I consider to be "Family Movies" for an age-appropriate family of course, and as always look up the parental guide on iMDB.com before watching any family movie with your kids, even if you've seen it before:

Citizen Kane
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Prestige (warning: PG-13)
The Sting I & IIThe Great Escape
The Sixth Sense (warning: PG-13)
The Bourne Trilogy (warning: PG-13)
Star Trek (the JJ Abrams one; warning: PG-13)
Gandhi
The Princess Bride
Big Fish (warning: PG-13)
Pirates of the Caribbean (warning: PG-13)
Patton
The Truman Show
Mutiny on the Bounty
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Gattaca (warning: PG-13)
Back to the Future
Ghostbusters
Paycheck (warning: PG-13)
Better Off Dead
Minority Report (warning: PG-13)
The Goonies
Clue
Patch Adams (warning: PG-13)
Seven Years in Tibet (warning: PG-13)
Jumper (warning: PG-13)
The Hunt For Red October
Salt (warning: PG-13)
National Treasure
August Rush
Mao's Last Dancer
Babies
Apollo 13
Hugo

Protecting your family in an ever-increasingly connected world

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, to get to wonderland Alice had to dirty her dress, scuff up her shoes, and slide down mud holes. She got there but it was difficult and risky. Alice was brazen. In Carroll’s later poem, “Through the Looking Glass”, the protagonist gets to wonderland by merely walking through the looking glass. It doesn’t seem to cost anything. Wonderland is just a step away, being somehow eerily inside her own home. The world many of us grew up in was full of temptations but often times it was risky; it was hard. Today our kids can walk down any back alley in the world and it’s all just a step away; a click away. The good news is that there is plenty of good solutions for keeping the back alleys where they belong.

Communication
First the obvious. Clearly communicate family expectations to your kids. Set hours of use, what’s appropriate and what’s not, consequences, etc. One idea is to have a family meeting with the outcome being a written contract which everyone in the family signs. Post it in view of computers in the home as a reminder of the commitment everyone has made to God and to each other.

Location, Location, Location

Any computers in the home need to be in public, trafficed areas. If students need to type a paper and they need a quiet place to work, send them to another room and leave a door open. Again, whatever the expectations are for where Internet surfing is permissible, make sure they are clearly communicated up front.

Third-party (free) Monitoring and Blocking tools

Blocking inappropriate web sites has gotten much easier in the past couple years. Thankfully some web filtering companies who sell very high-end devices to corporations have started making their solutions freely available for home-use. Of all the solutions I’ve tried, “K9 Web Protection” from Blue Coat Systems is the all-around winner. It’s free and works for the PC and the Mac [http://k9webprotection.com] as well as iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads [http://www1.k9webprotection.com/getk9/k9-web-protection-browser - follow the instructions]. Once you've installed the software and told it what to block, your web browser checks with K9’s filtering servers every time you browse to a web page and either allows it or doesn't. You can customize your setup to block the categorizes of sites you want blocked and unblock those that are permissible for your family. There is also reporting, parental alerts, automatic internet shutdown after so many blocked attempts within the same period of time, and more. You can visit their web site for installation/signup procedures. One added benefit to this solution is that if it’s a laptop, it’s installed on that laptop regardless where the laptop travels: onto the neighbor’s unsecured wireless network, over to a friend’s house, etc.

Online Toasters?

If toasters aren’t internet-accessible yet, I’m sure they will be soon. In the last 5 years, more and more electronics have become “Internet accessible”. From TVs, Blu-ray players, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, iPod Touch, to handheld gaming devices such as Nintendo DSi and Playstation PSP, “internet-accessible” is everywhere. Just search for “internet-enabled” and you’ll find internet-enabled cat feeders, pianos, and more. The toaster is just around the corner.

The challenge with this new reality is that the K9 Web Protections of the world don’t have filtering software for a Nintendo DSi, Wii, and blueray player (only PCs, Macs, and Apple mobile devices). These devices will taut “parent controls” often but rarely does that mean much other than the parents ability to simply shutoff online capability altogether (something I recommend for devices that don’t specifically need it). There is one very cool solution that will protect all these devices with a fairly descent, although not perfect, amount of accuracy. The solution is elegant and again, free! It provides decent protection for anything using your home Internet connection, all in one single swoop. The solution is called: “OpenDNS”.

OpenDNS [http://www.opendns.com/familyshield/]

First a little Internet background. When you ask the Internet for a web page [http://www.google.com for example], the Internet first decides what the Internet address is of that particular site. It’s kind of like trying to reach me by phone but only knowing my name. You first have to find my phone number by looking up my name in your phonebook. On the Internet, this lookup service are called “domain name service” (or DNS). Your home’s router/modem is given 2 DNS servers by your Internet provider to give it the ability to lookup Internet addresses behind the scenes. AT&T, Comcast, etc all provide you with 2 of their own DNS servers. Following our phonebook analogy, what if your phonebook was nice enough to only include the phone numbers of “nice” people and didn’t include look-up information for anyone else? That’s OpenDNS. If your computer told OpenDNS to find an inappropriate website (because your son or daughter requested such a site) its look-up system knows that web site contains inappropriate material so it just wouldn’t give your computer the correct Internet address. It just won’t work. You have to create an account on OpenDNS’s system in order to tell it what categories of content you want blocked otherwise, unconfigured, it merely blocks pornographic sites (which may fit your needs just fine). In addition to creating an account on their web site (which is optional) the other step (this is isn’t optional) to implement OpenDNS is to either A) purchase an OpenDNS-enabled Internet router or to B) login to your existing router and tell it to use OpenDNSs’ DNS servers instead of the 2 DNS servers you are already using. This option “B” is obviously a bit more technical but doesn’t require any new hardware purchase. It involves typing in OpenDNSs’ 2 DNS servers which are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. For more details about OpenDNS, please refer to the link above.

NOTE: Unfortunately, “AT&T U-Verse” customers can’t easily utilize OpenDNS (“AT&T DSL” customers won’t have a problem). There are some very advanced configuration options available to make it work (disabling wireless on the AT&T modem and daisy-chaining another wireless router off of the AT&T device) but for the most part AT&T U-Verse customers will only be able to install K9 Web Protection everywhere and will have to forego the OpenDNS additional layer of protection. AT&T U-Verse reports to have its own parental controls that might be acceptable for you. Click here for instructions on configuring those.


You could consider only using OpenDNS and not installing 3rd party monitoring solutions like K9 Web Protection but I would not recommend it unless all you are looking for is “accident insurance” (protection from you or a child in your home accidentally finding inappropriate material). For the determined one, there are ways around OpenDNS that can be tricky, but possible. I, for one, like the accountability of having K9 Web Protection available. One quick example why K9 Web Protection is so nice is if your neighbor has an open wireless network connection. In that scenario, if your home network blocks inappropriate materials, your child will still be able to hop over onto your neighbors network and will be unrestricted at that point.

Guidelines to follow:

• Recommended Content filter/monitor for PCs and Macs: http://k9webprotection.com
• Recommended Content filter/monitor for everything using your home Internet connection: http://www.opendns.com/familyshield
• Recommended Content filter for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches: http://www1.k9webprotection.com/getk9/k9-web-protection-browser
• When specifying a password when installing parental control software of any kind allow one person in the home to know the first half of the password and you know the other half. That way the entire family has accountability.
• If your computer is owned and managed by your company, check with your company’s technical support before installing any content filtering software on their computer. Effective content filtering software is so tamper-proof that it can be difficult for your company to effectively manage your system. Furthermore, your company likely already has content filtering and monitoring software installed on their computers, whether you are aware of it or not. Installing the free K9 Web Protection on a system owned by a business should never be done (doing so breaks Bluecoat’s software’s license agreement and puts your company at risk).
• Do not allow a child unsupervised usage of your company’s computer regardless whether you think it has an Internet connection or not. Many companies have a zero-tolorance policy when it comes to leaving traces of inappropriate Internet content on company-owned devices.
• Parental controls bundled with an Internet provider are tied to that provider’s connection; this shouldn’t be considered “safe” because if your computer has wireless capability, the neighbor’s Internet provider can often times be used as easily as your “protected” Internet provider. Every computer can have wireless capability if it has a USB port (wireless modems are very cheap and very portable).
• Keep in mind that when kids bring their DSi’s or PSP’s into other peoples’ homes, they are bringing with them a doorway into the Internet so lock down those devices using parental controls beforehand or check ahead of time whether the home they are going to has solutions like OpenDNS in place already (show those families how if they don’t!).
• Have a family meeting about Internet usage (allowed times, unacceptable sites, which places around the house are allowed for Internet surfing, about being honest when mistakes are made) and create a subsequent policy that the entire family is aware of (post it on the family computer).
• Put on your geek hat, open a user manual or two, and learn how to access your Internet router’s log of who browsed to what site when and communicate to your family that you will be checking those logs periodically. You wouldn’t let your kids wonder around a huge city without knowing where they are going and the expectation shouldn’t be any different when “wondering” around the web. Many internet routers have the capability to email those logs to you on a daily or weekly basis.
• An alternative to reading your Internet router logs is to utillize the reporting features of both OpenDNS and K9 Web Protection. Let’s face it: Even the most clever of automated solutions can be overcome by a bored, hormone-raging teenager with enough time on his hands. But knowing that every wall they hit in trying to overcome the filter will get reported to their parents/grandparents/girlfirend's parents/etc the less likely they are to try and bypass the filtering solution in the first place.

Links:

• Recommended (free) web filtering/reporting solution on a device-by-device basis: http://k9webprotection.com/
• Recommended (free) web filtering/reporting solution covering an entire household: http://www.opendns.com/familyshield/ (Click "Setup FamilyShield" and choose "Router")
• This is the same as the link above, but a version for the slightly more advanced user: http://www.opendns.com/solutions/household/
• Netgear Internet routers with OpenDNS enabled out of the box: http://bit.ly/cuWnv4
• OpenDNS response for AT&T U-Verse customers: http://www.opendns.com/support/article/305
• Instructions for setting up Parental Controls for AT&T U-Verse customers: http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB400849

Your opinion doesn't matter

A friend of mine recently turned me on to this article criticizing Baylor for not allowing homosexual faculty. The writer made good arguments, well reasoned. Intelligent. Still once finished I found the arguments ring empty to me. He acknowledged Baylor's policies rely on "the authority of scripture". But yet the writer never argued against scripture or Baylor's understanding of it. He makes a strong humanist argument and also managed to throw in a presumptuous, "Jesus would have done this". There were no direct reference to any historical truth claim about Jesus yet the author has no problem making assumptions about what the Son of Man would do today.

If the policy is wrong then it's wrong because Baylor and every group of believers up until the last 200 years is either misinterpreting what Jesus, Paul, Moses, and other biblical writers included as "sexual immorality" at the time they were writing or the bible flat-out isn't worthy of being that source of authority because it isn't the source of authority and truth that it claims to be. The author doesn't even attempt to make either case. If you wanna argue, argue biblical misinterpretations or argue anti-bible. If you don't then I'm left with your highly-educated, well-formed, thought-out, kind arguments on one hand, and the truth of the living God on the other. No offense but you lose.