October 22, 2018  Posted by Katie Bulmer  Everyday Faith 

We live in a pornographic world. Sex is everywhere but at the same time no one is talking about, or at least not in a healthy way.

A commercial came on the other day of a couple waking up the morning after to say, “What’s your name again?” and the audience burst into laughter. In this 5 second scene I was taught it’s normal, even downright hilarious to sleep with someone you don’t know. But my marketing brain has some things to say about this.

Who wrote this script? What was their agenda? My brain started to work on overdrive trying to unpack this scene that disturbed me so.
First, let’s look at the facts:

• This scene was not real life. These are paid actors who are told to act out a script written by people who are probably not relationship experts.
• Script Writer’s goal to entertain me, get me hooked on their show, and hopefully even have me buy all their swag. Teaching me about healthy relationships was never their intention.
• The laughter at the end of this fake scene was not an actual live audience of real humans but a soundtrack of laughing that was added in with a click of a mouse in editing.

Who is in charge here?

Due to media buyouts and mergers, there are actually a very small amount of living breathing humans who even control the media in general. When this small number of people gather in a board room to come up with the next script YOUR BEST INTEREST IS NOT CONSIDERED.

I am not saying media execs are bad, there are many great people in the industry but I can guarantee you relationship experts they are NOT.

Marion Joiner said it best:

I’m sick of hearing media and the world speak two vastly different ethics. On one hand, the media endorses pornography, laughs at adultery, and mocks sexual purity. Then, on the other hand, this same media cries out at the injustice done to victims. I find this hypocrisy a little much. You can’t claim it is no big deal in one arena and then condemn it in the other. -sex is sacred

I was a marketing major and have worked in media and advertising for 15 years. I know first hand the media is fueled by our buying power. While I would love to wave my finger at Hollywood, my marketing experience has taught me, that it is not the big city execs that decide what we see, it’s the consumers.

Every time a sex-saturated movie, magazine, or song is purchased we are shouting to the media, “We love it! Keep it up!”

The good news is, we have a voice in this matter!

Marketing 101 teaches us we VOTE with our dollars. With every purchase, download, and even watch time we are creating the world we want to see. We can say, “no” to the sitcoms and movies laughing off casual sex. We can say, “no” to the music downloads singing about women as a commodity.

We can say, “yes” to media that honors marriage, portrays healthy families and doesn’t cheapen the sacred gift that is sex.

When the first God is not dead movie was released it made 64 million in ticket sales and only cost 2 million to make. The average cost of making a movie is 40 million so this is the type of margin is what Hollywood dreams of. This is a perfect example of how we can tell the media we want more, and more we got! There are currently 4 God is not dead movies and the entire purefix streaming service based on the demand.

I vote it’s time to continue to raise the bar and consider what we pour into our brain. We decide what influences us and we have more power than we realize over what is produced in Hollywood and our entire media infrastructure.

Let’s define what is entertaining. Let’s consider the living and breathing humans who are acting out what “entertains” us.

Check this Top downloaded podcast episode where Katie talks more about why we follow the crowd, why it matters and how we can rise above influence from the media.