We have recently discovered the ability to edit our DVDs, allowing us to remove offensive content and, possibly, add movies to our collections that would otherwise be inappropriate. This has led to some important questions that need to be answered with regards to what you watch, collect, and edit. What really makes a movie bad may not be so simple as a rating letter or the absence of explicit content.

Explicit Viewing

In the LDS church we maintain standards that prohibit us from watching R-rated movies and other movies that are not up to standard for content and the expressed morality. For many this is considered a nuisance, a law to be kept for the sake of keeping it. For others this is recognized as a guideline to keeping the companionship of the Holy Spirit, who will be offended and driven away by tasteless and profane content. Enjoyers of films and appreciators of art are often disappointed when a movie that has all the elements of a great film suddenly features unnecessary material that breaches our viewing standards. “It’s a great movie,” they say, “except for just a few things.” But to compromise your standards for “just a few things” demeans faith and mocks the guidelines.

Edited Films

Years ago the Cleanflix movie franchise caught on like wildfire, especially in Mormon communities like Provo, Utah.  ** The idea of the busienss was to offer the films that have become especially popular but breach LDS standards and to remove the offensive content, allowing saints to avoid breaching the ecclesiastic instructions while also being able to see the film. Eventually these franchise were shut down by the law suits of the film producers, who argued that it was a breach of their copyright to change their product and market it as the same thing. We have recently found the means to edit our own DVDs, offending no copyright because they are the DVDs we have legally purchased and now own. Rather than hastily muting or covering the screen we can edit the film for comfortable viewing. Although a very labor-intensive process, this allows us to make some of our favorite films more suitable for friendly viewing. At the same time it has caused us to take another look at our movie standards and to realize that there are ups and downs to this approach – and that not every movie is worth cleaning, or even worth owning if it were edited.

The Trouble with Editing

One complaint with editing the film is that the editor must be submitted to all the content that is being removed, often times repetitively. If they were editing it just for themselves this would certainly be self-defeating. Editing one recent film required listening to each word of profanity three or more times in the process of precisely removing it. This, alone, is a discouraging feature. For this reason the merits to editing a film only for personal viewing are severely reduced. Editing the film for group viewing, and for viewing by different ages groups, is definitely makes more sense. There are some cases, however, when editing the film for personal viewing may not be as objectionable. In the case of violence, for example, we understand that no animals (or people) were harmed in the making of the original film; the gruesome scene is the product of skilled make-up artists and computer generation. I have noticed that in sitting to edit these sorts of scenes, you are not a part of the mood or the illusion of reality that is the purpose of watching the film. You are sitting parallel to the film makers in the role of a creator, viewing things frame by frame and in individual components. To some extent you have pierced the hypnotic veil of reality and are not suffering from the subconscious assumption that there is some truth to what you are seeing. Presuming that the film revolves around more than the content you are removing, and that it does indeed have fine features to recommend it, it can be worthwhile to remove some scenes of gore or violence. After all, the fine producers of earlier generations, such as many Hitchcock films, were able to have stories that contained violence as part of the story but had maintained a more refined Story-Telling ability that allowed them to get the point across without trying to drag the viewer through filth.

Sexual elements are a different matter. While I might consider removing short scenes that were mildly distasteful in innuendo, nudity is nudity. Producers who tout the bodies of their actors as their trade and claim it as “art” are indeed creating an illusion, but perhaps not the one they intend. They might like to think that they are displaying a fantasy; in reality, it is debasement. There is no make-up or craftsmanship but a mockery of God’s great work. And this is an image-transmitted poison that needs no illusion of reality to do its damage. I would not edit films with explicit nudity or sexual content, regardless of the justification or of the gender of the editor.

Uneditable Filth

Finally, we have come to realize that a film cannot be chosen based alone on what it does not contain. In other words, it isn’t enough for a film NOT to swear; that doesn’t make it good. The media we choose to view is instantly and deeply accepted into our minds and hearts. Whether it is TV programming, movies, books, music, theater, or art, to view it as entertainment is to consume it in its fastest-digesting, most deeply imbibed manner. It is crucial to be cautious about our entertainment-diet. Modern society likes to claim that entertainment is cheap and inconsequential; that it, like a dessert or a french-fry, is an indulgence that we should enjoy without thought for consequences. They do not portray it as the powerful matter that it is, capable of uplifting or corrupting. It can increase testimony of Jesus Christ or it can drive the spirit away while installing barbs in the mind that will keep the Spirit at bay with so little as a memory of an image, phrase, or feeling. We have come to recognize that some films have little that could be edited out and yet are still completely worthless, even destructive, to the viewers. The power to edit a film is not, after all, the power to make a good film out of a bad one.

How do I know what to Films to Edit?

Another problem arises: in order to know what you are editing, you have probably seen the unedited version of the film already. Certainly you should not go out watching films indiscriminately to see which ones are worth editing; that practice would mock right standards under the very pretense of doing good. In our case we have a collection of films that we like but that contain some degree of content that reduces our enjoyment. **Some of them have a single, incongruous scene in an otherwise unblemished film. Others feature exceptional qualities of story or gems of truth that make them a rare find and only need the dross removed from the gold.

We try to be very particular in what films we see, rent, or buy. We have no desire to tolerate vulgarity, disguised or not. Given the 20+ hours of computer processing, and the 2+ hours of hands on editing, required in the process of film editing, the only justification that makes it worthwhile is if there lies something exceptional in this movie that we want to share with others, and if we feel that the removal of certain distractors and detractors from the film would make the quality of the film more readily appraised. Perhaps these exceptional films, the ones that simply must be shared and remembered, are the only ones worth having in our collection.