Sometimes it takes a voice from the past to encapsulate what is happening in the present: in this case the complete moral breakdown of America’s entertainment industry, including the transformation of television into the foulest-mouthed, most bitterly nihilistic thing you could stick in the same room with your children.
That’s what Pat Boone is saying today. The actor and singer with the squeaky-clean reputation says plainly that Hollywood, already at the bottom of a foul moral pit, is nonetheless still digging harder than ever.
The 87-year-old devout Christian condemned the entertainment industry in an interview with FOX News on April 26, stating that “moral values” are completely absent from current TV shows and movies. In fact they have been replaced with negative values and the glorification of the worst behavior.
“On television, you can hear all sorts of swear words,” said Boone, as reported by The New York Post. “Nothing short of actual pornography is celebrated on television now. I don’t know how to put it strongly enough, but I just think the film industry is committing suicide. It’s killing itself as far as I’m concerned. America’s image is being destroyed.”
It’s a race to the bottom, Boone said, characterizing studios who once tried to be the best as now portraying worse and worse behavior to gain eyeballs and ratings.
Declaring that “the whole thing is upside down,” he said that “Some of the biggest films now show people getting away with the worst things. Lawbreakers are even celebrated. The criminals are becoming bigger. Heroes are doing worse things than criminals and being rewarded for it.”
Boone pointed to the raunchy series Big Mouth on Netflix — the service that brought a movie about prepubescent girls doing erotic dances to the world’s TV screens. Big Mouth serves up a noxious stew of seventh-grade humor for adult viewers.
“Here’s a nerdish young kid – and he and his friends are learning about masturbation, oral sex – all kinds of things,” Boone lamented. “And this is on Netflix. I don’t even know how they can even defend it, but it’s there. It’s all out there. Parents will just see it’s an animated show and think it’s OK for their kids to watch it … I mean, how bad can we get?”
Long a devout Christian, Boone told FOX News he turned down a potential project alongside star Marilyn Monroe because he found the proposed screenplay “immoral.”
“A teacher once told me, ‘It’s always right to do right, and it’s always wrong to do wrong.’ It sounds so simple, but that’s one of the lessons I still try to follow, even in my career,” the veteran star explained. “It was a moral lesson. I’ve turned down songs with lyrics that I just couldn’t sing. It just didn’t feel right for me to do. The same thing applies to movies and television.”
