How do great movie moments influence how people handle real-life moral dilemmas?

But now, in large part because of the relentless training we get from movies, everything - literally everything - we think we know, comes from movies. There is no original thought or approach to morality. It’s already been decided for us by Captain WIllard and the CIA’s “Terminate with extreme prejudice” and John Wick killing his way to heaven because he killed for his cute dog. And Al Pacino justifying selling out the CIA to the Russians because he didn’t get a promotion boo hoo hoo or Philip Seymour Hoffman struggling as an English teacher of 7th grade girls about fucking them.

Movie moments have changed everything - literally everything - about what people THINK they know. There is a famous story that you have all heard that police academies had to teach police trainees that when they get shot they DON’T grab their chest, fall over and die. Because the trainees had been ingrained so successfully by what movie actors do that that is what they do in training when they are “shot” and then in real life. Even minor wounds cause death. They fall down and die. In real life, you don’t just “die” and you have to keep fighting. They have to be completely retaught.

The same goes for morals - and on a national scale. The USA, which was originally taught all kinds of morals even from movies like “Angels With Dirty Wings” and “It a Wonderful Life” and “North by Northwest” was suddenly seeing a movie trend where instead of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” that cheating was acceptable to win. In so many movies, the good guy, under the gun, cheats, and then he wins against the bad guy and the triumph is supreme as if he really EARNED that triumph. When the movie MASH came out (and in the book), doping the football game opponents to win and cheating on play after play because the other team was bigger and more skilled…. was completely okay. When I first saw that movie, my first desire was to see Hot Lips naked in the shower (which was a mean spirited immoral cheat too) - but I didn’t jerk off to that later. I wondered instead how the cheating conflicted with MY moral values and how could the 4077th be “the good guys” when they had to cheat.

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The same goes for everything - even me. I was a bartender in college and I saw a television show that had an actor tell an angry drunk to “Be cool” and that totally de-escalated the situation so when I tried the same thing in the bar, I got a punch in the mouth. The drunk said (unlike the actor in the show), “I AM cool. I’m ALWAYS cool.” so all I accomplished was escalating the situation.

When I was 12 years old, my parents took the family to a Chinese restaurant for the first time. It was a novel experience for me. I have no idea what I ate. I was a picky eater then. But the one thing I remember - as if it were fucking yesterday - was cracking open that fortune cookie at the end and reading my fortune. It said, “There are no degrees of honesty. Either you are honest or you are not.” I believed that then because that was how I was raised. And I never forgot it. And I try to live up to that ideal, though I will admit I sometimes fail and when I do, those words come right into my head.

In the old days, for better or worse, morality came from ideals pushed by the government - remember television PSAs about the dangers of smoking - and the Church. Now, we need Tom Cruise and Leo DiCaprio and George Clooney to tell us right from wrong - and they are only mouthing the words of writers who are changing us by remote control and we don’t even know who they are.

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Thereafter in movie after movie, cheating is seen as an acceptable condition till we get to the point where baseball coaches are stealing signs and heroic football players are deflating balls for an advantage. Cheating is okay if you win. Pete Rose is still a controversial character. How many times have you heard, “There is no evidence his gambling on the games ever affected his performance.” Hello, McFly! Why are we even having this discussion? He’s a cheating piece of shit, end of story. There’s no rationalization.