We should have expected a movie piercing the darkness of the evil that is child abuse would get backlash.
Though the speed and fury of this backlash is disappointing, it should have been predictable. Unfortunately, I don't think most Christians expected it.
We should have expected it. But I think many were like me.
We saw the movie hit the theatre and thought, "this will be it, now." Now the truth will come out.
But the problem is that Christians are, by and large a trusting lot, some of us always hoping for the best without a struggle or a cost to us and our comforts. At least, we want to trust that truth will arrive, in blazing glory, and people will just see it.
But the problem is, the darkness is still dark. And people who have come to love the darkness have become blinded to just how much darkness really is out there.
Don't know if you know it or not, but this movie was purchased when it was completed, in 2018, for the purpose of making sure it never saw the light of day.
“Sound of Freedom” started life as a major studio project that was originally produced by 20th Century Fox and finished back in 2018. Despite being completed and ready for distribution, the film was shelved after Fox was acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2019, with the new owners refusing to release the movie.
Aurin MacIntyre, in an article at "The Blaze," seems to say this movie was purchased by Disney specifically to be able to control the narrative by owning it to keep it out of circulation. There's a technique for ya.
Why would they do that? Because if you've got something as lucrative as the child sex industry, you want to make sure it lasts.
We often underestimate the enemy and his allies, even though this movie represents a $160 billion per industry.
How naive we are.
By enemy, I mean, as a Christian, the devil. But in a larger framework, that means the devil and anyone who is aligned with him in this. In this case, anyone from consumers of child porn all the way up to those who make it, those who sell it and/or those who sell and/or use the children to make it are "aligned" with it.
Jesus said, "he who is not for me is against me." Anyone who tolerates it is at least partly aligned with it.
But why the need for so many on the left (and, unfortunately, even some on the right) to malign this movie as some crazy conspiracy?
I wish it was a joke, or else just some fringe theory held by a few. But it's not.
This idea that the movie is "the fringe" has a lot of people behind it.
Aurin MacIntyre, in his article, says,
This is the kind of story journalists should be lining up to write glowing celebratory pieces about. Instead, as if some form of order had been issued to all, the most vile leftist outlets simultaneously, a flurry of hit pieces suddenly appeared to denounce the movie as red meat for QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Outlets like Rolling Stone, Jezebel, the Washington Post, and the Guardian fell into immediate lockstep, framing the box office upset not as a David and Goliath story for the ages, but as evidence that dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories have seized the minds of the movie-going public.
Each article made sure to use phrases like “QAnon-tinged” despite never linking any content from the movie itself to the fringe movement. Rolling Stone described the film as “A superhero movie for dads with brain worms,” while the Guardian accused the movie of “seducing America.”
Rolling Stone famously defended the French movie “Cuties” against charges of child sexualization in 2020, praising the movie as “a sensitive portrayal of growing pains.” The writers who attended a showing of “Sound of Freedom” for their article treated the experience like a trip to the zoo, taking every opportunity to mock the backward yet dangerous nature of the GOP-voting plebians were absorbing conspiracy-theory-laced marching orders from their Klan-hooded overlords.
The breathless journalists were desperate to frame the film as “Birth of a Nation” for the disgruntled Trump voter, a cartoonish depiction of hate designed to whip up the latent violent tendency of a conspiracy-addled public.
We shouldn't be surprised. They also framed "The Passion Of the Christ" as "Pornographic Violence."
Seems to me that the whole purpose of pornography is to unleash a constant storm of endorphins to link the porn to the feeling the endorphins give ya.
As such, you'd think that "pornographic violence" would appeal to an audience that gets its kicks from blood and gore.
The passion was anything but, and did anything but. And yet,
The left tends to smear anything they don't understand with a derogatory label so they don't have to deal with the reality that is otherwise in their face.
Aurin MacIntyre has his ideas as to why they are doing this.
Journalists hate the movie for a simple and very telling reason: They have managed to code opposition to child sex trafficking as a radical right-wing position.
But the question still remains: WHY would they "code the opposition" to a "radical, right-wing position?"
What is to be gained by doing so? Do they resent giving credit to the right for having the corner on something they do not? Perhaps. But perhaps it's worse than that.
Might I suggest that the theory that this movie is a "right wing conspiracy" has a lot of power, money and entrenched evil behind it?
Maybe that's too simple. But I don't think it's at all inaccurate. Not a bit.
If you look at the downward spiral that is described in Romans 1, you see that people saw truth, held it up to inspection, found that the God who is revealed in nature and conscience is found "a little bit lacking," and so people give up the real God they see there, and chase after other gods, instead, because they like them better.
And as a result, God gives them over to a "reprobate mind" - a mind incapable of discerning truth from error.
Get a load of how twisted the logic is in the brain of Myles Klee at "the Rolling Stone."
....In short, I was at the movies with people who were there to see their worst fears confirmed.
Sound of Freedom lives up to that anticipation. It’s a stomach-turning experience, fetishizing the torture of its child victims and lingering over lush preludes to their sexual abuse. At times I had the uncomfortable sense that I might be arrested myself just for sitting through it.
Nonetheless, the mostly white-haired audience around me could be relied on to gasp, moan in pity, mutter condemnations, applaud, and bellow “Amen!” at moments of righteous fury, as when Ballard declares that “God’s children are not for sale.”
They were entranced by what they clearly took for a searing exposé. Not even the occasional nasty coughing fit — and we had no shortage of those — could break the spell.
He speaks as if rejoicing in the exposure of this evil as evil is somehow titillating.
I'm not sure how sick and twisted you have to be in your soul to get to the place where you can't separate the difference between the evil of using children as sex toys and the appreciation for the fact that this reprehensible evil is exposed.
But that's what it seems you just read in that quote from The Rolling Stone.
Perhaps they misunderstand the definition of fetishism.
Unfortunately, I think at best it's more that they don't want to have to come to terms with how evil their hollywood heroes are. So they paint these hollywood people as villains to be able to distract from the real issue.
And at worst? The people who write this verbal excrement are part of the consumer base in that $160 billion economy.
I don't know. I'm just saying. Not startin' nothin.'
But here is the grim reality here.
The real issue is that most people have a love-hate relationship with darkness. And having to come to terms with this insensate evil requires you to have to recognize that the line between good and evil runs right through the middle of the human heart.
That includes your own heart. Right there in with the rest of 'em.
IF you're going to acknowledge what is true, that acknowledgement requires you to decide what you're going to do about what you now see as truth: repent or rebel. There are only these two choices.
The problem with porn is that it takes constantly greater and greater amounts of deviance to deliver the same endorphin high.
You can draw life from your sexuality by enjoying it in the confines for which God designed it, or you can try to get "life" out of it by pulling it out of any (and ultimately, every) kind of perversion of what God's design is.
The end result is "smoking it more and enjoying it less," to where you end up chronically frustrated and wanting, or actually acting on greater and greater perversion to get the endorphin high that a sexual addiction is.
And regarding the Rolling Stone article (and its author) it seems that unless you're willing to acknowledge that the end of porn is a greater and greater thrill at the expense of exploiting a greater and greater abuse of the power dynamic; then perhaps your desire to want to believe that man is "basically good" leaves you with nowhere to go except to project on people who appreciate this movie a personna.
And that personna has to be that "they" are the ones with the problem and not you.
Believing that the people who "enjoy" this movie are part of the problem requires you to ignore the realities of this sexploitation industry.
And the guy who is baffled and pissed about this left-handed reaction from the left (as much as anyone rightfully can be) is Tim Ballard.
Ballard is the real-life agent portrayed in the movie. His thoughts about this nutbar attack from the left:
Ballard asked, “where is the QAnon doctrine being spewed in the film and the script?”, and argued that he would know best because he was there for these events that can be confirmed by others.
“This is just some other agenda … who would want to get the backs or run interference for pedophiles and human traffickers? That’s the more important question in all this. Why would you want to lie to push an agenda whose goal is to have children be in captivity? It’s kind of sick,” he said.
“But I think of the children that are really depicted in that film. I know what happened to them. Those children were the subjects of child rape videos. Those children were being sold for sex.”
Ballard, who noted that more than 100 individuals wound up being rescued, added that it is “embarrassing and frankly, grotesque for this guy who knows nothing to start throwing out terms like QAnon and connecting it to a real story.”
Is there hope? I certainly think so.
It's hard to remove this from the public discourse, now that it's out there. Ironically, the fact that the media keeps trying to frame the narrative is annoying. But in some ways, it's probably better than the alternative, which is to simply hope this movie just fades in the rearview mirror.
This is a war between good and evil, between light and darkness. But light and darkness are not opposites.
Light is light. Darkness is the absence of light. Now that the light is shining, darkness is put on notice.
But we need to arm ourselves with truth. As it says in 1st Peter (3:15), "Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you to account for the hope and confident assurance that is within you, yet do it with gentleness and respect."
The "endarkened" people in the media, in lockstep with the industry they are directly or indirectly trying to prop up, for whatever reason, cannot overcome the spirit of God and the light of truth for all that God is using this movie to awaken.
Pray up, get familiar with the problem, and the size and scope of it. The stakes have been established.
But the movie, although delayed, could not be silenced. Now that it's out there, we have to take a stand with those on the right side of this issue.
God is wanting to move and expose the darkness. Be sure you are prepared and of the right spirit to be a part of the solution as this scab gets peeled off of our sleeping society.