May
5
Written by:
Dennis Atwood
5/5/2010 2:42 PM
Guess what the top grossing movie was at the box office last weekend?
A Nightmare on Elm Street… the remake, that is, raked in almost $33,000,000. I just don’t get why people spend their hard-earned money during a recession in order to willingly have the living daylights scared out of them. Isn’t the world scary enough, as it is? Why would someone choose to drop $20 at a theatre for one ticket and a greasy tub of popcorn only to have Freddy haunt them in their dreams for weeks to come? It is a troubling world indeed…
“Escapism” could be one justification for why people go to such movies during troubled times. But who really wants to escape into a nightmare? Apparently, lots of younger people do. Nightmare distributor Warner Bros.' exit polling showed that the audience was evenly split between genders and that 40 percent was 18-24 years old and 20 percent was under 18. That’s 60 percent of the audience under the age of 24.
What this may tell us is something about the outlook that teens and twenty-somethings have of their world. One’s troubles back in the real world tend to pale in comparison to someone being tracked by Freddy Krueger. It’s a bit of an upside down approach, but then again maybe I’m overanalyzing.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, I don’t get the nightmare stuff. What with global warming, tornadoes, flooding, earthquakes, tsunamis, crime, disease, hunger, corruption, the economy, etc. there’s already plenty enough nightmare in the real world. When people escape from one nightmare to a different nightmare that tells me we are living in a troubled world.
Jesus told his followers that in the world there would be lots of troubles. He also told them the peace that he offers is nothing like the stuff the world gives. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27). Sounds like some good news the world needs to hear about.