Category: A Spiritual Look At All Forms Of Entertainment…

I love the movies. Tuesdays seem to be a great day for me to go because many theaters now are offering Discount Tuesdays where the cost is almost half of the normal price no matter what time the movie starts. Yesterday I went to the movies at a local theater where the cost for the movie ticket was $7.50 which was about $6 less than it’s normal price. Because I had the time available, I paid for two movies (Snitch and Jack and the Beanstalk in 3D) that I could go from one to the other without missing any of either. A long time ago, when I was a misguided young adult, I thought it was cool to go from one movie to the next on a crowded Saturday at the theater. The difference then was that I wasn’t paying for each ticket, I was only paying for the first.

Lately, this seems to becoming an epidemic as the costs of anything seem to be rising, especially movie tickets. I’m not sure if more and more people are sneaking into movies after seeing another but I have definitely have observed it happening lately. Take for example yesterday, I had just finished seeing Snitch and had gotten a refill on my popcorn. Across the hallway from the entrance to the Jack and the Beanstalk showing that I was going to, was Die Hard 5. Two men emerged from that theater having just seen it and cautiously looked over their shoulders a few times and then headed into the theater I was going into. I watched them pull out an older pair of 3D glasses that was in their pockets and wipe them off and proceed to stay for the whole movie.

Movie ticket prices today are a reflection of not just a factor of inflation, they are also a factor of many other things as well such as the actors and actresses asking for more money, the cost to producing a film rising, people not going to the movies as much anymore, and then there are those like these two people who were sneaking in and seeing a movie for free.

I’m guilty of having once done this. I did this a long time ago when I wasn’t trying to be in integrity in my life, be God-centered, and honest with all that I do. There was a part of me back then that said it wasn’t fair how expensive ticket prices were and I justified that I didn’t have the money to pay for multiple movies. The truth is that I did have the money. I just wanted to get away with getting something for nothing. I told myself that no one was being harmed in me doing that. Today I realized that I was part of the reason why movie ticket prices continue to soar. I also realize that sneaking in is essentially stealing. It’s no different then going into a store and taking anything off of a shelf, putting it in one’s pocket, not paying for it, and leaving.

I have a friend in New York who is a lawyer and earning more than six figures every year. He has a nice home and a family, and on just about every weekend, he goes to at least three movies and pays for only the first one he sees. Can he afford the other movie tickets? Of course and he would openly admit it that he could. So why does he do it? Why does anyone steal anything if they do steal? When I did it, there was a thrill or a rush of getting away with something. In other words, I got a “high” in doing it. The funny thing is that the money that I “saved” was only spent on something else that I couldn’t get away with stealing. A thought to ponder is what if all of the world’s goods were done on the honor system? What if the price was posted everywhere for each good but it was on the honor system to pay? Would anyone pay? Or would everyone just take and take and take? Today I can honestly say I would pay the price that was being asked. I wonder how everyone else would handle an honor system based society?

While people may not look at sneaking into a movie as stealing, it is. I know that to live a spiritually centered life, I can’t do things like that which I once did. I don’t want to live that way and I am glad I’m not. Today I refer to this as my God consciousness. What people don’t realize when they sneak into a movie or steal anything for that matter, is that they are hurting everyone else with the rising prices, and even worse, they are hurting themselves by corrupting their souls.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Normally I wouldn’t make a blog entry this late into the evening as it’s currently 1:00am here on the east coast, except I just came from a movie that I was extremely excited about seeing and instead left very disappointed. The movie I went and saw was Beautiful Creatures which is based on the book series by authors Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia.

A few months ago I saw a preview and read that this movie was similar to the whole Twilight series but instead of vampires and humans as the focus, it was witches and mortals. I thoroughly enjoyed the Twilight series on screen and while I didn’t read the books, I decided to do that with Beautiful Creatures. And I loved it immedately. While the books do draw some similarities to the way the Twilight series was set up with good versus evil concepts, they really are two completely different works of fiction. Within a matter of a few weeks I had already gone through the first book and the second book. By the time the movie arrived in the theaters a few days ago, I was buried deep into the middle of the third book with high hopes for the first movie to be as engrossing as the book series had been.

As the lights dimmed in the theater and the previews rolled out, I anxiously awaited the opening scene for the movie and then it finally arrived…in a different version, quite different from how the first book began. I shrugged it off and said oh well to myself and continued to watch with anticipation for many of the sequences that I was looking forward to seeing how they would translate onto the screen. Most of them never came. Scene after scene, storyline after storyline, change after change, the movie seemed like a completely different piece of work. While the foundation of the story was kept intact about a witch, referred as a Castor, and a mortal, with no special abilities, meeting and falling in love and finding their love to be taboo because of a curse, the things that made the book unique were missing. As I watched the credits start to roll after the last scene to this Romeo and Juliet tale, I noticed that there had been very few people there watching it. Was that because of all these changes that were made? I don’t know. What I do know is that on opening weekend of a Twilight movie or a Harry Potter movie, a person would be hard pressed to find an open seat.

All of this got me to thinking about my own life. When I was a young boy, I was quite original and unique in my own way. Sadly, when I got into high school, I began to change those parts of me, altering myself to ways I thought people would like better. By the time I left high school and college behind, most traces of that boy inside that was unique and different were gone. From the outside image of me, to the talents that I pursued, what the world saw in me now was a mere fragment of what I had originally been scripted as.

Luckily, I’ve woken up to the chameleon effect that I created and about a year ago, I began to strip away all the layers that were pasted on top of the original me. Ironically, now at the age of 40, I’m back to doing most, if not all, of those same things I did as a kid. The difference today is that I don’t want to change them, alter them, cover them up, or make them any different. I want to be me. And I believe that the new/old me that is emerging will be liked by many more people as compared to the life I had lived up until last year that was filled with sadness and loneliness.

Like Beautiful Creatures, I lived my life from high school to last year continuously adapting to meet what I thought others might like. And consistently, I lost the interest of those I met most likely because I wasn’t original and unique anymore. I had made myself a carbon copy of what I thought people might like. Except I’m not the way anymore and I’m thankful for that. My license plate is now “BURSLF” which means “BE YOURSELF”. And today I am. I’m back to being that boy again, living his life as original as I can be, beating to my own drum and I believe that people are going to love this original recipe much better as time goes forward.

I wish Beautiful Creatures had done the same and stuck to what was in print. I’m convinced that this was the reason why the theater had only a handful of people in it on opening weekend and why the box office numbers were showing it in a dismal sixth place in earnings. At least I can go back to the original me but this movie is already produced and forever on a reel in this version. But who knows, it’s Hollywood and remakes happen all the time. Beautiful Creatures, just be yourself, it’s the best way to be.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson