c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Hollywood has its Oscars, the golden statuettes that will be handed out during Sunday’s nationally televised broadcast of the 71st annual Academy Awards.

Less well-known are the”Teddy Bear”Awards.

Named for Ted Baehr, publisher of the biweekly magazine Movieguide, this year’s awards praised inspiring, morally uplifting, and family-friendly films like”Life is Beautiful,”while condemning other Oscar-contending films, including”Shakespeare in Love,”which was described as”funny, but morally degenerate.” Most movie reviews rate films based on a combination of technical and aesthetic factors. Movieguide’s awards and reviews rate these factors, too, awarding up to four stars for a film’s production quality.

But Movieguide breaks with Hollywood protocol by evaluating movies’ moral content, using a complex scale that not only counts obscenities and acts of sex and violence, but also evaluates a film’s approach to issues like substance abuse, capitalism, patriotism, and evolutionary, feminist, environmental, humanist, New Age, and occult worldviews.”Our goal is to help people become better consumers,”said Baehr, author of the 1998 book,”The Media-Wise Family”(Chariot Victor Publishing).”We want to give people the motivation to choose the good and reject the bad.” Films like”Prince of Egypt,”the animated film about the life of Moses, received a four-plus rating, which signifies”No questionable elements whatsoever,”even though Movieguide’s review said the film was marred by”one shot up a man’s tunic revealing underwear.” Films like”Ringmaster,”about TV sleazemeister Jerry Springer, or horror flicks like”Bride of Chucky,”receive a minus-four rating, which brands films as”evil.” Though little regarded by the mainstream media or by Hollywood movers and shakers, Baehr’s reviews are a godsend for thousands of conservative Christians who are deeply concerned about their own and their children’s media diets.

Baehr believes film _ like all forms of God-given human creativity _ should be about”the true, the good, and the beautiful.”But most movies _ and most Movieguide reviews _ contain a mix of good and bad.

For example, Movieguide gave”Shakespeare in Love”_ which has been nominated for 13 Oscars _ four stars for its production values. But the film was given a minus-two acceptability rating, and topped Baehr’s list of 1998’s 20 worst films. Movieguide called the film”smart, bawdy, romantic, and funny, but morally degenerate;”criticized its”pagan elements, feminist elements, (and) homosexual elements;”and said the film”has a banal plot that distorts history. It demeans Shakespeare’s genius by neglecting the nobler passions that permeated Shakespeare’s work.” Likewise, Movieguide praised”A Civil Action”for its”moral worldview”but complained that the film’s personal injury lawyer”relies on big federal government when he loses (his) case due to his own pride and mismanagement.””Rugrats”received a plus-one acceptability rating even though it contains”discussions and references to babies messing their diapers”while”Message in a Bottle”was called”a handsome, thoughtful but morally flawed date movie”which overly elevates romantic love, making it”idolatrous.”And Movieguide praised”The Last Days,”a Stephen Spielberg documentary about five survivors of Nazi Germany’s slaughter of Hungarian Jews. But the reviewer complained that one of the featured survivors was Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif.,”a radical from California who has said some pretty intolerant, perhaps even hateful, things about Christians and conservatives.” Movieguide’s reviews themselves get mixed reviews. London’s liberal daily paper,”The Guardian”featured a March 6 article titled,”The Weird Wide Web,”which featured the writer’s reaction to the Movieguide Web site (http://www.movieguide.org):”Proves Americans are at their funniest when deadly serious.” Helping believers decide which movies to see is only one of Baehr’s missions. He also serves as chairman of the 14-year-old Christian Film and Television Commission, a non-profit organization aiming to reform films by acting as an advocate for Christian values.

Baehr, a past president of the Episcopal Radio-Television Foundation, would like his commission to perform the functions once filled by the Catholic Legion of Decency and the Protestant Film Commission. Both organizations acted as the film industry’s moral guardians until the 1960s, when the Motion Picture Association of America adopted a voluntary film rating system. After that, Baehr says”the church abandoned Hollywood.” He’s trying to bring the church back to America’s movie-making capital, and his most publicized effort is his annual Awards Gala. At this year’s event, scheduled for Thursday night (March 18) at the Universal Hilton, Baehr will hand out some big-money awards, including the $25,000 Epiphany Prize, funded by the John Templeton Foundation to honor the year’s most inspiring film, as well as two $5,000 Grace Prizes, funded by Morgan H. Grace and honoring actors or actresses in film or TV whose performances”exemplify God’s grace and mercy toward us.” Baehr is also active behind the scenes, fielding calls from studios and production companies wanting to know what Christian teaching says about issues like religious observances, alcohol use, Satanism.”My agenda is to present myself as a resource to the studios,”says Baehr, who believes he has had an effect.”There are more films containing a strong Christian worldview now than there were 14 years ago.” Ralph Winter, a Hollywood veteran who was the supervising producer of last year’s”Mighty Joe Young,”agrees Baehr is having an impact.”I’m amazed at the places Ted gets into and the people he gets to sit down with,”said Winter.”Ted has to be congratulated for that, because I don’t know who else could do what he does.” Sometimes, Baehr feels like a lone voice in an industry served by hundreds of advocacy groups, including those representing ethnic groups, the disabled, gays and lesbians, major corporations, and powerful professional associations.

He can also feel like the odd man out among evangelical Christians, many of whom support anti-media watchdog groups like Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association, while others support ministries to entertainment professionals like Media Fellowship International.

Few people, however, seem to understand or appreciate the role an advocate like Baehr can play in shaping movies’ content and their portrayal of religious issues.”There are different types of ministry,”says Baehr,”and we’re trying to build bridges to Hollywood and help people there understand.”

DEA END RABEY