DVD Review: "Orange County" and Human Person Adequately Considered

by Jacki Popadich

Entertainment these days is a jungle. All this brain, eye and ear candy is constantly being fed to me, and now I think I'm sick to my stomach from all the sugar. We are constantly being bombarded with all kinds of media. I know that I personally spend a sizable chunk of my paycheck on movies, music and magazines. So as a Catholic young adult, what is worth your time and money?

Nourishing Entertainment?

For me one of the biggest frustrations is trying to find a movie that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. Okay, so maybe that isn't the difficult part. What gets hard is when the movie I want to see is a far cry from my moral philosophy. You know the ones I'm talking about: artistically fabulous, really intelligent, but morally devoid.

Don't give up hope yet. Just because the media today does not espouse our values doesn't mean that we can't learn from it.

"Personalism" Perspective

What we need to do is look at the Human Person Adequately Considered (or personalism), a method of making decisions devised from the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's.

The first of the four points that HPAC makes is that all human beings are embodied spirits. If you flip back through your philosophy class notes, you can find this idea in the section on Plato. What it boils down to is this: somewhere inside our bodies, we have a conscience -- the voice of God within us.

Secondly, each one of these embodied spirits that we call people is fundamentally equal, yet uniquely individual. In English please? All humans share a bond because they are all human and equal in that common bond. As we have all learned from our experiences, not any one of these humans is exactly the same, thus we stand alone as individuals at the same time.

The next idea personalism proposes is that all humans are historical figures. Every little thing we do plays some part in human history. It's kind of a weighty responsibility, which ties in with the last part of the Human Person Adequately Considered.

All humans relate to others. In other words, it's that classic ripple effect your junior high counselors used to tell you about. In our relationships we are responsible to ourselves, our families and friends, our local communities, the members of our church, to society in general, to future generations, and finally, to God. Every decision we make affects each of these different levels. This means we can't say, "It's between me and God." It isn't.

When we look at these aspects of humanity, it really changes the decision-making process. It also puts a whole new spin on how we can watch movies and television, read books and magazines, and listen to music.

Personalism At The Movies

So let's put this to use. A movie I originally saw at the theater (now available on DVD) is "Orange County", and it does a nice job of showing many of the relationships involved in making tough decisions. Here we have poor Shaun Brumder who just wants to go to Stanford University so that he can study writing with his hero. Unfortunately, due to a transcript mix-up, he was rejected.

While attempting to get accepted, Shaun enlists the aid of his brother and his girlfriend, as well as the rest of his family, and his decisions in dealing with these people wreak havoc on many of their lives.

In his relationship to himself, Shaun wants to remain true and attend Stanford. It's a straightforward, easy choice -- but the decision to actually go or not gets a little more difficult when dealing with his friends and family. If he goes to Stanford, he gets away from his embarrassing older brother and drunk mom. (His dad has remarried and doesn't pay much attention to him anyway.)

On the other hand, he has to leave his girlfriend, which is not such a good thing. He also takes into account that, although his family is weird and embarrassing, they love him very much and his leaving would hurt them a great deal.

When he is out on the campus of Stanford, we get to see how his decision would affect the local community there. And when he returns home to his friends, we see the effects of his decision on his immediate community. Unfortunately, we don't get to see the effects of his decision on the Church, as there is no real relationship portrayed in the film.

As a writer, Shaun takes into account the effects of his decision on his ability to write well. He considers how this affects society in general, as well as future generations.

The final relationship to be taken into account is with God, and unfortunately, "Orange County" doesn't touch on it at all. (Though Hollywood tackles all sorts of controversial topics, apparently characters who have a relationship with God are too hot to handle.)

"Orange County" Worth Your While

To watch or not to watch? That is the heavily weighed question presented here. Overall, given what we can learn from (some of) the decisions made, I would say that "Orange County" is worth the time and money as a Catholic.

Though it does not portray a story that is completely in-line with Church teachings, we can learn from the characters and their actions. By using the Church's understanding of "personalism" as our frame of reference, we are able to evaluate the decisions made by the characters and draw insight from them -- and that is often hard to do these days.

Life Applications:

How do you go about making decisions? What do you take into account?
How do you feel about the morals presented to you in today's media?
Do you include God in your decision making process?

Copyright 2002 - 2004 by Jacki Popadich
All rights reserved.