NECN "Child Expert" Likes "Cider House Rules" for Holiday Family Fare

Strange but true.  I did a double-take while watching NECN this morning before leaving for work.  NECN's resident "child and youth expert" Charlie Applestein talked about movies that can inspire children and help parents be better parents.  You can watch the video here, Charlie is the guy in the Santa cap.  First up was Cider House Rules.   It was a very well done movie, a kind of coming-of-age story of  young man raised in a Maine orphanage in the 1940's.   It's based on a John Irving novel.  Applestein initially talked about the scene where the orpanage director Dr. Larch says goodnight, every night, to all the boys in his care: "Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England."  

Even these abandoned boys feel that someone loves them and has high expectations for them  So far, so good.  But Applestein goes even further, saying that "it's a wonderful movie and it's a movie you can watch with your kids."  The NECN reporter questions how appropriate it is for family fare, noting the adult themes of the movie.  Such as incest, abortion, knife fights, "adulterous" sex and drug abuse.  It has a PG-13 rating.  What better holiday fare than that?  Let's get in the holiday spirit, shall we?

Cider House Rules is a staunchly pro-abortion movie.  Dr. Larch performs abortions at his orphanage (illegal then), and Homer Welles the young protaganist is his reluctant apprentice.   Homer comes of age when he performs an abortion on Rose, a Black teenager who's father (an apple farm laborer)  has impreganated her.  That's some "heroic journey", being willing to pick up the speculum and scraper.  Abortion is treated reverently and sympathetically in Cider House Rules.   This movie review captures the insidious nature of this movie, and the moral atrophy of our society, which retains its revulsion for incest, but has lost its revulsion for infanticide.

I find it disturbing that Applestein recommends a movie that practically elevates abortion to a sacred rite three days before Christmas, the most celebrated birth of an infant in human history.   Is this evidence of what people mean when they talk about the "Gramscian march through the culture," to "slowly discredit and undermine its institutions, values, and foundations"?

Comments

[tyree]

There are many "popular" films that a just propaganda for leftist causes. The Ciderhouse Rules is just one of them. The latest remake of King Arthur was full of anti-christian sentiment even though the original legend was founded on a Christian ideal.