Interesting question to consider. The Church doesn’t have an exact teaching on what media is good or bad to partake in. What is media though? Media is a form of art with the purpose of entertaining and most of the time conveying a message. The Catechism thankfully has something to say about art.
“Created in the image of God,” man also expresses the truth of his relationship with God the Creator by the beauty of his artistic works. Indeed, art is a distinctively human form of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being’s inner riches. Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man’s effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by the truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he has created. Like any other human activity, art is not an absolute end in itself, but is ordered to and ennobled by the ultimate end of man.” ¹
Art is fundamentally a good thing used to convey truth whether it is secular or religious. Of course, not everything that is fundamentally good is good. If it’s good, it depends on its given substance and not its inherent substance. Food is tasty in its inherent substance but the given substance of vanilla ice cream with anchovy chunks is completely unpalatable. The same thing with the media. Media has a good inherent substance but completely removed from morality the given substance is sinful. It’s not so much that we have to worry whether we can morally partake in media but rather if we should. Of course, this is not to say that we can partake in media that is inherently sinful such as pornography. This is also not to say that all media is good to consume or that every movie with sin in it is bad. I’ve seen countless movies where the characters participated in sinful behavior. One of them is a hard-rated R movie with drugs and swearing and yet it remains one of my favorite Christmas movies. This is because I recognize the good in the thesis of the film while also recognizing the film is not necessarily a great moral teacher.
“Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good.” ² This is the framework through which we should view all things. We can learn from the media we view and listen to without necessarily accepting every single part as true and moral. When you view the media, think about what is good about it and what is bad. What is the thesis of a film and what does the church teach?
Take Nocturnal Animals (2016) for example. The movie contains profanity and themes of sexual abuse. However, it also presents an important message about what revenge and resentment does to the soul. Yes, it has sinful aspects but also good ones. Even the sinful elements though it isn’t glorifying. It’s recognizing their existence. Compare this to a movie such as Movie 43 (2013). This movie contains strong pervasive crude and sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity, language, some violence, and drug use. I highly discourage watching this movie and it’s not because of what it contains which had earned its R-rating. I discourage it because none of the content serves a purpose other than displaying and endorsing debauchery. There’s no lesson or claim. It’s simply a movie trying to push the boundaries of sensibility. Then there are movies such as Transformers (2007) maybe there’s the occasional questionable joke but not that bad. However, there’s not a lesson or claim either. Its not passing these moments off as moral or immoral. Movies like these serve as simply entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we just want to turn off our brains and have a good time. We don’t have to try to pull a lesson out of everything. Just be sure to understand that just because it’s in the movie doesn’t mean it’s moral.
In short, when deciding if you should listen to/view a piece of media, consider what you think you’ll get out of it. Also, be sure you have a good grasp on Christian morality especially if you’re going into higher age ratings so you can separate the good from the bad. We don’t need to cloister ourselves off per se though. Just simply have a good Catholic lens through which to filter it.
¹CCC 2501
²Romans 9:11