Doesn't that apply to every public appearance of James "Snakehead" Carville and his wife, Mary Matalin?
Regards,
Posted on 09/16/2025 7:08:04 PM PDT by Morgana
Brett McCracken is the Senior Editor and Director of Communications at The Gospel Coalition. Every year, he posts his list of favorite movies and TV shows, often on the Gospel Coalition itself, and it is an under reported scandal that his favorite films frequently frequently contain graphic sex and nudity, both straight and gay.
McCracken’s Top 20 list of favorite shows in 2021, published on the Gospel Coalition platform, featured several that were rated ‘R’ for scenes of sex and nudity; his 2022 best movies list is full of graphic sex and nudity, and mercifully, his best films of 2023′ only featured a bit of sex and nudity.
For example, let’s review one of his “Best Movies of 2022′ that TGC published: the pornographic Norwegian film The Worst Person in the World.
This movie is rated R or 18+ in most countries for graphic sex and nudity throughout. Common Sense Media reveals that the film “follows the life of twenty something Julie (Renate Reinsve) as she navigates her way through life and various relationships. It deals with adult themes and sexual acts — both intercourse and oral sex — are portrayed on-screen, including full-frontal nudity.”
Kids in Mind has more details. Here is a sampling. Viewer discretion is advised.
After a woman breaks up with a man, they kiss passionately on a sofa, they move to the floor where the man removes the woman’s shorts and underwear (we see her bare legs, hip and the side of her buttock) and performs oral sex on her; the man stands up later and we see him without pants (his genitals and bare legs are shown). A man and a woman kiss passionately and remove each other’s clothing (we see his bare chest and abdomen); he thrusts on top of her (we see pubic hair, bare buttocks and bare breasts).
A woman lifts her shirt to show her bare breasts to a man (we see her bare breasts); he’s working and looks at her but is not distracted. A woman looks at another woman’s Instagram photos and we see her striking suggestive poses that reveal her partially bare buttocks, cleavage, abdomen, back and legs.
A woman pulls down a man’s pants in bed, and bites and slaps his bare buttocks (we see his bare buttocks). A man and a woman sit in bed (sex is implied) and we see the woman’s bare breasts and the man’s bare shoulders, chest and legs. A man and a woman sleep in bed together (we see their bare shoulders and sex is implied).
A woman is shown fully nude (we see her bare breasts, legs hips and abdomen) during a hallucination where she removes a soiled tampon and throws it in her father’s face.
During a hallucination, a woman imagines her fully nude body aged and we see her bare breasts, abdomen and buttocks as several people’s hands touch her; she also imagines an infant nursing from her breast.
Despite having the perverse and depraved viewing habit usually reserved for a 16-year-old boy passing the time at 2:00 am in his gooner basement, McCracken is so brazen that he and TGC are offering a $299 course on how to “Learn ways to evaluate and engage films from a Christian perspective.
In 2021, he released a list of his ‘favorite things on TV,’ and we couldn’t help but notice the inclusion of The White Lotus.
Appearing on HBO, this six-episode show is rated TV-M and contains tons of filthy language, sex jokes, sex scenes, copious amounts of male nudity, and some female nudity as well.
In fact, it contains (warning, graphic description ahead) a graphic sex scene featuring two fully nude men, where one has his face in the back-end of the other, doing very homosexual things to his anus with his mouth.
We’ve been able to pinpoint this scene to near the middle, based on online viewer feedback, which means even after he watched this scene, it was not enough to turn his stomach. Instead, McCracken kept on watching more episodes, understanding that he very well may see more of this content in the rest of the season, and then had the gall to list the season as one of his favorite things he watched.
Our criticism of the morality of the man leading The Gospel Coalition seems to have gotten to him, however. While the rest of this content is there, he recently edited this show out of his list of favorites, so that it doesn’t appear.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine, however, we saved it for posterity many years ago.
All this to say, when Brett McCracken releases a lengthy article on TGC criticizing Hollywood’s view of sex, we ought to rightly lambast them as the hypocrites they are. In 2018 McCracken wrote:
“The prevalence of sex and sexualized (often naked) bodies in today’s films and TV shows… is just one way Hollywood reveals its understanding of sex as a lust-driven consumer commodity. The very idea of sexual acts and sexualized bodies on a screen, for the gaze of the masses, presents sex in consumer terms—inviting third-party observers into a sexual intimacy that doesn’t belong to them but which feels like their prerogative to consume.”
Talk about ‘thou art the man.’
McCracken is one of these “third-party observers!”
In the same article that he laments the violative aspects of sex on screen, he discusses the film The Shape of Water, an R-rated flick about a romance between a woman and an amphibious beast, which he reviewed and did not like, and which features, in his own words, “an explicit scene of brazen, no-shame interspecies sex.” Kids in Mind again fills in the gap (content warning). (image on link be warned)
Why should anyone ever take them seriously?
there is an actual christian movie review site, I think I met the guy who runs it once?
anyway he is a nice old guy and really likes his movies but I always forget about his site cause I don’t watch TV or movies
but I am going to post it here so I can always search for it
https://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/titles-a.html
Steve Deace correctly stated that if your pastor is too cowardly to bring up Charlie, GET OUT!
BTW, Robin Mark’s “Whe All is Said and Done” should be featured at the funeral. This song encapsulates Charlie’s entire life. It is stunning.
I seriously doubt Brett is a true Christian believer.
I’ve seen a lot of movies over the years but I stopped about 7 years ago now. I’m very happy living movie free these days.
Well, heck, at least he changed his name from Phil.
I got halfway through this and that was more than I wanted to know.
You were thinking of When it’s all been said and done. Your listed song is and Abba song. A good suggestion.
It’s from a Christian attacker...
Why is Protestia at war with The Gospel Coalition?
I get the impression reading this that the Protestia staff who wrote this review never actually watched either the movie or the show under discussion. They rely instead on reviews from other websites concerned primarily with screening shows for childrens’ viewing, which is going to lead to much tighter rules. And it probably takes longer to read their breathless review than to watch the offending scenes onscreen. Don’t misunderstand me. I’d be happy to see a reinstatement of the Hays Code. But we live in 2025. I’m not going to faint at a glimpse of a nekkid person onscreen.
Are there nudity and sex in The Worst Person in the World and The White Lotus? Yes. Is this gratuitous? In my opinion, yes. If I were directing or editing these productions, would I do it differently? Yes.
That said, if I were to put on my King of the Prudes hat and edit The White Lotus, across six episodes in season 1, I could snip out 60 seconds and eliminate all the actual nudity, with time to spare. Across seven episodes in season 2, which is reputed to be a lot sexier, I might need 90 seconds, two minutes at the max, and most of that involves two characters who struck me as the sacrificial bodies offered up to the porn hounds at HBO. Everybody else pretty much keeps their clothes on, although several of the young ladies certainly do justice to their swimsuits when they’re at the pool or the beach in a couple of scenes. In season 3, I’d be back to 60 seconds. It’s mostly a tease, and it’s unnecessary, but HBO built a brand around gratuitous violence and nudity, so I imagine that HBO demanded its pound of flesh.
Mike White gave an interesting interview after season 1 aired in which he said he was uncomfortable with it and had never done that sort of thing in his other work. I’ve always wondered how hard HBO pushed.
I didn’t need a defibrillator to recover.
The Worst Person in the World is a Norwegian film and is shot to European standards. I think the explicit nudity and sex is gratuitous and trashy, but the Europeans ....
Anyhow, as in The White Lotus, it’s brief, basically a tease to sell tickets. And that said, the lead character, Julie, is presented as demoralized and directionless. Her choices are fundamentally selfish and short term. She is drifting aimlessly, and she doesn’t get a redemptive turn at the end. Other characters move ahead, including a squared away young man who wants to marry her and start a family. Julie’s presentation is ultimately bleak and sterile. She is an indictment of the cancer that is rotting the foundations of modern Western society. I imagine that’s why Brett McCracken included it on his list, probably with a warning and disclaimer about the more explicit scenes. The Protestia piece, naturally, doesn’t bother to actually link to McCracken’s review.
Especially with all the woke nonsense these days.
Doesn't that apply to every public appearance of James "Snakehead" Carville and his wife, Mary Matalin?
Regards,
If that is what they are watching and promoting, they should not. Those shows are literally porn.
Rarely anything new worth watching.
And why would they? Once something has been seen it cannot be unseen. We are to guard our heart with all diligence as the Word says.
Because "this is 2025" and porn & sexual sin has become even more prevalent does not make porn & sexual sin any less sinful or less harmful, just because there is so much of it now you have become desensitized to the degree you have become indifferent to it. You need to be exploring why it doesn't bother you vs. criticizing others for being rightfully bothered by it.
Join Facebook—as a male—and get “doctors” throwing porn in your face!
Thank you RW, yes that is exactly why.
I quit watching regular TV years ago because of the nonsense on it. I don’t even own a modern TV, I still own that old style. I don’t have cable and rarely if ever go to the movies.
I’m tired of trash.
My questions are simpler: what do you watch, what do you recommend to others, and how do you identify the very occasional (hopefully good) movies that you are willing to take a chance on?
Your viewing preferences are your own. Period. The culture war question is different. It’s about building a media ecosystem that gives conservative filmmakers and showrunners an opportunity to find an audience.
We’re very good at denouncing the stuff we don’t like, or think we wouldn’t like based on someone else’s review, even when we haven’t seen it ourselves.
Where we are very weak is in identifying good movies and shows, and passing along positive recommendations to others.
I do pay attention to freeper recommendations (and recommendations from many others as well). I’ll watch a trailer and read some reviews before watching. Some I don’t care for, but that’s fine; preferences differ. But some I think are terrific and I’m appreciative for the tip.
What I’m not willing to do is outsource the gatekeeping function to some stranger who may or may not know what he’s talking about. Everyone has blind spots, including people who try to tell me what I can and can’t watch.
He clearly did know what he was talking about, and you acknowledged it. Willfully and intentionally exposing yourself to pornographic / sexually explicit materials is not a matter of "viewing preference" and that is not what this article was about. This was a discussion about the leadership of what is supposed to be a Christian organization both viewing and promoting such materials.
You seem to be trying to get us to jump off into a rabbit hole on other secondary argument. You aren't responding to the point of the article, nor the point of what either of us said.
To repeat: Willfully and intentionally exposing yourself to pornography / sexually explicit materials and in effect encouraging others to do so is generally not regarded as reflecting Christian centered beliefs and values, and this article is written in that context with the leadership of a supposed Christian organization both watching and promoting said materials. How “good the story is”, the plot, etc. is rather irrelevant.
That is the entire point of the article. There are numerous things to choose from, both new and old, that don't contain such materials. And if there weren't, there is obviously the option to not watch anything.
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