Movies and music have come to form a major part of our lives. Movies, a form of art has been around for a few hundred years, but music, for as long as the beginning of time.

These two strong forms of art have changed in the sense of the content they portray, but it’s goal, which is to inform and entertain, has not really changed. The content has gone from pure unadulterated entertainment and enlightenment to the portrayal of dark acts of the occult, seeking to not just inform, but also to corrupt.

Simply put, we have gone from being informed and entertained to being corrupted and deformed, if not transformed. Oscar Wilde was right, he said “first art will imitate life, and then life will imitate art”. Our movies and songs went from portraying content of our normal day-to-day lives to our lives trying to mimic whatever the TV box displays.

Growing up in the early 2000s, we began to see music videos showing our favourite musicians dress half naked, very much different from how they lived or dressed on a daily basis or in real life. Because somehow, the music industry sought for better ways to entice and keep people clamouring for more. Nudity sells fast like hot akara. It is why, at every turn, whether on billboards or on TV shows, there is enough nudity to last you a lifetime. This got worse in the mid to late 2000s with female artists particularly, who sometimes took to the stage with no underwear, giving their adoring fans a view of everything under.
And with the allure of being recognized as a “soji” guy or girl, our people copied whatever these ‘gods’, as they have come to be seen or esteemed, did. Now, we complain so much about how bad indecency has increased and how rape is on the rise. This is no coincidence.

Men are moved by what they see and most times it doesn’t matter if what they see is a 10 year old girl or a 30 year old woman. Age is just a number when the mind already tainted beholds sights like that. To them, it is one and the same, whether young or old. Babe na babe! Today, mothers confidently buy bum shorts for their little girls who walk the streets in them, as they feel they’re still young and innocent and so there could possibly be no problem. You see, the problem is that we have gotten too used to whatever pop culture portrays, and it has come to form the basic life of most Nigerians.

Currently, we have a certain Naira Marley who has fans all across the country, who pride themselves in leaving their belts at home, only to go about with their pants down to their knees, with only their hands to support them. And to them, it is trendy. Whatever a celebrity does, it must be copied. We have lost control or a sense of responsibility. The result is a generation of young people without an identity, gravitating in ignorance on their way to oblivion. Since when did a bunch of pant-sagging, hemp-smoking, buttocks-tapping, and poorly cladded musicians become the standard for living? Since we lost ourselves in the media and the TV box. Since our values and beliefs that our fathers fought for with their lives have been swept under the rug. Since we have left God and made gods out of ourselves and objects meant for serving us.

Also in the early 2000s, movies like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix were released. Great movies at the time, at least to most of us. These movies opened us up to the possibility and the reality if magic. You see, the human mind has been made with a desire for the supernatural, a yearning for a sense of awe, hence the success of the aforementioned movies, especially the epic adventures by J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowlings. In the USA, kids took to Harry Potter like fire takes to fuel. People started exploring magic and the dark acts, astrology, Yoga and an interest in the Zodiac also skyrocketed. And as of last year, 2019, over a million Americans identified as witches, with 20% of that population frok New York. Ironic!
In a land where God or any thought or mention of the supernatural or the possibility of something bigger than the physical, has so often been rejected by so many groups, it’s ironic to see and hear of so many people, young and old, coming out to claim they practice witchcraft and magic.

Movies are powerful. And so are images. Throw in sound and the deal is all but sealed. A quick recap of how it started. The first ever movie made with sound was The Jazz Singer in 1927, while the first movie made with colour was the 1935 adaptation, Becky Sharp, with the first computer generated imagery (CGI) movie dropping much later in 1973. And with those improvements came increased influence of cinema on culture, most of which has been negative, at least to the discerning eye.
At the beginning, movies were adaptations of novels and Bible stories, as movies like The Ten Commandments of 1956, Samson and Delilah of 1949, and Sodom and Gomorrah of 1962, prove.
Perhaps the limited technology at the time kept the mind of movie makers from making films that required special effects. Yet we were better off then than we currently are.

Yes, images are powerful, they stick to our brains longer than sound does. There is something about us that desires to see what we’re following or hearing. This for instance was the major reason people like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in the early 1500s, to aid worship through imagery. Hollywood and knows this and so they have come up with new ways to wow the audience, inventing new ways to tell stories and hypnotizing us in the process.

Super Hero movies like Batman, Iron Man and Superman which made their ways to our screens in the early to mid 2000s, have also played a big role in our lives, whether we know it or not. In America where these movies are made, kids and adults alike, idolise these TV characters. They have costumes for every known superhero. But the idolatry doesn’t stop there. Many people have come to develop a believe in these superheroes, thinking that help and good can actually come from man. What this has caused is that, when going through a tough spot, people wish for Batman or Superman to come to the rescue, and when they can not reconcile reality with fiction, it leaves them high and dry.

Maleficent, a Disney film, portrays a witch in the titular role, played by Angelina Jolie, who has horns and tremendous power. In the movie, she is seen as the ultimate good as the kingdom of men are too corrupt to save themselves, so she comes in and saves the day.
Disney have come to be known as the child-friendly arm of Hollywood, because most of their shows or movies are animated, but that is just another hoax. Witchcraft and homosexuality are constantly being included in their movies and the subtle but powerful line, mostly used by their array of princesses “follow your heart”. The grownups can barely stand, yet even worse can be said about posterity as their tender minds are currently being obliterated right before our eyes without our knowing. You wonder why kids these days are growing up with little or no regard for societal values? They are merely “following their hearts”. Wonder why violence and homosexuality and gender dysphoria are on the rise? Look no further than Hollywood and maybe poor parenting.

Follow me! Movies like Doctor Strange and Godzilla, further buttress this point of salvation coming from evil or witchcraft in ways never before seen in cinematic history.
The beasts in Godzilla for example, are of compelling sizes and the men in the movie talk of them as gods, and we as their subjects who are at their mercy, and must look to them for help. The beasts rise from the water and some from volcanoes and mountains. One is locked up in ice. These bear much semblance to what Revelation talks about, for those that know their Bibles. In one scene, for instance, the three headed beast is made to look very big while the Cross is made to look smaller in comparison, as if to say the beasts will triumph.

Beasts in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, another J. K. Rowlings adapted movie, has a horde of fantastical beasts too, on par only with those mentioned in the Book of Revelation. What this means is that, when these beasts start showing up in the far distant future, people will warm up to them, instead of running from them. They will take sides with them against the forces of Light. It is gradual conditioning of the mind and we do not even know what is transpiring right before our eyes. To us, it is pure, unadulterated entertainment but to Hollywood, it is mind conditioning. Ever wondered why they call these shows “program”? They are programming the minds of men. Because unlike us, they know that we are being changed into whatever we spend time beholding.

How about the famous film, Venom, where a symbiotic organism forms a relationship with a human being and basically controls him, giving him extraordinary power? This is a portrayal of demon possession made to look cool, such that in time, men will crave to be possessed by shape shifting entities, so far as they are imbued with power. Power, another thing man deeply craves, of which Hollywood knows too well as to exploit for their good. In the Venom movie, the symbiont is an alien from another planet, this takes us into another popular Hollywood genre of alien movies.
In the portrayal of aliens in movies like Superman and the 2016 movie, Arrival, aliens are seen as extraterrestrial creatures that we should embrace since they are more powerful, more civilised and more technologically advanced than us. The theory of aliens is no different from demons. Simply put, aliens are demons, since both seek to possess and control. In fact, my friend watched so much of these alien movies that at some point, he started believing that aliens were real.
NASA tells us how they are yet to discover any substantial form of life on other planets, yet news outlets and entertainment giant, Hollywood always sell to us the idea of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In the 2002 movie, Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale in the lead role, the lives of animals is shown to be more valuable than the lives of men. For instance, in one particular scene, a dog is killed but before the trigger is shown, the camera is taken off the dog. But all of the thousand of men that are killed in the movie are carefully shown by the camera. What this means is that, our minds are getting used to seeing violence and the taking of life as normal. With all the save the planet stuff and animal rights agendas being preached in the West, the Whiteman is gradually beginning to make more of trees and animals than of men.

Finally, while special effects can be applied in making most movie scenes, no special effects are used in making sex scenes. It is real body-on-body foreplay. No gimmicks. Movies like 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Shape of Water, The Last King of Scotland, most of which are biopics, have full frontal and back nudity. There is so much sex scenes in movies this days that one doesn’t need to look for pornography to get his or her groove on. They get the whole package of violence, vulgarity, obscenity, depravity, nudity and a dose of sex all spiced with a slice of entertainment in one movie.

Hollywood’s portrayal or rather misportrayal of love as sex and feelings has made for very confused relationships. In the film’s, when you’re in love, you have sex and kiss. In the high school movies, 16 year old girls are encouraged by their mothers to ensure they are only disvirgined by their high school sweethearts on Prom Nights, in order not to regret afterwards. You ask where teenage pregnancies are coming from? Hollywood makes it look cool. You are ridiculed, almost persecuted, if you are 16 years old but without a boyfriend/girlfriend. Everyone wants to get hooked, yet most are still lonely because sooner rather than later, they find out that love and relationships are way beyond sex and some fuzzy feelings.

In conclusion, I can go on and on in critiquing these movies and our obsession with pop culture, but it won’t do you any harm to be careful about what you watch, if at all you must watch. The deception has since begun, and if by now you are still ignorant or in doubt that we are in a battle for our souls, wake up! The devil will not come and stand before you with horns and a long tail, that way you’d know he is the devil. This is how he stands before you.