Miley Cyrus Hits The Bong December 18, 2010

For those of you living under a rock, at Disney Channel star, Miley Cyrus’ eighteenth birthday she smoked a bong a salvia. A friend caught it on camera, and sold his video to the website TMZ.

Old news, I know. But new opinions.

Today, I saw a news show that my father was watching report that kids are trying to find salvia for themselves, just because Miley did it. I can’t find any reports of this online, but I know it must be true to some extent. Kids don’t know what to do, they need someone to look up to, an example. Their parents might work for a while, but parents become “geeks” in the tween stage. When Miley Cyrus hit the scene, she had an image of a dainty little small-town girl who reflected the greatest values. That’s not true at all. Her father was a best-selling country artist.

Here’s the thing: kids didn’t look up to Miley Cyrus, they looked up to Miley Stewart, who Miley portrayed on the Disney Channel sitcom, Hannah Montana. It’s not uncommon at all for a star to portray a character that shares their name. Everyone who performs under their own name in any situation (Especially when someone else is writing the script.) is performing a different character to some extent. I know that I do that.

“Doug” is a character, who just happens to share my name. He’s not a lot like me at all. I am myself when I do vlogs and stuff, but in other videos, Doug is Kermit the Frog.

Anydoodles, kids look up to a character, which is understandable, and the portrayer of that character does something bad, kids want to do that bad thing too.

This reflects the responsibility that children’s entertainers have. We need to think, we can’t tweet the way Kanye West does. (Sometimes I deliberate long and hard about tweets.) We can’t be perfect, but we have to be darn close to it.

I was sick yesterday and decided to watch a Disney Channel film. I admired the brand that Disney Channel has, they have a pool of performers that they use for everything, and kids love it. In a way, its kind of what I want to do with Blue Squid Productions. I want a brand with a collection of characters that can be used for anything. (More like the Muppets then Disney Channel.)

As Christians, if you are a Christian reader, as I assume most of my readers are, because I… direct Christian films, we can’t censor what kids are watching, and we shouldn’t try, but we can do two things SUPPLEMENT it, and DISCUSS it.

Supplement it with wholesome media, Christian shows. For every episode of Hannah Montana they watch, show them a VeggieTales video (Or, more preferably, a Blue Squid Productions video!)

Discuss it as Christians. Talk with your kids about what they’ve watched, and explain why it should/shouldn’t be listened to. Hannah Montana can tell the kids that you won’t be happy until you have a boyfriend, you tell your kids that Jesus didn’t have a boyfriend… or a girlfriend.

Christians are fighting a losing battle against old media, but we’re going to win in the end. They might have Mickey Mouse leading their army, but we’ve got God on our side.

And thus ends the long-rambly blog post about nothing and everything.