On November 5th, 2014, the Country Music Awards (CMA) aired on television as country music’s biggest night of the year. Multimedia, such as music on television has been growing extraordinarily quickly in the last few years. Shows like this attract a huge audience, and therefore carry a lot of weight when something is said or done because so many people are watching. We have seen multiple examples of this. One example would be Miley Cyrus’ 2013 performance on the Video Music Awards with Robin Thicke. Everybody talks about what happens on these shows. So, there are a lot of restrictions established by the creators of these shows to try to deter unwanted things from happening.
Sometimes, these shows take these restrictions too far. One of these restrictions for the 2014 awards was that they didn’t want any references to Jesus Christ on stage. I found this incredibly interesting, since one of the main foundations in the Country music genre is faith. So, why would they make this decision for such a large event? They truth is, they don’t want to offend any of the viewers. They want to make the show as unbiased as possible. I can understand the idea behind this. You don’t want people to stop watching your show because they dislike the ideas being presented, but it doesn’t make sense to me to try and take out something that is an integral part of a music genre. While most likely feeling awkward and out of place because of this restriction, most artists that performed on stage played song that didn’t have any Christ references; however, Carrie Underwood was an exception. Not only was she in the spotlight because of emceeing and her baby bump, she stole the show by singing her new song “Something in the Water.” This song explicitly references being changed by God through the water during a baptism. This performance caused an ample amount of controversy, but Mrs. Underwood did a fantastic job of containing her poise as she responded to the critics, “I’m not the first person to sing about God, Jesus, faith [or] any of that, and I won’t be the last. And it won’t be the last for me, either. If you don’t like it, change the channel.” This response showed us just how strong Carrie Underwood is. It is great to see that, even when people gain mainstream popularity, there are still some who will defend there faith no matter what.
We’ve begun to see this in multiple forms of media, not just in music television. Noah, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Wild, and Unbroken are examples of films that incorporate faith into their films. In music, we’ve seen an increase in Christian, or faith lyrics. Lecrae has hit number one on the Billboard top 100. A few years ago, lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan was asked in an interview where he thought the future of music would go. What would be talked about next? He told the reporter God and faith are the future of music. Sex, drugs, money, and empty love have been talked about so much, there’s nothing else to talk about; and he was right. In almost every sort of media it has been the highlighted topic talked about in the last few years. Many different opinions have been talked about since these new risings of faith talk have been brought up. Many people think if the movies or songs aren’t completely following the Bible, and not adding anything extra, then they are bad and shouldn’t be seen.
On the contrary, these pieces of media are the best stepping stones we’ve had in a long time in opening up the conversation about faith. Whether or not the films are 100% accurate gives us the opportunity to speak to other Christians or to non-christians about our faith and our thoughts. This is an important part about being a Christian. God created the church with community in mind; and without conversation, a community can’t thrive. So, don’t forget that this is a hugely important time for Christianity in media. Let’s make the most of it!
If you’d like to get more information about Carrie Underwood’s performance, read this article.
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