Worldviews in Entertainment: Starting the Conversation

This past week, I had the opportunity to engage with middle and high school students on the topic of entertainment. In the course of four 2 ½ hour sessions, we talked about some popular YA fiction and watched four movies: Maleficent; Captain America: Winter Soldier; The Amazing Spiderman, and Ender’s Game. (Most of them had read or seen Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Guardians of the Galaxy and Divergent,  I was looking for something that was new to them and wasn't about sparkly vampires).

In order to explore the worldviews, we used the following template of questions for a discussion at the end of each movie:

• What’s wrong with the world according to the story? What’s the proposed solution?
• Who are the heroes/villains, and why?
• What does the story suggest are important virtues and unfortunate vices?
• What things does the story just assume (rather than argue) are true or real?
• What does it mean to be human?
• Does the story make a difference between someone who does heroic things vs. someone who is a hero (or someone who does villainous things vs. someone who is a villain)? Is there a difference to be made? 
• What does this movie want you to believe is the secret to a good or meaningful life? Does that work in the real world?
• Does the story make sin/goodness look compelling? Boring? Revolting? Irrelevant?
• Many popular stories confirm either what we hope is true about the world or what we fear it true about the world. Do you see that in this story?
• Is God (or are Christians) present in the story? If so, is the portrayal honest? What about representations of the people and beliefs in other worldviews?