Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend
Barbara Nicolosi tells captive audience ‘what’s left to do’
By Theresa Thomas
NOTRE DAME — Barbara Nicolosi’s eyes darted around the auditorium.
“Here I am, at this conference, with all these academic and holy people. I feel a little like that Sesame Street song, “One of These Things is Not Like the Others.” she quipped, and the audience laughed. Nicolosi was present to offer her talk “Hollywood and the Sexual Revolution: What’s Left to Do?” as part of the University of Notre Dame’s third annual Edith Stein project, on Saturday, March 29.
While unique in style and presentation, Barbara was indeed very much like the other high quality, spiritual and academic speakers brought on campus to offer an optimistic perspective on the future of feminism. Speaking to about 200 people in McKenna Auditorium at the Center for Continuing Education at Notre Dame, Nicolosi began by stating what she would not talk about.
“I’m not going to talk about Act One.” (The organization founded by her which trains and mentors Christians of all denominations for careers in mainstream film and television), she said, “and I’m not going to talk about ‘Behind the Screen,’” her book of 17 essays of Christian writers of film and television, “or how to start a career in the entertainment industry.”
Although there has been recent attention and controversy surrounding the performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on the Notre Dame campus this year, Nicolosi also said she was not going to address that topic at length either. She did briefly challenge the mostly young, female audience, “If you don’t like it (VM), write something better. If we want cultural influence we have to create culture.” Then she dug into the topic at hand.
First, Nicolosi began, Hollywood matters. This is a self-evident truth. Hollywood matters because art matters; stories matter; entertainment matters. Hollywood is all part of the culture that influences people.
Second, she said, America needs inspirational role models on the big screen. She recounted that in 1977, just a few years after the “mess of Roe v Wade, gas lines and a prevalent ugly feminism,” the movie “Star Wars” was released, and it inspired Americans to be better ... to fight evil ... to be heroes. Nicolosi stated that America today yearns to be inspired as well.
Nicolosi attended the Sexual Health in Entertainment (SHINE) awards in Hollywood several years ago — an event she labeled “one of the most mind-numbing crass events I have ever attended” — and recounted that organizers were raucously celebrating their radical sexual agenda successes, beginning with Lucy and Ricky Ricardo of “I Love Lucy” TV fame pushing their twin beds together, continuing with the television character Maude choosing abortion and TV’s “Roseanne” experiencing a lesbian kiss. SHINE organizers ended the event with the comment, “We have so much left to do.” Nicolosi paused at this retelling, and stared intently and seriously at her audience. “No, we have so much work to do,” she insisted.
Then Nicolosi spoke hopefully. According to her, Hollywood teems with Generation Xers (a term used to describe the generation of Americans born in the 1960s and 1970s) who are dealing with the aftermath of the sexual revolution and are just now coming to power. She told of a lesbian writer who was seeking baptism in the Catholic Church for her partner’s child because both women had grown up without religion or guidance, and wanted something more for the little girl. Another woman she knows whose mother had multiple abortions, shared that she grew up tormented, wondering if her mother regretted having her. She told Nicolosi that she doesn’t want her children to grow up with the same fear and confusion.
Nicolosi stated that the young elite who are coming to power in Hollywood now are the first generation that has grown up with absent or divorced parents, and are victims of the sexual revolution. Since they were hurt by their mother’s abortions, parent’s divorces and the laissez faire sexual attitude surrounding them growing up, they are ready for something different. While speaking at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) recently, Nicolosi said that she asked for a raise of hands to determine how many were pro-life, pro-choice or undecided. An overwhelming majority of the audience (80 percent) self identified as pro-life. The tide is changing, stated Nicolosi, optimistically.
What’s left to be done, concluded Nicolosi, is to create beauty. She challenged her young audience to provide quality art in music, theater, film and writing, that illuminates Christian Catholic truth. “Please give your children 10 years of piano lessons and expose them to the arts,” she pleaded. She challenged scriptwriters to assume an audience that is confused and ignorant of basic truths, and ‘show,’ not tell the stories.
She disagreed with the idea that movies should not contain sexual themes. Sex, adultery and homosexuality are addressed in the Bible. “It’s not the topic that’s the problem in storytelling,” stated Nicolosi, “It’s the treatment of it.”
Finally, Nicolosi referred to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI)’s idea that sacred art, inspired by faith, both reflects and informs culture. “If you could do for God, what pagans do for money, we could change the world.”
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