The president of Connie Maxwell Children’s Home is joining other adoption advocates in condemning a Warner Brothers horror film that depicts a young adopted orphan girl as a murderer.
Ben DavisThe movie “Orphan” opened July 24 and tells the story of a couple who adopts a young girl named Esther from the local orphanage. The seemingly mild-mannered child goes on a killing rampage.
One early version of the trailer – which apparently was pulled by Warner Brothers – ended with a despondent Esther saying, “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own.” The movie’s promotional poster depicts the lead character, stone-faced and in pigtails, with the teaser line, “There’s Something Wrong With Esther.”
Adoption and orphan advocates fear the movie feeds what already is a natural concern on the part of some couples who are considering adoption, particularly of an older child. Those advocates also fear the movie could lead to some couples deciding altogether not to adopt.
“From reading reviews and watching clips of this disappointing film, I am dismayed at the truly inadequate picture it gives about adopted children,” said Ben Davis, president of Connie Maxwell Children’s Home, a South Carolina Baptist Convention-affiliated institution based in Greenwood. “It simply is another cheap horror film with absolutely no redeeming value that I can find. The premise of a child killing other children and turning on her adopted family is not entertainment but is just a way to make a fast buck through shock value.
“Sadly, the kind of tragedy depicted in this film could possibly happen in a family, whether a child is adopted or is a biological child. To exploit adopted children, however, by showing this gruesome horror and indicating that orphans are mean-spirited and deranged is uncalled for and is totally wrong.”
Davis said there is “no doubt” the film will “harm the whole adoption process greatly.”
“Prospective adoptive parents may think twice about their decisions after receiving the subliminal and overt messages that come from this movie,” he said. “Plus, the hurt that it certainly will bring to adopted children after seeing the trailers and reading about this film will be untold.”
Davis said he hopes people will not “waste time seeing this movie and financially supporting such misguided entertainment.”
To counter the movie, the Christian Alliance for Orphans launched a Web site, OrphansDeserveBetter.org, with pictures of smiling orphans – a direct rebuttal of the movie poster – as well as orphan facts.
Playing off the movie’s theme, the Web site shows a picture of a needy orphan with the headline, “There’s Something Wrong With Millions of Children Having No Family.” The Web site is urging Warner Brothers to contribute a part of the proceeds from the movie to help orphans. It is also asking visitors to the Web site to submit their positive stories about orphans.
The United Nations estimates there are 145 million orphans in the world. There also are 130,000 children in the U.S. foster care system waiting to be adopted, the Web site says.
“[When] you imagine kids who are growing up without parents, they already have the wind in their faces and face great challenges. This just doesn’t help them to be lumped in with all the horror figures of Hollywood lore,” Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, said recently on the “Albert Mohler” radio program. “It hurts them in another way, and that’s fanning natural fears parents have about bringing an orphan into their home, whether through adoption or foster care or otherwise. It could rob these kids of the one thing that they most need in the world, which is a loving family.”
Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Seminary, said the movie got him “riled up,” even though he acknowledges he’s not the “kind of person” who typically rails against Hollywood. Moore and his wife adopted two boys from a Russian orphanage, and he recently wrote a book, “Adopted for Life,” which spotlights adoption.
“I think this movie is going to hurt kids,” he said on the Mohler program while serving as guest host. “And I think the answer to this movie is not simply to rail against (it and say), ‘Can you believe Hollywood’s doing this?’ Instead, it’s listening to Hollywood and saying, ‘OK, we understand the question that you’re trying to pose, but we’re going to give you a different answer. We’ve seen a different story.’?”
Moore said it’s essential for Christians to keep the gospel at the center of the discussion.
“It’s not just a matter of rescuing children,” he said. “It’s a matter of seeing the gospel and of living out the gospel and of benefiting ourselves and our churches with what the gospel is all about.”
– With reporting from Baptist Press