We've heard of "what not to wear."  What about, "What not to watch?"

An attender at our church emailed me the following:

Recently, myself and some people close to me have been wondering what the Bible says about what is OK to watch or read as entertainment.  These questions stem from a couple of different things.
 
First, TV shows like Dexter on Showtime and True Blood on HBO that center around topics and ideas that are clearly non-Christian.  In Dexter, the main character is a forensic scientist that kills serial killers.  True Blood is a show about vampires, so there are the usual themes of lust, blood, and murder.  If you nitpicked the themes of TV shows, you would probably be hard-pressed to find even a handful that do not center around one of these themes.
 
Second, the future release of a film which disturbs me, entitled Antichrist.  The film appears to be after some audience shock value, but nonetheless it poses the question of would it be OK for a Christian to view such a film?
 
Does the Bible give us any information regarding these questions, or can you offer any guidance?
 
I find myself watching a movie or reading a book sometimes, and asking myself, "Is it OK to be entertained by these things?"

Great  question.  So what does the Bible say about all of this?

First, the Bible tells us that we should be careful what we ingest.  In the 101st Psalm, the Bible says:  "I will set no worthless thing before my eyes..." (Psalm 101:3a, NASB).

 "Vile thing" (which is the way the NIV translates the Hebrew) is a difficult translation.  There is little doubt that it is associated with evil, but its meaning is obscure.  It suggests associating yourself with the netherworld (cf. Canaanite mythology), and the goal is to steer clear of any such associations.  It goes beyond avoiding evil, and intimates setting before our eyes something that draws us into evil, or brings evil into our lives in ways that should have been avoided.  Calvin translated it as, "I will not set a wicked thing before my eyes."  Leslie C. Allen's translation is: "I have set before my eyes no wicked purpose."  Willem A. Vangerem translates it as "I will set before my eyes no vile thing." 

Let's offer a cultural translation:  I will set before my eyes nothing that is obviously evil for evil's sake, or cultivates evil in my heart.  Or as Theodoret of Cyr wrote in the early centuries of the Christian movement on this verse, "I walked in the innocence of my heart in my house."

The upcoming release of Antichrist by Lars von Trier has raised the question of "what not to watch" for more than just Christians.  When passed as fit for general consumption by the British Board of Film Classification, an article in London's Daily Mail ran the headline:  "What DOES it takes for a film to get banned these days?"  The film plumbs grotesque new depths of sexual explicitness, excruciating violence and degradation, causing even the most mainstream of critics to wonder if there is a line of decency that should not be crossed.  In the article, Christopher Hart writes

"You do not need to see Lars von Trier's Antichrist …to know how revolting it is.  I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I - and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency.  But merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-churning, and enough to form a judgment.  As Ernest Hemingway said of obscenity in a justifiably disgusting image, you don't need to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know they're scabs."