Hollywood and God
Veggie Tales Gets Edited
By Daniel Muniz

Parents who have Veggie Tales DVDs and videos already know that these cartoons carry an innocuous religious theme. At the end of every show Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber always recite a verse from scripture along with some sort of moral message about the episode that they were just in.

The animated series is fun for kids to watch especially for its silliness and humor. The Christian principles and moral values are presented in a clever and easy to understand format. And it is this religious simplicity that made Bob and Larry a hit among millions of Americans.

In fact, over 50 million copies of Veggie Tale DVDs and VHS tapes have been sold since 1993.

Pretty impressive since this series quietly started out among Christian bookstores and then gained enormous popularity. Veggie Tales eventually found its way to major retailers even though it never had any broadcasting or syndication on television. It was simply a good product with a good message that turned into an incredible phenomenon that even some non-religious parents found acceptable.

Now enter Hollywood.

The studio network of NBC smelled an opportunity and offered Big Idea, the owners of Veggie Tales, a Saturday morning time slot. Big Idea knew that some editing would be involved and they also understood that certain episodes from their library would not even be considered for airing because of their explicit religious content. However, they also felt that the Christian message in the selected episodes would remain intact.

Wrong!

The editors put Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber through a food processor by eliminating references to God.

At first, NBC lied by explaining that the extensive edits were really the result of time constraints and that it had nothing to do with finding its Christian message objectionable. However, after a bit of prodding by family organizations, NBC then admitted that they purposely removed certain religious elements from the episodes because they wanted to have a purely secular type of values based show instead of a Christian one.
 

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In a statement to the press, NBC explained:
 

"NBC is committed to the positive messages and universal values of Veggie Tales… Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible with these positive messages, while being careful not to advocate any one religious point of view." Source: The Los Angeles Times

Of course, the hypocrisy cannot be avoided.

The network has absolutely no problem airing sordid tabloid stories about the crude behavior of celebrities as well as other garbage. In addition, they are very careful not to offend Muslim sensitivities, especially in refusing to show the Danish cartoons ridiculing Islam, but they have no problem in airing a Madonna concert in which she would be crucified on a cross while wearing a crown of thorns.

In fact, offending Christians is no big deal to NBC executives but they somehow find a Christian message in their broadcasting, no matter how innocuous, offensive. It is ludicrous for the network and their lawyers to assert that foul language and programming with violence and gratuitous sex is not bad for children to watch but mentioning God is. There is clearly a double standard on that part of Hollywood that reflects a either a blatant bias against Christianity or a dismal disconnect with a segment of America.

And after seeing how NBC sliced up Veggie Tales, creator Phil Vischer now regrets going mainstream even though it represents an opportunity to reach a much bigger audience. Vischer feels that he would never have made this deal if he would have known how adamant the editors were in removing God from his series. He explains:
 

"I would have declined partly because I knew a lot of fans would feel like it was a sellout or it was done for money," he said, adding that "there weren't enough shows that could work well without those (religious) references." Source: The Associated Press

Fortunately, Veggie Tales is already a big success since there is a healthy market for Christian based children’s shows. Sadly, the only way for Big Idea to coexist with Hollywood is to remove God from its series which is contrary to what the creators had in mind when they first created Veggie Tales.

But in summary, it is amazing the foul language and bad behavior that Hollywood feels is acceptable for children to watch on television but it finds references to God as being totally unacceptable. Perhaps there is no way to bridge that gap because Hollywood lives in its own world of perceptions. If that is the case, then so be it. Viable alternatives still exist and Veggie Tales has proved to be such an example.

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