MUSIC!  Kids love it, parents hate it!  Or something like that.  I don’t know what that means.  I’m just trying to figure out a good way to introduce the obscure 1982 film, Rock: It’s Your Decision!

Rock: It’s Your Decision is an hour-long film about a teenager named Jeff (played by Ty Taylor, who I assume is the son of the film’s director, John Taylor).  Jeff and his mom have been fighting about the music that he listens to.  She thinks that it’s way too secular and therefore, a bad influence.  She turns to her church’s youth minister and asks him to talk to Jeff.  The very earnest (and kinda creepy, to be honest) minister challenges Jeff to spend two weeks only listening to Christian music and actually researching what the lyrics of his favorite songs are actually saying and what other people his age get out of those lyrics.  Jeff agrees and then, at the end of the movie, gives a ten minute sermon to his youth group in which he reveals what he has discovered.

What’s interesting is that, up until he delivers his sermon, Jeff comes across like not that bad of a guy.  Sure, he takes himself too seriously and he’s kinda boring and I know that, when I was in high school, he was exactly the type of nonentity that I would dread having to sit next to.  But other than that, he seems almost reasonable.  Stupid but reasonable.

But then he gives his sermon and — OH.  MY.  GOD.  It’s as if stepping up to the pulpit unleashes Jeff’s inner douchebag.  Suddenly, he’s pacing around the stage and talking about how musicians are all homosexual drug addicts.  He talks about how, when he listened to secular music, he would actually get possessed.  Even worse, when he talks about listening to that terrible music, Jeff acts it out for us.  He turns on an imaginary stereo.  He talks about how much he used to love hearing a good “get down beat.”  He starts physically dancing to the music in his head.  Scornfully, he reminds us that modern songs have titles like, “One of These Nights” and “Let There Be Rock.”  He points out that even so-called “safe” singers still sing about sex.  His audience, of course, sits there in rapt attention.  The youth minister watches from the back of the room and you can tell that he’s mentally high-fiving himself.  Jeff goes on and on until finally, he shatters a vinyl record on a church pew.  (Amazingly evil demons do not immediately fly out of the remains of the record….)

What makes all of this especially amusing is that the songs and musicians that Jeff so vehemently condemns are basically the same songs and bands that my parents used to listen to back before I was even born.  (And they continued to listen to them even after I was born, regardless of how many times I begged my mom not to sing along to the oldies station while driving me to school.)  The next time I find myself arguing with my Dad, I’ll know that it’s AC/DC’s fault.  (Or maybe I’ll just blame Captain and Tenille because, according to Jeff, they’re all equally bad…)

According to Mike “McBeardo” McPadden in the book Heavy Metal Movies, this film was specifically made for showing in churches and Christian schools.  As such, it’s a very low-budget film that mainly features amateur actors.  Instead of using idealized sets or costumes, it was actually filmed in someone’s house and at a real mall and in a real church and everyone pretty much wore their own clothes and, as a result, the film does have some anthropological value.  Having watched Rock: It’s Your Decision, I at least now kinda know what some people were like in 1982.

Anyway, for those of you who just want to jump to the good part, you can watch Jeff’s “sermon” below.

And, for all of my fellow history nerds who want to get the full 1982 experience, you can watch the entire film below.