Everyone knows what the angelic nanny Mary Poppins meant when she sang: "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."
Hollywood superstar Chris Pratt put a different spin on that during the recent MTV Movie & TV Awards. After receiving the Generation Award, he told fans to "listen up," because he was speaking "as your elder." Then he recited what CNN called his "Nine Rules for Living."
It was a strange set of commandments -- part potty humor, part youth-pastor sermon. But Rule No. 4 said this: "When giving a dog medicine, put the medicine in a little piece of hamburger and they won't even know they're eating medicine."
That's what Pratt was doing. The megastar of Guardians of the Galaxy and the Jurassic Park reboots followed the MTV rules and used some mildly off-color humor -- like how to poop at a party without smelling up the bathroom. These MTV celebrity-fests are known for their racy fashion statements and crude language.
That humor was Pratt's "hamburger." What caused a tsunami of Internet clicks was his "medicine," speaking as an out-of-the-closet Hollywood Christian.
Rule No. 2 proclaimed: "You have a soul. Be careful with it."
Rule No. 6 was rather personal: "God is real. God loves you. God wants the best for you. Believe that, I do."
Rule No. 8 was just as blunt: "Learn to pray. It's easy, and it's so good for your soul."
There was more to this drama than the rare chance to hear a "Hollywood A-lister tell people to pray," noted film critic Titus Techera of the Claremont Institute. Pratt was trying to turn celebrity worship upside down.
"Celebrities don't create themselves -- nor do they simply come out of the cynical manipulations of Hollywood. They come out of us," he noted, in an Ave Maria Radio essay. "We want something we can worship now, easily. … Above all, we love these celebrations because, unlike church, they don't require that we sacrifice our pride. That's the same as saying that we tend to find church boring rather than exciting. …
"The best celebrities can do is bear well the burden of our wrong-headed worship -- not to throw it off, but gently and humorously to point us in the direction of what's truly divine and thus worth worshiping. This is what Chris Pratt did with his nine rules."
It's possible that Pratt was more candid than he appeared to be in MTV's broadcast. In recent years, the actor has become increasingly candid about his faith, even during times of personal turmoil. At last year's Teen Choice Awards -- his first public event after announcing his separation from his wife, actress Anna Faris -- he said: "I would not be here with the ease and grace that I have in my heart without my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
At the MTV award show, Pratt concluded with rule No. 9, and some complex faith-based language.
"Nobody is perfect. People will tell you that you are perfect just the way that you are. You are not! You are imperfect. You always will be, but there is a powerful force that designed you that way," he said. "If you are willing to accept that, you will have grace. And grace is a gift. … That grace was paid for with somebody else's blood. Do not forget that. Don't take that for granted."
Producers switched from one camera to another after Pratt's reference to "a powerful force that designed you that way." The MTV press office confirmed that this program was prerecorded and never aired live. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about whether Pratt's remarks were edited -- perhaps removing an explicit reference to Jesus.
Whatever happened, Pratt's pronouncement "was funny, it was strange and it was moving," said David French, senior writer at National Review. The video "went viral" because Pratt offered sobering advice to a generation of young people that has seen its share of anxiety and depression, even after waves of messages that things are fine just the way they are.
The bottom line, is that millions of "people really like Chris Pratt," said French, reached by email. "Christians always love it when a celebrity publicly embraces Christ, and he did it in a particularly striking way."