Page 197 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

PAUL MESSARIS

and movie happenings are more exciting, more rewarding, more satisfying in
their resolutions than the everyday experiences of real people. What are the
consequences of being immersed mentally in such a world for a large and
regular portion of one’s existence, as so many people are in a culture of full-
time television and neighborhood video stores? And how do those con-
sequences mesh with people’s responses to commercial advertising, a form of
visual communication that is even more tightly wedded to idealization than
most Hollywood movies are?
A suggestive answer to these questions is provided by a brief item of gossip
that appeared in a supermarket tabloid some years ago. This story concerned an
aging (now deceased) Hollywood actor who had had the reputation of being
a ‘ladies’ man’. Somehow, a reporter asked him if he ever watched porno-
graphic movies. No, the former film star replied, he did not enjoy seeing people
do in the span of an hour and a half what he himself was no longer able to do in
a whole week. This comment is mirrored by the responses of subjects in
systematic research on the effects of pornography. As Zillman and Bryant
(1989) have found, a regular diet of pornographic movies tends to lower men’s
level of satisfaction with their own sexual relationships. At first blush, these
findings and the movie star’s personal story may seem somewhat far removed
from the world of non-pornographic cinema and advertising. However, on
closer inspection it turns out that what the movie star was describing appears to
be a common response of viewers exposed to any form of fantasy, be it sexual,
romantic, or whatever.
In the realm of non-pornographic sexuality and romance, a study by
Goldfarb (1987) has documented viewers’ responses that were strikingly similar
to those of Zillman and Bryant’s pornography-viewing subjects and the aging
movie star. Goldfarb was interested in how people respond to media representa-
tions of romance, and she explored this topic through individual interviews
with some forty young men and women. At the end of the interviews, she
explicitly asked each of her interviewees whether they ever felt inadequate or
disappointed about their own lives in comparison to images of romance in
movies or television. A majority of the people in her sample – men as well as
women, and college graduates as well as those who had not gone beyond high
school – said that they did. For example, here is the reply of a female college
grad:

Oh definitely! Even the sex scenes I feel really . . . small that I’m not
like that. Or the women who have really good careers, I’ll feel really
inadequate and say ‘how come I’m not as good as they are?’ I get so
wrapped up in the movie, I feel I’m the only one there. I get so
involved that I compare myself to their relationships, their careers, what
they look like. I sit there and look at that hairdo, those shoes, this dress,
the way she acted, and I just compare myself and I feel lousy.
(Goldfarb 1987: 86)

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