Page 146 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Reception of religion and media 135

And then, in addition to that, macrobiotic living, in a sense of jin and
jang balance. TV and the whole ritual around the food and the TV
dinners and TV trays don’t lend themselves to that.
Interviewer: Right. Does media play into your spiritual life at all in any
way?
Butch: If you consider CDs media, then yes. We play calming music. CDs
of our choice that create a mood that we want created.

This again reaffirms a distinction Butch wishes to make between certain
kinds of media – as typified by television – and other kinds of media,
specifically music recordings. But connections between his spirituality and
media do not end there for Butch. At a different point in the interview, he
is asked, “What is the most important spiritual thing that you have?” His
response, in fact, is connected with a major contemporary media enter-
prise.

I think . . . let me think about this. I have had this experience with
Deepak Chopra. I was on a business trip and just was attracted to this
book . . . The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and this book is
magical. And as a meaningful spiritual experience it seems all I have to
do is touch the book. Honestly. If I touch this book something good
happens almost invariably. I think it is partly that I’m realizing what is
in the book because I have read it and I haven’t done all the things he
says to do and I don’t do them regularly and I wish I did. But when I
touch this book or look at it, magical things happen. Good things. It is
bizarre.

This is fascinating, as it evokes images of traditional Christian ideas about
the capacity of objects to convey spiritual power. More importantly,
though, it demonstrates the extent to which media are embedded in daily
spiritual life, even for someone like Butch. What we might call his “seeking
sensibility,” the fact that he is still looking for satisfying spiritual ideas and
practices, opens him to things such as commodified therapeutic culture.
As with most people, Butch also carries memories of media from his
youth that were both attractive and inspirational.

Oh I enjoyed Star Wars and, honestly, even The Terminator movie
stands as one of my favorite films and not necessarily because, well, I
loved the action, the special effects, and the story line . . . what it tells
you about your children and the challenges that lay ahead. That is
pretty inspirational, that movie at the end. It is almost tear-jerking
when the mother is in the desert and she is pregnant and she is deter-
mined to help her baby, her unborn child to thrive in what she knew
would be a difficult situation in the future.