Page 147 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

136 Reception of religion and media

This at least means that, for Butch, media are a less problematic element of
his memories of his own life than he lets on with reference to his children’s
lives. This might help explain how it is that for most parents and most
households where these interviews were conducted, opprobrium about
media was also accompanied by an openness to media. Butch finds in The
Terminator a set of salient cultural values, symbols, and ideals: persever-
ance, hope for the future, parental love, etc., put in a very compelling and
memorable way. That is what media do and do well. They are, as we have
seen, fundamentally cultural and fundamental to the culture. There is a
tacit taken-for-grantedness in the experience of something like this film,
which represents broad cultural values rather than more narrow spiritual
ones. It is a very secular kind of inspiration that we find in media like The
Terminator or the Star Wars cycle.
Priscilla Castello shares with Butch a basic parental suspicion of media.
Agreeing with him that certain media are inconsistent with the lifestyle and
spirituality they hope to cultivate in their home, she is pleased that they
have found an alternative school for the children that shares many of these
values, particularly around television. At one point, the Interviewer
summarizes what she’s been hearing from Priscilla about her view of
parenting, and the challenges of maintaining a protected space in the home
for children. Priscilla responds to the question completely in terms of
media, specifically television. Television had not yet come up in the inter-
view.

Interviewer: So, I hear you saying that you are trying . . . you have a very
strong idea of how you want to raise your children as people and that
you feel that it is sort of you against the world in a way because other
people in your circle don’t share these values.
Priscilla: Right. And, I know that there are groups, like the Waldorf school
system, they’re not into TV and if you go to a strict Waldorf school I
think you are not even allowed to have a TV in your house. If you
interviewed Waldorf families, you would get some interesting... and
they are really into handicrafts. Like they do this finger knitting and
woodwork. They don’t even really focus on reading until like third
grade, make it a real push, that is (reading). So, they’re really working
for more . . . it is a spiritual thing, too, that is more, it’s Christian but
it’s sort of... I don’t know the person whose philosophy it is based
on. It is from Germany, I think. Or Austria.

This expresses an extension of the ideals presented by Butch earlier, that
there is a kind of holistic lifestyle issue – that he called “stillness” – that
the Castellos would like to be the hallmark of their home. And, once
again, they see television as particularly antithetical to that settled lifestyle.
She pursues this idea about the influence of “outside culture” in response