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144 Reception of religion and media

attend. For all seekers, there is an additional attraction to anything that
challenges received, institutional religion, and there is reason to suspect
that this would make such “resistant” media as Holy Grail additionally
pleasurable.
There is much evidence in these interviews as well that the salience of
these media tends to drive consumption. Bonnie Johnson’s viewing of South
Park and the Fallons’ viewing of Holy Grail seem to show that there is a
kind of attractiveness to media, something that we think of as a common-
place. But it is important in this context to reflect on the fact that the
received assumptions we have tended to bring to questions of media and
religion presume a different kind of viewing behavior, one driven by spiri-
tual or religious values or interests that are satisfied by certain media in a
more-or-less rational and cognitive process. At least some of the consumption
we’ve seen talked about here does not exactly move in that direction. It
seems like the media are just “there,” they are consumed, and the religious
or spiritual implications either follow on later or exist in a kind of dialec-
tical relationship with audience choice. As I said earlier, this also raises
questions about our notion of the “symbolic inventory.”
The accessibility of media is also probably part of the story here. The
fact that the media have become settled in the domestic sphere is a point of
some concern and anxiety, but we see here some evidence that for these
individuals, at least, the fact that certain of the media are there means that
they will be consumed. This is a matter of some importance. Judy Cruz
finds the Web unproblematic in part because it is there. I’ve also argued
that we need to think of the media as tacit and subtle at the same time they
are salient. People don’t focus on them, instead taking them for granted in
some ways, contextualizing them in other ways.
At the same time, though, the media are not so tacit that they are
completely transparent. The autonomous project of the self has these
narratives integrating media practice in ways that are an expression of that
autonomy. Judy resists the imposition of media-derived ideas about aliens,
for example. Autonomy is not surrendered to anyone, including the media.
Parents such as the Johnsons want their children to develop their self-
autonomy as well, and see media choice as an important element of that.
For most of them, but the Fallons in particular, the idea that the media are
something you can and should control also contributes to this project of
autonomy. It goes without saying that, for each of them, spiritual
autonomy is also a value, expressed in the context of the seeker sensibility,
and expressed over against received authority.
The “accounts of media” we see here are also significant for the distinc-
tions the media help make in the cultural, religious, and spiritual spheres.
The media inscribe maps on which interviewees place their narrative
selves. We’ve already talked about Judy Cruz’s distinction between “in-
home” and “out-of-home” religion, and her distinction between