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156 Born-agains and mainstream believers

Interviewer: What are those things?
Jay: Just the gruesome.
Interviewer: Like the monsters gruesome? Or the . . . I don’t watch it a
ton, but there are monster episodes. . . .
Lynn: Well, there’s, you know, dead people.
Ray: Dead people and like, flesh-eating stuff.

Beyond concern about gruesome violence, there is little more they have to
add about implicit or explicit standards for appropriate content. Jay has
stopped watching pro wrestling because he thought Ray was imitating
what he saw there. When asked directly if he understands there to be limits
or rules on what he can watch, Ray replies that he is not to watch “bad
videos.” When the Interviewer asks what constitutes such a bad video, Ray
replies, “A videotape with cursing, stuff like that.” This evokes an idea we
raised earlier, that acceptable media may merely be those which are simply
“inoffensive” in some vague way.
The Millikens also watch one of the most popular of all television
shows (and one that has been the subject of a good bit of controversy):
The Simpsons.

Interviewer: So, The Simpsons . . . do the kids watch it?
Jay: Yeah, they’ll sit and watch it. It’s a cartoon so they’ll sit and watch it.
Interviewer: What do you think about that? Either one of you.
Ray: Sometimes I’ll watch it.
Lynn: It’s not all the time though.
Interviewer: Do you like it?
Ray: Yeah, it’s okay.
Interviewer: [to Lynn] Do you like it? Do you like them watching it?
Lynn: I’ll sit and watch with them for a little bit and then if I don’t like
what’s happening, I’ll just say, “Let’s turn it.”
Interviewer: What kinds of things prompt you to turn the channel? When
it’s The Simpsons.
Ray: When they say bad words and stuff.
Jay: Well, they don’t really say. . . .
Lynn: I don’t know they [Jay and the children] watch it.
Ray: It’s another dysfunctional family.
Lynn: Yeah, really.
Interviewer: You say that and you all laugh.
Lynn: Because it’s true.
Jay: We think we’re dysfunctional sometimes.

Like millions of other Americans, the Milliken family watches, enjoys, and
identifies with The Simpsons. It is a pleasure for them, and something that
ties them together with others’ practices of meaning-making in media