Page 170 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Born-agains and mainstream believers 159

Karl: In my opinion, it’s rather gushy and unrealistic, relativistic.
Dinah: And it has to do with family structures and whether you have
moms and dads, and religious differences. . . . Wishbone’s the same
way, and actually I have talked to them a lot about Wishbone’s
subjects, and Kratt’s Creatures. Kratt’s Creatures comes from a very
ecological save the earth, animals are misunderstood. That’s their
philosophy. That’s not what I think. I mean, I’ll talk about that. That
doesn’t mean they can’t watch it. There’s some good things there, but I
don’t agree with their presentation. And also on Wishbone it’s the
same thing. You’ve got the divorced parents and the child living with
the mom. They just always bring these different lifestyles out, which is
the way life is, but I just want them to know that that’s not necessarily
the best way for life to be, so we’ll talk about those kind of things.
Clearly Dinah and Karl are particularly sensitive to media content that
addresses issues in family and social values. In a way, it seems that they see
media as a central site of struggle between their values and what has been
otherwise called the “secular humanism” of the broader culture. Pluralism
and diversity seem to be almost negative values to them, again reflecting
discourses about “values” in the public sphere.

Dinah: They had every . . . they had the Jewish girl and the African
American boy and the Indian who . . . the whole Indian philosophy
was in there, and the Mexican girl. I mean, it had every racial culture.
I do believe that we need to accept other people, but just the way it
was presented was too much for me.

The Callahans thus “get it” that the messages of openness and diversity in
this public television program are intended to represent as well as to teach
diversity, and they resist and negotiate with those messages and intentions.
“Why do they have to deal with it when they’re 3 years old? Just present
Barney, you know... ” says Dinah.
Like the Millikens, the Callahans are well aware of religious television,
and Dinah even reports watching a bit of the local Christian station. This
does not seem to be a major interest for her, and Karl is dismissive of it.
Saying it seems “contrived and stereotypical” of “televangelism stuff,”
Karl goes on,

it seems to me that a lot of the preaching there is health and wealth
gospel kinds of stuff: God’s a big Sugar Daddy and if you are really
walking with God things will go well, etc., etc. and that’s not neces-
sarily the case. It seems to be to me very superficial, popularly oriented
that I don’t think is the real full package, genuine article, walk in rela-
tionship with God.