Page 179 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

168 Born-agains and mainstream believers

the girls] Isn’t it YM that had that article about that girl on that
Seventh Heaven show? I mean, that’s the neatest show and then it
talked about how much . . . stuff about her boyfriend and how much
she hated her mother. I mean, it kind of took this nice character
and . . . it was weird. But I’m sure that’s what she really is.

Laura is clearly aware of the content of the magazine, and it is now
banned, in favor of more appropriate fare, such as Seventeen. The televi-
sion program Seventh Heaven is a regular part of the family’s television
diet, and she and the girls were surprised to find one of its actresses in the
context of such a magazine.
The children go to films regularly, and the family as a whole goes to a
movie about once a month, according to Laura. The family is not too specific
about the kinds of films they attend or want the children to watch when they
go alone. The girls report that they are allowed to attend PG-13 films. The
family does own a large library of videos, though, and those tend to be the
viewing of choice for the most part. They think they watch fifty to seventy of
them regularly, including films like It’s a Bug’s Life, “lots of Disney,” and
Apollo 13. Also in this library are what Laura calls her “ironing movies,”
mentioning specifically Sleepless in Seattle and taped re-runs of The Phil
Silvers Show. There seems to be a value in the idea of being able to control
the content of the family’s diet through these taped programs.
The children, particularly young Ryan, saw the family’s going “online”
after the Christmastime purchase of a new computer as a major watershed
in their media diets. This was particularly significant for the kids, who saw
their pre-Internet lives as a kind of cultural and social isolation.

Emily: Until we got our new computer, we were like the only people who
didn’t have the Internet. We had like a typewriter.
Ryan: Amish.
Emily: We were like technologically impaired.
Ryan: Amish.
Interviewer: Did that feel strange?
Catherine: Yea, kind of
Interviewer: Is it something you didn’t tell your friends about, or how did
you handle that?
Catherine: Well, they would always talk about what they would do on the
Internet.
Emily: They’d be like, “Oh, get on it at 5:30 and we’ll all talk.” And we’re
like, “What’s the Internet?”
Laura: (sarcastically) Pretty sad, isn’t it?

For this family, the ubiquity and pervasiveness of media in the home is felt
most keenly around Internet and Internet access. Dan and Laura had