Page 193 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

182 Believers, dogmatists, and secularists

Milliken and mainstream Allen households: the idea that parenting should
be about equipping children to make their own choices about media rather
than acting as censors or controllers of content. The difference, of course,
is the kind of content that is of concern.

Jan: I get really . . . I wish there were more movies that would be produc-
tive and positive. There seems to be such a focus on violence. I mean, I
don’t think it’s appropriate for Brett to watch movies that are sexual,
but I’d much rather he be exposed to that than violence . . . I think...
I mean, he doesn’t just want to turn on the TV and watch something
violent, but I get . . . I think that it’s going to be more of an issue in a
few years, when his friends are going to the high-action movies, that
that may become more of an issue. Maybe not. I mean, his value
around non-violence is pretty secure.

The one medium they are the most concerned about with reference to Brett
is video games. Brett is a heavy Nintendo user. He is limited to three and
one-half hours of “non-educational” computer use a week. This is clearly
a point of tension in the household, but Jan intends to hold fast. Where
she and Vicky prefer to think of Brett’s relationship to media in terms of
his developing skills at selectivity, Jan feels that video games are one
medium that has had a direct influence on him.
Jan is more concerned about the family’s relationship to the broader
culture than Vicky, and shares in common with the born-again believers
we interviewed the sense that her family is somehow out of the main-
stream of American culture, and not just because they are a gay family.
Her ideas here actually sound a good bit like those we heard from reli-
giously strict households. She sees media culture and choice to participate
in it as a major marker of the way individuality and individual values
come into conflict with a seemingly coercive media-cultural environment.

Jan: I certainly don’t want to embrace what I feel like is out there. It seems
like there needs to be a huge change in that way, and would really like
to get involved in some sort of organization to make changes. Because
I feel like, I can do what I can in terms of my own family, but I think
that there’s a much broader issue that I would like to see something be
done about. So I think that there’s a lot of people who are in agree-
ment with that, but none of us know what to do. And I’m not really
sure how much of the culture really likes what’s out there, but I think
that an awful lot of ’em certainly participate – in going to the movies
or buying the video games or whatever. So, I think that there’s much
greater acceptance than I’m comfortable with, so in that way I feel like
I stand apart and don’t really want to embrace what the general public
is doing.