Page 195 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

184 Believers, dogmatists, and secularists

media that have been religiously or spiritually meaningful to them. Like
many others among our interviews, that is simply a hard connection for
them to make. Vicky does think that their beliefs influence the kinds of
movies they attend, however. Asked if they select films or other media
because of their spirituality, she says,

I like movies that have that theme to it, and we’ll look for movies that
have that kind of theme to it if we’re going to rent a video or some-
thing, or we’ll see a movie. I mean, the movies we go to are about
people’s relationships and about – whether it’s relationships with each
other or with the earth or with spirituality or whatever – those are the
kind of things that we’re more interested in. But yeah, we like movies
like that.
The Stevens-Van Gelder family has some clear ideas about the media. They
avoid violent media, they see media choice and content through the frame
of religiously based “culture wars,” and yet they enjoy media as a family,
even ritually consuming it weekly. They think of their attitudes about
media as pretty conventional for parents of a young child. At the same
time, they do agree with families in other of Roof’s categories that there is
a media-based cultural mainstream out there that is at some variance from
their own values. Jan and Vicky want their son to develop his own skills of
media consumption, and to guide him toward that end. There is one area,
though, that concerns them, and that is simply the amount of time media
take away from other, more positive or “educational” pursuits. They are
critical of parents who seem not to be concerned about this issue.

Jan: Boy, I think for a lot of people, for most people, it [media] has a huge
role in people’s life. I think people watch a lot of TV.
Interviewer: Do you know some people like that?
Jan: Most of the people I know do try to set some limits around TV-
watching in their households. . . . Brett, there was a time when he
really liked Wishbone, and it would be on three times a day, and it’s
like, “That’s an hour-and-a-half.” And most of them, he had already
seen. It’s like, the same ones over and over. And so I think that it’s very
enticing for people to just sit in front of the TV and be entertained and
not have to be creative.
Interviewer: So with Wishbone, was the show itself OK? Was it just the
amount of time?
Jan: Yeah, I think it’s a great show. But he would come in and just turn on
the TV, and it’s like, “Wait a minute. This doesn’t make sense.”

This sets up an account of media for this family that sees media use –
whether an educational show like Wishbone or Brett’s playing of video