Page 207 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

196 Believers, dogmatists, and secularists

The Murphy-Gordon family
Sheryl Murphy, age 49, and Lanny Gordon, age 56, are professors on the
same faculty. They live in a major city with their son Paul, 13, and daughter
11
Erin, 10. They do not belong to a parish or attend religious services, though
the children attend a Catholic school that their parents see to be their best
option for a private school nearby. They stress that this school does not
engage in very much religious instruction. Sheryl, who was raised in a
Protestant household, says that her religious background has contributed to
her “secular humanist” values today. Lanny and Sheryl do not want to be
thought of as puritanical in their attitudes toward media, but, at the same
time, they think it is important to be selective about media. For them, that
means that they do have preferences about what the children watch. “We
used to have a kind of rule that all they could watch was PBS and the videos
we had,” Sheryl says. This rule has faded as the children have gotten older.
The Murphy-Gordon family sees the practice of distinguishing between
acceptable and unacceptable media as an important way of marking them-
selves in contemporary culture. They are aware of the means by which
movie ratings are established and how those ratings relate to commonplace
or mainstream social values.

Lanny: We basically don’t let the kids see anything that’s R-level, unless
it’s very selective. But we’ve noticed that the way those ratings go are
very misleading. ’Cause they’ll let PG-13’s have violence, but if they
have any kind of language or sex, then they go to R. But you can go to
R with very little violence, but there’s sex and language. So it’s a little
misleading how the ratings go.
Sheryl: In fact, this summer Paul watched two R movies with us.
Paul: Three.

They speak with some pride about their difference from other families in
this regard. Like others, they want their children to develop their own
skills at selecting and viewing media, but they are more willing than most
to expose them to material that is “on the edge.” 12
They do make distinctions between media. Film and reading are clearly
preferred over television. They have chosen not to subscribe to cable televi-
sion, for example, because they are “not a TV family.” In spite of that
self-understanding, they nonetheless view a good deal of television. They
are able to name a number of series and genres that they have regularly
watched as individuals or as a family, noting that, when it was on the air,
they habitually viewed the situation comedy Home Improvement together
and have fond memories of bonding around that show. Sheryl also notes
that she watches one of the late-night talk shows daily.
Sheryl and Lanny are among the few parents we’ve interviewed who specif-
ically point out the problem of sex-role stereotyping in media and culture.