Page 208 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Believers, dogmatists, and secularists 197

Sheryl: And I think the other thing we have tried to avoid is sexual stereo-
typing. We clearly don’t fit it, and we don’t want our daughter to be
compartmentalized.
Interviewer: Is that why no Barbie dolls?
Sheryl: That’s right. No bimbos. She has dolls, she’s loved dolls since she
was little. But they’re American Girl dolls.
Lanny: Dolls with a story. You know, those have a story . . . that have a
humanity. Rather than just fitting a certain stereotypical image of
what a beautiful woman is supposed to be.
The distinction between their concerns about violence and their perceived
sense that sex or strong language are more of concern to the typical house-
hold is an important issue. Pursuing this, Sheryl is asked to confirm that
violence is really the thing that concerns them the most. She confirms,

Sheryl: Violence is the big one. It’s absolutely high on my list.
Interviewer: More so than other things like . . .
Sheryl: Yeah, I don’t care about language, probably because I have a
terrible mouth myself. Also that I don’t think hearing a swear word is
going to alter their personality or give them a terrible model. I mean,
most of the words they hear aren’t that. And the other thing is sex,
and frankly, as far as I can tell... especially boys are not intrigued
with mush at an early age. So there has been no desire on their part to
see anything that was sexually explicit. . . . And so that left violence,
which for me does have an effect of corroding people’s sensibilities.
And often the violence is against women.

She goes on to elaborate about the problem with screen violence.

[I]n the media . . . in movies, it’s unrealistic. It never explores the reper-
cussions of violence, at least the kind of things these kids are prone to
see. There are profound movies about violence that I would like them
to see some day, but they don’t . . . I mean, I’d like them to see
Schindler’s List or Gandhi or something like that, but that’s not what
they wanna see. They wanna see Robocop. And, you know, by the time
you’re 10 you’ve seen 25,000 murders? Well, I have to say that by the
time Paul was 10 he had not seen even a small fraction of that number
of murders. So it’s the lack of realism, it’s the lack of exploring reper-
cussions, it’s totally the lack of any kind of response... I mean,
violence is glorified in these things, especially in the movies. . . . And
the glorification of violence in a violent society, to me is obscene.

Lanny and Sheryl do have familiarity with a good deal of television
programming, and are even able to name programs that they particularly