Page 210 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Believers, dogmatists, and secularists 199

connecting with their Jewish backgrounds. They describe themselves as
religiously liberal. Religion is not an “external way of coping” for them,
Joseph says.
Like the Murphy-Gordons, there is little if any connection between reli-
gion or spirituality and media for the Abrahams. At the same time, they
also have some clear ideas about what is and is not appropriate media
fare. They have never had a system of rules for what the boys could watch
on TV or what films they could go to. Like the Murphy-Gordons, they are
less concerned about sex than they are about violence in screen media.
Susan recounts a time when they rented an art film that contained nudity
and felt that it was perfectly appropriate for Zed, who was 8 at the time,
to watch it.

Susan: . . . the Baghdad Café had that old woman, she was having her
portrait, and she was bared from the top? Remember?
Zed: I don’t remember that.
Susan: [laughs]
Zed: I must’ve blocked that out.
Joseph: Susan remembers that. I wasn’t home.

The matter-of-fact way in which this is recounted suggests that, for the
Abrahams, the value of the artistic nature of the film is more important
than incidental nudity, and that the overall question of monitoring such
things is a low priority for them. Violence is a more important problem for
them. Like the Murphy-Gordons and others, the Abrahams wish to make
a distinction between media. For them, there is a clear hierarchy of media.
Reading is at the top, and, for screen media, news is preferred over enter-
tainment.

Joseph: Literate people read the paper. Well, I don’t think that’s very
common among kids anymore.
Zed: When did you start reading the paper? College?
Joseph: No, I got the paper in college, as a matter of fact, I got the
Chicago paper sent to me. . . . TV was much less important and intru-
sive thirty-five years ago. More people really did read the paper. I
mean, we didn’t have a TV in our college room till I was a junior or
senior, and then it was just a little bitty black and white. So I mean,
the world was different then. It’s not a criticism as much as a state-
ment of fact. But I’d like the kids to read as well as watch TV. And the
kids, really the older one, looks at CNN. Adam [their older son] does.
Zed: I do, too. And CNBC, and MSNBC.

It should of course not be surprising to learn that people who are basically
secularist in their outlook would not think very much about relations