Page 223 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

212 Representing outcomes

Interviewer: I’m thinking on Touched by an Angel the two main charac-
ters, and maybe there is a third, are they people on earth or are they
brought from somewhere else?
Judy: They are brought from somewhere else, but that’s fantasy.
Interviewer: But in the miracle show, they talk about angels on earth,
actual people who do good things?
Judy: Actual people, yeah. There’s a difference there, yeah.

Judy thus sees a real religious or spiritual inspiration in these “angel”
programs. It is interesting how, in each of these cases of inspiration from
media, the relationship to conventional or formal religion is in a way
defined out. For Rayna and Judy, both of whom have a relationship to
conventional, even conservative or traditionalist religious roots and
resources, there is something fundamental and satisfying about the inspira-
tion they achieve from media sources. As we’ve seen before, the authority
of traditions over the legitimacy of these sources is not really an issue. For
both women, the autonomy to make these choices and judgments rests in
their hands.

“It leads me to think or behave”

We might have expected to find many examples of people who were influ-
enced in one way or another by the media they consume. As I said before,
some of the most seriously held concerns and strident criticisms regarding
the impact of media on religious and spiritual lives is related to the notion
that the media would be able to actually influence the beliefs or behaviors
of viewers. The preponderance of concern about televangelism when it
emerged was centered in such notions. Thus it may be notable that, among
our interviewees, it is difficult to find many examples of people for whom
religious or spiritual material, per se, is seen to influence thought or action.
In fact, in most cases, those media materials most likely to act in this way,
the self-consciously “religious” ones, are avoided or contested. The
Milliken family, who we considered at some length in Chapter 6, are born-
again believers who are regular viewers of a range of “secular” television,
including reality shows. 7
When asked to reflect on the relationship between their religiosity and
their media use, they move immediately to an assumption that the media
in question must be “religious” media, and they are not big fans.

Interviewer: Is there a connection between media use and this spirituality,
your church-going, things like that?
Jay: Actually, we try not to watch... TBN (Trinity Broadcasting
Network).
Interviewer: Why?