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Representing outcomes 219

information so much as she wishes to identify herself with the ideas and
values she sees as lying beneath them. It is also interesting to note how and
how readily she uses this identification as a way of communicating her
difference from her father on these issues.
We met Judy Cruz in Chapter 5, where we saw how, as someone who
we would have expected to be rather traditional in her ideas, was nonethe-
less quite interested in the supernatural, science fiction, and other
non-traditional ideas. She is also a good example of now people can use
media as a source of association or identity. I’ll recall a passage in which
she makes a distinction between some traditionalist ideas and traditional
religious figures, and television programs. Where she is not as comfortable
with television preachers and the entertainments some of them offer, she is
drawn much more to miraculous and spiritual programs that are not as
self-consciously “religious.”

Interviewer: I know we talked before about Touched by an Angel and It’s
a Miracle. Are those different for you from preachers up on the screen
or on the radio?
Judy: Yeah, and there is another one that just came out called Crossing
over with John Edward. That’s kind of interesting to me because, I
guess because people have had experiences and a person can relate to
things like that whether it’s miracles or healers or, you experience
things like that and you can relate to things like that, but as far as
preachers or dancing, it is a little bit more different. It’s not as
comfortable.

Judy and Rachel illustrate an interaction of media with ideas and values that
is more precisely “identification” than it is “influence” of some kind. For
both of them, certain television programs and films represent a set of
commitments and ideas that they feel are important, and articulated in
themselves in such a way that they are motivated to associate themselves
with them. It is perhaps coincidental that both Judy and Rachel express an
interest in some of the same symbols and ideas. For each, this taste is distinct
from the expectations of their context, domestically and beyond. Also for
each, the specific programs in question do a particularly compelling job of
representing the values and ideas in question. And for each, there is a kind
of tacit understanding that these materials have a self-fulfilling justification
and authenticity about them. They are “real” in some sense, and both Judy
and Rachel draw meaning and value from this belief.

“It describes me”
Another relationship between media and audiences we have come across is
those places where interviewees talk about media or media practice as