Page 231 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

220 Representing outcomes

describing them. We might have assumed that some of the identifications
people would make with media would be not because they wanted to iden-
tify with something salient there, but because they saw things moving in
the other direction. We’ve encountered such accounts, and on two levels:
on the level of “accounts of media,” and on the more direct level of indi-
vidual “experiences in” specific programs and films. As an example of the
former, we’ll hear again from Jeff Stein. Jeff has become involved in a
12
specific New Age practice that has within it some clear ideas about how
individuals can and should gain new knowledge and insight. For Jeff,
media are an impediment to such knowledge for a number of reasons. In
the following passage, he seems to be saying that he believes that the
media represent a kind of insidious influence that seeks to insinuate itself
into consciousness, and that care should be exercised.
Interviewer: So in reality for [his religious practice] you shouldn’t be
exposed too much to media is what you are saying.
Jeff: Well, it’s more to say that there are... you know there’s very
powerful and potent um . . . essences and entities available, waiting to
get into humans and most of humans are too full and too “don’t
bother me” to get access . . . but the [practice] is very much about
being welcoming to it, to essences, to be a home, to having a dialogue
with this intelligence, that can grace your life and you can give it a
place to live.
Interviewer: So if you are too busy with the media then you wouldn’t have
time to listen to the intelligence?
Jeff: Yeah . . . but at the same time you know there is the habit life and
there is just . . . enjoying yourself.
Interviewer: Is it a topic in [his practice], in a lot of religions there is a
prescription in terms of media use: how much watching, what to
watch. . . .
Jeff: No, it’s not much prescription like that, it’s more a matter of be aware
of what you are putting into yourself and exercise common sense.

For Jeff, then, his religious perspective leads him to aspire to an approach
to media that he can describe as aware of these dangers and implications.
He is, in a sense, described by media, but not by characters, plots, or
programs, but by a style of media consumption that is “aware.” This is a
rather direct, descriptive, “account of media.” In Jeff’s view, we should
want to be known as people who consume media or understand media in
certain ways and act accordingly.
There are, of course, examples in our interviews of much more direct
examples of ways that media describe individuals and families. In Chapter
6, we met the “born-again” Milliken family. In the following passage, they
talk about their love/hate relationship with The Simpsons.