Page 233 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

222 Representing outcomes

relations seem to be an important motivation for many of our intervie-
wees. The next category is representative of this second level, “interactions
about media.”

“I describe myself using it”

Megan Sealy, who we’ve already met, is a Southern Baptist and the single
mother of teenaged Dell. At a point in our interview where she is talking
about ideas and images relevant to her identity as a mother, she is asked
whether the media provide such resources. She responds with a story from
her experience with her son. Dell had begun cutting classes in ninth grade,
and Megan found it necessary to show up at school unannounced to check
on him.
He was really embarrassed. And I told him if you do it again, I’m
going to show up in my bathrobe and slippers. You know, because I’d
seen that on Roseanne and I thought, “Oh, that’s so cool!” [laughing].
That would really put him in his place. He’d be so embarrassed.

The Interviewer then refers back to this incident in a question about media
and Megan quickly connects the question with religion and values.

Interviewer: In terms of the roles that you see yourself as having played
and continuing to play in Dell’s life, do you use the media in any of
those roles? I mean, you made a joke about Roseanne, are there other
cases where you’ve drawn from media?
Megan: (laughing) Yeah. Um, sometimes. As far as the media, if there was
a lesson to be learned or something like that or if it was a spiritual
lesson. You know, there’s a lot of good Christian tapes and stuff like
that we’d watch at home

This judgment of media on Megan’s part combines questions of interac-
tions about and accounts of media. While she connects with both
Roseanne and with the Christian tapes she refers to, she sees them as a
way of both connecting with Dell and representing religious values she
endorses. The self-description she invokes both for the Interviewer and for
Dell via these media is specific and rather conventional.
For many of the reasons we discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, we’d expect
young people to be particularly involved in interactions about media and
in the use of media in identity construction. Uta Fallon is the 12-year-old
daughter of Wyonna, who appeared in Chapter 5. She lives with her single
mother and older sister in a small western city. She identifies
Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) as an example of using media for
self-description in social exchange. CCM seems to have the capacity to