Page 235 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

224 Representing outcomes

Priscilla expresses a view that we have heard before: making distinctions
between various media in terms of their relevance to those ideas and values
that interest her the most. The Interviewer probes by suggesting that it
seems that Priscilla’s preferences fairly clearly favor other media over tele-
vision. Priscilla confirms this by suggesting that public television, in
particular, is a place where she would expect to find interesting material.
Like many others, she makes an exception in her preference for “non-
screen” media: films. At another point in the interview, she is asked
whether she actively seeks out anything related to her spirituality.
Interviewer: Do you seek out anything related to spirituality on television
or in the movies?
Priscilla: Sometimes at movie theaters. I only usually see art films or some-
thing like that. Yes, videos too. I haven’t done this for a long time but I
like to get videos about religion. Mostly it is goddess stuff or
Buddhism.
Interviewer: How about music and spirituality?
Priscilla: Music! Oh, yeah. I don’t have a huge collection of music but I do
go to the library. I like to get Celtic music. They have such great
music. I hear music and I think “Where did they get that music”! I try
to explore and find new music, mostly at the library. If we had more
money to spend in that direction I probably would buy more CDs or if
I found one I really like, I will go buy it.

Priscilla shares with many others we’ve interviewed a preference for film
and for music as authentically representing or conveying symbols and
values that are important to her. Relevant to our discussion here, which is
about how media experience provides opportunities for social presenta-
tion, linkage, or exchange, she provides a description of media operating
on two levels. She reports a kind of function of these media for her and her
sense of her self and a way that media become a set of descriptive associa-
tions through which she can make a narrative of who she is in religious
and spiritual terms.

“I want to contest/reject/endorse it”

At the same time that people are using the media in various ways for iden-
tity and identification, the media also help them make clear distinctions.
These negotiations over the meaning, significance, or legitimacy of various
media symbols and messages are important to most of the interpretive
strategies we’ve seen, and at their base is an evaluation. There are, of
course, many examples of such evaluative statements in our interviews. In
the earlier passage where the Millikens talk about their view of televange-
lism, and other “religious” media, the theme is clearly one of contesting