Page 239 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

228 Representing outcomes

You know, but usually... I can feel him like backing up. I’m like,
geez! – [to Dell] Is this making you uncomfortable, Dell?
Dell: No.
Megan: OK.
Megan: But, ah, you know I guess in that way, using the media as a tool
to show moral character and behavior. Because, I mean, there’s a lot of
really bad programs out there.
Interviewer: Any of them on MTV?
Megan: Well, yeah, there’s a few. There’s a few. You know, but you look
for opportunities in anything in life. You know, especially as a parent
you want to teach good moral values and things like that. So there’s
always opportunities, whether it’s media or music or just, you know,
walking down the street and having people talk rudely to each other.
There’s always opportunities.

It is interesting that Megan interprets a question that was intended to
invoke examples of media portraying religion and spirituality positively in
a different way. In fact, her response contrasts with that expectation in
two ways. First, she interprets the question as focusing on values and
morality rather than spirituality or religion, and, second, she uses exam-
ples that are negative, rather than positive. For Megan, the media are a
vast context of negative and problematic portrayals. However, this can be
turned to a positive by appropriate parental intervention. Megan thus
agrees with many parents and many among our interviewees that, left to
their own devices, the media are primarily a negative rather than a posi-
tive influence on children and young people. The appropriate stance for
parents, then, is to be constantly vigilant about this, and to be prepared to
turn troubling portrayals and values into opportunities for positive inter-
action. It is interesting, too, that she can find few concrete examples to
illustrate her point. Where MTV would be an obvious source of such
material, she seems not to have interacted with Dell about MTV, at least
not recently.
Earlier, we heard from Fred Kline talking about being moved by To
Kill a Mockingbird. His daughter, Steph, reflected earlier on using the
Internet for information about other religions. Fred is more “secular” in
his worldview than Megan Sealy, yet he agrees with her about the capaci-
ties of media to provide occasions for parental dialogue and intervention.
Like Megan, he rather facilely connects media and negative values and
ideas, ripe for intervention. Fred describes the classic situation comedy
The Andy Griffith Show as one of his favorite programs for its positive
content. Curiously, he agrees with Glenn Donegal, who is very different
from Fred in terms of his religiosity and worldview, on the meaning and
value of the Griffith program. Like Glenn, he connects Andy with
simpler times, when life for adults and young people was less compli-