Page 241 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

230 Representing outcomes

Interviewer: . . . do you ever find media that actually sort of support...
like, say these movies, do they ever have messages that reinforce you
know, strong morals or. . . .
David: Yeah, I think, that’s one of the things we try to point out, a lot of
them, it’s a... God, just a . . . trying to think of an example here right
off the top of my head, it’s like... we were watching Bug’s Life where
all the ants stand together and help each other, they’re happy and
work together, they all clean up the mess afterwards, nobody
complains, you know, and stuff like that and that’s something you try
to . . . and even on... you know, whether it’s cartoons or anything
that you see, it’s like, you’ll point an article out in the paper or some-
thing that says, “You know, this little kid did this and this and
this . . .” and, you know, I look at it this way, you can find whatever
you want to look for. Even, you know, some people say, “The news is
so depressing, you know, all they have is just who died and who got
shot up,” whatever. But then again you can always make whatever
positive, whatever you’re looking for. And that’s a lot of what we do is
just look for the more positive type things. You know, and we’re pretty
choosy, it’s gonna be real hard to find good things when all you have
is . . . it was like, Silence of the Lambs. What was good [laughs] about
that show? The only funny part about that was there was . . . the
second one, this Hannibal one. The gentleman who plays the bad guy
in there, it was on the . . . I was reading this little script thing about
the movie that was coming out and . . . I think it was the New York
Times. And it was saying that that first week it opened, he did a tour
of the United States and every night he went to a different theater in a
different town and there was a particular scary part and was in the
theater and he would whisper that same line to the people in front of
him [laughs]. And they were reporting back about what had happened
and he was like, he says, “The only place that people did not run out
of the theater screaming was in LA and they turned around and they
go, ‘Cool dude.’ [laughs] That’s him! Hey man, can I get your auto-
graph?’” He said that everybody else was so into the show that they
just left the theater, you know. . . .
Interviewer: So you’re saying that point is that even in something like that
you can sometimes find something humorous there or uplifting.
David: But that was . . . a... yeah, that’s something that we’re trying to
instill in our kids is that . . . that there is good things out there and if
you look at the good things, or look for the good . . . that’s what you
need to be looking for. I mean, you can find, I was just telling you
about the bad things about all these shows and stuff, but, and there’s
good . . . in the same amount there’s as much good and things that
way. I’m not as, you know, as far as The Simpsons, I . . . I’m like, you
can find good there too if you really look hard enough. I mean, they’re