Page 78 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Media and religion in transition 67

such approaches can become formalist. By this distinction, I mean to say
that archetypal or formal approaches become problematic in some ways if
they verge from mere formal analysis as description to formal analysis as a
route to legitimating or de-legitimating cultural artifacts. That is, formal or
archetypal analysis can be used to say that a certain artifact or text or
practice is or is not authentic or therefore legitimate. This is of a piece with
the so-called “Leavisite” tradition in cultural studies, now criticized for its
limited utility in understanding or accounting for culture as lived, experi-
enced, and constructed. Much of what we have seen in the evolving shape
of American religious experience would lead us to suspect that many
people today would question the notion of “legitimate” religious forms or
religious expression, making a formalist analysis problematic.
Representational Realism. There is a longstanding tradition of debate
over the nature of media artifacts being “real” or “not real.” Authenticity
and legitimacy are often attributed to cultural products in relation to their
“realism.” Much clerical critique of media treatments of religion is based
on the assumption that such treatments, to be authentic or helpful, must
be representational and be “realistic” in order to actually promote religion
in positive ways. 76
An interesting dimension of the debates over Mel Gibson’s The Passion
of the Christ in 2004 was this question of realism. Much of the clerical
and lay discourse about the meaning and significance of the film rested on
its super-realistic violence. Many viewers took it as a given that this level
of violent representation was by its very nature realistic. Representational-
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realist sensibilities also carry with them a certain class-taste bias as well,
being thought of by cultural elites as naïve or vernacular as over against
more sophisticated, cultivated tastes. 78
Instrumentalism. A great deal of commentary and criticism on the
nature and effects of the media rely on an assumption of the instrumental
efficacy of the media. Fears of the power of media to affect values and
spirituality are often connected with the sense that the media are instru-
ments that we encounter and understand primarily in terms of their ability
to affect us or affect others. A good deal of religiously based media criti-
cism rests on this notion.
The so-called “media literacy” movement, for example, much of which
is rooted in religious sensibilities, assumes that media audience practice
should be understood as a project of encountering, interpreting, and ulti-
mately contesting much of what is present in the media. The underlying
model of media consumption is one that sees the media as instruments or
artifacts that are the sources of cultural action. The momentum is with the
media, and audiences must respond or face a kind of subjugation.
Conservative critiques of the “anti-religion” of the media agree, seeing a
darker, more dangerous project there. 79 In the instrumentalist view, the
media are to be understood primarily for their potential to affect and