life

"There's trouble right here in River City...why, the boys are out back of the corn crib reading Capt'n Billy's Whiz Bang."
– a line from The Music Man

It is no longer enough to look with studied criticism at the content of media and ask questions about its effects.

The advent of each new technology in history has produced changes beyond the anticipation of its inventors, dreams of its investors or hopes of those who sought to possess it. The television set was brought into the home for entertainment. In the last 35 years it has come to displace, or accompany, seven hours a day of activity in the average home.

On the way to that statistic TV has changed our furniture arrangements, eating habits, language, political process. public agendas, and the nature of questions about the birds and the bees."

The small, bluish screen of yesteryear has shrunk to the wrist, expanded to wall size, gone color and attached itself to the typewriter. It has, by turns, been an instrument of family cohesion and division.

Over the last few years the communications industry has been tracking a new phenomenon — the takeoff of the home video-cassette market. Now in 40 percent of TV homes, the little boxes are outselling cable and vastly altering the forces that govern network programming. movie production and cable system hookup.

Media commentator Tony Schwartz called the VCR's growing popularity "the most important development in telecommunications since the printing press."

Many VCR owners tend to be media junkies, which may account for the unexpected acceleration of multi-VCR households. Once installed, their power of scheduling and content may inspire major changes in family viewing patterns.

A Time magazine article described a family with eight VCRs. Even the baby has a video camera trained on her crib as a monitor. Her antics can be videotaped at the touch of a button, and if she starts crying she can be immediately soothed by a tape of Sesame Street.

Such extensive use may be extreme, but it's still a far cry from the days when you could visit a friend's home and with relative familiarity turn on the TV, use the telephone or even adjust the oven. Today our homes are becoming technological islands where only the family members know how to operate all the new computerized entertainment, information and labor-saving devices.

No Ready Answers

In the midst of all the newness, some familiar questions tease the fringes of our consciousness — what are these new devices doing to me, to my family? Most commonly the questions relate to the content of media, particularly television, but increasingly, they must be asked of video games, video cassettes, music videos and "adult television" on satellites, cable and tapes.

The themes of the last few decades of analysis continue, with complaints of too much advertising, sex, or violence — or too little good news, good music, good drama. Less often raised are questions of what it means to become a multiple-set family, what has happened to negotiation around family viewing, perhaps with a bowl of popcorn, now that each member of the family views his or her own set?

We don't have to look far to be reminded of the increasing pace of technological development. Cover stories, feature stories, special reports and advertising in our old media (print, radio, and television) coax us into acquiring the devices of the new media. In addition to the VCR we are teased by computers, pocket pagers, answering machines, CD players and more. Mail order catalogs offer a high-priced, high-tech playground for the child of the television age, come of age. Even the familiar, time-honored catalogs of Sears and Wards have high-tech sections and supplements.

Every generation in history has taken delight in pointing out that things are changing at an unheard-of pace. In truth, until the major revolutions of agriculture, industry, transportation and communication, things stayed much the same from century to century. With the development of electronic communication the diffusion of technology throughout society has increased at a rapidly accelerating rate, aided and abetted by Madison Avenue and our desire to have the new, now.

The change of epochs was noted by an older man attending a Television Awareness Training workshop in the Midwest a number of years ago. After a discussion of the relation of advertising and entertainment in TV programming, he said, Its just like the old medicine wagon that came to town. You got to see the entertainment and then there was the pitch for the product. The only difference today is we have to buy the wagon."

Nowadays, you might even say that we buy the wagon, and then go out looking for the tonic to fill it.

How do our personal value systems affect our use of the new media technology and our selection of content? We need a dual focus in this quest of discovery with a commitment to understanding, intentionality and choice. It is helpful to look at aspects of the interaction between communication media and values.

Processing Our Values

First, and most familiar, is the question "What are the systems and structures of media (both technology and content) and how are we used by them?"

In our society, each innovation is introduced primarily for return on investment. The disciplines of science or the arts create the new. Production and marketing systems, interacting with economics and psychology (and sometimes government regulation) evolve marketing plans based on analysis of potential customers. While the advertisement may extol the utility of the product, or virtue of content, the intent is to sell as much as possible. This intention introduces subtle manipulation such as the marketing of home computers by seeking to make parents feel guilty if they do not have one for the children, or the suggestion that you will not be a valued person if you do not have the latest technological marvel.

Second, and more difficult, is the question of how we use media. What values underlie the selections we make? Our patterns are plainly in front of us, be it an evening of network TV, cable or video, skimming a magazine, or spending time on the family computer.

The curious thing is how unaware we tend to be of how we make our selections. We cannot read, view or listen to even a small fraction of what is available, so throughout our lives we attend to those things we somehow determine that we need.

The Video Mirror

We meet ourselves when we seriously reflect on the new media technology we choose for our lives and homes.

In the early days of television I knew a man whose religious group, and he himself, were widely known for their work for world peace. One evening I found him at home watching boxing, a common program at that time. From his body language it was quite obvious that this man of peace was in the ring doing battle with one or another of the contenders.

Conflicted responses are not unique to our transactions with media. They are a part of life. However, in no other area of life are our transactions so carefully studied with the intention of increasing our consumption of either device or content.

To some extent the advertisers are having trouble keeping up with us, as we use our new power to fast-forward through video-taped commercials or reduce hours of sports programming to a few minutes of action highlights. If the television generation was raised to expect a conflict resolution and happy ending every 30 minutes, will today's video kids spend their lives looking for the fast-forward button?

As we accelerate our lives to respond to the tempo of innovation, it pays to take a closer look at our motivations.

Reviewing Our Motives

Most books about the place of television and other media in our lives have a running theme of what They are doing to Us. Rarely is the question asked, "What is our motivation when we purchase new media technology and begin consuming the content it provides?"

The former analysis is relatively easy, fascinating and important to do. Young people and adults take to critical viewing skills exercises quite eagerly, and become adept at taking television commercials or programs apart.

It is a rare exercise, process, or discipline that asks us to look within to our roots an subconscious to understand our transactions with image and device. For their part the manufacturers and producers have far clearer understandings and expectations of how we will respond to their wares. Large budgets are devoted to researching our hidden motivation.

Experiencing Our Values

One positive step we can take is to become more careful observers of our transactions with media.

Many people report that sometimes they just want to watch television, not a specific program but just television. It is common to scan the channels, pausing briefly to sample, seeking the least objectionable program." Be aware the next time you do it. When do you choose to pause longer — a dramatic moment? An attractive person? Fine acting? A chase - scene? A fight? What personal selectivity factor was involved — was it a childhood image? Sexuality? An appreciation of art? An unresolved anger?

Among the powerful human feelings that can influence our selections are the desire to be loved, the wish to be in control, the fear of not being accepted as well as the quest for pleasure, new experiences, and new resources for living.

Another exercise is to develop a continuum or comparison between your values and those of the medium. Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper and label one side." My basic values." On the other side put. "What this media technology or content promises."

List your values first. They might include cooperation. helping others, seeing people as each having unique worth, problem solving through peacemaking, care for the environment, wisdom, patience, sexuality as a natural gift and self respect

Opposite them list the appeals of new media technology or content that strike a responsive chord in you. Don't be surprised if there are some discontinuities or even conflicts in the two columns. We are complex individuals and billions have been spent learning how to reach us at every possible level.

The aim of these exercises is to become conscious of your role in the transaction with media and values, to discover your own selectivity factors and then to make intentional choices based on your new understandings.

This is not to ignore the accountability of the creators of technological dreams. On the contrary, it recognizes that to criticize "them" without looking within is to ignore the reality that we are frequently willing participants because our needs are so well known.

The accuracy of our critique of the system will be better informed by our reflection on our own participation.

Why do we watch television?

Perhaps in one sense, because it is there. But analysts have long speculated on the appeal of various program categories, and advertisers and programmers have invested millions of dollars in attempts to reach audience segments of a particular age, sex or income level.

Most of these efforts have focused on answering the question, "Who tunes in?" But a groundbreaking research effort by marketing experts Ronald Frank and Marshall Greenburg has gone beyond the demographic categories to focus on how television viewing fits in with other leisure time decisions including other media choices like movies, magazines, newspapers and sports events.

By establishing a connection between viewing habits and other interests Frank / Greenberg have helped to answer a very different question: "How do television programs fit in with what viewers need?" To put it another way, we are indeed what we watch. And we watch what we are.

As reported in their report of their groundbreaking study, The Public's Use of Television, the two researchers utilized over 2,400 personal interviews and analysis techniques culled from marketing and sociology to identify some of the reasons people use TV and how it can help to fulfill unmet needs.

The result is a psychological profile of 14 categories of viewers — or media types — whose viewing habits were correlated with their interests.

Even a casual look at the categories explodes some common assumptions. For example: Young, blue-collar men watch TV sports less frequently than any other group. Black viewers watch more television but also read the highest percentage of publications. Teenage boys like programs that poke fun at male authority figures.

Although roughly divided by age and sex, the media typecasting charted here betrays the strengths, weaknesses and enthusiasms that go to make individual viewers more than a number on a rating card. Even more significantly, as the research shows, TV is not the primary medium for many viewers, and they use a mixture of media to satisfy their information and entertainment needs.

MEN

• Mechanics and Outdoor: Primarily young and blue-collar, they prefer non-competitive physical activities that satisfy a need for individual accomplishment — like auto repair, camping, fishing over television. Adventure, science fiction, and crime programming satisfy their need for escape. But they rarely watch intellectual or sports broadcasts. Heavy users of magazines that complement personal interests and hobbies, 'how-to' and escape-related books, science fiction and honor films.

•  Money/Nature's Product: Usually older males interested in more passive activities yielding some soil of return or product, and seeking more interpersonal contact and support, including an above-average concentration of rural retirees. Moderate viewing focuses on nature programs, money and business, current events and trends in the world around them. Traditional American values. Light use of the other media concentrates on business, real estate, and travel sections of the newspaper, and books and movies that feature strong male characters.

• Family and Community-Centered: Blue and white-collar males, especially from areas outside the major metropolitan areas. Their many family, community and religious interests leave little time for television. Generally prefer religious, news and sports programs. However, newspapers are best suited to breadth and depth of their interests.

WOMEN

• Elderly: Whether retired, widowed, or with grown children, they rely on television to satisfy their needs for a sense of belonging in the absence of interpersonal contact. Favorite programs include dramas, game shows, soap operas and religious broadcasts, with light to moderate use of most other media.

• Arts and Cultural: Mostly highly educated women belonging to households headed by managers or professionals, and with strong needs for intellectual stimulation and growth. Watch mostly theatrical and musical performances (especially classical), documentaries and news. However, they prefer all print media to television.

• Home and Community-Centered: High percentage of married homemakers, who are far more interested in sound family ties and local community events. Below-average viewing time, strongly favor soap operas and religious broadcasts. Above-average consumers of publications centered on women's interests and issues.

• Family Centered: Women with young children and interests in family interaction and child development activities use television as a vehicle for bringing children and adults together. Tailor viewing to what their children either want to or should watch, favoring non-violent, family-oriented dramas and movies, especially educational children's broadcasts. This group also makes great use of women's service and home magazines, and psychology or self-help books.

YOUTH

• Competitive Sports and Science Engineering: Teen-age males with a strong need for intellectual stimulation, status enhancement and escape from boredom. Moderate television consumers, but heavy viewers of program types with strong male personalities or that mock traditional authority figures. They tend to reject television fare that is intellectually up-scaled or abstract, features assertive females or downplays the need for personal independence. Read large quantities of sports, automotive and mechanics magazines, and use books and movies for escape.

• Athletic and Social Activities: Teenage females from upper-income families with high need to escape from problems at home and to be socially stimulating. Although below-average overall television viewers, they show a strong interest in escapist programming involving male/ female relationships in non-family, lighthearted situations. Intermediate usage of magazines is similarly oriented toward women's services, romance and fashion. Also avid consumers of escapist books and movies about love and romance, as well as the radio.

• Indoor Games and Social Activities: Low-income females interested primarily in indoor games and other non-intellectual means to higher status and social stimulation. Heavy television watchers, their preferred programming is youth and youth homemaker-oriented; virtually no viewing time devoted to informational or cultural programming. They also read an above-average share of magazines. Surprisingly. their book and movie consumption is somewhat more intellectual and less escapist than for other youth-concentration segments.

 MIXED (Mainly Adults)

• News and Information: Most interested in keeping informed on a broad range of subjects and in being socially stimulating. Devote the most time to watching television: news, talk shows, variety shows, documentaries, movies and sports. Light users of non-print media.

• Detached: Low socio-economic profile coincides with few psychological needs to satisfy, leading to very light usage of all media. Television preferences are somewhat escapist-oriented, with an emphasis on crime dramas, movies, science fiction and soap operas.

• Cosmopolitan Self-Enrichment: Extremely high socio-economic profile and diverse pattern of intellectual and cultural interests leads to a tremendous need for intellectual stimulation. The lightest of all television viewers, but also the most discriminating, they systematically avoid escape and general entertainment-oriented programs. Voracious readers of all print media, especially books and news and financial publications, they prefer films with a high intellectual content.

• Highly Diversified: Disproportionately black and Southern. These viewers compensate for their lack of educational and social advantages by watching more television than any other group except for viewers in the News and Information media type. Their magazine readership, especially of black publications, is the highest of all categories. Above-average use of local newspapers, general-interest radio, and films that interest all family members.

Question: Do you know where your children are?

Answer: At home, watching videos.

Saturday night is still movie night, and teenagers still go out in couples and in groups. But increasingly, their first stop is the video store and the final viewing point, the home screen The count isn't in, but with VCRs in nearly half the nation's homes, it's very clear that this new magic box has strikingly altered leisure time priorities for all ages.

According to a recent study, over 55 percent of those questioned preferred using the VCR to the movies and television it helps them watch. And certainly millions of families appreciate the time-shifting and prerecorded cassettes that give them the ability to watch late-night talk shows at noon, exercise classes before breakfast and classic movies any time they wish. The VCR dramatically expands entertainment options.

But the new availability of Hollywood movies on the home screen has moved a perennial parental issue into a new arena. From Platoon, Robocop, James Bond to Fatal Attraction, sexual explicitness — especially in tandem with violence — is the visual currency used to keep the cash registers ringing.

But another trend is even more disturbing. Building on the decades-long popularity of the horror film is a relatively new arrival in the entertainment market — the "slasher" film. The term refers to the sharp instruments — knives, axes, razors, arrows, chainsaws — typically used by the villains in these films to kill their victims. The genre makes its impact by blending the techniques of horror films with the sexual explicitness permitted by current moviemaking practice.

Although originally made for theatrical release, their "B" movie quality and "R" ratings limited the serious critical attention they received and helped make them inaccessible to many teens. But the arrival of the VCR has given them a new outlet. With their under-20 characters and sexually-oriented plots, these R-rated films are aiming for a young audience.

Even the casual viewer would surely note that these slasher films feature similar storylines and characters. But they share more specific characteristics, according to research undertaken recently by the National Council of Churches. Most important is their portrayal of women and sexual material in scenarios in which:

• Young women are the primary victims of the ever-present violence
• The violence occurs in a sexual or sexually threatening context
• Violent scenes are juxtaposed with mild eroticism

Some classics of the genre include Friday the 13th, with its various sequels, Halloween I and II, The Living Dead, The Evil Dead, The Toolbox Murders, I Spit on Your Grave and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

A typical segment from Friday the 13th, Part III, gives the general idea. In the space of a few minutes we see these images:

• A girl shot through the eye with an arrow gun.
• Two teenagers have sex in a hammock.
• A girl taking a shower.
• Blood dripping on a magazine a teenage girl is reading in a hammock. As the shock registers, she is killed by a knife stabbing up from below.
• A teenage boy is garroted — his female friend thinks he's kidding.

Striking Home

Although certainly offensive to many, these films are both popular and profitable. But, to paraphrase an old saying about television, if all media is a learning experience, what are viewers of these films learning?

The answer to this question isn't simple. Slasher films use explicit violence to induce a fear response. They create a tension that carries viewers out of themselves and provides the mechanism for a pleasurable release once the tension breaks. Sometimes the release mechanism is even laughter.

For adolescents, particularly, the degree of realism in each film heavily influences its impact. A situation perceived as being like life — that is, one viewers can imagine being in themselves — is more frightening. For younger children, however, the lines between fantasy and reality are less sharply drawn. They frequently need adult help to distinguish between fantasy and reality and interpret the likelihood of the events they see portrayed. In addition, sexually violent material is a hazard for younger children, who may be introduced to skewed views of relationships they are not yet fully prepared to evaluate.

Although not always recognized, the role of imagination is a crucial determinant of a film's effectiveness. Less sophisticated 'slashers" depend mainly on blood and guts for their shock value. Better-made thrillers — like Psycho or Jaws — precede the violent episodes with psychological twists and foreshadowing. In Jaws, for example. the shark isn't seen until an hour and a half into the movie.

Instead of graphic violence, the tension is heightened by narrative. Using only shots of the actor's face, the camera focuses on the honor he remembers as the survivor of a shark attack during his World War II service. When the shark actually appears, its devastation is much more unnerving. Sequels to Jaws, on the other hand, relied on tricks of the trade, with slim plots carrying the burden of violent and sexually explicit scenes.

A Learning Experience

Strangely enough, with all their reliance on sexual violence, most slasher films present a rather strait-laced morality. Although obviously designed to draw audiences, theft sex scenes lead to death, not fulfillment. Killers punish drug use, sexual activity and character flaws indiscriminately. The few conventionally moral characters, like Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie in Halloween, tend to be the only ones to survive. The moral, if any, might be that sex kills." As sex education tools, they are certainly lacking.

But do slasher films do any harm beyond raised blood pressure and goose bumps? The experts don't entirely agree, but much recent research has implied that sexually violent material influences viewers' attitudes and has more potential for changing their behavior than either sexual content or violence alone.

For obvious ethical reasons, studies of sexually violent material measure adult reactions, not those of teenagers. They also typically center on laboratory-evaluated reactions to concentrated doses of specially selected material. Although researchers are cautious about evaluating such data, they have been struck by the effects of viewing sexual violence on the young men they study. In fact, after analyzing post-viewing attitudinal studies media researchers Edward Donnerstein, Daniel Linz and Steven Penrod concluded that violent pornography could increase aggression against women. In fact, as they explained in their recent study The Question of Pornography: Research Findings and Policy Implications, "The highest level of aggression toward a female was displayed by men who were both angered and shown a sexually violent film." Both men and women were desensitized by the violence shown — but only men were made more aggressive.

Although studies have focused on both R and X-rated material, violence seems to be a key factor in encouraging aggressive attitudes. R-rated films that are not, legally, pornography (that is, they include only simulated sex and avoid representation of genitalia and explicit sexual behavior) may still encourage aggression by connecting sex with violence.

 "Kids between 10 and 19 watched three times more moview on videotape in 1985 than in 1984, and saw 20 percent fewer movies in theaters."
- Jack Matthews, Los Angeles Times

Play It Again

If one viewing can cause desensitization. one has to speculate on the effect on even well-adjusted youngsters who may watch these films over and over again in a group setting. It may be cool for youngsters — especially boys — to prove their maturity by assuming insensitivity. But the VCR has made it easier to make the experience repetitive.

A number of studies have confirmed that VCR use among adolescents is essentially a peer group phenomenon. According to a study of Swedish 13 and 14-year-olds, VCR viewing occurs overwhelmingly in the company of friends, usually in a group of three to four persons. Only six percent reported that they frequently watched videos by themselves.

This social viewing pattern means that even many teenagers who do not have VCRs in their own homes have access to material shown on them. A Michigan study found that youngsters with VCRs in their homes had indeed viewed more R rated films than those without them. But their VCR-less cohorts had also seen an average of one or two R-rated films. Evidently they watched R-rated cassettes on their friends' machines.

It seems clear that VCRs do help to expose even young teenagers to R-rated movies. But, as the researchers noted, "Despite greater access to sexually explicit and violent content over VCRs and cable, increased parental effort to mediate exposure are not reported, at least by the youngsters themselves."

Certainly children may rebel against their parents' values. And adolescence, particularly, is a time of testing and experimentation. For many questing young people, R-rated films, violent or otherwise, are so much grist for the mill.

 "The VCR has become the best excuse in the world to keep the party going. As long as the videos last, the party never ends."
- Law student, City University of New York

Concerned parents need to be aware of how much influence they can have on their children, as in a mother-son dialogue overheard recently in a video store. After rejecting a number of her son's violent choices, the mother agreed to several, but only if her son watched them while she was there. This kind of monitoring means that even if he sees the forbidden films at a friend's house this young man will understand what his mother disapproves of — and why.

From the other side of the counter, a Los Angeles-area video store manager describes how influential parents' feedback has been in shaping his store's policies. He said clerks are trained to scrutinize youngsters' choices and check IDs if necessary. Significantly, these procedures were set up as a response to parental feedback by store managers reacting to the demand, "What's my kid doing with this?" Managers who know parents are concerned have more incentive to act responsibly, he added.

Getting Help

Parents need to be aware that video store versions of R-rated films often have added material that was originally cut to make a film acceptable for theatrical release. But even if ratings can be taken at face value, the rating system is confusing and often inadequate. And few parents are qualified as film critics or cinema instructors.

But there are places they can go for help. Schools, churches and youth groups may be able to help find trained instructors who can teach the principles of film-making and help youngsters unmask the exploitation that motivates many violent films.

In family settings, the following strategies may help: Ask teens what they've seen recently and how they felt about it. If they show special enthusiasm for one or two films, rent them and sit down and watch with them.

• Share your feelings about what is depicted in a non-judgmental manner, explaining what makes you fearful, angry, upset, turned-on, turned-off, confused, amused or sad. Ask them to share their similar feelings.
• Talk about the sexual myths being depicted, such as films that show women enjoying rape and story lines that punish sexuality with violence.
• Discuss the degree of fantasy or realism in each film and how this orientation affects what the teen viewer is feeling. Joint viewing sessions with neighbors and friends may be helpful in discussing sensitive issues like sexuality and sexual behavior.
• Do encourage your local video store to prominently display ratings, establish rental policies that honor ratings age restrictions and place adult films in special sections out of the reach of underage youngsters.

But don't forget to work on the positive as well as the negative. In this case, at least, the good may drive out the bad. Make sure that young people are exposed to high quality films, including positive portrayals of sex and its fundamental connection with life, love and commitment.

As the Rev. Marie Fortune, the author of a well-known study of sexual violence, puts it: "If the only sexually explicit materials available are violent and abusive, people will learn from them that sexuality is degrading, exploitative and nonconsensual. We need more sexually explicit, factual materials which portray caring, affectionate, erotic, mutually consenting relationships among people."

We can't realistically expect to eliminate slasher movies without violating First Amendment principles. But we can work with our young people and the institutions that serve them to mitigate their harmful effects. And we may even become closer to our teenagers in the process.

How well do local news outlets in your community cover minority issues?

To find out, organize a media monitoring project in a class or discussion group. Just one week of monitoring can surprise you with what's included — and what's left out.

Select one week to monitor. Have one or several people commit to reading one daily paper or watching one local TV news program for the entire week. (Videotaping gives a permanent copy for later review.)

• Each monitor should count the number and length (in column inches or minutes/seconds of air time) of stories involving minority persons or subjects.
• Develop a chart to further analyze the coverage by subject matter (crime? sports? business? features?), by significance (page 1? at the end?), and by racial group covered.
• If possible note if the writer or reporter is a member of the minority group being covered.
• When the entire group compares results from each monitoring report, patterns, trends — and further questions — will surely emerge. Discussion and analysis could go on for weeks!