samedi 17 janvier 2004
Faith and the media
This has been a topic that I've always enjoyed studying and reading about. This integration between both perks my interest the most and is a subject I would love to explore more. I found an essay that I wrote two years ago about this; it's kind of brutally written (imo) but I liked it regardless:
"Violence, for example, has not increased in number or severity necessarily (looking back to recorded historical times), but coverage and glamourization of it has increased dramatically. Students will likely see about 120,000 depictions of violence including 18,000 violent deaths before they enter university, with the breakdown of seeing 27 violent acts per day (more than once per hour) from age five until age eighteen. These violent acts can range anywhere from a slap across the face to shootings to car crashes to exploding buildings to gruesome stabbings."
"A startling statistic in a study shows that 'there are 14,000 sexual references on TV annually and only 165 of these references deal with sex education, contraception, abortion, or sexually-transmitted diseases' (Strom, 181), indicating the distortion of the truth about sex that Satan has blinded people with. These references are mainly 'sexual innuendos, sexual advances, people making out, people 'making love', and sexual crimes' (ibid), none of which represent the true meaning of sex. Furthermore, sex is more prevalent outside of marriage than within marriage. The ratio for a soap opera for unmarried to married sex is two to one, the ratio for prime time shows on television is six to one, and for R-rated movies, it jumps to an astonishing thirty-two to one."
"'On American college and high school campuses today, the name most associated with the word 'Christian' – other than Jesus – is not the pope or Mother Teresa or even Billy Graham. Instead, it's a goofy-looking guy named Ned Flanders. Homer Simpson's next-door neighbor is the evangelical known most intimately to nonevangelicals' (Pinksy, 2001, 42). Even though there are theological inaccuracies on The Simpsons, most typical television viewers receive more information about Christianity from this show than from any other. It is almost a form of reverse witnessing where satirical humour can spur the curious to conduct more research about what they are not getting the full picture of."
Copyright 2002 Neely, excerpts from "The Effects of Media on Christians"
Libellés : college
