Pauline Center for Media Studies

“Turn Beauty Inside Out” Conference*

Hilton Universal
April 14, 2005

The Turn Beauty Inside Out (www.TBIO.org ) Campaign, is an ongoing public education effort coordinated by Mind on the Media. This is a collaborative effort to foster participation, discussion, and awareness of women's and girls' images in the media.

Media and Social Change
A Panel Discussion

Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP

My work as the Director for the Pauline Center for Media Studies (www.pauline.org) is to develop ways to encourage media literacy education, that is, how to question the media in view of becoming mindful about how media – entertainment and information media – shape and influence us through stories and image. Specifically this means through how gender, race, social status, diverse cultures, and religion are represented by the media leading to the larger question: how do I become in charge of my “mediated” life?

Our topic today is “Media and Social Change” and we could take this from many aspects: from the personal to the industry, to the political and economic. Social is about culture, however, and culture and the media influence each other. Culture is created by relationships that are created by communication, especially conversation. This kind of communication is always colored by our personal values. We talk about what is important to us.

I would like to address three points in this brief presentation today and follow this up with six skills we can easily put into practice to encourage media mindfulness:

Values, conversation, and meaning

Articulate our values
Talk about what we watch
Meaning
Articulate our values: My mother had her own way of doing media literacy back in the 1960’s. One day my brothers and I came home from school early to discover the TV thingys were missing. “Mom, we can’t turn on the TV!” “I know,” she said. “It broke. Go outside and play.” And we did! But by Saturday we wanted to watch TV. My mom and grandmother went shopping (our dad was overseas) and we realized that all we needed was a pair of pliers. So we raided our grandpa’s shed and watched TV for hours. Then we heard the car drive up and something told us we maybe ought not to be watching TV when mom came home. So I quickly turned off the TV and went behind it (ours was in a large cabinet) and put the pliers under it. Guess what I found? Yes, the two knobs to turn the TV on and to change channels. So much for talking about what we were watching… This approach does not really work in the long run, however.

Values are those ideas and ideals that direct our life. Some of these are courage, patience, integrity, charity, community, perseverance, justice, hope, faith – to name a few. If we can articulate even three values that we live by, and explain them, we can apply them to the television and movies we watch, what we read, and so forth. These values will help us articulate our criteria for choosing a program or not; we will be able to explain “why” we will not watch this program. I happen to appreciate South Park (though it’s getting old now) because it lampoons adult inconsistencies between what they say and actually do. But there’s much on it that is inappropriate for kids because the characters lack civility; also, immature children cannot navigate the satire. They already think poop is funny no matter the context. If kids are watching this show (and they are, especially adolescent males between the ages of 10 and 30), responsible parents and caregivers will talk about this type of humor and explain that it offends some people. Therefore out of respect for them we do not imitate the behavior and language on the show and we will watch something else. Use values as the criteria to choose what to watch or read; explain values to motivate choices; refer to values to question what we watch or read.

Talk about what we watch with one another, with parents, teachers, friends, and especially children. Talk about whether you liked the show or not and why – always “why”. Refer back to your values. This talk does not have to be formal, but it needs to be habitual, normal. As Dr. Phil said recently: to have a relationship with your children you have to be able to talk about the unimportant things in order to be able to talk about the important things. Values help us “see”. A mother once asked Sr. Mary Rose McGeady, SC, then president of Covenant House for runaways in New York: How do we keep our children from running away? “You talk to them. From the moment you bring them home from the hospital when they are born, you talk to them, and you talk to them and you talk to them.”

Meaning – Once you choose what to see or read, how do we make sense of it? What kind of meaning does each one of us make from it? Talking about what we see, hear and read helps us understand and appreciate film, and yes, television, as art – when it meets that criteria for us. Everyone makes meaning according to their age, experience, education, and so forth. No one understands the same thing the same way; so when we share about meaning, respect for the other is called for and real dialogue can happen.

We have just completed a cycle: Articulate values, apply them when we choose media, and once we have chosen, those very values will highlight the meaning that we make – and share in respectful conversation and dialogue.

Six skills that can be help us become media savvy:

Choose one value that is important for you and your family, e.g. respect for others. Then every time you see a film, alone or together, make a point of talking about how the movie showed respect for people. By the end of the story (it’s not over until the last credit rolls), did the characters respect others?
Create your own media blog; become a movie or television critic; state your criteria and then review accordingly: human dignity, respect for the body, how diverse cultures and people are treated, how well the film or show tells the story; what is the story; what did it mean to you?
Be open in your communication with others; kids, respect your parents’ opinions and parents, honor your kids’ opinions and always come back, in some way, to the values that guide your family;
Establish your family priorities, from meals together, to homework, sports, worship, and so forth. This will help you make mindful choices about the time you and your children spend with the media;
Know your media world; stand in each room of your house, paper and pen in hand, and make a list of all the media technology and media forms in your house – and don’t forget the bathroom, the new library, or the car, the new theater. Then add up how many TV’s, computers, video games, DVD’s, books, telephones subscriptions you have. Then make a list of how much time you spend with these media. If we think about the end of our lives, then we’ll understand how much media is enough or too much for us now;
Make a mindful trip to the mall together. For example, when you go to a clothing store, check out the labels and make note of all the countries our branded/logo bearing clothing comes from and the people that make them for us. (We actually prize clothing that advertises the very companies that sells that clothing to us, as a status symbol; this is part of visual literacy). Think of the free trade zones where the women who work there can only go to the bathroom every four hours, and if they say their period has started, they are accompanied by a woman who checks to make sure she is telling the truth. We might think: we should boycott those products! But no, these countries need development. So how can we support the organizations that support human rights and good working conditions in these zones; how can we encourage global, transnational companies to put the workers first? We come back to the value of human dignity and respect.

Some people think that sex in the media is our biggest problem, but I hold that our biggest problem is consumerism that supports the media and which the media support in return. Consumerism devalues the person that makes sexual exploitation possible; print advertising that promotes all the things that very advertising teaches us to buy to fulfill the artificial needs that this advertising has created, often shows women’s bodies without heads, for example. This is objectifying the body, fragmenting the person, in view of sales. Here is the connection between visual, media literacy, human dignity and economics and society.

At the mall, ask: how much is enough? Enoughness is a value.

Conclusion

There are two other points to keep in mind.

One is developmental compression. Because of the media, kids are getting older, younger. Fifteen year-olds can hack into the computers of the Pentagon or a telephone company because they can; but they do not understand the consequences of their actions. Understanding, looking for, talking about the consequences of our actions and the actions and choices of characters, are part of media literacy and character education.

The second point is impulse control. Kids are not good at this; child development experts will tell you that the part of the brain that controls impulsive acting is not mature until the person is about twenty-one. Because media is part of our world, because commercialization and consumerism are part of that same world, it is up to us to be involved in the lives of children and young people and talk about consequences and impulse control – they go together. The media influence us, of this there is no doubt. And we, as responsible adults, can help our children navigate this influence if we are involved in their media lives.

Media literacy leads to critical autonomy: to be who we are regarding the media whether or not someone is looking at us. This integrity goes right along with the goal of character education which is to be a good person whether or not anyone is looking.

In the 1995 film Clueless, in a rare moment of introspection, Cher (Alicia Silverstone) asks: “What does it take to become a better person?” If every young person in America asked him or herself that question, what a different society we would have. How can we lead them to a moment like this? The media makers of tomorrow are in our living rooms, classrooms, and church pews today. Media literacy can help create a mindful society that cares about being good persons and citizens.