ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 116, OCTOBER 2004
BOOKSHELF
Reviews by Bill Muehlenberg
“The Media-Wise Family” by Ted Baehr, published by Chariot Victor 1998. (Order from major book shops)
Although this book is a few years old, and deals with the American scene, it is still quite a helpful resource on how families, and especially religious families, can deal with the media in all its forms. This is especially important since all families, Christian and non-Christian, are immersed in a culture in which the popular media appears to be omnipresent and extremely influential.
How can families protect themselves, and their young people, from the harmful effects of popular culture? How can parents deal with the onslaught of anti-family and anti-faith values that are so incessantly promoted in music, videos, in movies, on television and in advertising? How can parents become the real educator and transmitter of values, rather than the entertainment world? These and other questions are carefully dealt with in this helpful and illuminating volume.
With the family home bombarded by all forms of media and entertainment, parents need to be wise and discerning as to what they allow and how they allow it. Baehr, a US media expert, offers practical advice on how the media monster can be tamed and used for good in the home.
The facts on media use are first laid out, and US figures are probably close to Australian figures. The average American child will watch 25,000 hours of television, while attending school for around 15,000 hours before the age of 17. And that child will likely spend less than 2000 hours of quality times with parents. Thus TV in particular and the media in general have become for many children substitute parents. The media, rather than mum and dad, become the main mind-molders of our children.
Baehr then examines some of the harmful effects the media can have on young people, and not-so-young people. He examines how violence, sexually explicit material, and other negatives are becoming a staple diet for most Americans. He notes that over 3000 studies have been conducted on the harmful effects of mass media on behavior.
He also documents how the entertainment industry is deliberately targeting ever younger audiences. But as Baehr points out, younger children just do not have the psychological and intellectual mechanisms in place to properly filter and analyze what they are soaking in. For example, younger children are unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and various images can have a lasting negative impact on them.
Baehr also documents how popular media is dumbing us down. Copious amounts of television viewing, for example, are creating a generation of children who are educationally worse off, and who are also stunted emotionally and socially. He also demonstrates how worldviews inimical to faith and family values are a regular part of much of the entertainment industry. Anti-Christian and anti-marriage messages predominate in much of Hollywood’s offerings. Thus parents need to teach their children how to treat their media intake with a discerning eye.
Baehr examines a number of films and television shows, noting their various worldviews: feminist, Marxist, atheist, radical green, secular humanist, New Age, and so on. He encourages us to learn to ask what a film says about such issues as God, man, sin, salvation, human sexuality, human purpose, human values, etc. We need to be informed viewers and listeners, not just uncritically accepting whatever comes our way, but carefully assessing it from the vantage point of a biblical worldview.
The book concludes with a practical and hands on guide to help parents teach their children to develop media discernment. And for those parents who want to take this further, Baehr publishes a bi-weekly assessment of films called “MovieGuide”. In an age in which entertainment and popular culture have become the new gods for many young people, parents need to know where to turn in getting help to curb the media monster. This book is a very helpful first step in the process.
Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism by F. Carolyn Graglia. Spence Publishing, 1998. (Order from major book shops)
There have been a number of good books offering a critique of feminism. Perhaps one of the best is this volume. Although it has been around for some years now, it still remains one of the most comprehensive, articulate and well-researched books to take on the excesses of feminism.
A major thesis of this volume is that while feminism may appear to be anti-men, it is even more so anti-women, at least women of a certain stripe. The author insists that wives and homemakers are the real target of radical feminists, and she spends a good part of this hefty tome (450 pages) in documenting this claim.
The author, who is a lawyer by profession, but a homemaker by choice, has the intellectual firepower needed to take on the heavyweights of the feminist movement. The thoughts and writings of Friedan, Steinem, Greer, Millet, de Beauvoir, and all the other major movers and shakers in the feminist movement are here carefully evaluated, and their antipathy to wives and families are carefully assessed.
Solid chapters explore the rise of modern feminism, the feminist agenda, the totalitarian impulse in feminism, the push for androgyny, and the attack on the institutions of marriage and the traditional family, among other things.
The author is especially adept at showing how women cannot have it all, at least not at the same time. The push for climbing the corporate ladder invariably takes a toll on child rearing and family, and many women have suffered as a result of buying the feminist line on this issue.
She tackles a number of other myths, such as the idea that gender is simply a social construct, and the idea that motherhood and homemaking are somehow second class lifestyles. She shows how women have been the big losers in the feminist-promoted sexual revolution. She documents how women have suffered under no-fault divorce. And she demonstrates how the push for a purely androgynous society results in all parties losing out.
While acknowledging that women have the right to pursue the feminist script if they so choose, Carolyn Graglia firmly believes that feminism is really anti-women. Feminism remains a destructive and destabilising social force. In the end, feminism has damaged women, harmed families, and put children at risk. Strong words, but after reading her arguments one has to agree that not everything has been sweetness and light in this major social revolution. Indeed, like most revolutions, the results are often worse than the original problem.
While many will violently disagree with the major propositions of this volume, the author’s arguments deserve a fair hearing. Spence Publishing deserves credit for running with such a volume, at a time when many other publishers wouldn’t dream of offering such a daring title.
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