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amado1Sometimes a small sample of people is given an outsized spotlight and implied to represent all of America -- for better or worse. This happens, for example, when people ask why violence is more socially acceptable than sex. Films showing nudity risk an R rating, but chainsaws cutting body parts off merit only a PG. While there's a grain of truth to this criticism, what's missed is that Americans do not vote on film ratings; that's done by a single group called the MPAA, known for its prudish and conservative agenda. Neither the MPAA nor its ratings reflect American values and morals.
—Benjamin Radford, America the Fearful: Media and the Marketing of National Panics.
I'm reading this book right now (and I texted my roommate to say we NEED to watch "This Film is Not Yet Rated" tonight 😆) and it got me thinking about the Satanic Panic and books (like Phil Phillips' Saturday Morning Mind Control and Tipper Gore's Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society) that focus on the Satanism or queerness baked into innocent media and toys.
Do those people give us an inflated idea of America's prudishness? I grew up fundie and went to a fundamentalist Christian school. There, we weren't allowed to read Harry Potter or celebrate Halloween. That was Satanism! But... how many parents actually stopped their kids from watching Harry Potter? I knew all 75 kids at that school, and only two sets of parents prohibited their kids from interacting with the Satanic wizarding world. One was my best friend's parents, who weren't even fundamentalists! They went to a whole different, more relaxed church, and just sent their kids to this school because it was (at first) the most liberal-minded Christian school in the area. The other parents were, predictably, the pastor and his wife -- the exact folks who set this school-wide anti-Harry Potter rule in the first place. The teachers, in the meantime, still handed out Harry Potter coloring books as rewards for good behavior, and the parents still hosted Halloween parties where dressing as witches or the devil was 100% allowed.
In another vein, my fundamentalist mother believed that the Earth was 6,000 years old and queer people were going to hell. But at the same time, I was allowed to watch anything I wanted. R-rated movies were allowed starting at age 2, and from then on, there were no restrictions at all. I could stay up late to watch South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons and then get dressed for church the next morning. I was allowed to watch queer movies whether she loved them (The Birdcage) or hated them (Boys Don't Cry). And both my parents were huge fans of "Satanic" heavy metal bands, so I grew up listening to Black Sabbath in the car on the way to church!
Earlier today, I read a Skeptical Inquirer article that posed the question (paraphrasing here): "Do we as skeptics overestimate the influence of psychics in our society, simply because we ourselves are obsessed with debunking them and ending that influence once and for all?" I mean, imo, the answer is definitely yes, and I'd expand that to cover not just psychics, but a wide variety of more commonly-concerning social ills. Humans are easily duped and tribal by nature but we're also empathetic, thoughtful, and always learning; as a queer person, for example, it's easy to overestimate the number of homophobes out there, and as lover of sex and horror, it's also easy to overestimate the number of prudes.
What do you think? I'm posting this publicly in the hopes that someone sees it on the "Latest" page and offers their opinion 😆 I'm big on Freedom of Fiction and virulently anti-censorship, and I think it's given me a pessimistic view of the world at large.
—Benjamin Radford, America the Fearful: Media and the Marketing of National Panics.
I'm reading this book right now (and I texted my roommate to say we NEED to watch "This Film is Not Yet Rated" tonight 😆) and it got me thinking about the Satanic Panic and books (like Phil Phillips' Saturday Morning Mind Control and Tipper Gore's Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society) that focus on the Satanism or queerness baked into innocent media and toys.
Do those people give us an inflated idea of America's prudishness? I grew up fundie and went to a fundamentalist Christian school. There, we weren't allowed to read Harry Potter or celebrate Halloween. That was Satanism! But... how many parents actually stopped their kids from watching Harry Potter? I knew all 75 kids at that school, and only two sets of parents prohibited their kids from interacting with the Satanic wizarding world. One was my best friend's parents, who weren't even fundamentalists! They went to a whole different, more relaxed church, and just sent their kids to this school because it was (at first) the most liberal-minded Christian school in the area. The other parents were, predictably, the pastor and his wife -- the exact folks who set this school-wide anti-Harry Potter rule in the first place. The teachers, in the meantime, still handed out Harry Potter coloring books as rewards for good behavior, and the parents still hosted Halloween parties where dressing as witches or the devil was 100% allowed.
In another vein, my fundamentalist mother believed that the Earth was 6,000 years old and queer people were going to hell. But at the same time, I was allowed to watch anything I wanted. R-rated movies were allowed starting at age 2, and from then on, there were no restrictions at all. I could stay up late to watch South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons and then get dressed for church the next morning. I was allowed to watch queer movies whether she loved them (The Birdcage) or hated them (Boys Don't Cry). And both my parents were huge fans of "Satanic" heavy metal bands, so I grew up listening to Black Sabbath in the car on the way to church!
Earlier today, I read a Skeptical Inquirer article that posed the question (paraphrasing here): "Do we as skeptics overestimate the influence of psychics in our society, simply because we ourselves are obsessed with debunking them and ending that influence once and for all?" I mean, imo, the answer is definitely yes, and I'd expand that to cover not just psychics, but a wide variety of more commonly-concerning social ills. Humans are easily duped and tribal by nature but we're also empathetic, thoughtful, and always learning; as a queer person, for example, it's easy to overestimate the number of homophobes out there, and as lover of sex and horror, it's also easy to overestimate the number of prudes.
What do you think? I'm posting this publicly in the hopes that someone sees it on the "Latest" page and offers their opinion 😆 I'm big on Freedom of Fiction and virulently anti-censorship, and I think it's given me a pessimistic view of the world at large.
