I think technology is good.
I love my new computer and the extended reach it has given me.
I think I'm smarter than I was before I got it working properly.

I use it to write love letters to my one true love.
I use it to email my parents and my children, who have moved far away.

I like cable television too.
There's two public t.v. stations, the History Channel, Discovery, three 24 hour news broadcasts.
I can keep an eye on popular culture by channel surfing on MTV and VH1.

However, like any good thing - technology has to be taken in moderation, just like any other good thing. If we aren't careful, technology will take us over and we'll become slaves to it.

By way of a discourse on Images of the Family In Popular Culture, I will try to explain how we've come to be the way we are, and how we can change a little.

There is a reading entitled "Images of the Family in the Mass Media: An American Iconography." (Walstrom, 1979) in Arlene Skolnick's, The American Family in Popular Culture and Social Science. In it, the author asserts that images in popular culture reinforce stereotypes and often the manifestation of them.

He maintains that this occurs due to a Freudian concept called optical memory-residues--that is, we see things as contrivances and later we internalize them as real. 

First comes : Objective Identification of Form and Object which is transferred to Subjective Matter of Motif and Concept (action and thought). In the language of the conspiracy theory of thought and behavior control, we use the diet of stereotypes with which we feed our minds to create a shorthand for categorizing events, situations and people.

However, in order for a stereotype to be kept salient, there need to be two conditions:

1. It must be useful to the Economy. The image has to be useful in selling products.
2. It must then contain some measure of conceptual or perceptual truth, no matter how slight.

If what we are given by society is the input, and we want to fix the problems we see in our culture, all we have to do is change the input.

We have to be careful, and remember what the computer programmer says, "Garbage in, garbage out!."
 

Alternatively, given our short time on earth to make a mark, to enjoy what life has to offer, we have to emulate Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. We have to dance and sing as though life was not as tenuous and unstable as we know it really is.

Ideals that we are given to process as reality are images from the media which are equivalent to the sacred images of other cultures.

As the media takes on increasingly more religious functions, the images by which we define reality and live our lives become increasingly controlled by persons other than those in our primary group.

Media provides heroes, myths, sacraments, and beatific visions for increasingly more and more folks. In so doing, the media parodies several aspects of all institutions - imparting basic American values on us all.

For example, the Rugged Individualism of John Wayne and the self-reliant Rambo are understood by Americans so as not to conflict with the cooperative elements necessary for society to "progress".

Thus, males are not, by and large, presented as Family Men in the media;
                                             

while females are, by and large, primarily presented as domestic and helpless, or sexual beings only.

Men are bound for greatness.
Women must manipulate or trap cagey males into familial relationships through the promise of never-ending sexuality or terrific meals (probably just the sex).

There are some problems in this male dominated media approach.
First, marriage and family life has consistently been shown to really increase the social power of the male, to be a more healthy state of being for men than women, and to actually curtail the freedom of women much more than men. But we don't get to hear those messages on television, in the movies, or in the lyrics of popular music. In fact, the messages of media send exactly the opposite ideal.

Before Marriage:

 
 

Men are physically strong, serious and have a "big picture" world view. They are illusive, brave, and heroic. Lois Lane is always attempting to maneuver Superman into romantic situations only to have to rely on his superior mental and physical powers to rescue her from the jaws of certain demise. The furthest thing from his mind is settling down with one of his sweeties.

Women are fun loving, "frisky" (a la puppies), demure, innocent, hopeful, and dreamy. They are gullible, and single-minded in their quest for a husband.

Or they are Bad Girls
 

After Marriage:

Men are balding, fat, befuddled, and prone to falling asleep if not constantly stimulated with the puzzling antics of wife and children. He is emasculated, stupid, and selfish.

Women are crazy for shopping, at once lazy and pathologically preoccupied with domestic cleanliness. The woman is the "real boss" of the household, long suffering, worried, intellectually superior to the husband.

Sex Role Stereotypes of Children in Media:

Boys are tough, mean, inquisitive, always getting into trouble (or embarrassing parents) - dirt is magnetically attracted to them. They are loud and self-absorbed demons.

 

Girls are sugar and spice, spunky, have feelings that are easily hurt, always clean (and irritated when smudged by boys). They are angels.

Teenaged boys and girls are headed for trouble because of the puberty blues. There are options in media presentation of the genders and family life, as social conditions give rise to social change. Art is supposed to imitate life.

The Impact of Television.

The 1950s marked the first decade of electronically portrayed families. Family life is either Pathological, Comedic, or Perverse. There are three modes of production in television.

First there is Drama - the "highest" form of television, in which art imitates life - seldom was family life portrayed in a positive way. Productions of Steinbeck ("Grapes of Wrath") showed the family being torn apart by the depression and the injustice of daily social life. True also for Miller's "Death of a Salesman" (alienation), Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (sexually perverse), Ibsen's "A Doll's House" (oppressive for women), and only occasionally do we have a positive view of family life (movies where Family life is all that stands between a Man's defeat and a healthy life) such as Thomas Edison's understanding wife and family. Lesser art forms, such as westerns like "Gunsmoke" were devoid of fully developed families, with the exception of the occasional "settler" family caught between frontier lawlessness and poverty. Matt, Doc, Festus, Miss Kitty, everyone west of the Appalachians were single and childless.

Second is the Situation Comedy - For adults there was The Honey Mooners, where Ralph and Alice (childless for the sake of lower production costs) constantly fight over money, prestige, and the conjugal upper hand. But they really love each other. Family shows (Make Room for Daddy, Father Knows Best, Dennis The Menace, Bachelor Father (what the author refers to as "abridged families" including "My Mother the Car, Mr. Ed, and My Favorite Martian"). All attempted to show the "lighter side" of family relationships. In all the years of I Love Lucy neither Lucy nor Desi had extramarital affairs. They also slept in twin beds and wore pajamas, which makes one wonder how THEY ever made Babaloo so that Little Ricky could have been conceived in the first place. Lucille Ball's pregnancy was the first to be nationally televised however, credit where credit is due.

Third--The Soaps - found their plot lines in the things that can go wrong in the "relationship" between men and women. Filing for divorce, marriage in name only, unwanted pregnancies, propositions for sex, auto accidents in which one half of the affair is rushing home to his or her lover to say how sorry he/she is for behaving like such a rascal but is knocked into a coma and never says "I love you". Lots of hospital scenes, combining the drama of the operating theater and the smooth operator. Loads of adultery, attempted murder of adulterous would-be and actual spouses, and mental illness.

The 1960s, 1970s and beyond.
The Abridged Family Form (missing a member) was a little ahead of its time, since single parent families were still in a minority. The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Nanny and the Professor, My Three Sons, Bonanza, and A Family Affair were a form of programming that continued through the seventies and eighties. Interestingly - in virtually all of these 1960s t.v. shows, it was the mother that was always "abridged", leaving the Hapless, though wise, father to raise his children either single handedly or with the help of a hired mother figure. In every case, the mother had died mysteriously (leaving several episodes devoted to heart to heart father-child conversations). This is a particularly touching strategy, given the cultural view on maternal deprivation. I always thought it was amazing that Ben Cartwright had such rotten luck in choosing these unhealthy accident prone women.

In the seventies and eighties, we began to see the single parent change gender with One Day at a Time (with a recently divorced mother of two teenaged daughters), The Facts of Life (where the coquettishly pubescent characters were essentially orphaned by their parents to live in a girl's academy), Alice (divorced mother of a teenaged boy which was a comedy scripted from a very serious dramatic screenplay, which was taken from a novel Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.), and most recently Kate and Allie (two divorced women pool their resources and problems to "blend" a family. One is a career woman, the other is domestic. Some critics maintain that such programs are answers to feminist pleas. Certainly all women facing divorce are opting to become the wife and mother of another woman and her children.

It was during the seventies and eighties that the roommate genre was concocted as homosexuality entered the comedy bin. Laverne and Shirley, Three's Company, The Odd Couple, Bosom Buddies, and Perfect Strangers. The idea was to show how much fun it would be for a man to have two or more wiggly female roommates and be wrongly accused of homosexuality, or to observe healthy American males cross dress in the transvestite tradition.

Poverty and Race.
The 1960s also brought social issues to television light, partly because of the upheaval of the times. All in the Family dealt comedically with issues such as racism, sexism, sex itself, bigotry and prejudice, and life in a working class, two generation family. Spinning off from this was The Jeffersons, which was a depiction of black family life among the nouveau riche noir. George Jefferson was touchy about getting the respect a man of his means deserved, their friends (the high rise universe) were an interracial couple, and a homosexual bachelor ambassador to the U.N. Good Times placed the black family back in poverty - showing strong family values in a drug free environment. Recently, "The Cosby Show" and "Family Ties" offer the same middle class family values as the earlier productions of the 1950s with contemporary themes. And there are others. The point is that the media presents us with false pictures of life, no matter how silly or funny they appear, that let us get our hopes up. At the very least, these television productions do not enlighten, nor do they provide us with truths.

Movies.
It may just be my imagination, but movies are getting dumber. In the 1940s , family life was always portrayed as a joyous condition - the problems of family life taking on Hollywood proportions--It's a Wonderful Life and Father of the Bride. In the 1950s, The Defiant Ones and To Kill a Mockingbird brilliantly took on the issues of racism, with the subject tangentially treated in the 1940s in such movies as Inherit the Wind. These were exceptional movies that made a point and made me feel good. They told me something can be done about the sorry state of affairs in which we live.

Of course, there were also the dumb ones like, Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Blob. Recent movies have dealt with family pathology - Ordinary People, baby boomers growing up in The Big Chill, yuppie life in Baby Boom and Three Men and a Baby, custody suits Kramer vs. Kramer, working mothers & househubbies in Mr. Mom. Largely a one dimensional view of these subjects. For example, Kramer vs. Kramer took to task the extremely difficult time any father might have in gaining custody of his child. A noble undertaking, except for the facts. Never in the past ninety years of U.S. family law, has a father had any difficulty at all in gaining the custody of his children. The fact is that 90% of the fathers don't even try because they don't really want to be bothered.

Family life has lately been a topic of movie scripts, while other social issues were treated much earlier. Perhaps the best story-put-to-film about the black family was Sounder (with a bow to the television drama The Diary of Miss Jane Pitman). Raisin in the Sun (1960s) is the only non-rural depiction of the black family that comes to mind. An overethnic view of Sicilian families was presented in The Godfather movies.

So What Does All This Mean?
One thing that our theories may agree upon is that media presentation of the family, gender roles, levels of violence in our society, and the cultural view of sexuality, impacts on the health and welfare of developing children, as well as whole families. People in our culture are often short sighted and tend to forget that mass media is always pushing them to buy products. They forget that mass media is a science first, and an art second - a business first, and a form of social commentary second. If we take the benign approach, we tend to view the media as relatively harmless entertainment. It's only a movie, after all. If we take the cynical approach, we tend to view all messages sent as clever, almost subliminal, strategies to form our opinions for us.