Journal of Communication, December 2002

U.S. Adolescent Religious Identity, the Media, and the “Funky” Side of

by Lynn Schofield Clark

Television, film, and other forms of narrative fiction have often been understood as direct competitors to the traditional beliefs and values of organized religion. Not all people experience the media in this way, however. This article analyzes several cases in which stories of the , , and paranormal in the entertainment media become an important context through which contemporary teens understand religious beliefs. The study employed research from a multiyear ethnographic study to examine narratives of young people with various backgrounds and levels of interest in religion. The article discusses five different ways in which stories from the entertainment media are either rejected or incorporated into what young people claim are their religious beliefs. Building upon cultural studies perspectives, the article demonstrates that entertainment media are one element of a culture that shapes and constrains religious identity construction for contemporary teens and an especially important one for those with few ties to formal religion.

“I watch a lot of extraterrestrial stuff,” Jodie, a young, Anglo American woman from an impoverished economic background, told me as she puffed her cigarette. “They’re different. It’s a new outlook on what could be happening, rather than on what already is happening, or what in the past has happened.” Skeptical about the God she associated with organized religion, Jodie was fascinated instead by other forms of the supernatural such as the paranormal, ghosts, and aliens. When I asked her what television program she believed was most like her religious beliefs, she offered this intriguing answer:

Lynn Schofield Clark (PhD, University of Colorado, 1998) is assistant research professor at the Center for Mass Media Research, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado. Her research interests include adolescents, the entertainment media, the Internet, of religion, and ethnographic methodologies. This article is based on her dissertation, directed by Stewart M. Hoover, and is excerpted from her forthcoming book, From Angels to Aliens: Teens, the Media, and Beliefs in the Supernatural (Oxford University Press, in press). The author thanks her research team colleagues, Stewart M. Hoover, Diane Alters, Joseph Champ, and Leona Hood for their insightful comments and the use of their interview materials. She also thanks the Lilly Endowment and the Louisville Institute for their generous support of this research.

Copyright © 2002 International Communication Association

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It would have to be X-Files. Because, no matter what anybody says . . . I’ve seen everything that everyone’s compiled together about aliens. There’s no doubt in my mind that we are not the only intelligent life . . . God was a higher being. How do we know he wasn’t an alien? On X-Files, Mulder, he would say something like that: How do we know God’s not an alien?

How, indeed? Some scholars in the studies of contemporary religion have questioned whether the entertainment media are to blame for what they might call the distorted beliefs of young people like Jodie (Fore, 1987; Schultze et al., 1991). In this era of irregular attendance at religious organizations, stories like Jodie’s suggest that, whereas the local synagogue, mosque, and church may be sources of information about the realm beyond, so are television programs like The X-Files. Although few young people might declare that they “believe” God to be an alien, Jodie’s statement raises intriguing questions about the role the media might play in the religious beliefs of U.S. teens who have few ties to formal religion. Jodie, for instance, never said she wasn’t a religious or spiritual person. She simply made it very clear that her religious beliefs were unconventional, to say the least. She was interested in the “funky” side of religion, as another teen termed the mediated depictions of the supernatural, the afterlife, and the paranormal. Based on my previous experiences as a mentor of young people in various civic, educational, and religious settings, I suspected that even as her particular statements of belief might be somewhat idiosyncratic, her interests in the realm beyond were not unique. I wondered how such beliefs might be related to self-presentation of a religious identity among contemporary young people, many of whom have limited contact with formal, organized religion. It is the goal of this article, therefore, to explore the ways in which popular television programs and films such as The X-Files, The Craft, or The Sixth Sense have served as a resource in how contemporary U.S. teens understand religion, the realm beyond this world, and their own relationship to these things. I focused on programs like these because teen audiences prefer them to more explicitly religious programs, and because they were identified by teens as programs that offer intriguing stories of the realm beyond this world—a realm of concern for monotheistic . Thus, my primary research question was this: What is the role of the media in religious identity construction, particularly when the media’s tales of the supernatural may seem to be compelling and—whether recognized by the young people as such or not—in direct contrast with stories from the historic institutions of religion?1 I found that for some teens, tales of the supernatural in

1 Religious traditions address some aspects of the supernatural, such as heaven, , angels, God, and miracles. Here I use the term supernatural to refer to the realm beyond the natural world, noting that in popular usage the word tends to be associated with delegitimized or folkloric legends including those of the afterlife, paranormal, and practices designed to draw upon power from a realm beyond. Whereas religion refers to a long-standing historical tradition and its associated practices, spirituality is a term used in association with the spirit and usually has some reference to both personal experience and some tradition of religion, however vaguely conceived. In brief, angels are the stuff of spirituality while ghosts, vampires, witches, and even aliens comprise the supernatural realm. See Clark (in press) for a more fulsome discussion.

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the entertainment media are an important context for how religious questions are approached and understood. Other teens, however, believe that the media and religion have little to do with one another and are in fact in conflict. In this article, I explore five different ways in which supernatural stories in teen media interact with traditional religion in the identity narratives of adolescents. Qualitative research is particularly helpful in constructing “thick descriptions” and multilayered analyses that address questions of identity construction and its relation to specific cultural contexts (Geertz, 1973). Thus, to address my question, I conducted and supervised focused interviews with young people and their parents, interviewing most in my sample more than once. My colleagues and I talked with teens who identified themselves with religious organizations as well as those who did not. We explored the supposed contrast between beliefs concerning the supernatural that are a part of orthodox religious systems and beliefs that seemed to relate instead to the media’s tales of the afterlife, supernatural, or paranormal. I do not make claims for generalizability across the population; however, I believe this research provides insight into the role of the media in relation to socially and historically situated discourses, such as those of religion. The purpose of this research, therefore, does not lie in describing a “typical” or “representative” U.S. teen and his or her religious experience, but in identifying the cultural constraints that inform and limit teen practices of identity construction—in this case, of religious identity construction.

U.S. Teens and Religious Identity Much of contemporary research into the religious formation of young people is based on the assumption that teens learn of and form their beliefs about angels, God, and the devil, the more traditionally “religious” supernatural beings, in the context of church, the synagogue, or Mosque, and that their religious identity is thus formed in relation to these organizations (Beeck, 1985; Fowler, 1981; Gustafson, 1993; Lytch, 2000). Yet, although the majority of teens claim that they identify with the traditions of organized religion, mounting data suggest that actual participation is much less widespread (Hadaway & Marler, 1998; Roof & McKinney, 1987; Warner, 1993). The lack of attendance at religious services may be particularly pronounced among teens. As Stolzenberg, Blair-Loy, and Waite (1995) demonstrated, family attendance declines once the child reaches the age of 10, and attendance for individual young persons does not rise again until they join the ranks of parenthood themselves. This suggests that a great number of young people in the U.S., despite their claim of a “religious” identity, might better be classified as “marginal members”: those persons who attend services several times a year or less and are neither deeply committed to nor hostile toward religion (Marler & Hadaway, 1993; see also Argue, Johnson, & White, 1999). Relatively little research has been conducted into the relationship of the media to religious identity among young people. Following in the tradition of “effects” research, Martinez-de-Toda (1999) and Tomkinson (1999) have argued that representations of religion in the popular entertainment media cause some young people to form negative perceptions about religion. Others, embracing uses-and- gratifications and cultural studies approaches, have explored how the religious

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beliefs of adults influence the use and interpretation of television, print journalism, or other media. These researchers have demonstrated that persons affiliated with conservative religious organizations often claim that there are important distinctions between their beliefs and those represented in the mainstream media. Although some of these persons seek out media from explicitly religious sources, many bring a religiously informed perspective to their interpretation of so-called “secular” media (Buddenbaum, 2001; Hamilton & Rubin, 1992; Hoover, 1988; Linderman, 1996; Rendleman, 2000; Roberts, 1983; Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996). Among today’s U.S. teens, religious beliefs are not a regular subject of conversation (Benson, 1984; Wuthnow, 1999), except in the discussions that take place around tragic events, such as the World Trade Center bombings or the Columbine High School shooting incident in Colorado (Zoba, 1999). Stories of supernatural occurrences, on the other hand, occur much more frequently. In fact, they are the raw materials of such long-standing traditions as horror films, sleepovers, campouts, and legend trips, all important features on the landscape of adolescent life (Bird, 1994; Ellis, 1982). They are an important cultural context that informs how teens evaluate stories of the afterlife, both those that are introduced in the media and those introduced in formal religious settings. How these stories interact with the narratives of faith groups among young people with varying commitments to formal religion, however, has not been explored in previous research.

Method

Following models articulated in Ang (1996), Bird (1992a), and Morley and Silverstone (1991), in-depth interviews were conducted as part of a larger, multiple-stage audience research project on families with young people in their homes. Data were collected between March 1996 and January 2000, involving a total of 262 individuals, 102 of whom were teen and, most of whom were interviewed twice.2 Participants were recruited using what Lindlof (1995) has termed “maximum variation sampling,” in which each family was expected to add a contrasting element to the overall sample. Thus, my research colleagues and I recruited participants based on an evolving sense of which groups might be under- or overrepresented in the sample, exploring such demographic variables as socioeconomic status, race, marital status of the parent(s), geographic location, and religious affiliation or lack of it.3 None of the participants had been known to me or the other

2 As associate investigator of the Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse Project at the University of Colorado’s Center for Mass Media Research, I conducted interviews and observations with 94 persons (55 of whom were teens) and supervised other interviewers, focusing on the media and supernatural beliefs among young people. Stewart M. Hoover was principal investigator of this project, and its members included then-doctoral students Diane Alters, Joseph Champ, and Lee Hood. 3 Although the majority in the sample of 62 families claimed an Anglo American racial/ethnic background, in 17 families at least one parent was from the following background: Mexican/Latino/Hispanic (8), Native American (4), African American (2), Asian American (2), and Arab American (2). The families were almost evenly divided between those earning an annual household income of less than $30,000, more than $70,000, or in between. Most parents were college graduates, although 13 families had

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interviewers in the project before the research.4 Fifteen of the families were affiliated with evangelical Protestantism and 11 with mainline/old-line Protestantism, 9 were Roman Catholic, 3 Reformed Jewish, 2 Sunni Muslim, 2 Mormon, 2 Unitarian/ Universalist, 1 Buddhist, and 1 Wiccan. Additionally, 15 families were nonaffiliated and nonpracticing, and 4 were nonaffiliated yet claimed to be practicing outside of formal religion.5 As the research evolved, it became clear that to address my research questions, two meetings with individual teens would not be sufficient. I came to realize that teens were easily “Othered” in research situations, written about as a group collectively experiencing the universal challenges of “coming of age” in a way that could erase the differences of age and the context of the historical moment for the researcher and researched rather than interrogating these differences. Feminist researchers have argued for the contextualization of such knowledge gathering, advocating a dialogic approach: “When we construct texts collaboratively, self- consciously examining our relations with/for/despite those who have been contained as Others, we move against, we enable resistance to, Othering,” as Fine (1998) has written. Yet how might a researcher engage in “collaboration” with a person across the gulfs of age, embedment in history, socioeconomic background, education, ethnicity, and religious identity? Believing, with Bird (1992b), that acknowledging the limits of such relationships does not necessarily prevent us from learning something within them, I sought to develop relationships of mutual understanding and trust with a few teens over time, recognizing that such work could reveal knowledge in only limited ways. Thus, in a second stage of research, I returned to some of the teens who had been most willing to talk with me about their experiences with religion and the supernatural realm. As critical cases, these teens were not selected for their representativeness (although they were not exceptional), but because they offered the best means by which to explore the seeming contradictions between the interpretations of mediated and religious stories of the supernatural.6 Although I originally referred to them as case study subjects, the teens are better identified as peer interpreters. While I talked with them about their own experiences, I also

adults who had not completed college and 8 had no college background. The families lived in rural, urban, suburban, exurban, and small city environments within the southwestern United States. Forty- seven of the families were 2-parent (3 were gay or lesbian), and 15 were single parent. 4 Participants were located through referrals from gatekeepers such as a leader of a single-parent support group, a public school media literacy expert, civic and religious leaders, and acquaintances. 5 In most but not all of the cases, teen children identified themselves with the religion espoused by their parents. Contradictions can arise between parent and child understandings of even the same claimed religious identity, however (Clark, in press; Lytch, 2000). 6 The five “critical case” teens included an African American male from a lower income family, an Anglo American female from a lower middle income family, a biracial Anglo/Native American female from a lower middle income family, a multiracial Anglo/Arab African male from a middle income family, and an Anglo American male from a middle to upper income family. Future study is needed to determine how many teens similarly are interested in or capable of discussing both religious and mediated stories of the afterlife, and hence how representative are the teens analyzed here. Some national survey-based research suggests that this is more common among certain populations and in

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asked their insights on responses I’d received from other teens, thus adding to the validity of my evolving analysis. From the original pool of participants, five teens (three males, two females) were asked to serve in this capacity, which involved up to 30 hours of interview time (alone, with family members, and with friends) but also included informal social time such as going to the movies or talking over a meal. Contacts with these peer interpreters took place over a period of between 6 months to more than 3 years.7 All of the participants’ interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, and all of the names used in this study are pseudonyms. Analysis of the data began with the first interview and continued concurrently with data collection, as a team of researchers carefully reviewed and discussed each transcript and collectively decided on appropriate follow-up questions.8 Mentions of religious and supernatural beliefs were coded and discussed in relation to stated self-identifications, with religious organizations using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). As more corroboration was found among subsequent cases, a possible theory of the negotiation between religious identity and supernatural legends was developed. Experts in the sociology of religion, drawing upon their own studies, offered confirmation for the evolving theory, thus strengthening this study’s validity.9 My analysis focused on young people who either identified with religious organizations or identified interests in either spirituality or in the supernatural realm. There were young people in the sample who did not talk about any of these things, but it was difficult to draw conclusions about these teens. In part, this is due to the limits of the method. Many people know that the stories of the supernatural are usually relegated to the realm of fantasy, and such topics may have, therefore, seemed inappropriate to mention in the context of an interview about religious identity and the media. The stories outlined below, however, suggest that this supposed separation between fantasy and religion, as well as the assumptions about the beliefs of young persons sociologists may have classified as “secular,” require further examination.

Results

Traditionalists: Affirming the Boundary Between Religion and Media The first pattern that emerged in the analysis of the data was consistent with

certain locations than others, while also affirming that the teens discussed here are not exceptional. A more fulsome discussion of this is made in Clark (in press). 7 Only one of the peer interpreters, Elizabeth, is mentioned in this study. Several of them, however, were engaged in discussions of the teens’ stories analyzed and presented here. Each of their stories is detailed in Clark (in press). 8 As a larger project, supernatural beliefs and religious identity were one of several sets of research questions investigated. 9 Qualitative studies may posit theoretical possibilities, as Glaser and Strauss (1967) have argued. These possibilities may be tested further in survey research. Experts in related fields, reviewing their own data (collected both in surveys and in similarly ethnographic studies), found the arguments made here to be suggestive and consistent with their own findings.

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previous research into adult religious identity and media behavior. Those young people most committed to conservative religious organizations were the most interested in preserving a strict separation between their religious beliefs and the stories of the supernatural presented in popular media. Teachings of religion and the content of the media were seen to occupy very different places, believed by these teens to be in conflict with one another. Some evangelical Christian teens, as Hood (1999) has noted, talk about the relationship between religious and fictional legends in terms of the popular moralistic question of evangelical , “What Would Jesus Do?” When asked whether or not she thought about God when watching television, for example, Sara Hansen, an Anglo American, upper middle-class teen from an affluent suburb, replied:

Sara: Yeah, like Jesus wouldn’t want you to be watching this. Jesus wouldn’t want you to be watching this ’cause it’s not very Christian-like. Interviewer: What specifically? Sara: Just like bad language and stuff, and sex stuff, all that stuff.10

Sara described the problems of fictional television in terms of what she understood to be its moral message. This approach was not limited to evangelical Christian teens, however. A similar statement was made by Zeke Schwoch, a Mormon, Anglo American, middle-class young man from a small city. He explained that he tried not to watch much television because “you do your best to stay out of the world.”11 Equating media with “worldly,” and hence nonreligious or “secular,” he noted that he believed the media “would make me forget a little bit what I was supposed to be doing” because the messages there can be “spiritually distracting.” This distinction between religion and morality on one hand, and the media and immorality or distraction on the other, was also echoed in the statements of a conservative, biracial, Arab African/Anglo American, Muslim teen. Responding to my question of whether or not he saw a relationship between his family’s strict rules limiting media consumption and Muslim teachings, Hasan Ahmed affirmed that he did:

Because you’re supposed to follow whatever your parents say and respect your parents. And you’re supposed to read the Qur’an, which is like the to us, so if you stay away from Nintendo, you’ll read the Qur’an more.

Although this distinction seemed common among those young people associated with traditional religion, a number of teens who identified themselves as “religious” had more difficulty articulating what they believed was a difference between their religious beliefs and those the conservative teens would describe as those “of the

10 Interview with Sara Hansen, conducted by Lee Hood on November 2, 1997, as a part of the Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse Project. 11 Interview with Zeke Schwoch, conducted by Joseph Champ on February 26, 1998, as a part of the Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse Project.

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world.” These and the following stories, I believe, are less clearly explained by either statistical reports on teen beliefs or by prior qualitative research into young people or adults.

The Intrigued Teens: Wishing to Separate Religion and Legend Many young people, like the traditionalists, spoke of a distinct separation between the stories of religion and those of the entertainment media. Yet, some young people had more difficulty articulating this separation when it came to discussing their own beliefs. This occurred in an interview with Elizabeth Farley, an Anglo American young woman of lower socioeconomic status who was actively involved in an aging Lutheran congregation. Elizabeth was puzzled when I told her that some people had mentioned The X-Files to me when asked which television program was most like what they believed in. As one of my peer interpreters, I had asked her to reflect on this strange phenomenon with me. Elizabeth hesitated, seeking the right words, then said:

The X-Files, it’s kind of, not really what you believe religiously, but what you believe, just, what you believe in, like ghosts and stuff. If you really believe that there’s ghosts, or extraterrestrials.

Elizabeth attempted to draw a firm boundary between religion, as it is related to the historic institutions of Christianity, and beliefs that might fall outside of those traditions, such as belief in extraterrestrials or ghosts. Because she placed herself inside the traditions of established religion, these alternative beliefs were outside the realm of possibility. At least she believed that they should be, as illustrated in the following comments. I had asked her whether or not her own beliefs were similar to what she had seen on The X-Files:

Not really. Like, when they were saying there was a sighting of an alien. I can sort of believe it, but there’s also something that could’ve been written off. “Oh well, somebody could’ve been faking it,” or whatever. And same thing with ghosts. They’re saying, “there’s ghosts haunting my house.” That could be anything, or it could just be in their mind. But when it gets into a thing like The Exorcist—which was this thing on television last week, about The Exorcist, about people being possessed and stuff. That kinda weirded me out, because I have a Ouija board, and that’s how the girl got possessed—it was through using the Ouija board by herself. And I was like, “Okay, put that away under my bed and never use it again!!”

Recognizing that such things as aliens and ghosts are outside the realm of the beliefs associated with the historic institutions of religion, Elizabeth would go so far as to say that these phenomena probably do not exist, but she thought she’d get rid of the Ouija board, just in case. For Elizabeth, the boundaries between religion and stories of the media turned out to be less firm than the boundaries spoken of by the traditionalist teens. Part of the reason for this emerges in Elizabeth’s recognition that exorcisms are in some way connected to formal religion. Some stories might be firmly dismissed as fiction, but other stories from the entertainment

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media could be viewed as possibly true because they involved recognizable religious beings and practices like , priests, and rituals. Maintaining a firm boundary between legitimate religious beliefs and the stories appearing in the entertainment media, therefore, seemed more difficult for some young people than at first might be expected.

The Mystical Teens: Religion Informs Teen Culture Experience Tammy Pearson, like several other teens interviewed, believed that she had had some direct experiences with the supernatural realm. As her comments will illustrate, these experiences were interpreted with reference to both religious traditions and popular teen entertainment. Although Tammy’s mother was actively involved in a Church of Christ congregation and fervently used “God language” to speak of her faith and life, Tammy, an African American teen from a low-income neighborhood, was more ambivalent about her relationship with church. “I do believe in God, and whatever. . . . I’m just not practicing it myself, I guess you could say, right now,” she told me. When I asked her about whether or not she considered herself a spiritual person, she related this to her love of dancing. Her dance teacher, in fact, told her that she looked “like an angel” when she danced, yet this reference to a religious supernatural being did not comfort but rather unnerved Tammy. In a reflection that had some resonance with themes from the popular film, The Sixth Sense, Tammy interpreted her encounters with the supernatural in light of what she believed her dance teacher would say about them:

A lot of times—I don’t know, you know how in the dark you kinda like see stuff? I don’t like to rehearse certain dances in a room by myself, because I always see this man peeping in the window, and I’ll be like, “oh, no! I am tripping!” And my dance teacher, she says, “that’s probably just one of your ancestors watching over you, just don’t be scared of him, talk to him.” . . . And then what was really strange, I was at my grandmother’s house . . . and I was looking in this photo album, and I see this guy, and I was like, his face looked so familiar, like I had just seen him like, last week. And I was like, “who’s this old man, granny?” And she’s like, “that’s your grandfather’s grandfather.” And I’m like, “yeah, right. I know this guy.” She was like, “Tammy, that man died before you were even thought about.”. . . And I know if I talked to my teacher, she’d be like, “because he’s your ancestor, you should know him.” And I’m like, “no, I don’t!” It just really freaks me out. People say I’m in tune with stuff, and I’m like, “no, I’m not in tune. I’m not.” That’s why I say I’m spiritual, but I don’t try to be. I try to like get away from it. It’s spooky.

Although it might be possible to interpret Tammy’s experience with the supernatural as benign or even positive, Tammy’s own emotional response was one of fear. This is possibly why she sounded ambiguous when she talked about the efforts made by her dancing peers to comfort her after the untimely death of one of her high school friends, Ebony:

The African troupe kinda helped me. In the African tradition, one of the biggest things is like ancestors. You have to give total respect to them, and still talk to them. Like when my friend Ebony died, the troupe, everybody was still telling

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me, “well, talk to her.” You know, “ask her why did she leave.” And I was like, “yeah, right! If I talk to her and I hear somebody say something, I’m just—I’m out!” (laughs)

This passage is interesting as Tammy’s peers seemed to draw a connection between the ability of ancestors to continue to participate in life through their descendants— a legitimate religious practice in several traditions such as those of Africa—and Tammy’s ability to speak to what might be called the ghost of her good friend, Ebony. Tammy, like most teens, enjoyed horror films and ghost stories. Drawing on the fear-inducing stories of ghosts in the entertainment media, then, perhaps it is no wonder that Tammy’s experience of the supernatural was one laced with fear and ambivalence. Like Elizabeth, Tammy viewed some stories of the entertainment media as possibly true when they seemed to connect with her own experiences and beliefs.

The Experimenters: Appreciating Both Legitimate and Delegitimated Religion The next teens I highlight, as interviewed and analyzed by Alters (1998), are interesting for their stated identifications, which are at some distance to Christianity, yet in somewhat surprising ways draw upon media representations of the supernatural in their identity construction. Annae and Katie Gardner were two sisters who at 14 and 12 were Anglo American, middle-class members of a family of committed and articulate Wiccans, a religious system increasingly seen as legitimate, yet whose adherents still comprise a small and often marginalized group.12 In the family’s interview, the young women and their parents expressed frustration that their religion was so frequently represented as folklore, such as in the popular teen film about witchcraft, The Craft. The family criticized the movie portraying “witches” as commanding evil powers and casting spells. The parents contrasted this portrayal with what they believed was the Wiccan respect for the free will of others, which includes the desire to avoid willfully committing evil. Like the traditionalist teens and their families, the Gardners suggested the wish for a clear boundary between religion and the fictional representations of legend in popular culture. When interviewed with their parents, the Gardner girls explained that they liked The Craft primarily for the fashion and glamour of its central teen characters. In her individual interview, however, Katie revealed that she saw more commonalities than differences regarding her Wiccan identity and practices and those she saw in the popular film:

Interviewer: Last time, we were talking about The Craft. You and Annae really liked it, and your mom was saying, “it’s not real.” What do you like about The Craft? Katie: I just like the fact that some of it is actually real. They took some stuff that actually you can do.

12 Interviews with the Gardner family, conducted by Diane Alters on September 26, 1997, and October 10, 1997, as a part of the Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse Project.

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Interviewer: What’s an example? Katie: In The Craft, they change their appearance, like hair color or eye color. When my friends were over, we were down in the basement and . . . we got Becky’s hair to be about this long [chest-length] and black. . . . Pretty much what happened is, while we were watching The Craft, we wrote down stuff which we might want to try later. And then we did. Interviewer: And it actually worked. Did you tell your mom? Katie: No, because we didn’t know whether she would approve or be mad at us for trying that stuff.

Based on previous conversations with Katie’s mother, it was clear that she would not be pleased that Katie embraced more of the practices she saw in the popular movie than those she witnessed in her parents’ group. Katie’s older sister Annae, too, bent the family’s religious tradition, although in her case it was to draw conections between Wicca, The Craft, and the longstanding popular teen practices of the Ouija board. Annae, being a Wiccan, seemed to be consulted as an “expert” on these rituals by her friends:

Interviewer: Do you see the stuff you’ve learned in Wicca in The Craft, or are those two separate things? Annae: Yeah. Like when they call the quarters [although, as she notes, in the movie they get the phrase wrong and instead “cull the corners”]. And a lot of the ritual stuff they do is the same. . . . Like burning incense, putting up a circle, lots of other stuff. It’s pretty interesting. Interviewer: And you’ve done that too, in your ritual? Annae: Uh-huh. I do it whenever I’m with my friends, and do like the Ouija board, we always put up a circle, like smudge the room and everything. Interviewer: Why do you do that? Annae: Because sometimes the Ouija board attracts negative energy. And it can get spirits like to tell you whatever you want to hear, or they’ll tell you stuff just to hurt you.

Katie and Annae’s parents struggled to assert their religious identity as distinct from that which they see in teen media culture. Yet, in this case, as their religion itself has often been represented as folklore and has been delegitimated historically, such distinctions are even more difficult to maintain. In fact, the alignment of the teens with the identity ascribed to them by their peers—that of Others, experts in the “dark arts” of the Ouija board—serves as an obviously appealing aspect of Wiccan identity construction for the Gardner teens.

The Resisters: Loving the Supernatural and Hating Organized Religion Finally, there were teens who, rather than at least nominally voicing respect for certain institutions of organized religion, verbally thumbed their noses at what they took to be the collusion between organized religion and its relation to

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legitimate, middle- and upper middle-class culture. In some cases, this took the form of challenging the beliefs deemed “acceptable” by voicing an identification with those that were delegitimated, as Jodie, the teen in the introduction, had done by alluding to a connection between God and alien life. Eric Day, an Anglo American teen from an underprivileged background who was a friend of Jodie’s, was equally explicit in drawing connections between his beliefs and his media preferences. Eric described his mother as “orthodox Christian” and his father as nonpracticing and noted that he had not attended church regularly since his preteen years. His favorite television programs and films echoed his interests in views that he seemed to see as challenging to the status quo. On the one hand, he expressed great skepticism about organized religion and what it had to say about the supernatural realm in particular. On the other hand, he was very interested in considering the possibilities of what might be out there in the realm beyond:

Eric: People go with this, “I ain’t gonna believe it unless I see it.” I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna believe it unless I see it, touch it, and taste it. Interviewer: Okay, so when you see stuff in television or in the movies that’s about angels or ghosts, or the devil, do you sometimes feel like what they’re portraying in television is authentic? Eric: It depends . . . anything that’s really fake like the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, or these dreams about the psychos who blow their head off and then the next year they’re back—I don’t believe it. No, it’s fake. But there were a few—Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft. The reason I like them so much is because things they write about could actually happen. Interviewer: Could, or do you think they did? Eric: There’s a possibility, I mean, it’s possible. Theologically, scientifically, and everything else, it’s possible.

Eric later echoed Jodie’s comment that it might be interesting to think of God as an extraterrestrial, but also, like Jodie, he noted that certain tenets normally associated with Judeo-Christian beliefs—such as angels, hell, and the afterlife— were also possible. Eric also evaluated his own experiences as a “hell” that he felt traditional religion had not addressed, making an alternate explanation all the more attractive.

Discussion

The Media and Cultural Context in the Role of Religious Identity Construction This chapter has suggested five different patterns for how teens discussed their religious beliefs in the context of supernatural stories popularized through contemporary teen media. First, teens I characterized as traditionalists are most interested in separating religion from the media. In many ways it is not surprising that these teens saw a clear separation between religious beliefs and the “fictional” realm of popular television and film. Studies of conservative religious subcultures

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have similarly argued for the importance of a distinctive identity among their adherents, with separation from the media as an important aspect of that identity (Kintz & Lesage, 1998; Rendleman, 2000; Warren, 2001). A strong theme of their distinctiveness, as evidenced in the examples reviewed above, centered on morality. Yet, religion is more than only a set of moral guidelines, as even most traditionalists would affirm. Western religions always have been related to the mysteries in this world and in the realm beyond, offering explanations and invoking awe for workings that are believed but not seen. Religion has also long been viewed as a source of power, offering various practices as a talisman against evil (prayers, chants, incense, etc.). Moreover, there is a long tradition of religion’s role as a source of critique aimed at dominant culture, particularly among disadvantaged communities (see, e.g., Wilmore, 1989, on the intersection of organized religion and political activism in African American history). These are the themes that emerged in other teens’ approaches to religious identity and the media. Annae and Katie Gardner, for instance, found in The Craft a reinforcement of their belief that religion is associated with the ability of individuals to draw upon supernatural power. Tammy Pearson articulated the belief that religion, much like popular ghost stories, is associated with the mysteries of the realm beyond. When Jodie and Eric cheekily challenged organized religion, they did so out of a sense that organized religion is aligned with the values of a dominant culture that they find oppressive. Here, a seeming contradiction emerges: Is religion a form of oppressive values, as these teens seemed to suggest, or is it a form of positive values that are to be affirmed in the face of declining cultural morals, as the traditionalist teens declared? It is not the purpose of this article to answer this question, but it must be pointed out that such debates about religion’s role in society precede the stories of the teens discussed here. This article demonstrates that young people can draw from the media reinforcement for either identification. Certainly, the view of the traditionalists has a great deal of cultural purchase in contemporary U.S. society and is foundational to discussions that see the media as one of many sources undermining traditional religion and its values (Fore, 1987; Postman, 1985). This view was rather widely held in my sample and beyond, which is not surprising given that more than 3 in 10 teenagers in the U.S. describe themselves as strongly committed to their religious convictions (Gallup, 1999). Whereas highly committed teens may be found in every religious affiliation, it is worth noting that almost the same percentage claim to be evangelical or “born again” Christians, and there are reasons to suspect a high degree of overlap between these two categories (Roof, 1999; Wuthnow, 1988). It is interesting, therefore, to note the traditionalists’ self-presentation as members of a “subculture,” which understates the position of traditionalists both numerically and with reference to the U.S. culture’s historic relationship with religious values, particularly those of Protestantism (Demerath, 1995). Ironically, the distinctiveness of their perspective is not nearly as distinct as they might wish, as stories related to Christianity have long been popular subjects in the entertainment media (Clark, in press; Newcomb, 1990). This is why some teens, like Elizabeth, intrigued with the realm beyond that they see depicted in the media, might claim an identification with religious

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organizations, yet have trouble drawing the strict lines of separation between mediated and religious stories that seem so clear to the more traditionalist teens. Morality and beliefs about the realm beyond are not completely unrelated; in the U.S., we tend to associate deviant behavior with those beliefs that arise out of a blend of “official” religion and popular culture. This was certainly central to the analysis of the tragic suicides of the Heaven’s Gate members. Yet, as Caughey (1984) pointed out, beliefs in the supernatural are not universally related to deviance and are not predictive of deviant behavior. In fact, among non-Western societies, personal connections to the supernatural realm are highly valued. The same is true, if less generally acknowledged, among many populations in the U.S. Think of the popularity of psychic phenomena and even of the syndicated television program, Crossing Over, for instance. Such interests may fall below the radar screen of elite culture, but they may also be more innocuous than deviant (Greeley, 1975). They also have an important connection to women’s experiences and identifications. Throughout history, women have been more likely than men to believe in the ability to be in contact with deceased persons and to experiment with witchcraft, seances, and Ouija boards (MacDonald, 1992; Verter, 1998). These activities are firmly ensconced in teen girl culture, as they allow teen girls to experience fear and horror in the safe contexts of their peers, among other young women who are experiencing the same real-world fears as they are (Davis, 2000). Looking beyond the material realm for means of empowerment holds appeal for many who are at some distance to elite culture and its resources, and it is an important context through which beliefs about the supernatural hold appeal. My research, therefore, suggests not a “confusion” of fictional and religious legends on the part of contemporary U.S. teens so much as an unstable boundary between religious and fictional legends. This unstable boundary has perhaps been in existence for as long as there have been stories regarding the realm of the supernatural (Hall, 1990). Teen girls and boys who occupy a particularly delegitimized space, save for their not-coincidental recognition as a primary market for mass-mediated materials (see, e.g., TRU Teenage Marketing & Lifestyle Study, 2000), are perhaps in some ways best positioned to point us to this fact. The role of supernatural stories in teen culture offers an important contextual explanation for why stories from both religious and mediated sources may be unproblematically blended in the narratives of the teens analyzed above. It does not explain, however, why even the “resister” teens still choose to identify themselves as “religious” or “spiritual,” or at least open to the supernatural realm, despite their disdain for organized religion. For an explanation, we return to the earlier discussion of the status of religion in relation to morality in the U.S. What does it mean to define oneself as secular in the context of a culture in which religion is equated with morality? It seems plausible that teens, like those of other ages, associate secularism with immorality. The discourse of religion in the U.S. is limited by its prejudices, as persons espousing atheist views attest (Nash, 2002). Thus, teens who claim interest in beliefs that are not consistent with organized religion, as well as teens who claim no interest in organized religion itself, may identify themselves as religious or spiritual as a means of identifying themselves as moral and good people. Because religion and morality are closely entwined in U.S. culture,

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it may be impossible to separate the two in any discussion of self-identification with religion, regardless of what one thinks about the supernatural realm.

Conclusion

This article has examined the role of the media in religious identity construction among U.S. teens. I identified five different ways in which teens either affirm or blur the supposed boundaries between the beliefs about the realm beyond from religion and similar beliefs popularized in the media. There were the traditionalists, those young people who were highly committed to their religious traditions and interested in separating religion from stories of the entertainment media. The intrigued teens also wished to affirm such a separation, but had more difficulty when they encountered stories in the entertainment media that seemed to have some reference to their religious traditions. Mystical teens had marginal ties to traditional religion but a great deal of interest in the supernatural realm, whereas those teens termed experimenters actively sought resources on the supernatural realm from the media. Finally, the resisters challenged organized religion while embracing unorthodox views of the supernatural realm. With this typology, I reframed the question that tends to see media and religion in competition, pointing out that neither is wholly determinative of an individual’s religious identity. I argued instead for an understanding of the cultural contexts that shape and limit how teens may come to understand religion, its stories of the supernatural, and their own relationships to these things. In particular, I highlighted stories of teens with little connection to organized religion, pointing out how they seemed to blur distinctions between stories of religion and those of the supernatural. In analyzing their desire to nevertheless claim a religious identity for themselves, I argued for the importance of religion’s equation with morality in U.S. culture. I noted that certain contradictions of religion’s role in U.S. culture, such as whether or not religion is associated with positive moral values, mysteries about the realm beyond, or with oppression, are echoed in the media as well as in individual narratives of religious identity. My study results in three findings that are suggestive for further research. First, in its discussions of unorthodox beliefs and experiences among self-identified religious teens, the study has demonstrated that religious identity and religious beliefs may not be directly related to one’s religious affiliation or lack thereof. This study therefore relates to the discussions in the sociology of religion that explore secularization. At a time when an increasing number of young people seem to be only marginally related to organized religion, we must question how popular supernatural experiences and interests are related to religion and to secularism. I have demonstrated that there is, in fact, more than one type of religious identity, and more than one way in which the media and religion interact in the interpretation practices of audiences. This, I hope, may encourage scholars in cultural studies to explore the multifaceted and plural nature of religion in U.S. society today, particularly as it extends beyond the traditionalist variation that is the most frequent subject for analysis and critique.

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Second, this study relates teens’ interests in the supernatural realm to their perceived position of powerlessness relative to the larger society. Although this position may change as teens mature, the approach taken to religion and the supernatural in the teen years may prove to influence the shape of religious beliefs in generations to come. Future research is needed to explore both the issue of the generalizability of the five patterns outlined here and the question of religious change over time. Third, this study has demonstrated that the media, as an element of culture, echo contradictory approaches to religion within the culture. The media may serve as symbolic opponents of sorts for those who would see themselves as distinct from mainstream culture. Stories in the media may inspire teens who wish to experiment with various forms of supernatural or spiritual practices. For others, however, the media may serve simply as an unacknowledged background that unconsciously frames understandings and identity narratives, such as in the case of teens with more marginal interests or relationships to religion. The media, in their ability to frame and reinforce ideas about religion as moral, mystical, powerful, and a source of critique of the wider culture, therefore give important definition to the ways in which contemporary U.S. teens construct identities of themselves as “religious.”

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