February 2013 – Almost everyone does it. Watches television, that is.

More than 88% of American adults watch television every day, and the average adult watches between five and five-and-a-half hours. Children and teenagers come in at an average of three-and-a-half hours a day.

In 2012, according to the Nielsen Company, which tracks habits related to television, more than 84% of U.S. households had more than one TV set. In 1960 it was 12%.

Is all this TV good or bad for Americans? The war has raged for decades over the impact of television on those who regularly watch it, especially since Hollywood dropped its restrictive content codes for movies in 1968 and for television programming in 1983.

Evidence is mounting, however, that in its presentation of violence, sex and profanity, or even the use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, television shapes those who watch it. TV is not only ubiquitous, but also persuasive and potent in its ability to influence our values and behavior.

How we learn
Usually the outcries from medical and mental health organizations focus on TV’s impact on kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, recommends that children under two years of age should be kept as “screen-free” as possible.

But it’s not just children who are susceptible. Studies demonstrate that adults are impressionable as well. This is because television’s potency is tied to the way human beings learn.

That’s the contention of Peter Guber, a film producer and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. His body of work is impressive, including films such as Batman, Rainman, The Color Purple, Flashdance and Soul Surfer.

In a 2011 article for Psychology Today, Guber said that in his 40 years in the movie-making business, “I’ve come to see that stories … are far more than entertainment. They are the most effective form of human communication, more powerful than any other way of packaging information.”

Why? Stories hit the viewer emotionally and thus connect him or her to the characters in the film.

The viewer “can very quickly come to identify psychologically with characters in a narrative or share an experience – courtesy of the images evoked in the telling,” Guber said.

It’s why people are mesmerized by a movie series like Twilight or a drama like Glee (Fox), but often don’t know how many members of Congress serve in Washington, D.C. We are captivated by stories. They cause us to weep or laugh or shudder in fear. The mere presentation of facts cannot compete with that power.

Real world impact
Once people have been transfixed by a story, however, transferring new values becomes easier. Guber said telling “purposeful stories” is the most effective means of persuading people and “the most effective way of translating ideas into action.”

A pair of fascinating 2008 studies appear to validate Guber’s theory.

The first, headed by Eliana La Ferrara, professor of economics at Bocconi University in Italy, was a study focused on the influence of soap operas on fertility rates in Brazil.

Lending credibility to this study was the fact that availability of soap operas on television did not spread evenly in Brazil. That’s because the Rede Globo network, which had a de facto monopoly on production of soap operas (called “novelas” throughout Latin America), entered different markets at different times. Using census data for the period 1970-1991, researchers could compare fertility rates in markets where novelas arrived early with those in which novelas arrived late.

What researchers found was stunning. After exposure to soap operas, family size began to shift to reflect family sizes in the novelas.

It was as if viewers began to identify with the characters they were watching and began to mimic their lifestyles. In fact, said the study, “[P]eople living in areas covered by the [Rede Globo] signal were more likely to name their children after novela characters” than those who did not.

On these soap operas, the average female character had no more than one child on the show, and for the first 10 years of Rede Globo broadcasting, only two women in prime time had any children at all.

La Ferrara said that, in fictional soap opera marriages, fertility rates “are markedly lower and divorce rates markedly higher than in Brazilian contemporaneous society. These observations make us confident that the role models portrayed in the programs of the television channels … were clearly consistent with a radical re-orientation of society’s attitudes toward women’s roles in the family, including fertility.”

More remarkably, the study was able to demonstrate that it wasn’t simply television per se that led to altered fertility rates but the soap operas themselves. In other words, it was the content of TV programming that influenced attitudes and behavior.

It was “exposure to the particular reality portrayed by Brazilian novelas,” La Ferrara said.

Similarly, a study headed by Robert Jensen of UCLA School of Public Affairs examined the effect of the spread of cable television in India as it related to the status of women. Researchers found that introduction of cable into villages that had previously been without it changed attitudes on matters such as the acceptability of domestic violence against women and preference for having sons rather than daughters. Like the Brazil study, a drop in fertility also resulted after cable television entered a region.

Having accounted for other factors such as income or influence of “modernity,” Jensen said “the timing of changes in outcomes is closely aligned with the introduction of cable.”

The mechanism of change was clear: Exposed to the ideas and behavior of urban dwellers via cable television, villagers “begin to adopt or emulate some of these.”

Changes occurred quickly, according to the study, “with observable impacts in the first year following cable introduction.” Similar studies cited by Jensen’s team reported changes that occurred even more rapidly – within a few months.

Of course, a decline in domestic abuse is a good thing. What is remarkable about the Jensen and La Ferrara studies, however, is the empirical demonstration of the power of television to change attitudes and behavior for good or evil.

In fact, both studies concluded with a pitch for government to use the potency of television to shape culture.

La Ferrara said, “Our work suggests that [television] programs targeted to the culture of the local population have the potential of reaching an overwhelming amount of people at very low costs, and could thus be used by policymakers to convey important social and economic messages.”

Likewise, the Jensen team, after noting the inherent difficulties of using other government approaches to problems such as lack of education or overpopulation, said “the possibility that some of these behaviors may be changed largely due to changes in attitudes, cheaply and quickly supplied by TV, offers significant promise.”

Medium of propaganda
The notion that social scientists would encourage governments to use the power of television to manipulate the public and mold opinion toward a desired end should be disturbing – even frightening.

In America, of course, that manipulation has been handled for the last 50 years, by and large, not by the government, but by Hollywood.

Last summer, commentator and writer Jonathan Chait penned a fascinating article admitting that the cultural and political left – of which he declares himself to be a part – had intentionally used Hollywood as an instrument of social change.

From comedian Tina Fey’s devastating portrayal on NBC’s Saturday Night Live of former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to “the tree-hugging mysticism of Avatar,” Chait writes in frank fashion of the leftist capture of and use of the power of culture as a medium of propaganda.

“Imagine that large chunks of your entertainment mocked your values and even transformed once-uncontroversial beliefs of yours into a kind of bigotry that might be greeted with revulsion,” Chait said to fellow liberals. “You’d probably be angry, too.”

In his 4,200-word commentary, Chait pointed to example after example of Hollywood’s overwhelmingly leftist slant – and its passionate effort to change American society.

He noted, for example, the ABC drama Thirtysomething, which premiered in 1987 and aired for four years. In its third season, the program stirred a hornet’s nest when it showed two homosexual men in bed together – for the first time in television history. The result was the loss of one million dollars worth of advertising revenue.

However, there was apparently a larger principle involved for ABC network president Robert Iger, who cited his “social and creative responsibilities” to air the scene. Iger said, “I am grateful that ABC was willing to air the program at a loss.”

Obviously, if Hollywood was only in the business of producing entertainment to make money, ABC would never have aired the controversial scene. But in Iger’s mind, normalization of homosexuality trumped even the fiscal bottom line.

When they are honest – or caught off-guard – even Hollywood movers and shakers admit to the liberal bias of the industry.

In 2011, conservative commentator and syndicated columnist Ben Shapiro interviewed more than 100 well-placed Hollywood insiders. These industry elites assumed that Shapiro was liberal, and their candor in admitting the open secret of leftist bias resulted in the book Primetime Propaganda.

Typical of their comments was the statement by Leonard Goldberg, executive producer of the CBS police drama Blue Bloods and executive producer of popular past shows such as Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island and Starsky and Hutch. According to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Goldberg said that liberalism in the television industry is “100% dominant, and anyone who denies it is kidding or not telling the truth.”

Transformational power
It is not unfair to argue that, for the last half century, Hollywood elites have become a new class of prophets speaking their version of truth into the living rooms of America. And it is frequently debilitating and corrosive to our cultural mores.

A study released late in 2012, for example, demonstrated the power of television to even erode the marital bond. Dr. Jeremy Osborn, assistant professor of communication at Albion College in Michigan, examined the effect on marriages when people watched fictional romances on TV shows such as Two and a Half Men (CBS) and True Blood (HBO).

“In this study I found that people who believe the unrealistic portrayals on TV are actually less committed to their spouses and think their alternatives to their spouse are relatively attractive,” Osborn said.

“It turns out that people are warping their expectations with their real-life partners because of what they’re seeing on TV,” he added.

These new prophets have laid out their blueprint for a new America, tearing down moral traditions and, in their place, erecting an entirely new morality. Nowhere is this more evident than on issues related to human sexuality, marriage and family.

In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Homosexuality, Edward Schiappa, Peter Gregg and Dean Hewes of the communication studies department at University of Minnesota, found that the pro-homosexual sitcom Will & Grace impacted viewers’ attitudes toward gays and lesbians and homosexual relationships. The NBC show was popular on network television from 1998 to 2006.

The Schiappa study surveyed 245 undergraduate students to ascertain their attitudes toward homosexuals and the frequency with which they watched the sitcom.

“The greater the viewing frequency of Will & Grace, the lower the level of sexual prejudice toward gay men,” the study said.

The study made certain assumptions based on a test developed by Gregory M. Herek, professor of psychology at University of California at Davis. Herek’s scale of approval/disapproval toward lesbians and gay men assumes that disapproval of homosexuality based on religious or other moral precepts is de facto “sexual prejudice.”

For example, 71% of those who regularly viewed the program believed that homosexual relationships were “normal” like those of heterosexuals, while only 45% of non-viewers agreed.

Sixty percent of viewers agreed with the statement that Will & Grace “has encouraged me to think positively about homosexuals.”

This transformational power of television is undeniable. Chait noted that when vice president Joe Biden endorsed same sex marriage in May 2012, he “cited Will & Grace as the single-most important driving force in transforming public opinion on the subject.

“In so doing,” Chait continued, “[Biden] actually confirmed the long-standing fear of conservatives – that a coterie of Hollywood elites had undertaken an invidious and utterly successful propaganda campaign and had transmuted the cultural majority into a minority.”

Drinking polluted water?
Obviously, Christians have no earthly vehicle to counterbalance Hollywood. It is a Titan, standing alone on the American landscape in the clarity of its moral messaging, depth of its pockets and breadth of its reach.

“This capacity to mold the moral premises of large segments of the public, and especially the youngest and most impressionable elements, may or may not be unfair,” Chait said. “What it is undoubtedly is a source of cultural (and hence political) power.”

Of course for Christians, the power of Hollywood goes beyond mere matters of fairness or balance. When an industry is so colossal and dominant, the spiritual source of ideas being conveyed by that industry becomes paramount.

The apostle John said that the difference between “the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” is discerned by this simple test: Whoever agrees with the teachings of Scripture is from God; whoever denies it is of the spirit of antichrist (1 John 4:1-6).

Both the Old and New Testaments warn God’s people of both the power and danger of false prophets – the purveyors of error – because they lead believers away from the righteousness of the Lord and into wickedness.

If Hollywood writers and producers mock God, ridicule Christians and proclaim the validity of a life lived in defiance of God’s laws, are they not false prophets?

This doesn’t mean we gleefully condemn them to an eternity in the fiery abyss and turn our backs. We should mourn their blindness and plead to God for their salvation.

But far too many believers embrace the lies of our spiritual enemy, rather than reprove them. What sort of Christian welcomes a false prophet into his living room, sits down in his recliner with a bowl of popcorn and a cold soda, and then listens, enthralled, to the false prophet’s poisonous lies for hours before turning in for the night?

In the book of Jeremiah, a true prophet of God warns the people that, because they have forsaken the laws of God and embraced idols, the Lord “will feed them, this people, with wormwood [a bitter plant] and give them poisoned water to drink” (Jeremiah 9:13-15).

If Hollywood’s earthly influence is to be challenged, it will be done by the power of the gospel, preached by a holy people. For that to happen, however, Christians must themselves break free of Hollywood’s spell.  

What can you do?
Don Wildmon founded AFA in 1977 specifically in answer to the filth and violence of Hollywood that was pouring into the nation’s living rooms. What he warned about has come to pass right before our very eyes.

Christians must not give up this fight. Here are a few suggestions:

(1) Support films and programming from American Family Studios and other family-friendly outlets.
(2) Take time to read biblically-based movie reviews in AFA Journal and elsewhere in order to make wise entertainment decisions for your family.
(3) Sign up with OneMillionMoms, AFA’s watchdog division dealing with objectionable television shows and the advertisers who support them.
(4) Visit the website of Parents Television Council, a friend of AFA dedicated to educating parents about television content.