INFLUENCE OF TELEVISION AND FILM

There is an argument out there that what a person can watch a TV program or movie and not be influenced to change his or her values.  Jonathan Gottschall has written an interesting column in the Dallas Morning News on the influence of fiction on our society.  He argues that fiction does change a person's values.

Here is his comment on fiction as seen on TV:  Moreover, it’s clear that these stories really can change our views. As psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative.” For example, studies reliably show that when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgmentally (say, Modern Family), our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction. History, too, reveals fiction’s ability to change our values at the societal level, for better and worse. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped bring about the Civil War by convincing huge numbers of Americans that blacks are people and that enslaving them is a mortal sin. On the other hand, the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation inflamed racist sentiments and helped resurrect an all but defunct Ku Klux Klan.