Seeing through the media

the long version

As daily we ingest countless mini-narratives (printed advertisements, television commercials and programs, movies, full-color images, and the like), we are often unaware that, at the same time, we are absorbing imaginative proposals of what life is all about. These proposals need to be thought about and not just swallowed, and Michael Warren here offers a way of thinking about them and about what they mean. He provides a method of being able to pay attention to what we see and how we see, what we can accept and what we cannot. Seeing Through the Media puts basic skills of cultural analysis into the hands of ordinary persons, particularly those who gather with others guided by a religious tradition to worship God. These skills include: a rethinking of the word culture itself, finding the usually anonymous names and faces behind any electronic communication, understanding how culture is produced, skill in decoding the iconic images we see and the metaphoric images by which we see, the ability to evaluate what we see and hear, new forms of personal and communal agency. Teachers, parents, religious leaders, and all others who are concerned with the dangers of cultural colonization in our time will find here ways of thinking and seeing that can be passed on to children, students, and other religiously committed persons. - Back cover.