Pop Culture and the Moral Debate

Today, our Western value systems are constantly being re-evaluated. The media, inclusive of radio, television, newspapers, film and the Internet, are having a profound effect on popular culture. The media is taking a prominent role in forming the mores of the day. Subjects once taboo are now discussed with increased frequency. Individuals are being left to form their own ethical conclusions on the messages conveyed by the media in the face of disintegrating punitive powers of school, church and family. Janet Cramer’s (2007) article “Discourses of Sexual Morality in Sex and the City and Queer as Folk” explores the divergent views on sexual morality portrayed in two widely popular cable television programs that viewers are left to decipher.

Cramer’s article would seem to be written for scholarly audience, one no doubt with a toolbox containing more than just the basic Introduction to Sociology or Philosophy course. Her prose continually sends one searching for definitions and background on scholars and terminology that she casually makes use of. From aesthetics to the “secularization theory,” her writing takes on a condescending tone more palatable to her academia associates than to a layperson. Cramer cites empirical studies as though they were artifacts of popular culture themselves and known to a vast audience.

While Cramer searches for a “moral framework” (p. 425) that Sex and the City and Queer as Folk espouses around the values of marriage, care of self, care of others, honesty, and dialogue, the reader must allow himself to look past the blasphemous disregard for traditional Western values that these two shows exhibit. As Cramer self-confesses, functional morals must be checked at the door if the discourse of these shows is to be analyzed. The question becomes then of the significance that can be placed on a show such as Sex and the City which implicitly extols the value of marriage while at the same time using the promiscuous escapades of its characters to ensnare the audience? Cramer seems to believe that it is the discussion of these conflicting views that will ultimately set the tone of our moral paradigm.

Cramer goes on to address how the two shows tackle the value of honesty. She makes the comparison of honesty as a continuum of duplicity in Sex and the City, to honesty portrayed as the bedrock of relationship in Queer as Folk. However, she doesn’t address how these two divergent views are to be reconciled by viewers to ultimately influence their own moral behavior. But it is the ensuing debate over this discourse that Cramer believes will be responsible for constructing a moral framework.

Cramer points to the self centered standards these two shows promote with regard to the morality of care of self, while basically ignoring the care of others. While these two shows may be responsible for initiating a public discussion on the care of self and others, both put a higher value on self and that is the image that viewers are undeniably left with. Finally, Cramer hypothesizes that the portrayal of having a dialogue between self and others (p. 423) is the most significant factor in the formation of moral standards these shows have. The process of developing our “story” forces us to organize our judgments and to come to a realization of just who we are in terms of our ethics.

Understanding that we are continually being left in the position of becoming our own “moral authority” (p. 411) is the key idea that a reader of Cramer’s article is left with. Discourse in moral issues is taking place daily through outlets of popular culture. Will viewers show the initiative to challenge the messages being sent by the media, or simply take the standards exhibited as the new gospel? Society’s open discussion of these moral issues is what will in the end determine our moral standards. It was disappointing that Cramer chose to simply look at the discussion of sexual morality in these two programs and left for further study and analysis just how the messages in these programs are received and internalized by viewers as they frame their own views on morality.

References

CRAMER, J. M. (2007). Discourses of Sexual Morality in Sex and the City and Queer as Folk. The Journal of Popular Culture, 40(3), 409-432.