Curious about a woman's age? Ask her when she watched The Brady Bunch. Some of us of a certain age remember The Brady Bunch as the Friday night highlight. The neighborhood kickball game would end abruptly at 7:50, and we would scatter each to her own home to tune in the television. Slightly younger women remember a post-primetime Brady Bunch in its heydey of after-school reruns. Today's generation isn't in the Brady know; I felt my age keenly when our editorial assistant, overhearing our discussion of this childhood classic, asked, "You mean The Brady Bunch was once on network television?" She may still have her youth, but she missed out on those wonderful Friday nights that many of us remember.

But Friday wasn't the only good night for television. We used to gather as a family around our black-and-white 12-inch screen on Saturday evenings for a whole line-up of good stuff. Mary Tyler Moore was first, followed by The Bob Newhart Show, and then Carol Burnet. Remember those? And then there were the weeknight programs for kids, incentives for cranking out the homework before supper, such as The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie. The Cosby Show came along at the tail end of good, clean family TV viewing. After that, the slide into slime began.

I sat down the other night to catch the political news in Iowa, and during commercials I clicked around to see what else was airing. My search was pretty depressing; yet as distasteful as it was, I've learned that an awareness of what's on the airwaves helps us understand the society in which we are called to live as salt and light. This doesn't mean we have to (nor should we) immerse ourselves in a lot of garbage, but at least knowing what's going on in pop culture informs us of how people think, what they believe, and where they are looking for meaning and purpose. With that in mind, here's a taste of trendy TV:

1. America's Next Top Model. There were actually two or three similarly themed programs airing on the same evening, shows featuring wannabe supermodels competing against one another in that largely pointless of genres, reality TV. In this rendition, young men and women parade themselves before a panel of botoxed judges, who assess them based on looks, attitude (the brassier the better), and commitment to debauchery. One young women was cut in the first round because she refused to pose nude in front of all the others. Her refusal was portrayed as puritanical and life-defeating. Another young woman quit college to participate in the competition with the full support of her parents.

2. Tila Tequila-something-or-other. I couldn't believe what I was seeing here. More so-called reality, this one featuring a young woman looking for a mate, either male or female. Another in a wearying string of programs seeking to normalize homosexuality (think Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). Add some crass humor and lewd conversation, and you've got the gist.

3. Dr. 90210. A program featuring the glamorous life of a plastic surgeon who gets rich surgically enhancing everyone he can. Surgical mutilation masking as beauty seems to be a television genre all its own now. The message is loud and clear: big breasts and taut skin are required if you hope to be happy, wealthy, and loved.

4. The Girls Next Door. Life in the Playboy Mansion with 80-year-old Hugh Heffner's three twenty-something girlfriends. I did a little digging, and believe it or not, the majority of viewers of this program are women. From a pop-culture standpoint, Holly, Bridget, and Kendra are women to emulate.

5. To Catch a Predator. I found this program to be the most jarring of all because it uses virtue as a cloak for entertainment. The stated point of the program is to catch pedophiles; the real point of the program is to enable the viewer to enter the world of lurid sexual misconduct while reclining with the popcorn to watch the destruction of those who get caught. A decoy is used, a young boy or girl, to lure a suspect into the net. The suspect arrives at the location of the sting, at which time MSNBC anchor Chris Hansen exposes him on national television. With the cameras aimed on him, the suspect begs and pleads for the cameras to go away, but to no avail. He is then arrested and carted off to jail. The program is billed as a successful way to cut down on the pedophile population, but if the program wasn't revenue generating, they'd stop the effort soon enough. But it is revenue generating because people are watching, and the reason people are watching is that they find it entertaining. Yet the suspects are real people with real families. How would we feel if our sin was exposed on national television? The crimes and sins they are committing are certainly not to be tolerated, but surely there are better ways to stop it. Is our society now no less barbaric than those that turn public executions into holidays? Apparently not.

The point here is not to wag an evangelical finger in society's face about its entertainment value. Rather, it's to face the reality of current culture so we are better equipped to love those caught up in it. While it is good and right that we admonish one another as Christians to keep it clean, admonishing the lost to do so is a waste of breath. Apart from Christ, people see no reason to clean up. What they need, as Thomas Chalmers preached, is the expulsive power of a new affection. And only Christians can show them something better.

Labels: culture