Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.
If a person thinks that the media are infiltrating his mind and controlling his thoughts and behavior, we consider him a nutjob, and we recommend professional help and serious meds. But if a person thinks that the media are infiltrating other people’s minds and affecting their behavior, we call him or her an astute social observer, one eminently qualified to give speeches or write op-eds.
The previous post dwelt on economist Isabel Sawhill’s Washington Post op-ed channeling Dan Quayle, particularly Quayle’s speech asserting that a TV sitcom was wielding a strong effect on people’s decisions — not just decisions like Pepsi vs. Coke, but decisions like whether to have a baby.
That was Quayle, this is now. Still, our current vice-president can sometimes resemble his counterpart of two decades ago. Just a last month, Joe Biden echoed the Quayle idea on the power of sitcoms. On “Meet the Press,” in response to David Gregory’s question about gay marriage, Biden said that “this is evolving” and added:
And by the way, my measure, David, and I take a look at when things really begin to change, is when the social culture changes. I think “Will and Grace” probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far.
“Will and Grace” ran for eight seasons, 1998-2006. Its strongest years were 2001-2005, when it was the top rated show among the 18-49 crowd. Biden could point to General Social Survey (GSS) data on the gay marriage question. In 1988, ten years before “Will and Grace,” the GSS asked about gay marriage. Only 12% supported it, 73% opposed it. The question was asked again in 2004, six years into the W+G era. Support had more than doubled, and it continued to rise in subsequent years.
We don’t know just when in that 18-year period, 1988-2004, things “really began to change.” Fortunately, the GSS more regularly asked the respondent’s view on sexual relations between same-sex partners. Here too, tolerance grows in the “Will and Grace” period (gray on the graph):
The graph is misleading, though. To see the error, all we need do is extend our sampling back a few years Here is the same graph starting in 1973:
The GSS shows attitudes about homosexuality starting to change in 1990. By the time of the first episode of “Will and Grace,” the proportion seeing nothing wrong with homosexuality had already doubled. Like Quayle’s “Murphy Brown” effect, the “Will and Grace” effect is hard to see.
The flaw in the Quayle-Biden method is not in mistaking TV for reality. It’s in assuming that the public’s awareness is simultaneous with their own.
Why do our vice-presidents (and many other people) give so much credit (or blame) to a popular TV show for a change in public opinion? The error is partly a simplistic post hoc logic. “Will and Grace” gave us TV’s first gay principle character; homosexuality became more acceptable. Murphy Brown was TV’s first happily unwed mother, and in the following years, single motherhood increased. Besides, we know that these shows are watched by millions of people each week. So it must be the show that is causing the change.
It’s also possible that our vice-presidents (and many other people) may also have been projecting their own experiences onto the general public. Maybe Murphy Brown was the first or only unwed mother that Dan Quayle really knew – or at least she was the one he knew best. It’s possible that Joe Biden wasn’t familiar with any gay men, not in the way we feel we know TV characters. A straight guy might have some gay acquaintances or co-workers, but it’s the fictional Will Truman whose private life he could see, if only for a half hour every week.
Does TV matter? When we think about our own decisions, we are much more likely to focus on our experiences and on the pulls and pushes of family, work, and friends. We generally don’t attribute much causal weight to the sitcoms we watch. Why then are we so quick to see these shows as having a profound influence on other people’s behavior, especially behavior we don’t like? Maybe because it’s such an easy game to play. Is there more unwed motherhood? Must be “Murphy Brown.” Did obesity increase in the 1990s? “Roseanne.” Are twentysomethings and older delaying marriage? “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” And of course “The Simpsons,” or at least Bart and Homer, who can be held responsible for a variety of social ills.
Comments 26
Yrro Simyarin — June 7, 2012
So do the objectification of women on television and the right-wing bias of Fox News have a similar non-effect?
Does media only influence culture on certain issues, or once it reaches a certain ubiquity?
I'm not sure about Will & Grade specifically, but I find it hard to believe that media has had no effect on the growing acceptance of homosexuality. It's not brainwashing, but it is a powerful force for the cultural definition of "normal." And in cases like this, that's a good thing.
Now obviously TV execs don't like to push things until they think their customers are ready for them. But just the simple fact that my generation grew up talking like valley girls would seem to indicate there is an influence.
The Buzz — June 7, 2012
It seems to me like TV shows mostly mirror what we consider acceptable, rather than change it. Looking at it like that, Will and Grace was probably created/aired/etc in part because it became more acceptable to be gay and therefore more possible for the show to succeed with mainstream audiences. Just as Friends was probably successful because it was airing as it became more acceptable to be a single twentysomething.
Jimmy TheFish — June 7, 2012
I guess the media had no influence of nazifying germany back then, who knew
Andrew — June 7, 2012
I was thinking much the same as The Buzz here, especially considering the enormous barriers against getting any new content onto network TV. This is a medium completely beholden to advertisers, tightly regulated by censors, and limited to time slots; of all the mass media, network TV is the least capable of making room for subversive or minority viewpoints.
By the time a concept arrives on NBC at prime time, by the nature of the beast, it is already mainstream. I am very skeptical of the notion of "Will and Grace" as an educational tool, but we can give it some credit for demonstrating to the risk-averse entertainment industry that gay leading characters were not incompatible with a large argument. (Though "Ellen" had already broken that ground a year before W&G premiered, as its lead's coming-out produced its highest ratings).
Once gays in general were shown to be less toxic to ratings than previously thought (I'd say this was established by 1998), a more diverse array of LGBT characters began slowly trickling into entertainment media. "Will and Grace" was never anywhere near the vanguard there, but it probably helped make possible a critical mass of depictions of the queer experience that helped accelerate the broader acceptance that was already trending.
In short, the show educated the industry and its advertisers.
Biden would have done well to give at least as much credit to the thousands of ordinary LGBT people who spent the "Will and Grace" years fighting for our civil rights, sharing our stories, and exposing the bigotry in the mainstream, as he did to the sitcom.
MSoB — June 7, 2012
It would be interesting to tease out any differences (as Yrro brings up) in attitudes toward social issues and aspects of culture that the media is able to influence. Surely no one would argue that the media does not have tremendous power in perpetuating certain beauty standards and treatment of women.
For what it's worth, here's a story of my own absorption of media beauty standards and attendant racism during my childhood/teenhood (yes, I'll readily admit that I was influenced by the media): http://mortalsenseofbeauty.typepad.com/mortal-sense-of-beauty/2012/05/snow-whitewashed.html
Rachel Krieger — June 7, 2012
I am somewhat surprised about how much the statistics changed over the time period of the "Will and Grace" TV show being broadcasted. LGBT individuals are discriminated against all the time, but the social world
has become more accustomed to it and doesn't disapprove of it as much anymore.
This article shows the impact that the media can have on their viewers, so much
that it can change the views somebody has over a social issue.
Blake — June 7, 2012
It's also an easy way to take attention away from the decade of activism that actually lead to those changes.
casey — June 8, 2012
I think it's fair to credit the simpsons and roseanne with a number of left-ward social shifts. The problem here seems to be more one of mis-identifying important media rather than that media has little or no effect.
mimimur — June 8, 2012
Hwo about the complexities here? Maybe Will and Grace was greelit because of the changing attitudes and then controbuted to to the development by reproducing that discourse.
This makes me think a bit about Mad Men and the 50's/60's craze that emerged at about the same time as the show started. It's kind of a different situation, since fashion journalists deliberately draw on the show to spark interest in the fashion they're advertising, but one might still question wether the show would have been such a cult if the winds weren't blowing in that direction already.
dandanar — June 9, 2012
Dear Jay,
I am a bit disappointed with this post, and similar arguments that attempt to debunk the importance of an event ("Will & Grace") in some sort of long-term trend or shift (public opinion on gay marriage/same-sex relations). You're right to note that the relatively smooth trend that pre-dates the start of the show suggests that other forces are in play, but seriously, is anyone arguing that they weren't? Will & Grace would never have aired without a substantial audience willing to watch an out lead character and watch plotlines in part focused on his relationships with other men. So, the fact that the trend pre-dates the show is not particularly surprising.
But the fact that the trend pre-dates the show does not necessarily imply that it would have continued - or continued as strongly - without the show! In other words, continuation of a trend calls for explanation just as much as discontinuities. Who's to say that without W&G, the trend would have ended or reversed? It doesn't seem likely, but the data don't come close to ruling it out.
Again, I don't think W&G was more important than many other changes and trends during this period. But I think this sort of argument is too quickly dismissive.
A more persuasive analysis would need to consider indirect and direct effects (like Rosenberg's excellent discussion of the non-importance of Brown v. Board to the growth of the civil rights movement and to desegregation - agree or disagree, it's very carefully argued), and would at least attempt to look at age effects. For example, if the GSS data show a spike immediately following the show's end, maybe that has to do with teenagers who watched the show for its entire run and finally aged into the GSS sample, and thus the big effect of W&G actually came after its end. I don't have evidence that that is the case, but it's certainly possible.
This sort of post is extremely helpful to rein in hyperbolic rhetoric (ZOMB! W&G changed everything!), but only when properly hedged (e.g. causality is hard and messy and public opinion is shaped by all sorts of things).
Alex Cranz — June 9, 2012
Last weekend I spent time with some family members from a very white and very heteronormative part of the midwest. For whatever reason we started talking about gay marriage and the ones who watch shows like Grey's Anatomy immediately knew how to answer the question "so what do married gays call each other" while the others--those who avoid most television shows and films--were the ones ASKING that question.
Pop culture absolutely has an effect. Is it a primary cause for major societal change? Doubtful, but to out right dismiss it's effectiveness probably isn't too wise.
Acorey84 — June 13, 2012
So...if television is getting more violent and models are getting thinner, why is violence declining and the general population getting fatter?
march_hair — June 22, 2012
"We generally don’t attribute much causal weight to the sitcoms we watch. Why then are we so quick to see these shows as having a profound influence on other people’s behavior, especially behavior we don’t like? Maybe because it’s such an easy game to play."
The third person effect can explain this. In a nutshell, the third person effect says that people tend to think "I am not influenced by the media, and "you" (a friend, perhaps, or other people of similar educational backgrounds) are not influenced by the media, but other people (unknown to "I") absolutely are." So we might worry about the effect content is going to have on children, or Republicans, or high-school drop-outs, but we think of ourselves as somehow above the influence.
Babbers — June 8, 2013
I just googled "will and grace effect" because I was just reading a book by LeRoy Ashby on the topic of popular culture and he mentioned this theory & it sparked my interest. He is quite scholarly in his writing & in my experience - he's not one to be politically motivated or biased. Anyway, he references a 2000 poll where 25% of Americans supported gay marriage. He then references a 2009 poll that showed 50% of Americans being supportive of gay marriages. A follow up study was conducted with only those who'd indicated their support and these participants were asked what was the #1 thing that had influenced their favorable opinion of homosexuals and the overwhelming majority of participants said "characters on television."
If we assume all of that is correct, then your article on the Will & Grace Effect might be due for revisions. I don't know the names of the polls or who conducted them, Ashby doesn't say. I'm assuming he put footnotes in his book but I'm actually listening to it on audio because it's like 10 years long. Wish I could provide more specifics. Maybe somebody else has the paperback.
Babbers — June 8, 2013
Oh! I totally forgot to mention...
I think it's incredibly misleading to formulate graphs & charts with only those specific years you pinned & to also claim to know when a sitcom was at its peek. Will and Grace is currently in syndication & has been since their 100th episode. I, for one, didn't ever see the show during its prime time evening spot but I sure have seen every episode multiple times (because it's a hilarious show). On any given day between 2001 & today, people can catch episodes of Will & Grace on multiple different channels at all times of the day & night. I think in order to be more accurate you'd need analyze ratings for every slot it plays in & get a better idea for the actual numbers of viewers that were potentially influenced. Your info is really only taking into account a teeny sliver of the pie.