Category: TV shows

02Oct

A “Supernatural” Encounter with Angels

Thanks to my sons, I have come late to a recent popular TV show that dealt with angels, demons, and the occult, namely “Supernatural”.  I have seen reviewers describe the show as underwear models fighting demons, and that makes me chuckle.  I am tempted to join the Christian responses of either avoiding it as clearly heretical, or dismissing it with a wave of the hand and saying something along the lines of, “it’s just fantasy; enjoy it and don’t think too hard.” However, thanks to fielding questions about demons and angels, and for the benefit of my sons, I will engage with some of the ideas raised by “Supernatural”.  

First, I will credit some things that the show gets “right” according to hints from the Bible.  In contrast to popular images of angels as beautiful women with harps, or frivolous babies with wings, the show’s portrayal of angels as powerful warriors of grim determination are, in my view, an improvement.  

Artistic Renditions of angels

Biblical angels are supernatural beings of power, spiritual in nature and therefore generally invisible to mortal eyes; but they are able to take human form.  As an example, men in white were seen at the tomb of Jesus to announce his resurrection, and also on the hilltop after his ascension.  The writer of Hebrews furthermore advises Christians:

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Examples of angels appearing as men from the Old Testament would include the two men who visited Lot prior to destroying Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.  

In the majority of the biblical passages that deal with angels, they are performing the role of emissary or spokesperson, sent from God.  The very word “angel” (ἄγγελος or angelos ) means “messenger”.  But they also are also engaged in executing God’s judgement upon unrighteous people, and in protecting God’s people.

As in the TV show, the Bible also speaks of angels as being engaged in warfare.  For example, in Revelation 17, we get this information from the apocalyptic vision of St. John:

“Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

The Bible speaks of archangels, who are leaders or “princes” among the angelic host. Two are mentioned by name, Gabriel and Michael.  The Book of Daniel mentions Michael twice.  In chapter 10 an unnamed angel visits Daniel, and tells him that he was delayed:

“The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia”

From Chapter 12 of Daniel:

“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.”

Gabriel says this of himself in Luke chapter 1:

“And the angel answered him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news’.”

As in the show, angels can fall away and betray God.  In the New Testament , the books of Jude, and 2 Peter have nearly identical passages regarding fallen angels being imprisoned. From Jude: 

“And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”

This brings me now to things the show gets terribly wrong.  In many aspects of its portrayal of angels and demons, “Supernatural” becomes either downright asinine, or simply blasphemous.  Time will not allow me to list all of the sins of this show.  I will gloss over the silliness involving ancient Greek gods and goddesses, Hindu deities and the like—from a Christian perspective these are not real.  I will also set aside the tendency of secular media to mangle the Christian apocalypse, a topic that both fascinates and is woefully misunderstood. The show furthermore has an almost medieval fascination with relics, Latin incantations, holy water, and amulets.

The series depicts angels possessing humans, much like demons do, and using them as “meat suits” or “vessels”.  This is not really Biblical.  

Furthermore, in “Supernatural” even the “good” angels are portrayed as being clueless at best (Castiel) and more often as total jerks (Gabriel and Raphael), and not always much better than the demons they fight.  

In fact, sometimes Sam and Dean must try to kill angels in order to protect themselves or their world from annihilation. An undercurrent of dualism becomes ever more prominent in later seasons.  Rather than good being superior to evil, and evil needing to be vanquished, the idea is that good and evil are merely opposite forces that are both needed for balance, like the Chinese Yin and Yang.  

In Christian theology this would be foolishness.  St Thomas Aquinas described evil as privation.  As one writer describes it, “Evil is not some thing in its own right – like some kind of dark seeping ooze that invades goodness and destroys it. No, evil is not a “thing” at all, but the falling-short, an emptiness or non-functioning, in something else.“ (Dr. Joseph Magee, “Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Problem of Evil”, online at  https://aquinasonline.com/problem-of-evil/)

I find it quite interesting that a show dealing with angels and demons in every episode is nonetheless simultaneously very nearly devoid of God.  The angels are usually portrayed as agnostics who lament that their “Father is absent” and wonder whether God even exists.  This is in stark contrast to the biblical depictions of angels as being in the presence of God. (When God does finally appear in “Supernatural” he is a limited being, bearing little relation to the God of Christianity–This could be a subject for a different essay).  

Even harder to find than God is any trace of the Son of God.  The series has an “Antichrist” but no “Christ”.  Jesus is mostly a nonentity in “Supernatural”.  In an episode in season 6, a diabolical being named “Eve” tells a Christian truck driver “you do know that Jesus was just a man” before brutally killing him.  Of course, in Christianity, Jesus is more than just a man.  He is at the center of it all. He is the God-man who after triumphing over death and evil, has been exalted to the heavenly throne, to “the right hand of God”, where he is surrounded by hosts of angels.  

Jesus tells his disciples in John 1:51, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  

The final role for angels listed in the Bible is that of choir.  As in the old hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crowns”, the heavenly anthem of the angels ultimately will drown out all other music, including the cacophony of this world.  In Revelation 5, John has the vision of an innumerable throng of angels “numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand” encircling the throne and singing songs of praise to Jesus.  Let us now take up their anthem:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

17Dec

The Good Place? (Beware of Spoilers)

You wake up, and find that you are sitting in a leather chair in a strange room that looks a bit like a physician’s office.  A pleasant bespectacled man tells you that you have died, and are now beginning your afterlife.  “Welcome to The Good Place,” he beams. You soon emerge into a sunny, pleasant “neighborhood” filled with saintly seeming people milling about and eating frozen yogurt. Yet not all is as it seems. For one thing, you clearly know that you don’t belong.  You were a terrible person in life.

This is the opening premise of the entertaining and thought provoking show, “The Good Place”.  Somehow I missed this on NBC and am now binge-watching reruns on a streaming service.  I will confine my remarks to the first season, but will directly discuss the shocking twist of the season finale.

Eleanor, a self-absorbed, semi-alcoholic woman whose life’s work was selling a fake product, finds herself dead and consigned to “The Good Place”, but she knows that she doesn’t deserve to be there.  A mistake has caused her to switch places with another who shared her name.  She decides to try to earn her place anyway and begins ethics lessons with a former ethics professor named Chidi.  Meanwhile she has a troubled and catty relationship with her neighbor, Tahani, a tall glamorous former philanthropist, who seems too good to be true, and has some subtle narcissistic traits.  After doing the right thing in the midst of numerous ethical dilemmas, Eleanor finally realizes something shocking: “This is actually the Bad Place, isn’t it?”

The show has been compared with the play “No Exit” by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, and this is apt.  The first season unfolds much like the famous scenario in Sartre’s book.  “No Exit” describes a version of Hell. Sartre, who was famous for saying, “Hell is other people” drafted a play in which three main characters are trapped together in a pleasant room. They are dead, and have been consigned to Hell.  They have been assigned to spend eternity together. It dawns on them that they are to be each other’s tormentors:

INEZ: Wait! You’ll see how simple it is. Childishly simple. Obviously there aren’t any physical torments—you agree, don’t you? And yet we’re in hell. And no one else will come here. We’ll stay in this room together, the three of us, for ever and ever. . . . In short, there’s someone absent here, the official tortur

GARCIN [sotto voce]: I’d noticed that.

INEZ: It’s obvious what they’re after—an economy of man power—or devil-power, if you prefer. The same idea as in the cafeteria, where customers serve themselves.

ESTELLE: What ever do you mean?

INEZ: I mean that each of us will act as torturer of the two others.

The three characters proceed to do just that, until finally Estelle cracks:

“Open the door! Open, blast you! I’ll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes—all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears—I’ll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.”

These parables accord with a more modern version of Hell, in which psychology replaces fire and brimstone as a metaphor for its torments. I think of C.S. Lewis, who wrote “It’s not a question of God ‘sending’ us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.”

Some have objected to this idea, as it underplays the justice and retribution aspects of Divine punishment. In Lewis’ view, and that of “The Good Place”, Hell is as much a self-inflicted torment as it is divinely appointed punishment.  

However, does it need to be “either / or”? Might it not rather be both?

02Nov

The Haunting of Hill House

Hill House sign

I am still processing my emotions after binge-watching the Netflix series “The Haunting of Hill House.” As with most shows and movies produced lately, this tale is nearly devoid of any traces of Christianity, so I recommend it mainly as creepy fun for Halloween—the media equivalent of visiting a haunted house attraction. Yet I think it transcends the horror genre a bit more than most haunted house movies.

“The Haunting of Hill House” is as much a psychological tale of dysfunctional relationships as it is a supernatural tale of ghosts. It is also a good specimen of the classic gothic literary genre, like Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher—classier and spookier than many of the more comically outrageous special effects-laden haunted house movies out there (in which I include the 1999 movie “The Haunting”, inspired by the same Shirley Jackson source novel)

I therefore have mostly praise for this series. Solid acting and writing effectively establish an atmosphere of sadness and foreboding, as the Crain family’s present day struggles are set against a tragic backstory that is slowly revealed. Along the way it achieves moments of creepiness that I have scarcely seen since “The Sixth Sense.” While not above an occasional jump scare, the show’s spookiness is mostly earned through more subtle storytelling.

I’ve seen mixed reviews of the final episode. Some praised it for wrapping up the story lines and revealing the mysteries in an emotionally satisfying way. Others raged that it offered a “cheap” happy ending, slapping on a saccharine finish that betrayed the dark depths to which the story had previously gone. (One contemplated version of the ending had the Crain family remaining trapped in Hill House forever). Much as I sometimes enjoy an art house movie with a grim ending, in this case I am glad they opted for the former. The father’s sacrifice to save his children was dark enough for me, and tugged at my own feelings as a parent who loves his children deeply. Few movies bring tears, but Hugh’s final scene pulled some out of me. I would have been disappointed if he had died in vain.

Reviewing this story from a theological perspective, of course, Hugh’s sacrifice has a lot of resonance. His character was certainly not a perfect Christ figure: Hugh was guilty of willful blindness early on, and he was emotionally unavailable to his children later. I’ve rarely seen a more muted and tortured character than the quiet mumbling man who showed up for Nell’s funeral. But at the end, he showed some redemptive mettle. He put his family first, to the point of being consumed by a sacrificial death that allowed them to live.

The seductive nature of evil is another theme, especially in the last episode. Evil offers a false echo of goodness that promises to assuage some deep hurt or satisfy a craving, but this proves illusory. The mirage dissolves, and evil instead devours its prey.

Finally, the way in which a life can be “haunted” by past mistakes was portrayed compellingly. “Guilt and fear are sisters,” Nell’s apparition tells her family near the end. The final sequences of dreams play on these powerful “demons” in the lives of Steve, Shirley, and Theo, and demonstrate how these forces have dragged down and “haunted” each of the characters, more so than the actual ghosts of Hill House.

03Nov

A Stranger Version of Sacrifice and Redemption

image

Over the course of Halloween, we treated ourselves to a binge viewing of the Netflix miniseries “Stranger Things”. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll offer that it was entertaining–an endearing homage to the nineteen-eighties, Steven King stories, and Sci-FI movies like “ET” and “Close Encounters”. And–full disclosure here–this is largely being lauded as a “period piece”, and the “period” in question is my own, particularly the time of my own childhood. Stepping back into a warm cocoon of memory is part of the enjoyment. Wall mounted rotary phones, old “Coke is it” commercials, Atari, 80s cars, shag carpeting, and brown upholstered furniture are evident everywhere.

I enjoyed also the assembly of 80’s science fiction and horror motifs: You have a group of nerdy middle school friends from broken or dysfunctional families bicycling all around town with little adult supervision or intervention. You have disappearances and other creepy events occurring to people in a small Midwestern town surrounded by a terrifying forest. You have a secret government lab performing mysterious experiments. You have strong (though flawed) characters trying to rise heroically despite their circumstances (the mildly psychopathic yet truth-seeking Sheriff Hopper is a prime example).

In sum, you could find worse ways to spend 7 hours.

Also, stop reading now, because I want to discuss the ending.

But do come back at some point.

Ok, this is the last warning before I plow into details you might not want to know yet…

One of the standout performances for me is the grimly determined orphan “Eleven”, played by 12 year old actress Millie Bobby Brown. Her young eyes radiate despair and terror and hope so hauntingly that it reminded me a bit of Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense”. She surfaces mysteriously into the lives of three friends, who soon learn that she has extraordinary gifts. They also soon find themselves on the run from shadowy government agents, while also hoping to figure out a way to find their missing friend Will.

Since this is a religion-focused blog, I would be remiss to avoid discussing how Eleven (“El” to her friends) is almost a Christ figure. She is of mysterious birth. She possesses an almost unimaginable power–she can levitate objects, kill with a thought, and create portals between parallel worlds. Her life is one of near constant suffering. She reaches out in friendship to the youngsters and loves them. In the end, she sacrifices herself to save the others. Her story is a picture of sacrifice and salvation–one innocent sufferer giving her all so that the others may live. As Jesus stated ages ago, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

The story involving the missing boy Will Byers, can also be seen as a parable of redemption. Early in the series, he disappears into the grim, toxic, and deadly “Upside Down”–a kind of hell existing in parallel to our universe. His mother, portrayed by Winona Ryder as a petite nervous wreck who never gives up hope, is a spot of emotional warmth. She believes she can communicate with her son and will go to any and all crazy lengths in order to do so; for example, when the now invisible young Will somehow makes some lights blink, she responds and by the end of that day she has every inch of her little house plastered with Christmas lights. When she figures out that he is trapped in a parallel universe, she finds a way to the portal in the basement of the heavily guarded government lab, braving the risk of arrest or murder at the hands of the government men. She enters the “upside down”, braving the toxins and monsters, in a quest to retrieve her lost son. Against all odds, she finds him and takes him out of there. He is redeemed, taken back from the shadow of death, retrieved from the grip of Hell and its monster.

The “Upside Down” is also thought provoking in a theological way. In this story, the “upside down” is a parallel universe, one of many possible alternate realities, like ours but inverted. It has the same geography and even the same buildings–houses, schools, and tree forts–but everything is dark, gloomy, and cold. The air is toxic. A terrifying monster inhabits this land. It is hellish.

What if the Christian “Heaven” and “Hell” are in fact alternate dimensions, peopled by versions of ourselves that are better or worse. Hell might be the “upside down”, and Heaven is an alternate reality that is better.

Along these lines, what if our world is actually the “upside down”, a sick and perverted alternate universe to some other better one. That would fit our appalling history of mass murder and other atrocities, both horrific and banal, that are etched upon history. What if we are the demonic versions of our better selves? By no means am I going to claim this as the real truth, or ignore that it wouldn’t quite fit the biblical narratives, but it can be fun to speculate.

31Jul

Wayward Pines

I caught the finale of the Fox Miniseries “Wayward Pines”, another entry in the interesting genre of the dystopian future.  The series began with solid characters and an air of mystery–FBI agent Ethan Burke wakes up after a car accident, to find himself in the hospital of a small Idaho town.  He wanders around this sleepy locale which has the veneer of a lovely community, but something sinister lurks just beneath the surface.  He quickly finds that he can’t seem to leave–all roads circle back toward town.  A heavily fortified fence surrounds the valley, beyond which are heard unearthly howls, and we see glimpses of menacing creatures.  What is going on with this creepy town and its fearful residents?

Spoilers here: Stop reading now if you plan to watch the series!

Flash forward 10 episodes, and we have our answers.  We have learned that the town is really the brain child of a visionary scientist, who foresaw the end of humanity and created the town as a fortress and humanity’s last refuge.  The town’s residents were all cryo-frozen in 2015 and then reawakened 2000 years into the future.  The rest of humanity has meanwhile evolved into cannibalistic monsters (referred to as “aberrants” or “abbies”) that hunt and kill anything on feet.

In the final episode, the scientist, David Pilcher, reveals that he isn’t done playing God.  He doesn’t like it that Ethan Burke has “outed” him and his operation to the rest of the townspeople.  He has decided that it is time to pull the plug on this “batch” of humans by turning off the power to the protective fence.  Like many a screen villain before him, he listens to opera music in his opulent mountain lair and watches the progress of the cleansings.  His own henchmen turn on him and he is killed, but not soon enough to end the destruction he has unleashed. The mutants swarm in and kill most of the town fairly quickly in a set of fast paced scenes that seem reminiscent of zombie apocalypse movies like “World War Z”.  Ethan Burke rescues some of the townspeople, who make it into the fortified complex that overlooks the city.  Ethan blows himself up in an elevator shaft to kill many of the “Abbies” and saves the others.  His son is conked on the head by debris, and awakens from a coma three years later.

Ethan’s son finds that things have come full circle to where they were at the beginning of the series.  The town seems to be back to normal, but this is illusory. In fact, a cadre of cold-blooded fanatical youth have also survived, and managed to overpower the adults.  Everyone who survived the mutant apocalypse has been put back into cryo-freeze and a new batch of humans is living in terror under the malignant reign of these fanatical youth.  A statue to David Pilcher stands in a park where the bodies of three people dangle, hanged for trying to leave Wayward Pines.

I have to admit that I was left a bit crestfallen by the final twist at the end.  Did Ethan really sacrifice himself only to have the “Hitler Youth” take over?  If this is the fate of humanity, is it worth saving?  These are the interesting questions that have theological implications as well.  Even as we humans show brilliance in the face of hostile natural forces, using all of our cleverness and ingenuity to survive and thrive, we nonetheless remain our own worst enemies.  Despite the spark of divinity–that “image of God”–that is imprinted upon us, we are fallen creatures.  “Wayward Pines”, like Holy Scripture, doesn’t give an optimistic appraisal of our fortunes, when we are left to our own devices.   The final questions for humanity remain open: Will we destroy ourselves? Will we play God, or rather seek the real one?

25Jun

Sleepy Hollow: Apocalypse Word Salad

image“Sleepy Hollow” is a show that trades on a formula: This or that cursed object or ritual is about to usher in the apocalypse, or visit some doom or tragedy upon an innocent girl, or both. It reminds me a bit of an old show called “Friday the 13th” in which a curio shop owner collected occult objects that the heroes were trying to get out of public circulation.

The first episode of “Sleepy Hollow” has a headless axe-wielding British horseman emerging from a barn to terrorize a sleepy upstate New York community. In what seems a mashup of Irving’s Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane also mysteriously awakens 200+ years after facing the horseman in the 1700’s. In this telling, Crane is no wimpy schoolteacher, but rather a revolutionary war hero, played enthusiastically by Tom Mison, who is resurrected to take on this hideous beast. He teams up with a street wise female cop (Nicole Beharie), who becomes his partner of sorts. Some of the enjoyment in the early episodes is watching him cope with modernity, even as she must come to grips with the realization that there may be supernatural forces at work.

Fairly quickly, things take a turn for the apocalyptic. The headless horseman is none other than one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who is about to usher in the End of Days.

The Bible is treated in typical media fashion as a book of arcana that contains a recipe and doomsday calendar for the earth’s end. (Of course, to be fair, there are some Christians out there that view parts of it this way, too). The Bible is discarded for the most part except to offer up a frightening passage here and there from Revelations or Ezekiel. I haven’t watched enough to see if they are even using real verses or just making stuff up. In any case, even if the verses are real, there is no context or theological framework to make sense of them. The show basically puts the scripture in a blender and hits “frappe”.

True believers will be saddened to note that although demons abound, there is very little of God to be found anywhere. The forces in play are demons, not angels. The wrath of Molech is substituted for the wrath of God. And of course, the End of Days can be averted if humans can just stop that next portal from opening, or disrupt a profane ritual involving dribbling blood on some tied up female victim, or just get get that [insert occult object here] off the streets.

Perhaps they should have stopped with the pilot. The proverbial “jumping the shark” occurred somewhere fairly early on. Two seasons now have seen a proliferation of creatures and occult entities to rival even what the old 1960s “Dark Shadows” soap opera could envision at its campiest. (A Barnabas Collins vampire would fit right in; Alas, but Jonathan Frid was born too early). At least “Dark Shadows”–and “Ghostbusters”, to name another that pops to mind–didn’t take themselves too seriously. In “Sleepy Hollow”, that sickening sound you hear isn’t the rolling of heads onscreen, but of eyes offscreen, as the show chugs along, introducing pied pipers, cursed Judas coins, good witches fighting evil ones, a demon named Molech snarling at his human servants, a Frankenstein monster created by Benjamin Franklin, and so on.

So consider watching this for the atmosphere (though this seems to get less creepy as the silliness mounts), and perhaps for some unintentionally campy fun. But don’t expect to learn anything of eschatological or biblical importance. You won’t find much similarity with Washington Irving’s tales, either, aside from some names.