It is not surprising that in a time of sustained global economic
and political uncertainty that our storytellers would give us a steady diet of
apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic tales.
It is human nature that our storytelling would reflect the times of the storytellers. Recent years have given rise to the “Hunger
Games” books and films, as well as a host of TV shows like “Jericho”, “Falling
Skies”, and this season’s breakout hit “Revolution” that have had something to say
on the subject.
I think it is worth pausing to consider what messages we are
consuming and only in part because of what impact they might be having on
us. While that is a concern, I think the
deeper concern is what these tales and their popularity tell us about how we
view ourselves. How do we define our
humanity? What is our relationship to
God? The challenge I think is that the
more we ask these tough questions of our entertainment, the more and more concerned
we should become about the answers.
I want to mainly focus in on “Revolution”, the highest rated
of the TV shows, and one that concluded its fall run last night. “Revolution” is set 15 years post the
apocalyptic event, in this case a global blackout that brought all machines (even
those that are gas or battery powered) to a screeching halt. With this premise the show has set itself up
to be describing more than the panic and chaos that would come in the immediate
aftermath of such an event. The show is
attempting to explore what society would look like after human beings have
adjusted to this new reality.
The answer, according to the show, is that it is essentially
a Darwinian type world where the ethos is the old law of the jungle, kill or be
killed. With very few exceptions in the
episodes that have been aired we apparently are unable to procure food for
ourselves without stealing or taking it from someone else (which often involves
killing them). To the extent any societies
have formed, they are territories claimed by militias through bloody military
campaigns. Given there has been no
discussion of acquiring necessary resources or righting wrongs, these campaigns
appear to have been purely waged for the purpose of empire building, to serve
the ego of whichever Napoleon is commanding that particular republic.
It has become extremely difficult to find any redeeming
portrayal of humanity among the show’s core characters. Even among the merry band of protagonists, we
have seen the character of Rachel Matheson shoot a hungry man to keep him from
taking food from her family and stab a former colleague and friend to protect
her own family. Miles Matheson is a supposed
reformed sociopath who seems to keep having to kill people. Aaron Pittman, the former tech billionaire
rendered completely worthless (in more ways than one) when the power went out,
wouldn’t hurt a fly, but it is constantly portrayed as a weakness.
Indeed, the writers have taken pains to leave only the
children, Danny and Charlie, as the two characters on the show who don’t want
to take innocent life and in one episode the adults went to extremes to keep
Charlie from having to take an innocent life.
While being children in the story they symbolize hope for the future,
surrounded by a Darwinian construct it is completely inconceivable that they
can maintain this posture and survive.
The show is completely devoid of any notion, discussion, or
reflection by the characters that there are some things worth dying for. Or better said, that there are things I am
not willing to do in this world or tolerate in this world just to live for my
place in the next world is much more important.
In essence, the show is missing the notion that this world is not all
there is.
The genre is really startlingly absent of any discussion of
religion, spiritual crises that might arise from such situations, or any
pondering of what the place of this world might be in the grand scheme of
things. This may be a key explanation as
to why so many of these shows seem to reduce humans to mere animals. To contemplate the spiritual realm, to
contemplate the meaning of life, these are squarely human qualities. A Zebra is incapable of wondering how the
Earth was created.
I understand that networks don’t want to make religious
shows or risk alienating any particular religious group as the battle for
shrinking audiences. But at the same
time, they are wading into these heavy topics, they are making these stories. It only seems logical that human beings,
living in such circumstances, would at least have a passing thought or two
about the theological implications of what is going on around them. I credit “Falling Skies” for at least
alluding periodically to a faith shaken by the alien invasion, despite having
only a 10 episode season. But for “Revolution”
to ignore these things seems to imply that Christianity, religion, is just
there for when things are going well.
Flip the lights off and we all become a bunch of heathens.
That of course is precisely the opposite of the human
experience. It is when times are tough
that our faith is tested and while “Revolution” accurately depicts that some
among us would use the chaos as a way to forge a new, material richer life for
themselves (Captain Tom Neville harkens back to Heinrich Himmler, the chicken
farmer who became head of Hitler’s SS), many would also choose to respond by
continuing to live their faith. This
duality of responses to the same crisis is the essence of the struggle of
humanity.
We live in a fallen world and the forces of this world are
constantly trying to drag us down to be less than we can be. Satan wants to make God’s masterpiece into
nothing more than the animals that we are surrounded by. Except that this makes us less than
animals. Animals do not consciously
choose their behavior, they have been preprogrammed, it is instinct. Human beings would have to consciously choose
to behave this way.
The question that all of this begs is how do we as a society
feel about such a portrayal of humanity on a consistent basis? Do we really believe that our civil society
is that fragile that even the slightest wrinkle would set in motion the kind of
behavior that would set human beings back a thousand years or more?
I do not know what the answer is and I think we as a society
do not have an answer. I think these
shows are reflective of writers who are reflective of a society that no longer
reflects upon what it means to be human, what our relationship to God is, or
how we reconcile our relationship with that God to this world. The perfect example of that would be a new
film about a “society” adrift and that is “Life of Pi”.
The book was, from beginning to end, about a boy’s spiritual
journey. As the boy is set adrift, with
a tiger, it becomes a metaphor for our own spiritual journey. Yet the film has apparently removed almost
any notion of a spiritual quest making it, yes, just a movie about a boy
floating with a tiger. A film version of
“Les Miserables” that came out about a decade ago was similarly
secularized.
The interesting lesson, that could be drawn from both cases,
is that when remove God from the story, from the equation, it does not make the
art better, the characters better, the stories more universal. It has precisely the opposite effect. It makes the art worse, the characters less
appealing, and the stories harder to relate to.
It is a lesson that NBC’s “Revolution” would be wise to learn as the
same thing happens when we attempt to remove God from life.
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