Or, How To Ruin An Entertaining TV Show… Desperately grasping at any straw to fill their increasingly echoing and irrelevant churches, C of E vicars are now raiding the television sci-fi cupboard in an effort to “reach” young people. I say this as a fan of Doctor Who: if I was a member of this or any church that decided to use said series as a “teaching aid” I would have been totally turned off from not only the church lessons but probably the show to boot. It would ruin the enjoyment of the show for me, the way dissecting novels has ruined the ability of generations of English majors to be able to simply read a book. Of course, I was an odd child, who was always repulsed rather than flattered by the attempts of my elders to patronizingly talk down to what they supposed was my level in order to “reach” me. The sight of an over-thirty trying to be “hip” and “cool” and speak contemporary teenage slang struck me then as now as clumsy and farcical, not to mention insulting. It’s as if they were saying “you youngsters are too dumb to understand grown-up subjects, and also we can’t be bothered to actually help you overcome your youthful ignorance, so we’ll treat you the way the cliché missionary treats the simple Stone Age cannibals and speak to you in Pidgin.” Then the cannibals boil them and eat their heads — or in the case of contemporary Western society, the adults cannibalize their own culture until everyone is the equivalent of a person with no head, or at least no brain.
And on a side note, the so-called “Christian symbolism” that all too often leaks into, or in many cases has been clumsily dropped into, science fiction series, films, and novels is one thing that has always tempered my enjoyment of the genre. Since most science fiction writers, at least in television and film, are liberal and secular in outlook the result almost invariably comes off as a cynical attempt to hijack Christian beliefs to something I call the idea of Cooler Jesus. For instance, how much cooler a Jesus is a cute time-traveling alien guy in tight pants than that boring old bearded guy in the robes on your grandma’s kitchen wall? Or worse, that bleeding guy stuck by nails to a piece of wood, what a downer! And Cooler Jesus is also tolerant of gays and disapproves of guns, and he’ll take you for a spin in his time machine if you’re a reasonably good-looking humanoid girl, so take that, Christians! You know, I think David Tennant is hot, but he’s not the Messiah.
(Via the Flea.)
11 Responses to “The Church of England continues to become more and more pathetic”
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June 4th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
In the parlance of modern moral relativism, we cannot be critical of the cannibal or any other ethnic group for their codes of behaviour. The same loony (but sadly authoritative to the young) arts and academic opinion makers will relentlessly criticize nasty America or any western countries for their imposition of Christianity and commerce on formerly undeveloped countries.
Having succeeded in glossing the Marxist takeovers of various African countries as “de-colonisation”, these same voices in the arts, media and academe would now try to inflict shame on us for not intervening in the predictably disastrous outcomes.
If the collection of undemocratic swill that comprise much of the UN’s membership will not support action in the ME, they can go whistle for help in Africa. The big risk is that the next wave of colonisation will be even worse than the Marxists, and also something starting with M.
The following is a treasured quote form our old friend Diplomad:
“Clearly the poor in many countries face a wretched existence. Much more wretched now that “their” countries are independent and governed by “their own” elites rather than by foreign white men. Some countries are not nations. They are just places on a map; the turf of cynical gangsters who wrap themselves in funny colored flags, have huge Swiss bank accounts, sit at the UN, and pontificate on all manner of things (note: the same persons to whom Kerry would turn to get approval in his “Global Test” theory of US foreign policy.)
We have a world populated by chronically failed states; states that use their power and immunity only to bring misery to their own people. It is time not to take certain “countries” seriously and to put them under tutelage. That would be a much better and more lastingly positive use of scarce resources than the current wasteful pouring of money into the pockets of aid workers and gangsters.
In other words, bring back the British Empire.”
June 4th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Well, I guess that’s what I get for using “cannibals” as a metaphor.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:58 am
You want comments Andrea, you got em.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:23 am
I like on-topic comments.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:24 am
“The sight of an over-thirty trying to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and speak contemporary teenage slang struck me then as now as clumsy and farcical, not to mention insulting.”
Yo, that’s a cool and awesome statement. Really makes your post “pop”.
Seriously, though, that’s the kind of thing that has ruined HGTV for me. Otherwise interesting shows that demonstrate genuinely useful things to know about updating or selling your house, feature people – hosts and clients – who use “cool” and “awesome” with only slightly less frequency than “a” and “the”.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Oh, I’m used to that. Actually, since a lot of those hosts are younger than me (in their 30s and 20s), I figure that’s really how they talk. There’s this one HGTV show, I forget the name (not Design On A Dime, that’s full of the cool-awesome speakers; the one that usually airs after it) with a hostess who is in her 40s or 50s, and she doesn’t talk that way.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I should add, nowadays the gig is to say things like “bling-bling” and… whatever people are saying. Actually I think “bling-bling” is already over, they’re using some other term. I can’t keep up with the slang — guess I’ll just keep on using standard English.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I thank you for that. Andrea (standard English)- you’ll be one of the few I can actually understand without a translator! I knew I was old & stodgy the day I could understand what everyone on Blair’s blog said, whether they were Aussie, Canandian, or ‘Mercan…but very little of what was on some tv show made in this country.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Please excuse spelling & spacing mistakes – baby sometimes gets ahold of the keyboard.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Dang, and I tried so hard …
Cheers
June 8th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Didn’t L Ron do the churchie/science fiction thing already. I guess it worked for him…..
I hate the olds using the modern kids slang. Like grownups using “grouse” when I was a teenager or in my early 20s. By that time “grouse” was dead.