what's that you say? I watched teevee all day?
One of the things that bugs me about nearly all the TV I watch is the recurring assumption that Christian = Catholic. Sure, there's specificity when specificity needs to be had, but if characters go into a random church, it'll be a Catholic church; if someone needs to find and/or dress up as a religious official, the official in question will be a (white) Catholic priest; if someone has a Christian object, it'll be a crucifix or a rosary. About the only exception to this seems to be that television-makers have generally realized that there aren't a lot of black Catholics in the world, and as such, black churches on TV tend to be the gospel-singing, hand-clapping kind. Everybody else, though, does the Vatican rag.
Even what I've seen of British television seems to fall prey to this more often than not, which just baffles me. Come on, guys, I know about your history with the papists and all, but you've got your whole own state church. You may have heard of it; they named it after the place and all.
A preponderance of non-negative Catholic representations might be great if a) this were done correctly, b) this actually represented US demographics, and c) this got used meaningfully instead of just as a random default setting for 'Christian'. Without any real reason behind the choice, assuming that all Christians do these Catholic things kind of comes off as creepy Catholic fetishism/exoticism -- ooh, look at the men with the collars and the pretty churches and the magic water! -- and that's kind of gross. So: hooray for Catholics on TV! But dammit, Catholics for a reason, not just because mainline Protestants don't have enough smells or bells to scream RELIGION! to the audience.
This is just one of the many reasons why Community is fantastic: it knows Baptist from Episcopalian from Jehovah's Witness, and then proceeds to know that there are religions in the world that aren't Christianity or Judaism. And then it makes them all celebrate Christmas! But awesomely.
...I know I'm probably the only person in the world that this bugs, but it does, it totally bugs me. It's right up there with how much it bugs me that the cast of Bones is supposed to be made up largely of hyper-pedantic super-geniuses, but the writers are not hyper-pedants and thus the cast members make stupid grammatical errors -- ones that aren't strictly incorrect, generally, but come on, if these people are going to have as their defining characteristic the obsessive need for correctness, I'm going to expect them to use the subjunctive properly.
Once Stephen Fry disappointed me terribly by using 'decimate' to mean 'nearly obliterate'. Come on, if there's only one other person in the universe who gives a damn about that as much as I do, it should be you, Stephen!
Even what I've seen of British television seems to fall prey to this more often than not, which just baffles me. Come on, guys, I know about your history with the papists and all, but you've got your whole own state church. You may have heard of it; they named it after the place and all.
A preponderance of non-negative Catholic representations might be great if a) this were done correctly, b) this actually represented US demographics, and c) this got used meaningfully instead of just as a random default setting for 'Christian'. Without any real reason behind the choice, assuming that all Christians do these Catholic things kind of comes off as creepy Catholic fetishism/exoticism -- ooh, look at the men with the collars and the pretty churches and the magic water! -- and that's kind of gross. So: hooray for Catholics on TV! But dammit, Catholics for a reason, not just because mainline Protestants don't have enough smells or bells to scream RELIGION! to the audience.
This is just one of the many reasons why Community is fantastic: it knows Baptist from Episcopalian from Jehovah's Witness, and then proceeds to know that there are religions in the world that aren't Christianity or Judaism. And then it makes them all celebrate Christmas! But awesomely.
...I know I'm probably the only person in the world that this bugs, but it does, it totally bugs me. It's right up there with how much it bugs me that the cast of Bones is supposed to be made up largely of hyper-pedantic super-geniuses, but the writers are not hyper-pedants and thus the cast members make stupid grammatical errors -- ones that aren't strictly incorrect, generally, but come on, if these people are going to have as their defining characteristic the obsessive need for correctness, I'm going to expect them to use the subjunctive properly.
Once Stephen Fry disappointed me terribly by using 'decimate' to mean 'nearly obliterate'. Come on, if there's only one other person in the universe who gives a damn about that as much as I do, it should be you, Stephen!