(no subject)
Prompted by green-maia's posts about MD and religion, and my own comments there.
My reaction to Immortal Sins in comparison to green_maia's, as well as other people's, made me remember a blog entry by Ricardo Pinto, where he talks about the Catholic themes he noticed in his writing despite being an atheist, and how differently Portuguese readers and readers from English speaking countries react to the violence in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon books (*). He remarks on the prevalence of the crucifix in Catholic countries as opposed to the plain cross used by Protestant Churches, and goes on to ask, 'How profoundly is a culture shaped, the minds of its children shaped, by the difference between these symbols? The contrast between the abstract instrument of torture and execution, and the instrument being demonstrated in use, viscerally, by having a man depicted on it suffering?', and concludes: 'And it seems that I am Catholic enough to have portrayed a unity between violence and redemption, between violence and love, that is immediately understood by people who have grown up with the crucifix and causes much more of a problem for those who have grown up with the plain, bare cross….'
I have no idea if this would hold up to scientific analysis, but I do find the idea interesting, and it made me think.
I wasn't brought up Catholic as such, my parents never went to church, although my mother still is a member of the Catholic church, whereas ironically my father, who left years ago, is a lot more interested in theology and philosophy. But Austria was, and in many ways still is, a Catholic country and it's impossible not to absorb your share of Catholicism. Like almost every child at the time (1972) I got baptised as a matter of course and consequently attended religious eduction class at school. First Communion was at the age of eight, and while my biggest concern at the time was that my mother wouldn't buy me white shoes to match the dress, you've necessarily become familiar with the story of the crucifixion by then. You'll probably have drawn pictures of it, which, if you really think about it, is... I don't really know what word I'm looking for. Weird? Macabre? If children drew that kind of thing unprompted and outside of a religious context, there'd probably be worried teachers and parents and counselling.
I had a children's bible, which I actually read, because I still remember the pictures, and preferring the OT, which was more like the Greek and German mythology my father used to read to us, to the NT, which I thought was a bit boring. I wouldn't describe myself as a spiritual or religious child, or even very interested in religion. Confession freaked me out completely, which is why I only ever went a bare handful of times, and I attended Mass only with the school at the beginning and end of the school year and whatever few other occasions there were. Did I believe in what we were taught? I don't really remember. Probably to an extent, but I don't connect any specific feelings, good or bad with it. It just was, unquestioned. Even in a public (i.e., not private or religious) school you'd have religious education class which you're only allowed to opt out of when you're fourteen (and I'm almost certain it was sixteen or seventeen when I went to school), and there was a good chance you'd be looking at a crucifix for the entire 8 - 12 years of your school career.
When I was 15 or 16, I suddenly became serious about religion, which in hindsight seems to come with the age, because my sister went through a similar phase, and is no more religious now than I am. Our religious education teacher had a bible class, which I attended, and ironically I missed confirmation because I was so serious about the whole thing that I wanted to do it ~properly~, in the right spiritual frame of mind, and kept putting off until atheism caught up with me and it was too late.
Which is to say, on the whole I was probably subjected to a lot more Catholic influence than Pinto, who only spent part of his childhood in Portugal before his family moved to the UK. Even if I became an atheist before I turned 20, by that time the mythology, the iconography, a certain way of thinking about certain issues were embedded in my brain on a so many levels that it's impossible to determine the real extent to which they shaped me. When I finally quit the Catholic Church a couple of years ago (excommunicating the people who helped a nine year old girl get an abortion after she'd been raped by her stepfather, while welcoming back the Lefebvrists was enough to overcome even my usual lethargy), I still felt a pang of guilt for a while, a sense of sudden emptiness, and even two years later being in a church still feels vaguely wrong, as if I shouldn't be there now. (And then I occasionally catch myself thinking that quitting didn't invalidate my baptism... *facepalm*) If at any point during the last 15 or more years you'd have asked me if I considered being Catholic part of my identity, I'd probably have laughed and shaken my head, but apparently I'd have been wrong. And I only ever knew the reformed brand of Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council, and had no pressure put on me by anyone, nor any personal unpleasant experiences; I'm not sure I even want to imaging what sort of damage the kind of Catholicism that used to threaten hell and damnation wreaked in the minds of children.
When I watched Immortal Sins... I absolutely loved it, and there was something more that I only managed to put into words when I wrote the comment in response to green-maia's entry: it felt familiar.
Even though I grew up in completely different circumstances, Angelo was a character I could relate to, and while I can't say I ever consciously struggled with sexuality vs. religion, I still could understand his guilt. The iconography felt familiar. I loved the echo of the Pietà image, and it didn't bother me in the least, partly I guess because there's plenty of (for lack of a better word) homoerotic religious art from the Renaissance to the present. Or more generally speaking, if you grew up at a time when Hermann Nitsch was still an object of controversy and hadn't become completely mainstream yet, RTD's occasional use of religious imagery is really quite tame in comparison. And while the scene where they killed Jack over and over again was hard to watch the first time, I didn't react to it in the way I'd have reacted to a random scene of violence, and this brings me back what Pinto wrote: with the religiously influenced iconography even the cruelty of it, the brutality of it and the suffering, felt, in a way, familiar.
And something else felt familiar too: Jack's anger. People of my generation, especially if they grew up in a big city rather than a village, on the whole probably won't have felt the worst of the suffocating and oppressive effect Catholicism can have in small communities. I do associate becoming an atheist with a memory of a sudden feeling of freedom, but as I said, I was lucky enough to grow up without pressure in this respect, and I don't really have any kind of personal bitterness. At the same time, maybe mainly through films and books and art the awareness of a struggle and rebellion against a conservatism that was largely embodied by the Catholic Church is still part of the country's collective consciousness. And this is why I think it's impossible to call the episode offensive without recognising the basic truth of it, because this (if not worse) is exactly how until very recently the Church, Catholic or otherwise, regularly fucked up the psyche and lives of gay men and women, and in many places continues to do so.
* * *
There's a second part to this ramble, which is about how I lost my faith and the religious themes in DW. Looking at the example of my sister, it probably would have happened anyway, but I still remember the first crack in my more or less unquestioning acceptance of the whole belief system. The son of a teacher at my school had an accident and as a result was in coma, and once during Mass we were praying for his recovery. I still remember how afterwards I started to think about how profoundly unfair it would be if God actually helped the boy specifically because of our prayer, because then what about all the people who didn't have an entire school to pray for them? Not long after that I started studying archaeology and ancient history and became aware of how obviously religions are shaped by the societies that produce them, even if they in turn also influence them, and that was that, but I still do remember that first crack, and while the line of reasoning may sound childish now, the underlying issue is still my main problem with the concept of a personal god.
I've been moving towards agnosticism over the years because atheism is in the end also a leap of faith considering how little we still know about the universe, but looking at the state of the world I find the concept of a God who occasionally will chose to interfere in some human lives, but not in others, intolerable. I can deal with the injustice of coincidence, I can deal with the knowledge that human nature can be, and often is, very ugly, but I absolutely can't deal with the idea of a God who could (and in some cases even does) prevent suffering, but choses not to for some mysterious reason of his own. There is a passage from The Brothers Karamazov that stuck in my memory although I've forgotten most of the rest of the plot since I read the book years ago, and that is the chapter titled Rebellion, where Ivan Karamazov gets into a theological discussion with his brother Alyosha, and (essentially) says he can't and won't tolerate or accept a God whose plan includes the suffering of innocent children.
And this is part of the reason why I love WoM so much, because for me this is what Adelaide rejects: she (like Judith in The Second Coming) personally profited from the Doctor's actions, he saved her life, but she looks at the wider picture, and realises not just that as a consequence of her being saved other people might die, but that in front of her stands someone who would keep making these decisions, who had all the power, and she decides that the price is too high. And she is brave enough, and strong enough, and proud enough to tell him, 'No', even if she has to sacrifice her life to make that point. There will still be suffering and death, but at least there will be no (quasi-)god, playing around with human lives and deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.
In WoM RTD got it right, whereas the implications of Gwen's speech in Day Five of CoE are so horrible that I've wondered if the whole thing isn't, intentionally or not, a step towards the final deconstruction of the Doctor/God theme. The children they were going to hand over to the 456 had nothing to do with 1965 or the whole mess, and if the Doctor could save them, but allows them to suffer because humanity's behaviour disgusts him ('turning away in shame')... then we're back with Ivan Karamazov and the whole theodicy argument. It's clear what RTD tried to do, but he was right in the first place, the fiction of the Doctor and the big man-made tragedies are irreconcilable and incompatible, certainly if they're historical, but even if they're fictional like the events of CoE. If it worked in Fires of Pompeii, then only because the tragedy of Pompeii is two millennia old and history this far removed has become something akin to mythology in most people's minds.
(*) Which, btw, I cannot recommend enough. They're not flawless, but IMO deserve more recognition than they got.
My reaction to Immortal Sins in comparison to green_maia's, as well as other people's, made me remember a blog entry by Ricardo Pinto, where he talks about the Catholic themes he noticed in his writing despite being an atheist, and how differently Portuguese readers and readers from English speaking countries react to the violence in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon books (*). He remarks on the prevalence of the crucifix in Catholic countries as opposed to the plain cross used by Protestant Churches, and goes on to ask, 'How profoundly is a culture shaped, the minds of its children shaped, by the difference between these symbols? The contrast between the abstract instrument of torture and execution, and the instrument being demonstrated in use, viscerally, by having a man depicted on it suffering?', and concludes: 'And it seems that I am Catholic enough to have portrayed a unity between violence and redemption, between violence and love, that is immediately understood by people who have grown up with the crucifix and causes much more of a problem for those who have grown up with the plain, bare cross….'
I have no idea if this would hold up to scientific analysis, but I do find the idea interesting, and it made me think.
I wasn't brought up Catholic as such, my parents never went to church, although my mother still is a member of the Catholic church, whereas ironically my father, who left years ago, is a lot more interested in theology and philosophy. But Austria was, and in many ways still is, a Catholic country and it's impossible not to absorb your share of Catholicism. Like almost every child at the time (1972) I got baptised as a matter of course and consequently attended religious eduction class at school. First Communion was at the age of eight, and while my biggest concern at the time was that my mother wouldn't buy me white shoes to match the dress, you've necessarily become familiar with the story of the crucifixion by then. You'll probably have drawn pictures of it, which, if you really think about it, is... I don't really know what word I'm looking for. Weird? Macabre? If children drew that kind of thing unprompted and outside of a religious context, there'd probably be worried teachers and parents and counselling.
I had a children's bible, which I actually read, because I still remember the pictures, and preferring the OT, which was more like the Greek and German mythology my father used to read to us, to the NT, which I thought was a bit boring. I wouldn't describe myself as a spiritual or religious child, or even very interested in religion. Confession freaked me out completely, which is why I only ever went a bare handful of times, and I attended Mass only with the school at the beginning and end of the school year and whatever few other occasions there were. Did I believe in what we were taught? I don't really remember. Probably to an extent, but I don't connect any specific feelings, good or bad with it. It just was, unquestioned. Even in a public (i.e., not private or religious) school you'd have religious education class which you're only allowed to opt out of when you're fourteen (and I'm almost certain it was sixteen or seventeen when I went to school), and there was a good chance you'd be looking at a crucifix for the entire 8 - 12 years of your school career.
When I was 15 or 16, I suddenly became serious about religion, which in hindsight seems to come with the age, because my sister went through a similar phase, and is no more religious now than I am. Our religious education teacher had a bible class, which I attended, and ironically I missed confirmation because I was so serious about the whole thing that I wanted to do it ~properly~, in the right spiritual frame of mind, and kept putting off until atheism caught up with me and it was too late.
Which is to say, on the whole I was probably subjected to a lot more Catholic influence than Pinto, who only spent part of his childhood in Portugal before his family moved to the UK. Even if I became an atheist before I turned 20, by that time the mythology, the iconography, a certain way of thinking about certain issues were embedded in my brain on a so many levels that it's impossible to determine the real extent to which they shaped me. When I finally quit the Catholic Church a couple of years ago (excommunicating the people who helped a nine year old girl get an abortion after she'd been raped by her stepfather, while welcoming back the Lefebvrists was enough to overcome even my usual lethargy), I still felt a pang of guilt for a while, a sense of sudden emptiness, and even two years later being in a church still feels vaguely wrong, as if I shouldn't be there now. (And then I occasionally catch myself thinking that quitting didn't invalidate my baptism... *facepalm*) If at any point during the last 15 or more years you'd have asked me if I considered being Catholic part of my identity, I'd probably have laughed and shaken my head, but apparently I'd have been wrong. And I only ever knew the reformed brand of Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council, and had no pressure put on me by anyone, nor any personal unpleasant experiences; I'm not sure I even want to imaging what sort of damage the kind of Catholicism that used to threaten hell and damnation wreaked in the minds of children.
When I watched Immortal Sins... I absolutely loved it, and there was something more that I only managed to put into words when I wrote the comment in response to green-maia's entry: it felt familiar.
Even though I grew up in completely different circumstances, Angelo was a character I could relate to, and while I can't say I ever consciously struggled with sexuality vs. religion, I still could understand his guilt. The iconography felt familiar. I loved the echo of the Pietà image, and it didn't bother me in the least, partly I guess because there's plenty of (for lack of a better word) homoerotic religious art from the Renaissance to the present. Or more generally speaking, if you grew up at a time when Hermann Nitsch was still an object of controversy and hadn't become completely mainstream yet, RTD's occasional use of religious imagery is really quite tame in comparison. And while the scene where they killed Jack over and over again was hard to watch the first time, I didn't react to it in the way I'd have reacted to a random scene of violence, and this brings me back what Pinto wrote: with the religiously influenced iconography even the cruelty of it, the brutality of it and the suffering, felt, in a way, familiar.
And something else felt familiar too: Jack's anger. People of my generation, especially if they grew up in a big city rather than a village, on the whole probably won't have felt the worst of the suffocating and oppressive effect Catholicism can have in small communities. I do associate becoming an atheist with a memory of a sudden feeling of freedom, but as I said, I was lucky enough to grow up without pressure in this respect, and I don't really have any kind of personal bitterness. At the same time, maybe mainly through films and books and art the awareness of a struggle and rebellion against a conservatism that was largely embodied by the Catholic Church is still part of the country's collective consciousness. And this is why I think it's impossible to call the episode offensive without recognising the basic truth of it, because this (if not worse) is exactly how until very recently the Church, Catholic or otherwise, regularly fucked up the psyche and lives of gay men and women, and in many places continues to do so.
* * *
There's a second part to this ramble, which is about how I lost my faith and the religious themes in DW. Looking at the example of my sister, it probably would have happened anyway, but I still remember the first crack in my more or less unquestioning acceptance of the whole belief system. The son of a teacher at my school had an accident and as a result was in coma, and once during Mass we were praying for his recovery. I still remember how afterwards I started to think about how profoundly unfair it would be if God actually helped the boy specifically because of our prayer, because then what about all the people who didn't have an entire school to pray for them? Not long after that I started studying archaeology and ancient history and became aware of how obviously religions are shaped by the societies that produce them, even if they in turn also influence them, and that was that, but I still do remember that first crack, and while the line of reasoning may sound childish now, the underlying issue is still my main problem with the concept of a personal god.
I've been moving towards agnosticism over the years because atheism is in the end also a leap of faith considering how little we still know about the universe, but looking at the state of the world I find the concept of a God who occasionally will chose to interfere in some human lives, but not in others, intolerable. I can deal with the injustice of coincidence, I can deal with the knowledge that human nature can be, and often is, very ugly, but I absolutely can't deal with the idea of a God who could (and in some cases even does) prevent suffering, but choses not to for some mysterious reason of his own. There is a passage from The Brothers Karamazov that stuck in my memory although I've forgotten most of the rest of the plot since I read the book years ago, and that is the chapter titled Rebellion, where Ivan Karamazov gets into a theological discussion with his brother Alyosha, and (essentially) says he can't and won't tolerate or accept a God whose plan includes the suffering of innocent children.
And this is part of the reason why I love WoM so much, because for me this is what Adelaide rejects: she (like Judith in The Second Coming) personally profited from the Doctor's actions, he saved her life, but she looks at the wider picture, and realises not just that as a consequence of her being saved other people might die, but that in front of her stands someone who would keep making these decisions, who had all the power, and she decides that the price is too high. And she is brave enough, and strong enough, and proud enough to tell him, 'No', even if she has to sacrifice her life to make that point. There will still be suffering and death, but at least there will be no (quasi-)god, playing around with human lives and deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.
In WoM RTD got it right, whereas the implications of Gwen's speech in Day Five of CoE are so horrible that I've wondered if the whole thing isn't, intentionally or not, a step towards the final deconstruction of the Doctor/God theme. The children they were going to hand over to the 456 had nothing to do with 1965 or the whole mess, and if the Doctor could save them, but allows them to suffer because humanity's behaviour disgusts him ('turning away in shame')... then we're back with Ivan Karamazov and the whole theodicy argument. It's clear what RTD tried to do, but he was right in the first place, the fiction of the Doctor and the big man-made tragedies are irreconcilable and incompatible, certainly if they're historical, but even if they're fictional like the events of CoE. If it worked in Fires of Pompeii, then only because the tragedy of Pompeii is two millennia old and history this far removed has become something akin to mythology in most people's minds.
(*) Which, btw, I cannot recommend enough. They're not flawless, but IMO deserve more recognition than they got.