"Everyone" is in church

After the lecture about television and Christianity, a lot of television shows come up in my mind, a lot of details I never thought about before pops up. Shows in North America have always have Christian involvement, include the background of stories, Christian disciplines, stories from bible, Christian elements as well as Christian figures.

But the representation of Christianity becomes really complicated now; humanity and religion are intertwining together. The television show “the walking dead” is a kind of disaster horror show, talking about doomsday, and how a small group of survivors living in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, and during their way searching a haven, they struggle to balance their humanity with their survival.

Doomsday always makes people link it with the punishment from God, in this show, it’s not explicit until second season, and it’s also more complicated than just punishment. In the first episode, when the group is searching for the lost girl Sophia, a sound of ringing bell lead them to a church, the church is a symbolic place encapsulates almost everything. The mother who lost her girl is praying and confesses her sin as devote Christian, the protagonist Rick who claimed non-Christian is praying in his way as well, even the zombie sit quietly gazing on and maybe “praying” to the Crucifixion, and the Jesus is “bleeding” on the Cross. All these explicit Christian contents constructed the complexity of Christianity in this show, and also reveal the nature of the religion. “Everyone” is in church, Christians, non-Christians, and even zombies.

When there is no society, there is still faith, when there is no society, the vigilante becomes more like a savior, in the broadcasting television nowadays, people consider more than just faith or just humanity, but also the interaction between them. This change causes the change in representation of Christianity in popular culture like broadcasting television nowadays.

Response to “Serial Killer and God into a bar”

This is a response to Rachel V’s earlier post "Serial Killer and God into a bar":

Rachel V's post: http://gospelaccordingtobuddychrist.blogspot.com/2012/01/serial-killer-and-god-walk-into-bar.html

After reading Rachel V’s posts, I found out that one of the earlier posts was happened to be the same television show I was planning to write about this week, the sixth season of the show “Dexter”. This show was about a vigilante serial killer who “has no religion” but plays the role of “savior” just as Jesus did, in this season, the Christian content become explicit because the issue about how to educate his young son emerged.

According to Rachel, “Someone studying the relationship between religion and pop culture from the “outside” may see this season as a great representation of religion.” I really agree with that, the identity of Dexter has always been a debate, his identity as a vigilante or a killer or a savior? Especially in this season, a lot of Christian elements have been inserted into the show, the Jesus tattoo, the church school, the crucifixion; Christianity is really explicit in it.

              

This also brings another question about the representation of Christianity in television shows nowadays, the depth, variety and complexity of it. Christian figures are not simply good, the killer in the first episode Joe Walker has a tattoo of Jesus on his body, he is apparently a Christian, but he is a cold-blood killer at the same time. On the contrary, the main character Dexter who claims as an antitheist but actually is doing a savior’s job; they are both kind of paradoxical figures. Generally, both of what they did can be considered as sin in Christianity, but neither their nature have been hidden in the show.

As I believe, the interaction of Christianity and popular culture has changed as we changed and our society changed as well, the simple Christian figures cannot cater for delving humanity and social issues, therefore the Christian figures began to show complexity, no longer simple good or simple savior.