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As much as I admire Mike Judge's portrayal of the Texas everyman Hank Hill, I was always disappointed with what appeared to be his lack of any religious affiliation. While I've seen him occasionally interact with what I always assumed was Arlen's female Lutheran cleric, I can't recall an episode in which he was actually in church.
So I was prepared to be amused with last Sunday's episode, "Born Again on the Fourth of July". To recap, Hank and Peggy instruct Bobby (who's not ready at departure time) to follow them to church on his bicycle. Bobby instead orders pizza with money taken from his mom's purse. In a fit of remorse, Bobby accompanies Lucky to a Pentacostal storefront congregation, wherein he becomes "saved".
Now obviously (or perhaps not obviously) I don't object to exploiting religion for its comedic possibilities; The Simpsons, for instance, gets religious humor right almost always. And I don't even mind that Bobby, upon his "conversion", becomes kind of a prick, especially since Lucky calls him out on this.
But I do think that if Judge wants to show us a Pentacostal coming-to-Jesus, he's kind of obligated to mention, you know, Jesus. But somehow, faith in Christ is replaced in the episode by "really, really, wanting to be saved." That's it! That, and some nods toward cleaning up your life, is all that's mentioned. What makes this especially disappointing is that Judge's animators clearly spent some effort in getting the Pentacostal style right. They should have paid a little more attention to the substance, kind of like Robert Duvall did when he made The Apostle. Whatever you think about Duvall's movie, you have to admit that the Gospel was preached correctly.
4 comments:
I haven't seen the episode, but my guess would be that not getting into the actual doctrine was rather deliberate. Sort of drawing a line between attacking what these people do and what they believe. Mocking sanctimony without wanting to seem to mock Jesus specifically. This may be particularly true of KotH, which seems to have a more-conservative-than-usual audience.
That's a guess, though.
Except that the substitute for "theology" in this case made them sound completely idiotic.
Personally, I really don't expect popular entertainment to "take my side" on religious questions. But I am always happy when it gets the message right.
For instance, whenever The Sopranos, dealt with religion, the Christian character was often one with whom the audience is not expected to particularly identify with because of petty vanities (Father Phil), creationism (the evangelical pastor who visited Tony in the hospital). And Tony's life was always so much more interesting. But the Christian message was always presented faithfully. (Indeed, so faithfully that, without knowing, I would guess that David Chase is himself a Christian.
I'm getting caught up on My Name Is Earl. Interestingly, I just watched an episode that centered around a church. The interesting thing is that religion, within the episode, was brought up in an entirely positive context. And yet, in an episode about God and forgiveness, Jesus was not mentioned once.
In one respect, that's pretty routine. The main character in the short-lived series The Cleaner was self-consciously religious, and going back to the '90s there was Touched by an Angel. But if the person of Jesus was ever mentioned in either show, I missed it.
Now, I'm prepared to give Angel credit for presenting the gospel metaphorically, and the religion of Cleaner was always acknowledged to be improvised. But it bothers me when the Jesus allergy is extended to plot points where the show is dealing with a very specific Christian experience.
I don't think Judge intended to be insulting; on the contrary, I'm sure he respects religion as part of the lived experience of America's working class. But this episode bungled it so badly that I would never mistake him and his writers for Christians, whereas I can tell from watching The Simpsons that at least some of the writers probably are.
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