F*** you, says BBC as 50,000 rage at Spr*ng*r

I did watch the thing last night with my theatre-professional wife. I did find myself wondering in concert with "Tory deputy leader Michael Ancram" about whether this was all just a publicity thing really; I'm pretty certain that some publicists have got into a jerking the strings of certain Christian groups for free publicity. Anyway this is one of the few times that yo'll find me agreeing with a Tory, I suspect, so relish it well. Aparently Mr Ancram "brought the row over the screening of the opera into the political arena yesterday, when he told Radio Four audiences of the Any Questions? show the BBC was deliberately luring more viewers by broadcasting a piece of entertainment that was bound to cause an upset."

Anyhow, that was one of the more trivial aspects of the issue. So how did I react? Well, I thought that the objections were hyped. Yes there was a lot of bad language [and I dislike that, but recognise that it is a personal reaction to a great degree]. However, given that the main point seemed to be to satirise and question the motivations behind the production and popularity of shows like the Jerry Springer show I feel that the bad language is justified: if you doubt me make sure you watch a few airings of the show. The most disturbing aspects were the portrayal of Jesus and the Father, I guess; but again the context was the dying Springer's vision of hell and the perspective was that of hell. Incidently Jesus was not in a nappy [diaper for USA'ers] but in a loincloth such as used on crucifixes but worn in a way to suggest the nappy worn by the same actor in the first half of the show [yes, there was a kind of Wizard of Oz-ness to the second half].

For me the whole thing worked well as a kind of exposee of the religious/philosophical issues of contemporary society with regard to the nature of good and evil, right and wrong and also a demonstaration of how out of touch much Christian language and portrayal of ultimate reality is with 'normal' people. I was also left with a strong impression that the author was seeking to lay bare the contempt that lies behind a lot of popular culture; and succeeding quite well, I think.

I found it interesting that the show ends with an endorsement of the idea that there is no right and wrong and yet the very next sentence is commend people to love one another and look after one another -if there is no right and wrong why should we? Lip service to relativism, but a recognition that there actually is an underlying goodness to creation which makes it almost self-evident that pleasure is better than pain love than contempt. That's where a lot of popular culture is: caught between affirming relativism and denying it when it gets too hairy.

Part of the disturbing nature of the portrayal of God and Satan is the demotion of good an evil to 'local' categories; sides in a dualistic battle where neither is more ultimate than the other. Disturbing too is the failure to note that the point is that good really is more ultimate and that ultimacy of the truly Good is what Christians are talking about when God and the message of the cross are on the table. Of course the tragedy is that this show is simply picking up how the Christian message has been picked up in western popular culture for a long-time now.

This show demonstrates to us Christians how much work there is to be done to share the inner logic of Christian faith in ways that naturally resonates and makes 'plain' the connections between goodness and sin and atonement. This play, for me, is a protest against the arbitrary-seeming nature of Christian messages. Let's not shoot the messenger, rather hear the message, take out the beam in our own eyes ....
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