Patton Dodd: October 2006 Archives

I've written here before that Harriet Hayes, the evangelical Christian character on "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," is a credible Christian character. It's a claim I've defended to evangelical viewers who think she's just an excuse for writer Aaron Sorkin to say that he's presented a balanced view of American Christianity--so he can otherwise focus on the crazy Christians oft-mentioned in the show.

Well, last night's episode scored a point for the Harriet-is-an-evangelical-fraud crowd. As Harriet was being grilled by a reporter, Martha, on what lines she'd cross for the sake of entertainment, we heard this exchange:

Martha: Would you have a problem doing a sketch about premarital sex?

Harriet: I don't have a problem having premarital sex! It might be the only sex I ever have.

Premarital sex is verboten among evangelicals, so there's definitely a problem with this characterization of Harriet. It's not that evangelicals never have premarital sex; it's that they wouldn't be so flippant about it. Harriet does acknowledge that she's hit taboo territory ("I just gave you your pull quote," she admits to Martha), but her tone does not seem equal to what evangelicals generally believe about sex before marriage.

I'm tempted here to evaulate the rest of the conversation between Harriet and Martha, which was largely about Harriet's faith and which was largely true to the form of evangelical culture and belief. But I'd rather leave it alone--after all, I'm mostly hoping that Sorkin creates a credible character, not a credible type. Five episodes in, it's too early to tell for sure whether Harriet will be credible as either.

In any event, the key moment in last night's episode came not during the Harriet-Martha exchange, but during the Harriet-Matt exchange, which took place on the balcony outside Matt's office as Sting performed "Fields of Gold" on the stage below. It was tender and affecting, and I realized that this love story really is the show's singular stroke of genius (five episodes in): In 2006, no lovers could be more star-crossed than those living on opposite sides of our cultural divide.

"Studio 60" might be a "Romeo and Juliet" for an America divided into Red and Blue states. Especially in Sorkinland, where political affiliations are one's deepest and most significant commitments, it's remarkable to imagine a romantic bridge across America's political-cultural gulf.

Reading the story this way reminds us that Red-Blue America has become the stuff of myth. Like all myths, Red-Blue America is more useful as an explanation of ideology than of reality: It gets the broad strokes right but can't acccount for details. And like all myths, Red-Blue America is tough to overcome, which is why we need fiction to do it for us.

So I'll be cheering for Harriet and Matt. And hoping they don't come to a Shakespearean demise.

Why are environmental ethics treated with such suspicion among evangelicals? It's a question that has bugged me for years, but the answer is an easy one: because evangelicals, by and large, vote Republican. I often argue that evangelicals are not monolithic in their views, but the environment is a subject that gives my argument pause. Most evangelicals I know either don’t care about environmental ethics or don't support environmental regulation; many consider global warming a bully pulpit for the left. I know green evangelicals, but they are an exception to the rule.

In the last year, however, we've had occasion to believe that all this may be changing. Bill Moyers' "Is God Green?" (airing tonight on PBS) is another in a series of media notices that those green exceptions in evangelicalism are growing in number and volume.

After watching "Is God Green?" I was both hopeful and chagrined. Hopeful because evangelicalism's environmentalists are so much more well-spoken, humble, and just plain likeable than the evangelicals who tow the industry-first, environment-second Republican party line. Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals may be reviled by some of his fellow evangelicals for leaning left on the environment and social justice, but he's clearly a man motivated by Christian convictions. Same for the other evangelical environmentalists Moyers interviews, including Tri Robinson, a green pastor in Idaho, and a group of West Virginia evangelicals whose tap water has been contaminated by the Massey Energy Company. (Their story is the most moving part of "Is God Green?"--an "Erin Brockovich" for the evangelical set.)

But I was chagrined, too, because Moyers' program portrays just how difficult it is for real change to occur on this issue in evangelicalism. It'll happen, but it'll be slow, because many evangelical leaders have uncritically embraced the silly notion that environmental ethics can only be a project of the secular left. Moyers reminds us of the claims of U.S. Senator James Inhofe, a professed evangelical, that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated (!) on the American people. We hear similar hyperbole from the Revs. Pat Robertson and James Dobson, and get an earful on God's willful destruction of the earth (at the willing hands of ExxonMobil) from E. Calvin Beisner, professor of theology at Knox Theological Seminary.

Evangelicals appreciate and trust their leaders--again, not monolithically, but by and large. For evangelicals to begin to take the environment seriously as an aspect of Christian priorities, they'll have to be led. Many of congregants at Tri Robinson's church were closet environmentalists, but they did not feel free to care for creation until Pastor Robinson gave them permission. Rich Cizik says his conversion to environmentalism occurred only after he heard the case for global warming from Sir John Houghton, a trustworthy evangelical scientist.

In my hometown of Colorado Springs, it's been wonderful to have Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, take steps toward broadening evangelical priorities to include creation care. And Haggard walks (or rather, rides) what he talks, puttering around town on a scooter in a community that adores its SUVs. Many parishioners have followed suit: Word on the street is that local scooter dealers have a long waiting list.

Good signs, all, and hopefully part of real change. Moyers' doesn't answer his program's titular question--Is God green?--but he does give us reason to hope that evangelicals can be.

Click here to watch clips from the show.

If you're an evangelical Christian wondering about how you're being perceived in popular culture these days, you might be planning to see "Jesus Camp." Change your plans. Watch "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" next Monday night instead.

"Jesus Camp," with its stark representation of Christian fundamentalists at the margins of mainstream evangelicalism, offers an intriguing but uninformed view of Bible believers in America. Aaron Sorkin's engrossing "Studio 60" offers something far more complex. Not only does Sorkin have a bigger stage and a longer reach, but--if the first three episodes are any indication--his views on evangelicals are more comprehensive, substantial, and intelligently critical than anything in "Jesus Camp."

In the series pilot, the narrative about the show-within-the-show is launched when a studio executive orders a skit called "Crazy Christians" to be cut so as not to offend (crazy) Christian viewers. The show's producer responds with an on-air tirade against the neutering of culture at the hands of these conservative religious sensibilities. In come our heroes, Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet), Matt Albie (Matthew Perry), and Dannie Tripp (Bradley Whitford), whose heroism lies not just in their creativity and willpower to rescue the show-within-the-show, but also in their willingness to stand up to the Christian conservatives who have scared the show into a stupor. By the third episode of "Studio 60," our heroes have aired the offending skit, called the bluff of a Christian boycott, and been rewarded with an unprecedented gain in Nielson ratings.

Some viewers have complained that we never actually see the skit "Crazy Christians," but really, we don't need to. Crazy Christians are fore-grounded again and again in "Studio 60" as we learn that part of the daily grind of a television executive is putting up with the conservative Christian press (Rapture Magazine!), Christian affiliates, and Christian picketers outside the studio lot. Crazy Christians are referenced routinely in the show's smug dialogue:

Jordan: "I wanna know how Rapture Magazine gets credentialed for an NBS press conference!"

Shelly: "You think it should be the policy of this network to exclude religious publications?"

Jordan: "We're not talking about the Christian Science Monitor. How many whack-jobs read Rapture Magazine?"

Shelly: "It has a circulation four times the size of Vanity Fair."

Jordan: "Are you kidding?"

Shelly: "No, I'm not."

Jack: "I'm a little surprised myself, Shelly."

Shelly: "You shouldn’t be."

Jack: "The rapture is what I think it is, right? The world comes to an end, believers go up in a spaceship?

Jordan: "It's not a spaceship; it's Jesus Christ."

Dialogue like this is a Crazy Christians skit. Again and again in "Studio 60," we're reminded that crazy Christians are a part--an annoying and unavoidable part--of American life.

But "Studio 60" contains a giant caveat to its ongoing critique of evangelicals: Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson), the evangelical Christian star of the show-within-the-show. She's hip, she's hot, and she's hilarious. She's a credible, likable character, and she's a Christian. When, on last week's show, Harriet argued to Matt that a particular joke should be taken off the air so as not to offend the small town that was the joke's butt, I wanted to stand and cheer. That's the kind of thing a good person--not just a good evangelical--would do. And letting an evangelical be a good person and a good character... well, it's enough to make us think that Sorkin might have talked to a Christian or two rather than just read about them in the newspaper.

More importantly, Harriet is an accurate representation of a fact rarely mentioned: Evangelicals aren't just (and aren't all) politically active home-schoolers and megachurch-goers. They are also people who live and work in every aspect of the marketplace, including (gasp!) the entertainment media. That's right: When you're watching "That '70s Show," attending a Broadway play, and listening to a favorite indie pop song, you're often being entertained by evangelicals, unawares.

I mention this not as a triumph of evangelicalism (perish the thought), but just to note that Sorkin is making sense of the poles of religion in American life. What seems aggravatingly abnormal in some instances--crazy Christians--has an astonishingly familiar, and more congenial, face in other instances. Sorkin seems to understand that evangelicalism is more than the sum of its parts. Thus far in "Studio 60," he's achieving something resembling a fair representation of evangelicals: They are those boycotters, those megaphones of moral values; but they are also men and women whose personal expressions of faith are more complicated and nuanced than the big picture reveals.

Neil Labute is not a writer of tragedy in the classic sense, because tragedy requires a genuine hero, and Labute's characters inspire only disdain. But his films and plays are undeniably tragic--"In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors," "Bash," and others feature misogynists, rapists, adulterers, and bigots, and most of them don't feel a smidge of guilt about their depraved ways. That's what's tragic about the world of Labute--his characters aren't just without morals; they're without remorse.

With "Wrecks," a play that opened last month in New York City with Ed Harris in the lead--and only--role, Labute has combined classic tragedy with, well, Labutian tragedy. The entire production is set in a funeral parlor, where Edward Carr is mourning the death of his wife, Jo-Jo. She sits behind him in a closed casket; he paces back and forth in front of her, monologuing to the audience about his lost love. As he does, "Wrecks" opens upon several puns: Carr and his wife ran a classic car rental business; though they were involved a major auto wreck one time, Jo-Jo's life is eventualy wrecked by cancer.

And then there's the titular pun. Some reviewers have called "Wrecks" a play with a dramatic twist, but a twist only works if you don't see it coming. Given that (1) the play is called "Wrecks" and (2) we learn soon after the play opens that Carr's wife was 15 years his senior, it's hard to believe Labute hoped to shock us with the real nature of this couple's relationship. (If you're not familiar with "Oedipus Rex" and plan to see "Wrecks" and want to be surprised, stop reading now.) When, after more than an hour of rapturous recollections of his affection for Jo-Jo, Carr reveals at the play's end that Jo-Jo was his mother, it's not a revelation; it's a confirmation of something Labute has been saying for years: In a broken world, true love--the kind that puts another before self--is nearly impossible to imagine.

Labute, a graduate of Brigham Young University, was until recently a professing Mormon. (His play "Bash," which features a series of Mormons doing some very, er, un-Mormon things, led to his disfellowship from the church.) If he's left the faith, he hasn't left behind its commitment to the idea that people are inherently broken.

But "Wrecks" is not just another Labutian expression of human fallenness; it's also a poignant comment about our current religious and political moment in America. Until we "learn" about Carr's willful incestry, he comes off as (1) a hopeless romantic and (2) a typical moralist. He's constantly making observations of the "When I was a kid" and "In my days..." kind. But his moralism is just sentiment for the past and nothing more. He feels as strongly about old-timey mores as he does about old-timey automobiles. And as his incestuous marriage proves, his moralism is not connected to anything substantial--it doesn't instruct Carr's life; it just gives him a way of sentimentalizing the past.

Carr is a metaphor for American moralists today--those who see the 1950s as the pinnacle of Christian living, or the Founding Fathers as trumpeters of the Christian evangel. Too often, such moralists aren't connected to anything substantial; they fancy bygone days, but their rhetorical praise of the past isn't informing their lives in the present. No naming names here, but how many mighty moralists--especially in the religio-politics of our culture war--have we seen fallen? It doesn't take a playwright to see epic tragedies unfolding on small scales all around us.