Daredevil and Catholicism

[ivy03]

I finally watched Daredevil. I find it interesting that the producers said they wanted to do a gritty, darker show, but without "gratuitous violence," cause, um, holy shit? Does the existence of Game of Thrones suddenly mean that everything that is less violent than Game of Thrones is suddenly not gratuitous? I really liked episode 10, but other

Comments

[jethrien]

I think that's most of it. Catholicism has the weight of history, lots of mysterious chanting in Latin, incense and candles, guilt and martyrs and angels and saints. An empty (movie-style) Catholic church involves hundreds of guttering candles and stern looking stained glass. A (movie-style) Catholic priest is saintly or tortured. Mainstream Protestantism just isn't as colorful.

[jethrien]

Also true.

I also agree with your exoticism thing. It hadn't occurred to be, but then, I was raised Catholic and it doesn't feel particularly exotic to me. :)

Then again, the parish I grew up in really wasn't. Exotic, I mean. Chuckro was terribly disappointed when he saw my home church--the inside looks kind of like a barn. With a giant copper-green Jesus statue, of course. (I mean giant.) Very few candles, just plain crosses for the stations of the cross, really boring baptismal font, and while the (tiny) windows were colored, each window was solid. Not cool stained glass. The confessional was actually just a small side room that was also used for storing hymnals. The outside, on the other hand, looks like a malevolent horseshoe crab that wants to eat the parking lot and maybe also the rectory. We...had issues with the architect.

[trinityvixen]

Catholicism is lazy writer short-hand for tortured/dark inner conflict. It almost has nothing to do with the church itself, though it may have to do with the fact that many Catholic churches are crazy dark. Literally and metaphorically--the one's I've been in seem constantly short a few light bulbs and there isn't one that doesn't make it clear just how raw a deal Christ got in his last days. You can't buy that kind of narrative cache