Religion, British Reality TV, and my New Novel*

In a recent New Yorker magazine, Sam Knight writes about a British reality tv show that was produced last year while news of Brexit and the American presidential election dominated the headlines. In an article titled "Back to the Garden," Knight retraces the steps of a program that posed the question, "What if we could start again?" The show seemed to promise in its promotional material images of escape from what Knight calls "the pointlessness and the cruelty of late-capitalist existence." Perhaps not surprisingly, the show ended in cancellation, with the isolated show contestants left in their fenced off "Eden" still acting out their roles, unaware that no one was watching them, their re-boot society moving in a direction we've seen before in William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies.

"A nation's reality shows do not arise from nowhere," Knight writes. His litany of productions from Russia, Japan, and Norway, to the Greeks' focus on Survivor suggests a range of blatant attempts to act out otherwise subconscious aggressions and desires for escape from limiting economic. spiritual, and cultural boundaries. Perhaps in this light, the English attempt to bring religious images to the screen should be admired. They've attempted it before (more on that in a moment). But the collapse of British Channel 4'sEden production could have been predicted. No matter how unspoiled the land or skilled the human beings involved, we remain fallen creatures or, as might be said today, post-Edenic in our insecurities. The attempts to "get back to the Garden" have been made before in history, always with the same result. One wonders why we still might believe that TV could change any of this. But there we have it.

As noted above, Eden might remind us of an earlier British reality show that tried to bring religion to mass audiences. About ten years ago, a reality show aired in England in which Christians traveled around London and attempted to get random people on the street to attend church services. It was this old series, in fact, that got me thinking about the idea for the reailty show in my novel, in which a group of believers travel around America and try to reach others for God.

My idea is not typical of American TV. Our focus always seems to fall on talent, schemers, bachelorettes, winners, and survivors. Our dreams and visions move toward individual success and failure, not so much communal living and utopian desires. We seem to want to build things on our own rather than trust anything to others. We are Robinson Crusoe. Every man is an island.

Even so, it was that old British production that first got me onto the idea of writing about a religious reality show in which things go wrong. I should add that I don't really watch reality shows myself. But I remain interested in how what are billed as "games" can take on realities of their own. 
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*This is a repost of a recent newsletter.

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