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Here's my rant about the Xtian normativity that infuses Lovecraft Country (LCC here on out). H/t @LaurenNakaoWinn
Some of this is pulled from stuff I wrote elsewhere. Some of it will be new. So heads up and bear with me.
Something to wrap your head around: If you were brought up in a Xtian dominant environment/society, Xtian norms have shaped the way you conceptualize the way the world works, human nature, ethics, religion (even the *term* religion is Xtian normative), and so on.
Doesn't matter if you actively practice/believe. Honestly, I don't think most people break from it until they deliberately and consistently expose themselves to different frameworks.
So, in the case of media and media criticism, it shows up in a deeply puritanical streak where good and evil are not actions and choices, but reflections of a person's or character's inner nature.
It also shows up in the ways that people seem preoccupied with whether a character's thoughts/feelings/actions are morally justified rather than trying to understand where those thoughts/feelings/actions come from.
Case in point for LCC: Montrose. He does some horrible, and many viewers were upset by the show going to great lengths to explore where those horrific actions came from rather than straight up condemning him for them.
Meanwhile, I'm like, "Of course he does that, considering what his experiences have taught him." But if I expressed that openly, I'd've gotten a lot of, "Why are you trying to justify all the bad things Montrose has done?"
In LCC, it also shows up in the way the show tries to shoehorn the plot (especially the finale) into a typical good vs evil (or God vs Satan - more on this in a bit) narrative even though the characters themselves are straight-up too complex for that.
Then the show Goes There with the hamfisted way it links Tic to Jesus (all the way down to his martyred blood being salvation) and Christina to Satan (morally corrupt enemy of God who tempts humans to embrace forbidden knowledge (magic) and forbidden pleasures (non-cishet sex)).
IMO, the show did Christina a disservice by making her the big bad because she's a lot more fun as a wild card. Her character is more akin to the tricksters of myth and folklore than the villains of contemporary media. /tangent
Then there's the way that, in the US, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is seen as a kind of Original Sin, which LCC reinforces rather than challenges.
Original Sin means you are automatically morally corrupt, and nothing you do can undo that except faith in Jesus. Meaning: you are born bad and condemned to damnation unless you think/feel/believe the right thing.
With Christina, we see the same thing in the way that so many viewers condemn her for having the "wrong" thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes then use this as an argument for her being incapable of being anything but the ultimate villain of the show.
Even the ways she helps and empowers others become automatically suspect because her reasons aren't pure enough. And I'm... *sigh*
Let me show you how strange this looks from my Jewish perspective.
Let me show you how strange this looks from my Jewish perspective.
Imagine this rich heiress who kills a bunch of Nazis. She does it for her own reasons that aren't the least bit altruistic. That's still fewer Nazis for me to worry about. We can argue about her motives when there are no more Nazis. But for now: Thanks, lady!
But the way most viewers would have it, I'm supposed to be like...
"I know you killed all these Nazis, but do you really care about my people?"
"No."
"You horrible person!"
"I know you killed all these Nazis, but do you really care about my people?"
"No."
"You horrible person!"
I'm not about to start a whole new thread about Jewish views on moral development, but I will say that, in Jewish tradition, the important thing is the Do The Thing.
Even though it's ideal to Do The Thing for the right reasons, whatever it takes to get you to Do The Thing is valid (some conditions about Doing The Other Things apply).
Good intentions don’t absolve people of wrongdoing, nor do ulterior motives erase the good that people do.
So Christina crashing her car into truckload of racists matters. Giving Leti enough money to pay for a house matters. Sharing magical secrets with Tic and Ruby matters. Keeping her promise not to harm Leti matters.
Now, if I really wanna get Jewish about this, I can say that for us, sin is not a stain on your soul. It's more like an arrow missing its target. Our job is to do what we can to fix it and try again. The more we try, the closer we get to hitting our target.
TBH, I'd argue that Christina's deep yearning for human connection, for family and for love (ask me to do a thread about how against the grain THAT is), is what can give her the drive to learn better and do better.
