Page - 100 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

100 | Alexander D. Ornella www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 99–122 INTRODUCTION Alex: Don’t be the vicar for the day, for once. Adam: I can’t, it’s a calling, isn’t it. It can’t be un-called for the day.1 “Being” a male vicar entails more than just one’s calling: it means a very spe- cific form of “being” a man and performing masculinity. It means to live one’s clerical masculinity in a so-called secular society (which more appropriately is described as shaped by a complex relationship between religious pluralization, a renewed interest in religion, and an ongoing secularization process)2 that seems to clash with traditional religious values on many levels. The critically ac- claimed BBC2 show Rev. (BBC2, UK 2010–2014) portrays some of the struggles with and over clerical masculinities in a secular-religious setting, that is, in the context of a religious community, the Church of England, that is affected by and affects the secular community it lives in. Clerical masculinities are not stable but live and breathe the dynamics of both their socio-religious context and their secular “others”. Rev. (2010–2014) is not the first or only TV show to feature clerics, but its exploratory, search- ing approach points out that (higher ranking) members of the hierarchy, and masculinities in general, are never just beneficiaries or performers of power but are also subject to power and socio-religious momentums as well as to their own personal “baggage”. Rev. (2010–2014) can be interpreted as an attempt to explore the negotiation processes of masculinity within an institution that is involved in the “production” of religion and gender roles. It shows that be- ing a man in an institutional setting is as much a performance as it is a more or less successful negotiation of other people’s expectations and one’s own worldview. In particular, the main male clerical characters in Rev. (2010–2014) inhabit positions of power but all have their flaws. They can best be understood as losers whose clash with masculine systems renders them more human. While all male characters are losers in their own way, the loser-masculinity is best em- bodied through Adam Smallbone, the protagonist of the show. After a brief discussion of masculinity and television, this article offers three perspectives on the negotiation of masculinities in Rev. (2010–2014): the loser, sexual bodies, and threatened masculinities. The conclusion draws these three perspectives together and shows that the male characters struggle with fitting into predefined notions of being a man but at the end of the show learn to ap- preciate and celebrate their own masculinities. While the show consists of three seasons, most of the examples in this paper are taken from the first two sea- 1 Dialogue between Alex Smallbone and her husband, the vicar Adam Smallbone, in BBC2’s show Rev. (2010–2014), S01/E06. 2 Cf. Weisse 2016, 32–33, 39.