Page - 101 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Losers, Food, and Sex | 101www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 99–122 sons. In particular the ending of season two is important for the discussion of masculinities because in an iconographic Christmas meal staged as a Last Sup- per, the characters – and the audience – learn to see through their “corporeal eyes”.3 SCREENING AND NARRATING MASCULINITIES ON TELEVISION Rev. (2010–2014) is a very well received4 BBC2 sitcom that aired from 2010 to 2014 and was co-created by British actor Tom Hollander, who also plays the main character, Adam Smallbone, the vicar of the London parish of St Saviour’s. At the heart of the sitcom is the renegotiation of what it means to be a clergy- man, husband, father, friend, or someone seen as “religious other” by secular society. It also addresses that clergymen are sexual bodies with sexual desires, rejected or fetishized bodies, or queered bodies. In his response to Rev. (2010–2014), Robert Stanier, chaplain of Archbishop Tenison’s School in Kennington, argues that the show is “just a series about a 30-something man”;5 and in many ways it is, and in many other ways it is not, for it can be seen as a way to work through and discuss contemporary issues. In the context of TV news, John Ellis argues that television is a form of “working- through”6 – it draws on “raw data” and transforms them into narratives.7 Doing so, television aims to bring order and stability to messy images and information fragments of local or global events.8 Yet, that does not mean that television offers easy solutions to complex problems; instead it remains an open process that ultimately remains inconclusive.9 Thus television structures, responds to, and tries to anticipate cultural needs and transformation processes.10 Televi- sion, its aesthetics, narratives, and processes of production, can reproduce and perpetuate existing social structures and lead to passivity. However, as a forum in which moral questions are discussed and shared, it can also foster critical engagement and become an agent of change.11 Rev. (2010–2014) emerged out of Hollander’s curiosity about what it might be like to be a vicar and – according to Hollander – much research went into the crafting of the characters. Indeed, a number of clergy recognized a little 3 Cf. Fulton 2006. 4 Cf. Fraser 2010. 5 Arnold 2011. 6 Ellis 1999, 55. 7 Cf. Ellis 1999, 55. 8 Cf. Ellis 1999, 56. 9 Cf. Ellis 1999, 55, 58–59. 10 Cf. Hartley 2009, 21. 11 Cf. Zborowski 2016, 13; Dant 2012, 2–3; Cardwell 2006, 76–78; Cardwell 2013.