Page - 110 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

110 | Alexander D. Ornella www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 99–122 ple to say the least; and the music is not played by an orchestra or organist but comes out of a CD player. And yet some of what Stringer says about the Anglo- Catholic context resonates in the character of Adam: The priest within Anglo-Catholicism was not like other men. In many cases he was celibate, but even if he was not, he did not drink and gamble and “fight like a man.” He was a “man of the cloth,” less brutish than the average man, or by implication, than the average husband. It is no coincidence that the most loyal followers in Anglo- Catholic churches were women, nor that these women actually enjoyed and revelled in the camp/drag humour of their clergy. Many entered into this world with enthusi- asm and something of a sense of liberation. The man in the frock at the altar was part of the escapism. In part, he was attractive, totally unlike other men they knew, but he was also, and literally, “unavailable.”34 Clothing, however, cannot only render the priestly body an object of desire, but it can also turn it into the body of a pervert, or a “perverse body”. In one of the opening scenes of the very first episode, three construction workers next to the church yell at Adam, asking, “Mr. Vicar, where’s your dress? Are you gonna dress like a girl today?” The prejudice against priests as sexual perverts thrown at Adam shows that there is not one but many clerical masculinities: lived, ex- perienced, stereotyped, othered, expected, imposed, chosen. Throughout the show, Adam tries to negotiate all these different aspects, and we take part in the journey of a pretty average, heterosexual, overall happily married guy who happens to be a vicar, who tells us that he will have a wank, who is fed up having to be – or play – the clergyman, who is looking for a true friend, and just enjoys and longs for the attention of women. All the different ways the sexual comes into play in Rev. (2010–2014) show that the male priestly body is not just a body that is sexually abstinent (celibate) or practices sexuality within a (heterosexu- al) marriage, but that the priestly body as body always is and has to be thought of as sexual body. As sexual body, such “sexual markers of manliness”35 are an important ingredient in the negotiation of masculinities both within a clerical context and in relation to non-clerical masculinities. THREATENED MASCULINITIES After years of struggle and debate, the Church of England allowed the ordina- tion of women as deacons, priests, and bishops in several steps. As Rob Clucas and Keith Sharpe show, however, the ordination of women priests represented only a formal equality. In the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure 1993, a 34 Stringer 2000, 50. 35 McLaughlin 2010, 22.