Page - 115 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Losers, Food, and Sex | 115www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 99–122 male characters such as Colin and Archdeacon Robert. While Robert seems to be in a position of power, he has his own struggles with the institution and his personal life. But it seems that exactly what many would perceive as weakness makes the male characters more human and sympathetic. These fractured los- er-masculinities featured in the show turn out to be quite subversive. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks argues, Viewing the male experience as universal had not only hidden women’s history, but also … prevented analyzing men’s experiences as those of men. The very words we used to describe individuals – “artist” and “woman artist,” for example, or “scien- tist” and “woman scientist” – kept us from thinking about how the experiences of Michelangelo or Picasso or Isaac Newton were shaped by the fact that they were male, while it forced us to think about how being female affected Georgia O’Keefe or Marie Curie.48 By focusing on the “loser qualities” of its male characters, Rev. (2010–2014) por- trays some of the struggles individuals face when trying to cater to expecta- tions of clerical masculinities, of always being there and available for others. As Hollander stated in an interview, They [vicars] are being good, they are being nice to people, their door is always open to people when there’s nowhere else to go, you can still go to the church. So they don’t have … their private life is rather compromised the whole time. There is often somebody knocking on the door. And they are often exposed to rather irritating peo- ple, but they as vicars can’t say please go away, you are irritating, because they are the vicar. The rest of us can choose who we hang out with.”49 The series pokes fun at some of the everyday experiences a male cleric might encounter, without ridiculing personal struggles with faith. One thread present throughout the series is how the different male characters negotiate their being male with expectations of what it means to be male: their own, their partners’, their friends’, the parishioners’, and the institution’s. While the individual prob- lems of the main characters are different, through its humor the series makes clear that they all share in the struggle over embodying male identity. The series draws on stereotypical and popular images but also gives space to subversion and transformation. The portrayal of masculinities in the show, however, is not unproblematic. This becomes particularly obvious in the male characters’ relationships with women. Adam seems to feel unsettled – even threatened – by women entering traditional male arenas. Robert and Adam perceive their female colleagues as 48 Wiesner-Hanks 2002, 601. 49 Hollander 2013.