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Losers, Food, and Sex |
117www.jrfm.eu
2016, 2/2, 99–122
on continued, “Seeking an answer to these questions, the church invokes two
major themes, or rather, structures its answers to these questions in response
to two historic arguments: purity and pollution; text and authority.”53 And he
went on to argue that “purity systems function by making the human body and
its boundaries a symbol for the social body and its boundaries”.54
The struggle over “Is it OK?” seems to be at the heart of the various nego-
tiation processes over masculinities in Rev. (2010–2014): vicar, husband, sexual
male body; being female in a predominantly masculine and patriarchic hierarchy
that imagines itself as female, as Christ’s bride; archdeacon, careerist, and gay.
All the different male characters on screen are trying to live up to a specific form
of masculinity. Yet only when they learn to say “it is OK” and accept their own
way of being male, appreciating the diversity in being male, do we see them
starting to thrive and becoming subversive.
The end of season two, with the iconic Christmas meal resembling the Last
Supper, provides a key for understanding the negotiations of masculinities in
the show. In a pessimistic reading one could conclude that all is not well in ec-
clesial space and that while women have now been admitted to all levels of
ordination, the institution is still a patriarchal heteronormative space governed
by ideas of purity/pollution and authority/text.55 Masculinity dominates feminin-
ity, but that is only one part of the picture. In ecclesial space, one master narra-
tive of masculinity still seems to dominate over all others – including those of
deviant masculinities – and the diversity of masculinities throughout the history
of Christianity is often forgotten. As the current debates in the Anglican com-
munity over homosexuality show, such master narratives of specific (religious)
masculinities, with their roles and expected behaviors, disrupt communities
rather than unify them.
The iconography of the Last Supper, however, invites a more positive, a more
Eucharistic interpretation. The Eucharistic meal invites, draws together, gives
body to community and is itself body. Eating and drinking, we absorb someone
or something else into our own bodies.56 Psalm 34:9 says, “Taste and see that
the Lord is good [or sweet, depending on the translation]”.57 The Eucharist,
then, allows one to see through the body with one’s “corporeal eyes”58 and
to understand differently and see differently, “suggesting a significant correla-
tion between the apprehensions of the soul and the sensory experiences of
53 Nixon 2008, 598.
54 Nixon 2008, 599.
55 Cf. Church of England 2013b; Heneghan 2013; Nixon 2008, 599.
56 Cf. Fulton 2006, 170.
57 For a discussion of the sweetness of the Lord and the different versions of translation, cf. Fulton 2006,
181.
58 Cf. Fulton 2006, 175.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Band 02/02
- Titel
- JRFM
- Untertitel
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Band
- 02/02
- Autoren
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Herausgeber
- Uni-Graz
- Verlag
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Ort
- Graz
- Datum
- 2016
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Seiten
- 168
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften JRFM