Netflix and Venerate
Our character is a normal every day guy be he’s been given the powers of God for a week. He’s struggling, so he visits The Big Guy Himself…
Our character is a normal every day guy be he’s been given the powers of God for a week. He’s struggling, so he visits The Big Guy Himself. Turns out God lives on the empty top floor of an industrial building and is played by Morgan Freeman. He’s running a minimalist schtick, is God, so he wears a white suit and black shoes.
I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the look, but I have to say that media depictions of the Christian god often leave me nonplussed. Angels with harps are passé, so inevitably He’s dispensed with them and frankly just about everything else.
Hell, now that we can do. The recent series of Good Omens depicted the abyss as series of gloomy crowded corridors, demons pushing their way through, no doubt in search of the Circle line. They hit just the right mix of tragic and utilitarian, lacking only adverts for online banking. Sadly heaven was still a barren penthouse full of stupid, sort-of-middle-managerish angels.
I guess it’s not surprising that it’s easier to show something as horrific rather than perfect, but come on team, can we at least read the source material?
[A] throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads… and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.
And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,who was and is and is to come!”
The Bible, Revelation 4
I mean, imagine that in your netflix prime show — now were talking. And we are not remotely done. Flying cities, healing fruits, multitudes in worship. And this only the stuff that’s canon. Often I find C. S. Lewis writes even better:
But very far away I could see what might be either a great bank of cloud or a range of mountains. Sometimes I could make out in it steep forests, farwithdrawing valleys, and even mountain cities perched on inaccessible summits. At other times it became indistinct. The height was so enormous that my waking sight could not have taken in such an object at all. Light brooded on the top of it: slanting down thence it made long shadows behind every tree on the plain. There was no change and no progression as the hours passed. The promise or the threat of sunrise rested immovably up there.
The Great Divorce
If heaven is undersold, I think my beef with most depictions of angels is even worse. Sure, you can show them as androgenous but prissy, but alternatively…
Now as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them. As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl. And the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel… And their rims were tall and awesome, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around.
The Bible, Ezekiel 1:15,16,18
In the words of Twitter, just let that sink in.
I get that unlike many mythical canons the Bible is still in use, but I reckon some good content could get Christians on side. Check out Unsong. Mainly I struggle with such a deep and varied cosmology being so often reduced to one or two notes. All I’m saying is, the Bible has gravitas. And if you’ve got a special effects budget, why not cover at least one creature in dewy, lidless eyes.
