kitewithfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kitewithfish) wrote2021-10-08 10:39 am
kitewithfish) wrote2021-10-08 10:39 am
More Musing on Midnight Mass - Spoilers
I'm still chewing on Midnight Mass, and why the typical compassionate, multi-viewpoint Mike Flanagan ending, an ending the emphasizes the flawed humanity of everyone involved, worked for me in the endings of Bly Manor and Hill House, but falls so flat with Midnight Mass.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Leah Schnelbach for their excellent discussion of Midnight Mass at Tor.com - go read it here: https://www.tor.com/2021/10/01/religious-horror-and-horrific-religion-in-midnight-mass/
Midnight Mass has a villain. Bly Manor and Hill House have trauma that make their apparently villains worthy of compassion and mercy even as they do awful things, but Midnight Mass has an actual, straight forward villain, and pretends that it doesn't, and I think there's the issue for me.
Spoilers below the cut!
Father John Pruitt is a bad pastor, in that he specifically fails to carry out his duties as a leader of a congregation with a full understanding of the authority that he carries and the damage he can do with it. To lead a congregation comes with certain ethical and moral commitments, and Father Pruitt fails to fulfill those commitments. Some of those failures are inflected by the fact that its a Roman Catholic parish, but most of them are actually pretty available to any person leading a Christian congregation, and many of them are open to any religious leader.
He is a bad pastor *before* he meets the angel.
He is a bad pastor when he manufactures an apparent miracle and tricks a child asking about the nature of death and resurrection into believing that an injured animal is resurrected, when Father Pruitt has actually replaced it with an uninjured animal.
He is a bad pastor when he pursues a relationship with a parishioner, who knows him as a religious authority and a spiritual advisor. Dating a parishioner, even in traditions where that is permitted, is fraught - people who meet you as a religious authority are going to have a really different form of engagement with you than someone who meets you as a potential romantic partner. You are not on equal footing with the people in your parish - your job is to be a pastor, not a friend, and that's not a mutually equal relationship. The parishioner should be getting much more personal support and care out of that relationship than the pastor gets. Getting your emotional needs, platonic or romantic, met by starting relationships with parishioners, is a morally complicated thing to do, even if you come from a tradition that would permit that to be an openly acknowledged romantic relationship. Most pastors I know from traditions where this is permitted are *deeply skeeved* about dating within their own parish; many will not pursue it at all. Many pastors I know will not be friends with their parishioners even after they leave a church, because those relationships are inherently unequal by design, and it can be abusive to ask for emotional support from a parishioner even if you don't bone.
He is a bad pastor when he pursues a relationship with a *married* parishioner.
He is a bad pastor when he clandestinely escalated that relationship to sex, when he agreed to a vow of celibacy.
He is a bad pastor when he fathers a child with that married woman, secretly, and he is a bad father for lying to his child and for asking the mother of his child to lie about it.
He is a bad pastor when he permits Beverly, a parish administrator, to embezzle funds for the fishing recovery effort to build a parish hall, instead of using them to help the impacted fishermen and their families.
Father John Pruitt is already a deeply unethical and immoral person before the beginning of his story in this show. He has used his authority as a religious leader to indulge his own emotional needs; he has let his congregation down; he has claimed the right to manufacture miracles and stolen the authority of God by doing so.
He is a bad pastor, and a bad person at the start of this story. He is must less sympathetic than any similarly damaging character in Mike Flanagan's prior works, and yet, the story seems remarkably sympathetic to him, particularly in the last episode.
Midnight Mass is about a parish. Midnight Mass is a show that contains families, and romantic relationships, but it is not about just a family or a romantic relationship - it is about a parish. Parishes are established for a reason; they have leadership and funding and codes of conduct, and they are just much, much, more complex communities than a family. You can tell a story like Hill House about a family being hurt and hurting each other in their trauma and pain, and have no villains. You can tell a story about Bly Manor, about people being hurt and injured by their family and class structures, and have no villains.
But you can't tells a story with a priest who starts off his career staging miracles to persuade his child congregant of his authority, and end that story by having him staging greater and more impressive miracles to persuade his congregation, leading to those congregants murdering nearly everyone in their village who is not a member of the church, and have no villain.
I grew up with a member of the clergy for a parent. My sister is clergy. I got a Masters in Divinity and studied how to be clergy, and what it would mean to be a pastor to a congregation. I have been a member of, at this point, six different parishes, and I have usually been in a position to know some of the things that were happening 'behind the scenes' by virtue of relationships with people in positions of leadership. I have a lot of experience in seeing what good church leadership looks like, and how bad church leadership rots a congregation in its bones.
Father Pruitt had already started to harm his church before he left for his pilgrimage, before he came back a vampire, before he poisoned the wine, before he murdered a congregant, before he used church staff to hide that murder, before he staged miracles to convince people that a vampire was an angel. Before Father John Pruitt began to murder his parishioners, he was already hurting them, and he was using church authority to do that, and that makes him the villain.
So this story has a villain. And I am annoyed by how the story seems to fail to even realize that in its last chapters.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Leah Schnelbach for their excellent discussion of Midnight Mass at Tor.com - go read it here: https://www.tor.com/2021/10/01/religious-horror-and-horrific-religion-in-midnight-mass/
Midnight Mass has a villain. Bly Manor and Hill House have trauma that make their apparently villains worthy of compassion and mercy even as they do awful things, but Midnight Mass has an actual, straight forward villain, and pretends that it doesn't, and I think there's the issue for me.
Spoilers below the cut!
Father John Pruitt is a bad pastor, in that he specifically fails to carry out his duties as a leader of a congregation with a full understanding of the authority that he carries and the damage he can do with it. To lead a congregation comes with certain ethical and moral commitments, and Father Pruitt fails to fulfill those commitments. Some of those failures are inflected by the fact that its a Roman Catholic parish, but most of them are actually pretty available to any person leading a Christian congregation, and many of them are open to any religious leader.
He is a bad pastor *before* he meets the angel.
He is a bad pastor when he manufactures an apparent miracle and tricks a child asking about the nature of death and resurrection into believing that an injured animal is resurrected, when Father Pruitt has actually replaced it with an uninjured animal.
He is a bad pastor when he pursues a relationship with a parishioner, who knows him as a religious authority and a spiritual advisor. Dating a parishioner, even in traditions where that is permitted, is fraught - people who meet you as a religious authority are going to have a really different form of engagement with you than someone who meets you as a potential romantic partner. You are not on equal footing with the people in your parish - your job is to be a pastor, not a friend, and that's not a mutually equal relationship. The parishioner should be getting much more personal support and care out of that relationship than the pastor gets. Getting your emotional needs, platonic or romantic, met by starting relationships with parishioners, is a morally complicated thing to do, even if you come from a tradition that would permit that to be an openly acknowledged romantic relationship. Most pastors I know from traditions where this is permitted are *deeply skeeved* about dating within their own parish; many will not pursue it at all. Many pastors I know will not be friends with their parishioners even after they leave a church, because those relationships are inherently unequal by design, and it can be abusive to ask for emotional support from a parishioner even if you don't bone.
He is a bad pastor when he pursues a relationship with a *married* parishioner.
He is a bad pastor when he clandestinely escalated that relationship to sex, when he agreed to a vow of celibacy.
He is a bad pastor when he fathers a child with that married woman, secretly, and he is a bad father for lying to his child and for asking the mother of his child to lie about it.
He is a bad pastor when he permits Beverly, a parish administrator, to embezzle funds for the fishing recovery effort to build a parish hall, instead of using them to help the impacted fishermen and their families.
Father John Pruitt is already a deeply unethical and immoral person before the beginning of his story in this show. He has used his authority as a religious leader to indulge his own emotional needs; he has let his congregation down; he has claimed the right to manufacture miracles and stolen the authority of God by doing so.
He is a bad pastor, and a bad person at the start of this story. He is must less sympathetic than any similarly damaging character in Mike Flanagan's prior works, and yet, the story seems remarkably sympathetic to him, particularly in the last episode.
Midnight Mass is about a parish. Midnight Mass is a show that contains families, and romantic relationships, but it is not about just a family or a romantic relationship - it is about a parish. Parishes are established for a reason; they have leadership and funding and codes of conduct, and they are just much, much, more complex communities than a family. You can tell a story like Hill House about a family being hurt and hurting each other in their trauma and pain, and have no villains. You can tell a story about Bly Manor, about people being hurt and injured by their family and class structures, and have no villains.
But you can't tells a story with a priest who starts off his career staging miracles to persuade his child congregant of his authority, and end that story by having him staging greater and more impressive miracles to persuade his congregation, leading to those congregants murdering nearly everyone in their village who is not a member of the church, and have no villain.
I grew up with a member of the clergy for a parent. My sister is clergy. I got a Masters in Divinity and studied how to be clergy, and what it would mean to be a pastor to a congregation. I have been a member of, at this point, six different parishes, and I have usually been in a position to know some of the things that were happening 'behind the scenes' by virtue of relationships with people in positions of leadership. I have a lot of experience in seeing what good church leadership looks like, and how bad church leadership rots a congregation in its bones.
Father Pruitt had already started to harm his church before he left for his pilgrimage, before he came back a vampire, before he poisoned the wine, before he murdered a congregant, before he used church staff to hide that murder, before he staged miracles to convince people that a vampire was an angel. Before Father John Pruitt began to murder his parishioners, he was already hurting them, and he was using church authority to do that, and that makes him the villain.
So this story has a villain. And I am annoyed by how the story seems to fail to even realize that in its last chapters.
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