At CMRC Joyce Smith offered a discussion of the struggle between church and media as meaning-making insitutions in the conext of her favourite television program, Rescue Me. Not aired in Australia (yet), the drama series focusses on one character, a fire-figher in New York City who comes from Irish-Catholic heritage and struggles to find meaning in his life after the breakdown of his marriage and the loss of family members in the 9-11 disaster.

The show has received negative reviews and protests from the American Catholic Defence League, in its portrayals of Jesus and other biblical characters and in the presentation of other characters, such as a laicised priest and another priest who is arrested for peadophilia.

Smith offers the show as an alternative space where audiences reconsider the Christian story, and as an example of television’s power to reinterpret and portray the biblical story. She sets it alongside other examples such as The Passion of the Christ.

My first reaction to these statements was “No, they aren’t bad because they challenge the Church’s authority to present the Christian story. They are bad because their interpretation is just wrong.” Immediately I saw myself doing exactly what Smith was saying the Church was doing: I see them as bad because they don’t interpret the story and its characters my way. And this, I think, is exactly what the Church and its bodies, like the American Catholic Defence League, is going through. The Church is on trial in this show, and the Christian story is set above and outide its context, and therefore control.

Can’t wait for the show to come to our shores. Thanks, Joyce, for your presentation and for identifying the struggle that I’m also having.