Midnight Mass Is a Terrible Depiction of Christianity … and Exactly What It Needs
*Spoilers Ahead*
About halfway through my first watch of Mike Flanagan’s Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass, I wished I had known going in that it was a reimagining of the classic vampire tale. Expecting something more in the family of Flanagan’s other work — ghostly supernatural thrillers with spiritual undertones — I was not quite prepared for what I got: a direct and highly literal dose of body horror, complete with questionable prosthetics. My thought was that if I had known going in what I was getting, I would have been primed to appreciate it for what it was instead of expecting subtlety and getting a hammer.
My second time through, I changed my mind. As others have pointed out, the best way to watch Midnight Mass is cold. The jarring revelation that That Is A Vampire, and that Those People Don’t Know That Is A Vampire is part of the show’s charm. The dawning realization later on that They Do Know is part of its brilliance, and its terror.
I was equally unprepared for the unflinching religious content of the series, which takes direct aim at theological issues and doctrines central to Christianity — suffering, death, resurrection, miracles, pluralism, hypocrisy — all apparently born out of Flanagan’s own deconversion process. Strikingly, many influential progressive Christians have hailed the series as a revelation. Diana Butler Bass described it as “the best presentation of theology ever in the medium of television.” Sharad Yadav said it contained “some of the best depictions of people prosecuting questions of religious belief from all sorts of different places.” David Dark called it “the most profound response to Christianity in America (television-wise) I’ve ever beheld” and describes “receiving” it as one would, well, Mass. For my part, a Pentecostal educated at a Catholic university, I found the representation of the faith and of Catholic piety to be credible and charitable (aside from the vampire thing I mean), while simultaneously pulling no punches. If nothing else, Flanagan has clearly spent a good deal of time in church, and he also apparently brought in priests to consult. He has some things to get off his chest, but they feel earned.
Some obvious (but generally cheap) criticisms that have been leveled at the show are that Flanagan misreads Catholic doctrine, that he unfairly vilifies Christians while favoring other equally violent religions, or that he’s too preachy — though, interestingly, from different angles depending on the reviewer, perhaps a sign that he’s struck the right balance. These are cheap because Flanagan has clearly gone to great effort to tread respectfully on the religious themes he tackles, saying in an interview:
“We were very careful to make sure that this show has an open invitation to people of any belief system… Its core values, in a sense, are very Christian: empathy, kindness, concern for your fellow man … It celebrates our capacity for belief and our capacity for faith.”
Indeed, it’s very clear by the end who the faithful are and who the hypocritical are, and only a willful misreading could confuse them.
A major strength of the series, of a piece with Flanagan’s other work to date, is its focus on relationship. The bonds, and the animosity, between the characters is both the source and resolution of the plot, and the driver of the nightmare at its core. Without a late-revealed, almost childlike impulse of affection, the plot could literally not have gotten off the ground (pun intended). The relational focus is directed inward as well: learning to see oneself as something valuable, worthy of affection and capable of forgiveness, is the path to redemption here. Pretense as a tool of domination is the path to damnation. Honesty is the instrument of grace.
These are weighty, theologically and philosophically rich themes for a Netflix special. You might think they’d require a lot of exposition, and you’d be right. The story is bookended and punctuated by lengthy monologues on death, afterlife, suffering, and hope. Most of the critical reviews center on these mini-sermons, and they are undeniably verbose. However, the fact that they never feel inauthentic or unnecessary is a mark of the caliber of storytelling here. Each arrives at a pivotal juncture for the character that delivers it, and the overall effect is reminiscent of a spotlight-focused moment in a stage play. Given the theatrical quality of the production from the beginning (see the incredible 7.5 minute uncut opening scene in E2), the form of these monologues is thus not at all unpleasant.
Still, there are weaknesses, and they lie primarily in the generally sophomoric content of the monologues just mentioned. While I trust that Flanagan’s professed wrestling with religion is sincere, the script he penned and directed feels just a bit too much like papers I’ve graded from long-winded underclassmen in these places. A trilogy of monologues stand out in particular, both for their climactic placement and their neophytic musings on the afterlife. For example, in an otherwise powerfully acted scene, characters Erin Greene (played by Flanagan’s wife and recurring collaborator Kate Siegel) and Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) exchange their views on what happens when we die. Riley gives a fairly standard materialistic take on returning to the earth, complete with an explanation of near-death experiences (neurotransmitters flooding the brain), and Erin gives a superficial but self-aware, generically religious view of heaven, made poignant by the recent loss of her unborn child. The overall effect is intended to be sweet and cathartic, and it is, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Flanagan thinks he’s more informed on these issues than he is.
This is confirmed in an interview in which he explains that Erin was intended to represent a midway point between Father Paul’s (Hamish Linklater) dogmatism and Riley’s skepticism, both of which veer into fundamentalism at times:
“Erin always existed in between these two poles as the moderate. And the longer we lived in the story, the more clear it was that that is going to be the worldview. That is going to be the kind of humanistic approach that should win in these situations.”
But by the final monologue at series’ end she becomes the mouthpiece for an entirely historically and conceptually unrelated religious conception instead, a kind of quasi-Buddhism in which the self was an illusion all along and the events of death are materially indiscernible from Riley’s earlier expressed view. This struck me as an abrupt departure from previously established religious themes, and it cheapened the tension between the protagonists’ — and the audience’s — worldviews. It also suggests that Flanagan has misunderstood his source material, since Buddhism isn’t a “moderate” position between monotheism and atheism (being entirely compatible with the latter), nor is it more or less “humanistic” than the others. Indeed, Erin’s monologue about death in E7 is basically the same as Riley’s in E4, but with some pseudo-intellectual speculations on the interconnectedness of everything thrown in.
I’m stressing these monologues because they seem to be the metric by which many viewers are judging the show, which is unfortunate since its central brilliance lies elsewhere. They’re all delivered reverently, but many will find the hope they aim for hollow. It’s worth noting, for example, that Erin’s E4 death speech is personalist and theistic when told from the perspective of her lost child, but it’s Buddhist/pantheistic when told from her own perspective later. Ideally, the show would explore whether this implies something about what we want for others vs. ourselves, but Flanagan seems to be unaware of the contradiction. More importantly, there is that persistent aura of faux sophistication that encourages others to ascribe profundity to what are in reality introductory ideas in need of critique — Erin’s Buddhist turn is presented as a revelation. I’m against anything that encourages lowering the standard of public discourse around religion, so I find these speeches mostly off-putting. But I’m bothering writing this review because there is profundity to be found in this series — which makes these departures all the more frustrating!
If the series stumbles a bit on the afterlife, it makes up for it when it comes to more specifically Christian themes. Flanagan’s sanguivorous read of the Eucharist is a thing to behold, as is his use of the Bible. He manages to find a remarkable amount of Biblical support for vampirism. The reads of scripture are questionable to be sure, but in such an interesting way. While these are not new criticisms by any means, credit should be given for the effort of picking out enough references to make the conspiratorial galaxy brain of the lead antagonists believable. By the time you’ve heard Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan) rattle off reference after reference for every conceivable detail of the events they’re experiencing, including their newfound sensitivity to sunlight, you just have to let go of the “but-waits” and sit back in appreciation.
Two Biblical references merit specific mention. In E5, Riley and Father Paul have a, uh, tense conversation about the fact that Riley was involuntarily turned into a vampire — the word is, brilliantly, never mentioned in the series — and that Paul just murdered and fed on their mutual friend, Joe Collie. Nbd. The climax of the conversation occurs when Paul forces Riley to admit that he’s jealous of Paul’s lack of guilt over his apparently evil act. To justify himself, Paul reads Hebrews 9:14:
“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
In the text, this is one half of a comparison between the atoning effectiveness of the animal sacrifices prescribed in Levitical law and the willing sacrifice of Christ. In Paul’s mouth, it’s proof that he doesn’t need to feel bad about killing Joe because he has drunk the actual blood of Christ (you know, through the “angel”). This is an excellent example of the literalism that Flanagan weaves through his tale, and it’s so effective that one wonders which came first, the story element or Flanagan’s awareness of the verse.
In the same episode, Bev Keane uses the notoriously challenging passage in John 6:53–56 to explain to Riley how everything that’s happening is Completely Expected:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.’”
Again, reading this as cannibalism is practically an ancient tradition, so not breaking new ground here, but Flanagan sets it within events that are so foreign, and Sloyan delivers it with such exasperated certainty, that as a viewer trying to think with the characters, one is forced to ask “Why isn’t that what he meant?” And looking it up in context won’t easily resolve the issue. It is a weird chapter. I daresay most Christian viewers won’t have the Biblical literacy to answer the question easily, and that’s part of the point: what the Bible means depends heavily on the social context of the reader and what uses it’s being put to. Putting an interpretation into the mouths of credible characters in unusual circumstances that is at once obviously outrageous and difficult to refute is a wonderfully pedagogical way of shocking religious viewers into this realization.
There is an aspect of this that is difficult for Protestants to understand, primed as we are to see everything as symbolic. But literal, concretely referential interpretations of texts that were originally intended for entirely different purposes is the very DNA of Judeo-Christian interpretation. It is exactly the style of creative exegesis employed by scripture writers themselves — and even Jesus — so concerns about not getting it “right” come off as a little hollow.
Even the original audience of Jesus’s words couldn’t stomach it. A bunch of disciples leave when he says it, and Peter utters the famous “to whom shall we go,” justifying his choice to stay with “you have the words of eternal life.” Of course, Bev would say Peter wanted to be immortal, and Flanagan would present him as some kind of vampiric familiar, without using the language. I’m not joking when I say that it would make a useful exercise for a seminary student to puzzle over why interpreting that justification in the traditional sense of eschatological resurrection should be privileged over Flanagan’s more literal read, especially given the sense of urgency and immediacy that biblical scholars acknowledge is present in the text.
If I were teaching biblical hermeneutics, I would totally assign this. It’s a delightful — and spooky — way of delivering the twin lessons that Christianity is hard and was originally understood to be so, and that the Bible doesn’t have a single “correct” meaning. Jesus did not try to convince people to follow him, and he said things, like the teaching in question, that seem designed to make it harder. And the Bible does not tell us how to interpret it. Indeed, it becomes what you look for in it. Stories that were always there but went unnoticed to some are salient to others with different experiences. Where the devout see a weird angel or even God, conspiracists see aliens. Where VBS teachers see a fun kids’ story with animals and a big boat, skeptics see global genocide. Where white theologians see heroes of the faith, womanists and feminists see rapists and slave owners. Where Christians see the foreshadowing of loving sacrifice via symbolism, Mike Flanagan sees vampirism.
In this way, Flanagan is a more honest reader of the Bible than most pious evangelicals I’ve known who are unable or unwilling to admit the horror in it. Flanagan is explicit about this:
“When I was a kid and in Bible study, the horror elements embedded in the Bible are impossible to ignore … You’ve got angels patrolling through Egypt and slaughtering the firstborn. You’ve got the river turning to blood. You’ve got plagues of locusts, and a pillar of fire. And you’ve got a God who’s thrilled to just murder people at will and full of wrath. You’ve got demons, you’ve got talking serpents, you’ve got people being torn apart, torture, and it’s all there.”
In another place he says:
“… there was very fertile ground in the biblical text to kind of create, or at least justify, a lot of the things the story is doing through actual biblical descriptions of angelic properties and actions. And it was wonderful and fascinating to me that we didn’t have to look very long and very hard for passages in the Bible that explain why a vampire would burst into flames in the sunlight or to justify murder. You know, it’s all there. And that’s one of the fascinating things about the Bible, there’s a lot of horror in it.”
The man’s not wrong. The rampant violence, misogyny, and racism in the Bible have turned many away from the faith for good. That an atheist filmmaker can find enough sympathy for religious devotion that he ends his show with his characters singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as they face death together is remarkable. The whole series is a performative demonstration of the contradictions inherent to faith: deep guilt juxtaposed with stunning sacrifice, casual fundamentalism alongside profound forgiveness, the beauty of miracles joined with the fathomless injustice of a God who performs miracles only for some.
But this isn’t even the best aspect of the show. What struck me most forcefully was its powerful take on misinformation and echo chambers. At some point in the latter half of the series it occurred to me that the solution to the whole problem facing Crockett Island was for one person to believe their own senses enough to say “You guys, I think that’s a vampire.” But no one does — ever — for the same reasons that Republicans almost never become Democrats and anti-vaxxers are dying instead of deciding to trust scientific institutions: they live in an echo chamber that has immunized them against counterevidence, even if that evidence is coming from their own eyes and ears. Father Paul describes to Riley watching himself feed on an innocent human, “as if your body were acting under some other will.” This is how groupthink is experienced in a cult, and what’s crucial to understand for those of us on the outside is that the cult members by and large experience this as a good thing. Being part of a larger entity with some real power and influence in the world is reassuring, validating, even if it means that I don’t always understand the motivations for my own actions and beliefs. In Midnight Mass, the moral is clear enough: this sort of fundamentalism literally cannibalizes itself in the end.
Flanagan is admirably even-handed with this lesson. As he says:
“… it wasn’t just about religion – I was struck as well by how fundamentalist thinking could permeate and corrupt any belief system. How it could appear and spread within the scientific community as well. Nationalism. Politics. The media. How easily faith could be weaponized against the faithful. How incentivized we could be made to believe something in the absence of evidence – or, even more disturbing, in the presence of contradictory fact. I was horrified at how this cognitive dissonance was, in some circles, presented as a virtue.”
He gets it. Devotion to the group against one’s individual self-interest is part of the point of fundamentalist institutions, religious or not. Devout, otherwise reasonable people are often willing to trade everything — including the evidence of their own senses and sense of their own good — for membership in whatever club will have them. And like Bev Keane digging in the dirt, they will eventually self-destruct in their cowardice and violence.
Moreover, the tendency to react to critiques like this one by going on the defensive helps to confirm Flanagan’s point: the harms illustrated metaphorically in the show are all too real, and Christians’ refusal to see the potential for them in themselves and their own symbols is precisely what keeps them from noticing (or outright excusing) horrors in their midst that they’d readily see in any other context. Christianity is not unique in this, but it is almost unique in its outward commitment to modeling a form of community that is supposed to be the antidote to these kinds of harms. As theologian Sameer Yadav has said:
“That’s one of the scary things about being Christian … one of its truth conditions … is that a certain kind of community exists or can exist, and if it can’t or doesn’t, then Christianity is false.”
That its symbols and mythology and principles can be so easily turned to believable embrace of literal vampirism says something uncomfortable about Christianity’s success at this metric, whether we Christians are primed to see it, or want to acknowledge it, or not. Like any great critic of religion (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, etc.), Flanagan offers Christians a valuable gift if they are able to receive it: a literal, terrible (in the old sense of dreadful) reading of both their doctrines and their lives from a perspective of suspicion rather than faith, informed at its core by an abiding and generous compassion.
Riley, the atheist, demonstrates the weakness of Father Paul’s temporary flirtation with a naïve divine command theory by showing real courage, not to accept his desire for insensitivity as good but to recognize it as a vice worthy of his own destruction for the health of others. There’s nothing quite like encountering the essence of one’s Christian faith in the guise of a rationalistic pantheism, or for that matter in the form of a classic vampire tale. But this deep familiarity ensconced in radical otherness may be precisely what the church needs to jar it from its fundamentalist slumber.
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