Monday, March 18, 2013

THE BIBLE

I watched an episode of the much-touted television series "The Bible" last night.  Well, half an episode.  Here's my thought: the majesty and the truth of those great stories is inherent in the language that conveys them to us.  It is their poetry rather than their historical or factual accuracy that makes them meaningful.  To translate those stories into the literal, "reality show" quality that television images bring along with them is to reduce their magnificence and their emotional power to the absurd and the grotesque.  Impossible--for this viewer--to watch such stuff without being numbed by the earnest, over-the-top sincerity, not to mention the inevitable melodrama that robs the stories of all subtlety and metaphor and renders them as laughable as a bad movie.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Amen. I found it hard to relate the characters to the ones I have read. It completely lacked the complexity of the Bible. The violence seemed simplistic as well. I gave up on it pretty quickly.