Did anyone else watch Preacher this summer? It's a wonderfully bizarre, supernatural story of a former criminal turned preacher in a Texas town. He receives a supernatural power that lets him tell people to do what he wants them to do. Angels of various stripes, a vampire, and a boy with an "arseface" all make up part of the cast. It's based on a mid 90s graphic novel/comic book.
The show made me think about how people characterize their god as parts of themselves, if not outright their highest self idealization.
*************Spoilers**************
One of the characters runs a meat packing plant, Odin Quincannon. The actor who plays him looks like he straight out of a comic book come to life and tells Preacher, "You know the rules. I dont talk about how my meat is made, you don't talk about your magic man in the sky."
After Preacher receives this power, Genesis, he makes a bet with Quincannon that if he comes to church and doesn't leave a Christian, Preacher will sell him the church and the land. Quincannon shows up, then ready to leave as soon as the service is over when Preacher does the priesthood shoulder grip so many of us are familiar with and tells Quincannon with Genesis, "Serve God." This has a backfire effect, because Quincannon serves the god he made in his own image, what he calls the God of Meat. (The comic gets pretty graphic with this as I understand.)
I don't want to give too much away for those that might now want to watch it, but it made me think about how people, especially people in the cult and other religions perceive their concept of god. People who are cruel, authoritarian, and rigid tend to embrace those aspects in their version of god, even relish in the punishments meted out (check out Rapture Ready sometime if you don't believe me.) The Mormon god is just an aspect of the leaders- above the peons, not to be questioned, and a lofty father figure that barely deigns to acknowledge your existences, much less your struggles.
AMC is killing it with all these shows in the last 8 years. It's so much fun to have a combination of black humour, supernatural horror, and everyday people in one show. Tulip is one of my fave characters and her one liners are hilarious.
I agree, AMC has had some great shows on lately. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are some of my all time favorite TV shows. I heard somewhere that one of the producers from Breaking Bad was making this show, so I told my husband that we should watch it, but he didn't seem too interested. Maybe I should tell him we should give it a chance. After all, he's always complaining that we never have any shows to watch.