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There is a phenomenon i notice in media but never hear named. Call it, "Representation As Inherently Problematic."
Examples: There are no mentally handicapped people or trans people on shows that are not specifically about these topics. The reasons for this for mental disabilities are fairly obvious: mental handicaps are considered intrinsically undignified. If you show a mentally handicapped person doing or saying something dumb on a show, this counts as mocking a protected group. Thus: total absence.
Similarly: If you have a trans person on a show you need to make it clear to the audience they are trans, which either requires it to be a plot point (making it a sort of Very Special Episode) or making the trans person not pass (which is undignified and thus opens the writers up to criticism.) Thus: total absence.
Similarly, morbid obesity is undignified, and the morbidly obese are close to being a protected class (being as it is a physical disability). Thus, having them on a show is undignified and opens up the writers to criticism. Thus: total absence.
Another example: land o' lakes mascot, a native American woman, gets criticism for being stereotypical, which is synonymous to being visually identifiable as a native american. So she was removed from the labeling.
Another: Dr. Seuss gets criticism for visually identifiable depiction of a Chinese villager; book gets pulled as a result.
A similar-feeling phenomenon is This Character Has Some Characteristics Of A Protected Group, Which Is Kinda Like Being A Standin For That Group, Making That Character's Poor Qualities A Direct Commentary On That Group. Examples: criticisms around Greedo and Jar Jar Binks being racist caricatures; criticisms of goblin representation in Harry Potter as being anti-semitic caricatures.
Here's a Patton Oswalt stand-up bit from 2011 (NSFW!) where he talks about being asked to audition for the role of "Gay best friend" in a romcom and him saying that he would only do it if he was allowed to play the character as really, really dumb, because he was tired of seeing all gay characters in media being portrayed as impossibly awesome and flawless.
The flip side of this is Weak Men are Superweapons. I've definitely started noticing recently that, at least in the media I consume, fundamentalist Christians (or deeply religious people in general) are never depicted as anything other than evil. Examples: the "Crackstone" character in Wednesday, the antagonists in Devil in Ohio (well, those were actually Satanists, but they sure looked like a standin for Puritans or Amish people). Can anybody think of an example of an important (main character or recurring supporting character) character in recent mainstream media that is depicted as a good person who does good things, but who is also explicitly a fundamentalist Christian?
This is a total aside but I find it curious what does and does not get labeled NSFW. I'm not criticizing you or anything, you're following standard norms, but I find it weird that a stand-up bit without swears is "SFW", and a stand-up bit with swears is "NSFW", even though the actual thing I'd get in trouble for at work isn't the swearing, but the fact that I'm watching stand-up while I'm supposed to be working.
Or, like, pictures of women in bikinis is "SFW", but pictures of topless women are "NSFW", even though I'd be ~75% as embarrassed to be caught at work looking at women in bikinis as at topless women.
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The counterpoint would be the Hollywood Atheist, though, ie. explicit identification with atheism as a creed being associated with cynicism and bitterness (at best) and villainousness at worst. Of course many/most examples are from a while ago, I'm not sure how prevalent this stereotype is now.
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The “hot priest” from Fleabag? Though of course he:
Thanks /u/butlerian
Fleabag seduces him out of his vow of chastity but he doesn't actually stop being a priest iirc.
Fifty Hail Mary's and he'll be fine.
Oh right. True.
Anyway he seems to be portrayed well, object of desire, nice guy etc
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In the otherwise uneven and overlong Don't Look Up the best scenes center around Timothee Chalamet's very sweet and earnestly Christian character.
Not main character tho
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IDK about fundamentalist, but the main characters in Kim's Convenience (Mr. and Mrs. Kim) are Christians. They are active in their church and take their faith seriously, and are depicted as good people doing good things.
I wonder how much of that is because they're Korean. White Christians seem to be the ones depicted as fanatics, hypocrites or nice but dim. Unless they're liberal Christians who are on board with reproductive justice, LGBT rights, and racism is the only sin, of course. "Jesus would be out marching with BLM" type Christians.
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I question whether obscure Canadian sitcom counts as mainstream (although I enjoy it).
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Some of that comes from a very strong (and reasonably grounded) stereotype associating Korean immigrants with Christianity. To the point of it being a joke in Asian American circles that while other Asians come over and open restaurants and nail salons (if they're feeling especially broadminded, they might add motels to the list), Koreans comes over to start a churches. Still a good example and probably comes from the original source material being written by a Korean immigrant (who true to stereotype is the son of a pastor).
One thing I find interesting about Kim's Convenience is how heavily it can deal in stereotypes sometimes. For example, Mr. Kim is pretty damn close to being a racist caricature of Korean immigrants. But they pull it off really well: the show sometimes shows his mannerisms in a humorous light, but the writers aren't just picking on him. He feels like a real person, with good and bad things and who I found incredibly relatable (despite not being Korean or an immigrant). I feel like the way they deftly handle such characters shows the skill of the writers.
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I think part of it is that writers- being secular hollywood types- mostly have trouble writing fundamentalist/deeply religious characters in ways that are both deeply religious and interesting to watch, so they show up in orbital roles or as antagonists(who don’t need to be fleshed out).
Bernadette’s parents and Sheldon’s mother from big bang theory were convincingly characterized as (different kinds of)fundamentalist Christians who were essentially good people, but they weren’t exactly main characters.
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"Bible" Boyd is pretty much the only reliably "good" person in "Fury".
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I'm not quite certain what your definition of fundamentalist / deeply religious is here, but here are some positively portrayed Christians off the top of my head:
Harriet Hayes from Studio 60 (2006-2007). She's shown to have pre-marital sex and considers posing nude at one point so she is admittedly a bit of a stretch.
Detective Almond from Backstrom (2015) is a born-again Christian who works as a volunteer pastor in a local community church.
Matt Murdock in Daredevil(2015). A flawed but ultimately good man. He's Catholic and often seeks counsel from his parish priest.
Shepherd Book from Firefly (2002) is a pastor, though it's also implied he found religion after a life of dirty deeds, so your mileage may vary here.
Michael Carpenter from The Dresden Files book series.
Graham Hess in Signs (2002) though we meet him in the middle of a crisis of faith.
Desmond Doss in Hacksaw Ridge, but it's a biopic, so that may not count.
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot Shirley from Community (2009-2015). She's got her flaws (prone to gossip) but she's depicted as a genuinely good person who does her best to do the right thing.
The Good Doctor introduced a doctor last year that is heavily religious (Christian) and it's honestly her most positive trait and they introduced a love interest for her that is also deeply religious. Maybe this is an import storyline from the Korean version, I don't know. But the two characters are almost universally supposed to be portrayed as positive (the girl is also as woke as one can be and still be a Christian). Though every character in the show is, I suppose, presented in a positive light. One of the last few episodes the female christian talks about how she's waiting to have sex for marriage. This is (2021-2023).
The Good Fight, probably in the running for the wokest show to ever exist had Andre Braugher come in after Delroy Lindo left and his character was extremely Christian, kind, and entertaining but because of those things all the other characters didn't believe that he was genuine at all and thought he was a phoney who was scheming but he really wasn't, exposing their own bias and this was (2021-2022). Though he and the female character above are both black they are genuinely presented as good people and good Christians. But there's also Jamie from Outlander at least up until the latest season in 2022 who you could say it doesn't count because of the era he lives in but considering his life and circumstances it wouldn't be strange for them to make him not Christian but he remains that way (though the most recent antagonist was a more devout Christian so maybe that's a wash).
There's also the Young Pope (2016) and The New Pope (2020) and even through all the characters foibles in it, almost everyone, even the scheming ones, are still fundamentally good people. At least the people portrayed as religious.
It made me think of how much of a kind of tropey character Shepherd Book actually was at the time because I remember so many shows that would have a solidly sound and humanistic moral center of the show be a pastor or extremely religious character. The Simpsons (which ended in season 11), Oz, The X-Files, and (going back to Andre Braugher) Homicide: Life on the Street. Recently that trope has kind of gone away and I feel like the amount of characters who are good and almost solely as a shorthand for that are made religious is still pretty high but the amount of people that are evil and also religious has probably skyrocketed, I blame horror.
An interesting note to the OP is a trans character played by a trans actor in Big Sky that was part of the main cast was just silently written out. Maybe that is an adjustment for the audience or maybe it's just coincidence.
I was pleasantly surprised by how wholesome the Young Pope is. The latter half of the season has some of the most genuinely heartfelt and beautiful moments I've ever seen on TV.
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Over 15 years ago shouldn't count. And Daredevil is a version of a character who was a Christian over 15 years ago.
Why?
True, but the writers of the modern incarnation of the character could have just as easily chose gloss over or downplay his Catholicism.
Because the political factors that would lead the media to not include any good Christians were considerably different 15 years ago.
Your arguement is that media has become more hostile to Christianity in particular over the last 15 years? I'm not debating you, I just want to understand your position on this.
Uh, yes.
There was certainly some hostility 15 years ago, but by no means as much.
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Michael is the single best representation of what a Christian should be like I've ever seen in pop culture, bar none. He's just a genuinely good man, but he doesn't ever throw that in anyone's face or judge them. I unironically would love to be able to say I'm like Michael, though I'm a hell of a long way off from that.
I'm genuinely surprised at both Michael and Father Fortes as written in the books. Butcher's treatment of Christianity is possibly one of the most respectful I've come across in modern secular media in my entirely life.
It goes further. Having a sex vampire quote Corinthians at length is quite the novelty.
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Greys Anatomy had a really interesting Christian doctor for years and it led to really interesting story lines regarding sex, marriage, crises of faith and ultimately abortion. Pity she was removed to free up her love interest for an unpopular character that the writers wanted to center.
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Shepard Book's past life shouldn't be a problem, total depravity is fairly common to most Christian doctrines (an assassin and a vegetarian who never raised her voice are both equally deserving of hell absent Jesus).
Yet many heroes of the bible have very checkered lives. David covets his neghbor's wife, commits adultery with her, murders her husband but is contrite and is called a man after my own heart by God. Paul murders every Christian he can find before before meeting Jesus, getting saved himself, and authoring most of the New Testament.
The questionable thing about him is whether his faith is Christianity. The show does a great job of pulling tropes from the 20th century but attaching them to an alien culture, his faith could just as well be Islam, Christianity or some mix of either with an Eastern faith. The show did this well enough that someone who has almost every trope of unrepentant Confederate yet is lionized by the culture that hates the source of those tropes.
There are enough references to Book reading & studying the Bible that I assumed he's a Christian of some stripe.
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I get that you're nodding to general perceptions regarding who "counts" as Christian but the caveats bug me.
You don't have to be personally / socially conservative to be Christian! If we use the Nicene Creed as an orthodox litmus test, being a Christian is defined by what you believe, not how you conduct yourself. (This is not to say that I don't personally think Christians, including myself, should strive to meet certain behavioral standards. But there is a lot of disagreement about what those standards should be precisely. And pretty widespread acknowledgement that most of us aren't going to live up to the ideal all or even most of the time.)
So did St. Paul!
This is where we get into the weeds. Portrayals of liberal Christians aren't what we're talking about here; they tend to be regarded favourably precisely because they will fit into the Zeitgeist, and the "praying to God" stuff is just private personal quirks which is how it should be. They'll be your escort to the abortion clinic to support you against the bad Christians out front protesting. I think we could all imagine an episode of a mainstream TV series presenting such a view.
"Yeah I really believe all the Bible stuff" either literally or conservatively (small 'o' orthodox) on the other hand - zealots, baddies, or just nice people but shackled by the blinders of their repressive faith unless/until they get liberalised. Something along the lines of "I used to be one of the bigots protesting outside abortion clinics but then my daughter was raped and needed an abortion to save her life otherwise the pregnancy would have killed her, so now I've seen the light and done a 180 on all my old views". Again, episode on a mainstream TV drama.
I'm 100% with that. Unfortunately, there's a lot of "Well modern people in the modern age can't believe those old stories anymore, so we'll junk all that, and besides now we have science and women can vote, so we scrap this theology and change our disciplines" around "what should Christians believe?" that fits in with the Zeitgeist (see above). Is society now for gay rights? Then let's redefine our understanding of what St. Paul meant in this epistle so we can say he condemned 'bad' homosexuality but didn't mean 'good' homosexuality. Let's go all the way to say that the centurion and his servant were gay lovers, so clearly Jesus approves of gay rights! Let's say that witchcraft and demonic possession are spiritual gifts and silly old Paul just couldn't broaden his notions to accept that! (Seriously a sermon preached by the then-head of The Episcopal Church, that should be non-socially conservative enough for anyone).
So you're a slave, possessed by a demon (or suffering from mental problems, if we take the modern approach). Your owners are making money out of having you tell fortunes. Along comes a guy who heals you. This is A Bad Thing because he should have recognised that being ill and exploited by people who regard you as a thing, not a person, was in fact a beautiful, holy thing.
Yeah, somehow I'm not a liberal Christian.
Thank you for writing this. This is the response I couldn't figure out how to properly phrase.
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Ned Flanders is a great example of the cultural shift, actually, because where he was once a genuinely nice guy who wanted to be good to everyone (even Homer), likely at least in part due to his religion, he eventually mutated into a punching bag for the writers to use against evangelists, where "Christian (bad)" became his personality. No more was the kindhearted neighbor; he became oppressive, bigoted, hateful, and judgmental, with his kindly demeanor seemingly being a facade.
The Trope Namer for “Flanderization,” even.
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