Any time a new television show comes on with even a faint whiff of faith, the faithful go ga-ga. So it is with NBC’s new potboiler, Kings.
Why shouldn’t we rejoice that the contemporary secular media has taken note of biblical themes? Let’s count the ways, beginning with a plot synopsis.
Kings purports to be the story of King Silas and his family, the Benjamins, who have unified the country of Gilboa from, as his queen put in the latest episode, “a collection of Stone Age tribes.” Gilboa is constantly at war with its sworn enemy, Gath, whose military might is shown through its line of invincible tanks known as Goliaths.
Just as King Silas is dedicating the newly built capital of Shiloh, a fresh confrontation erupts with Gath in which a farm boy turned soldier, David Shepherd, saves the king’s son, Jack, after he’s kidnapped. Then David single-handedly blows up a Goliath while trying to escape. As the masses glorify their new war hero, King Silas has young David transferred to Shiloh. There Silas tries first to make political use of David’s new fame, and then begins to keep an anxious eye on him after Silas witnesses David being crowned by a flock of monarch butterflies—the same mystical anointing story that Silas has told of himself to his own adoring public.
Unbeknownst to Silas, David has already been anointed (with motor oil, no less) by the Reverend Samuels, a popular and prophetic preacher who originally marked Silas as God’s chosen king. And so it goes.
Anyone with a modicum of biblical knowledge doesn’t have to watch Kings for long before she or he realizes that the show is another overwrought television drama of pretty people in shiny clothes trying to preserve their wealth and power through deceit, manipulation, or plain old perversion. Its patina of biblical themes is so far removed from actual Old Testament stories as to be not merely silly, but a tool for fostering biblical illiteracy.
Why should it matter that a TV show so blatantly misappropriates Old Testament stories as popular entertainment? The answer lies in the reality that biblical illiteracy of this magnitude, amplified by broadcast media, has a way of burrowing into the public consciousness. Thus when believers call on the history of faith to support a rationale for contemporary action, the made-for-TV version is all that people know. This undermines religion’s moral authority, particularly in acute social dilemmas.
Furthermore, a significant element of current political turmoil—the battle between Palestinians and the Israelis for possession of the land they now both inhabit—is connected (by those who make the purely religious argument) to Old Testament tales from which Kings draws its motifs. The parallels in the TV conflict between Gilboa and Gath, standing in respectively for Israel and Palestine, are ham-handed and cartoonish, providing no light on the biblical themes and interpretations that fuel the religious dimension of this brutal conflict.
From this perspective Kings bears multiple deficiencies, starting with the fact that its initial episodes are based on stories found in 1 Samuel, not in first or second Kings. Consequently, unless one knew where to look, any impulse to trace these themes in an actual Bible would be misdirected from the first. Since there are now four generations of Americans with no formal religious affiliation, with an accompanying ignorance of Judeo-Christian scriptures, the supposed “biblical” seeds of “Kings” root easily in fertile fields of illiteracy.
Saul becomes Silas (possibly to assuage fears of anti-Semitism), his daughter Michal becomes Michelle, Jonathan becomes Jack Benjamin, David’s lyre becomes a priceless antique piano. When Silas’ Queen Rose (whose name is rarely if ever spoken) intones the famous acclamation of David, “Silas has his thousands and David his tens of thousands,” she refers not to conquering enemies, but to crazed fans, or perhaps money.
Perhaps the most grating thing about Kings thus far is the unrelenting naiveté of its hero. The TV namesake of Israel’s great king seems a ninny in the face of the glamour and glitz of Silas’ court and his capital, Shiloh (which far more resembles New York or San Francisco than Jerusalem). The biblical David was a shepherd, true, but he wasn’t anywhere nearly as clueless as Kings’ David Shepherd is. Even as a young man, the David depicted in 1 Samuel was a wily operator who knew how to play upon Saul’s pride and paranoia. Warts and all, David deserves better than to be portrayed on TV as such an earnest milquetoast.
In other words, Kings is not only poorly translated as an allegory from biblical Israel to a contemporary setting, it’s boring to boot!
Those who’ve read the biblical stories of Saul and David, David and Jonathan, Samuel and his sons, David’s wives Michal and Abigail, know that they offer a panoply of human achievement and human folly far deeper and more exciting than their TV counterparts. Sadly, few in the faith community or anywhere else are making an effort to bring these stories, with all their complexity and nuance, to television, films, or cyberspace. That’s where we tell our stories today, and stories matter.
It’s dangerous that so few in contemporary society appreciate the hold that the Bible’s stories (especially when told inaccurately) have upon people’s minds, beliefs and actions. These stories deserve to be presented today not with faulty imitation or as a Hollywood swords-and-sandals epic, but with all their heroism, villainy, intrigue, and significance intact.
Then we would not be merely entertained, we would stand more chance of being enlightened as well.
Tags: bible, biblical interpretation, chris egan, cynthia b. astle, king david, kings, media, pop culture, television
One would think that someone accusing others of illiteracy would have an idea of what the word "nabob" means before using it in a published article.
The Fundamentalist Committee for the Defense of the English Language (aka Daniel Boyarin)
Point well taken, Daniel. Perhaps I was thinking of "ninny" or something other "n" descriptive, and neither I nor our excellent editors caught my brain skip on deadline. Shall we update it?
Regards,
Cynthia
Corrected. "Ninny" does the trick.
Our editorial eyeballs were weary yesterday. Less so today!
(Thanks, Daniel.)
As for nabobs, here's some background:
http://bit.ly/15pvyU
Kings is no more a biblical narrative than Jesus Christ, Superstar but to hold it's lack of academic or theological rigor as a fatal flaw is unjustified. I for one am enjoying the series, but I didn't come to it looking for religious education or biblical enlightenment and began watching primarily on the strength of my estimation of Ian McShane as an actor. I have remained engaged by virtue of the program's fresh and yet authentic treatment of Saul and David's relationship. Perhaps I should be held accountable for the ease with which I am amused, or dare I say mislead by the "pretty people and shiny clothes" but I believe the writers and producers have done an honest and credible job of re-imaging the story in a modern context. Complaints such as Cynthia's strike me as valid as those that would criticize Shakespeare for his cavalier handling of historical record in Julius Caeser. Granted Kings is not Shakespeare but like the bard, the screenwriter(s) obviously have set imitation of the great playwright as an ambition, and in a modest way they succeed. Like Shakespeare they attempt to appeal to the audience on a number of levels... for the likes of biblically literate such as Cynthia, it provides an ongoing challenge of "spot the motif", for the less academically fettered it has murder and death and lust and corruption, and for the even less sophisticated it provides (although not very successfully) bombastic Falstaffian buffoonery in the palace guards.
The appeal and value of scripture not only lies in its revelation of God's word, but also in the immortal and enduring applicability of its themes to life in the past, present and future. A sure way to engineer the eventual death of scripture is to insist that only scripture is allowed to tell those stories. Cynthia's pedantry suggests her tolerance only for analogical treatment of biblical material where the great power of scripture lies in metaphor.
I also find Cynthia's criticism of what she interprets as David's naivete as quite curious. In fact I find the presentation of this modern David quite believable. He's not gullible or clueless as she suggests, but like his namesake he is a simple (as in unsophisticated) man of faith. This portrayal of David as a highly principled yet fiercely loyal royalist does a superior job of providing an explanation of how these two rivals still managed to broker a relationship... perhaps not in the past, but at least in a believable current day scenario. Indeed, the aspect of the series I most enjoy is how it is showing how God works through these two very flawed individuals until ultimately God's will is done. Cynthia seems to subscribe to a hermeneutic that requires all divine agents to be wilely, crafty sophisticated individuals... I do not place such requirements on my divine messengers.
Its unfortunate that this series is obviously going down for the count, because had it been more successful (and for my dollar it's lack of success is precisely because it IS too literate) then it would have generated the very interest in the back story that Cynthia suggests should not even be required in the first place.
Personally I don't think its important to work in how Saul demanded 100 foreskins of his enemy and David delivered 200, nor how knowledge of that pithy detail contributes to anything more than brinkmanship in the sport of biblical trivia.
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.