Hollywood Hates Nuns

Townhall.com ^ | September 7, 2012 | Brent Bozell

[Kaslin]

Some hateful stereotypes never die in Hollywood. The cover of the Sept. 7 edition of Entertainment Weekly featured the 63-year-old actress Jessica Lange, smirking in a nun's black habit, holding a big, punishing cane in her hands. Lange is returning for a second season on the FX series "American Horror Story," but this time with an entirely new plot and characters.

Nuns are now a thing of horror. "Jessica Lange returns, this time as a terrifying nun," promised the magazine's cover. They eagerly hyped a new storyline that's "a macabre mash-up of nuns, Nazis, aliens, a serial killer named Bloody Face and the lead singer of Maroon 5." Set in Massachusetts in 1964, this nun dominates the inmates of a mental asylum named Briarcliff.

The mastermind of this spectacle is Ryan Murphy, the fallen Irish Catholic homosexual (surprise) who began with the FX sleazefest "Nip/Tuck" and then scored big with "Glee" on Fox. Think of a horror show, and naturally, Murphy thinks of ... nuns?

"I'm just writing what I would like to see. I'm scared of aliens and I'm scared of Nazis and I'm scared of nuns. So it's the perfect stew of horror and fear."

Murphy told Entertainment Weekly he "wants Catholic groups just waiting to be outraged by his show to know" that "We show people who are really devoted to Catholicism and believe in its powers. For the most part, the religious people in the show are making an attempt to do their best in a very difficult world."

Baloney. It is patently untrue. That, of course, has never stopped Murphy.

The same article promised "viewers will meet Lange's Sister Jude, a scarily stern woman of faith (and fan of corporal punishment) who's running the show at Briarcliff while grappling with some very un-nunlike personal demons."

Lange told the Los Angeles Times "If I were playing a straitlaced nun, start to finish, I can't say that would interest me too much. What's great are the extremes. To go from where she was and where she's getting to, that's what's going to be interesting."

A summary of the characters spread across the Internet by Murphy's team also explains that, "Lange now takes on Sister Jude, a nun who's more sadistic than saintly." Monsignor O'Hara will be the subject of the nun's sexual desires: "Sister Jude's superior finds himself on the receiving end of the nun's affections (and fantasies), but he's not entirely innocent. Not unlike the red lingerie under Jude's habit, there are dark intentions under Monsignor O'Hara's grace and piety. This year, he'll be subject to Sister Jude's brutal punishment (read: shackles, canes)."

Entertainment Weekly quoted Lange that Sister Jude has "a lot of bad history and secrets that would threaten her if it came out." The magazine added this character "used to be a girl named Judy who drank and slept her way around Massachusetts." Actor Joseph Fiennes, who plays Monsignor O'Hara, suggests "clearly she's attracted to the monsignor for his grace and religiousness...and the monsignor might play with that, manipulate that."

The magazine also reported "Sister Jude serves as the Nurse Ratched to Briarcliff's troubled inmates." That's a reference to the villain of the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," who was a vicious, dictatorial ruler of a mental asylum.

Does this sound to anyone with brainwaves like a Catholic nun and priest attempting to "do their best" to be faithful to God and his church?

Murphy's producing partner, Brad Falchuk, confessed his ignorance to Entertainment Weekly "I'm a Jew. I don't know enough nuns. I saw 'Sister Act' and it freaked me out." But Adam Levine, that aforementioned pop singer in the cast, explained: "What's great about the fact that it's on FX is that you can go too far. You can do really unorthodox, crazy things that people are going to talk about."

It's easy to see the game that Murphy is playing here. He wants to "go too far" and build a big buzz -- but he also wants to claim his religious characters really try to "do their best." He wants critics to be outraged enough to draw publicity, but not so outraged that they get the show canceled. He wants enough outrage to maintain his place as the toast of sybaritic Tinseltown. In its first season, "American Horror Story" was touted by FX as the year's top-rated new cable series, and the Emmy tastemakers honored it with a whopping 17 Emmy nominations.

Once again, that "conservative" tycoon Rupert Murdoch is amoral enough to provide the Fox and FX platform with shows that have painted pornographers and perverted plastic surgeons as rebellious heroes and now will portray nuns as creepy villains. Murdoch must laugh all the way to the bank as his entertainment properties shred everything that's uplifting and decent in our popular culture.

[IronJack]

One was a demented crusader whose career suffered due to an obsession with one criminal.

The other was a fictional character.

You understand my confusion ...

[Bratch]

Don't forget Mary Tyler Moore.

[delcopatriot]

FYI ~ people you refer to as ‘Nuns’ are actually ‘Sisters’. A Nun is cloistered; which means she chose to live her life secluded from the world.

The only way to see an actual Nun would be to enter into a cloistered community...

[Venturer]

Doesn’t sound much like this is a remake of the “Belles of St. Mary’s.”

Jessica Lange couldn’t carry Ingrid Bergmans Habit.

[Wilum]

Just couldn’t give her the respect to call her Sister

[Mrs. Don-o]

Borges, I had the same reaction you did. At the beginning of "Dead Man Walking" I was pretty solidly anti-death-penalty. But he end I had serious doubts. It's clear that the condemned man, Matthew Poncelet, really IS a remorseless murderer, and that he is in gravest moral danger because he won't admit, even to himself, let alone repent, the despicable thing he did.

The dramatic tension of the story comes from "Will he admit the truth, and will he repent?" By the very end it becomes clear (at least to me) that it's only the pressure of his inmpending execution (plus Sr. Helen's truth/goodness influence) that moves him across the line to admitting guilt and sorrow.

The execution turned out to be a spiritual benefit for Poncelet. Very paradoxical. And wasn't it so for Dismas?

[An American In Dairyland]

I don’t go to movies but that is beside the point. The issue I raised is that Hollywood was not portraying nuns negatively back when that film was made...quite the contrary. It always revolves around their political agenda. Yesterday nuns were good. Today...

[Borges]

That film was made in the mid 1990s so I don’t see much of an ideological shift since then. Also, as I mentioned, that fim was not political in any meaningful sense. If you haven’t seen it you shouldn’t make comments about its’ content.

[An American In Dairyland]

Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. You sound like a Democrat. Also you don’t have the final say on what is or isn’t significant. Again you sound like a Democrat.

[trisham]

Sick.

[Borges]

LOL I don’t know what Democrats have to do with this discussion. If you haven’t seen the film then you are speaking out of pure ignorance. It was on many critics’ lists of that year’s beat films.

[GOPJ]

The women who devout themselves to the Lord and church or the dykes who serve for “social justice”?

The dykes who serve for social justice would not be of interest to Hollywood... those women don't have far to fall. Hollywood hungers for the devout and virtuous to be compromised and corrupted.