BBC1 shows a magazine programme called ‘The Heaven and Earth Show.’ This is presented by a couple sitting on a sofa and there is a phone in for every item to involve the audience (10am Sunday BBC1 – 1 hour) people can also send emails.
ITV used to show a magazine type programme late on Sunday evening e.g. ‘Saturday Night’/‘Holy Smoke’ – aimed at under 25’s.
Channel 5 has religious programmes between 8am and 9am on Sunday mornings such as various religious cartoons like ‘Alpha Zone’ about the religious music scene and ‘My Sunday’ which talks about famous religious people e.g. Richard Gere who is a Buddhist.
The programme ‘Heaven and Earth Show’ is about religious and moral issues and contains many interviews and different views. In this particular example these is an interview with Dr. Higgins who wrote a book on religious/moral issues in films such as The Matrix. The moral issue is whether fat is a sin, considering it is thought as one of the seven deadly sins. People phone in their views and then the panel discuss is. There was also a Buddhist retreat on Holy Island, west coast of Scotland where Elvis Presley also once visited. There are 30,000 trees planted and the rules are no smoking, no drinking, no stealing, no killing and no fishing. They do a lot of Tai Chi and attend the Wesak, a Buddhist festival. They are then led through current views, told by a western Buddhist. The show always has a celebrity and this time it is Michael Douglas while they looked at father and son relationships and family relationships, they also explored Douglas’s own religious values as well.
It is presented as mainly like a religious chat show and uses married couple to present the show.
I think the age group for this programme could vary depending on what is on the show. For example, with films/celebrities a lot of young people could be attracted but overall the programme is quite mature, thus it will probably attract more of the elders than youngsters.
Section A: (2)
Dot And Ethel
Between the years 2000-2001, we followed the episodes dealing with the moral issue surrounding the death of Ethel Skinner in EastEnders – a weekly soap on BBC1.
The outline of the story is that Ethel and Dot Cotton had been lifelong, good friends. During Ethel’s final illness, Dot nursed her and looked after her. Ethel revealed that she was suffering from cancer, in particular a brain tumour. She realised that she didn’t have long to live and knew that, before the end, she would most probably loose all her mental powers and would be unable to recognise friends and relatives. The thought frightened her.
Ethel was taking morphine capsules/tablets to help control the pain. However, one day, Dot found Ethel hiding a bag of morphine tablets. Instead of taking her tablets regularly, Ethel had been saving them. She told Dot that she would take them all at once when the right time came. Horrified, Dot took the bag away from her and told her how wrong she thought Ethel’s intentions were. Dot is a Christian and a very religious person; she felt that God would punish suicide or assisted suicide.
Over a period of time, Ethel repeatedly begged Dot to give her the morphine tablets and to help her, when the time came to finish her life when she wanted – surrounded by friends and still with her right mind. Dot refused.
After a party at ‘The Vic’, Ethel decided that she wanted to ‘go’. She had enjoyed herself, she had had a drink with her friends and now she felt she was getting physically worse. She pleaded with Dot who eventually gave in and gave her the morphine tablets. By the morning Ethel was dead.
Afterwards, and particularly after the funeral, Dot became guilt ridden and Pauline Fowler and other friends could not understand why Dot and taken it so badly. Dot felt she had committed murder and deserved to be punished. She felt that God would punish her and that she would never go to heaven to be re-united with her deceased husband.
In incidents and conversations that followed, we get insights into the various arguments for and against Euthanasia. Dot expressed the view that life is sacred, special to God, a gift from God – what Christians have referred to as the ‘sanctity of life’. Only he has the right to take it away. She found verses in the Bible that suggested she deserved punishment from God.
The EastEnders episodes on this issue did give the opportunity to hear various viewpoints on euthanasia, as expressed through the characters of the programme. Its treatment of the issue was thus fair and not one-sided.
Section A: (3)
Se7en.
The seven deadly Sins, which are gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and wrath – are all excesses of drives that are in balance basically good. The opposite of each sin is also a sin, which means the virtue would be somewhere in the middle.
Se7en is directed by David Fincher. It was released in 1995 and stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.
In Se7en, Detective Somerset, a man who lives a bachelor’s life in a very neat and clean apartment, meets Detective Mills, a former policeman recently made detective. They first appear mismatched, thoughtful Somerset quickly gets annoyed with Mills impulsive behaviour.
In the movie, Mills makes a statement that Pride comes first, not gluttony in Dante. Indeed, here is a plan of the earthly paradise:
THE EARTHLY PARADISE
VII The Lustful
VI The Gluttonous
V The Avaricious and Prodigal
IV The Slothful
III The Wrathful
II The Envious
I The Proud
THE ISLAND OF PURGATORY
Pride is the sense of one’s own self-respect. The balance is self-respect, appropriate regard for one’s own inherent worth and dignity. In the movie, a beautiful girl was disfigured and Doe had glued one of her hands on a telephone, to the other, sleeping pills. Doe’s name is fully John Doe; he is a deranged serial killer who believes it is his duty to punish seven sinners. This meant the beautiful girl was given a choice; either she could call for help and she would live, but she wouldn’t be beautiful, or she could put an end to her misery. John Doe describes the girl as “a woman, so ugly on the inside that she couldn’t barely go on living if she wasn’t beautiful on the outside.”
Greed is an inordinate desire. The opposite would lack of all desire that accompanies deep depression and withdrawal from life. The balance is the desire to accomplish, the will to do, an ambition. In Se7en, a lawyer was killed in his office and forced to cut a pound of flesh from his body. GREED was written in blood letters on the floor across the room. There was blood around the eyes of his wife on a picture, and behind a painting, the police found written in fingerprints, ‘HELP ME’. The fingerprints were Victor’s, who was the victim of sloth. The killer tells Mills and Somerset about this murder, “you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster, to keeping murders and rapists on the streets.”
Lust is unrestrained, intemperate, irrational, sexual desire or craving. The opposite would be catatonic unresponsiveness. In balance, lust is the longing for intimate communion, the desire for connection and closeness in mutual care and valuing. The lust victim was a whore. The killer made a man wear a blade while having sexual intercourse with her. LUST was carved on the door. To the killer, she was a, “disease-spreading whore.”
Envy is desire and admiration turned sour. In its positive side or balance, envy becomes admiration and appreciation. John Doe envied Mills’ normal life, as he told him several times and Mills killed him. He had planned this as he couldn’t commit suicide, it is not allowed by the Catholic Church.
Gluttony is ingesting an excess of any substance, an over-indulgence, making a pig of oneself or becoming high or intoxicated. In balance gluttony is good appetite, which is essential for the affirmation and living of life. The gluttony victim was the first that was found by the police. He was an obese man who was forced to eat till death, tied to his chair with barbed wire. The word GLUTTONY was written in grease behind the refrigerator. Behind the same refrigerator was a piece of paper on which was written, “long is the way and hard is that out of hell leads up to light.” This is a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost. John Doe describes this man as, “an obese man, a disgusting man who could barely stand up. A man, who if you saw him on the street you would point to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him. A man if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn’t be able to finish your meal.”
Wrath, the opposite would be apathy. In balance anger is protective, a protective device of the self to guard what one loves. Mills was wrathful at John Doe because he had killed Tracy. He shot him, and now his life is destroyed. He has no family anymore, no job either and at best he will spend the rest of his life in jail. Or he might be sentenced to the death penalty.
Sloth in its original meaning is akin to despair. Sloth is to look upon the wonder of goodness of creation and turn our backs. Sloth is a rejection of the joy and goodness of life. A homosexual drug-dealer was tied to his bed and barely fed for one year. The killer took samples from his body. He took one picture every week to show his decay. SLOTH was written above his head. Actually, when they find him, he isn’t dead yet, but he isn’t much alive either.
Rain is associated with death. As a matter of fact, it is raining most of the time in the film.
In conclusion, the film is extremely symbolic, with lots of references to religion – Christianity.
Se7en is not about the murders of the chase, but about all that is bleak and disturbing in modern life, about moral decay, about those things that go bump in the night of the soul.
Section B: Evaluation.
‘TV always presents religious people as out of touch with the modern world.’
I don’t think that Television necessarily presents religious people as out of touch all the time. It does in some ways but doesn’t in other ways. For instance, ‘Songs of Praise’ can be and probably is quite out of touch. It doesn’t seem to grab interest for a wide range of audience. Instead it contains middle-aged people singing hymns but I doubt people want to watch other people singing hymns on television. Although with programmes such as ‘Vicar of Dibley’ and ‘Father Ted’, they seem very much in touch. They’re both funny comedy programmes with ‘Vicar of Dibley’ starring guests such as Kylie Minogue on the programme. Although I can see how someone may think TV always presents religious people as out of touch because in some senses a lot of the programmes are. The Heaven & Earth Show could be perceived as boring because some people may not want to hear about celebrities in a moral/religious light, nor would these people find the phone in discussion topics of any interest. Even with something like ‘Father Ted’ they could say that the characters are funny because of their naivety due to lack of knowledge and touch with the modern world!
