Should Catholic Feminists Watch The Chosen?
Spoiler alert: yes. Here's why.
Two weeks ago I paid a college student an absurd amount of money so that my husband and I could sit in a dark movie theater, drink overpriced wine, eat popcorn with “butter topping”, and watch John the Baptist get killed.
I’m very used to what I like to call Shitty Christian TV1. In fact, I’m so used to it that when someone first mentioned a TV show about Jesus to me my eyes rolled so far to the heavens I’m honestly surprised they didn’t get stuck there. I could just see it: the low production quality, the corny Gospel proclamations, the inaccurate aesthetics. I don’t know what it is about people who love Jesus and people who love well-scripted television but it’s often felt to me like those are two separate circles. Finally, though, they seem to have gently slipped into a very small Venn diagram, and in the middle lies The Chosen.
If you’ve been living under a rock, The Chosen is a crowdfunded, multi-season television show about the life of Jesus. It’s currently on season four, and it is wildly popular. This is partly due to the fact that it’s 100% free on the Chosen app, but you can also pay to see episodes early on the big screen.
But here’s a question to chew on: should Catholics watch a televised dramatization of the Gospels? One that adds on unverified background information, portrays the apostles as a bunch of whining sinners, needs to do some accent work, and has what some would call a Protestant view of Mary?