Immersive Story Worlds

Text study, the week before Christmas, last year. My colleagues and I were discussing how people generally seem to be more open to the idea of miracles around this time of year, and I make a passing comment about everybody needing a Father Clarence at some point in their life.

Andy's eyes go wide in dawning realization, he snaps his fingers, points at me and says "You watch All My Children!"

Busted!

Wayne's eyes go wide in disbelief as he blurts out "YOU watch a soap?" This information apparently rocked his world, as every time he saw me over the next month, he would shake his head and chuckle and mutter something about not being able to believe it, still.

But yes, I watch All My Children, a fact I don't quickly reveal about myself because it tends to solicit responses like Wayne's. Apparently, many find it a quirk in my character that goes against type.

But I watch for many reasons. I watch because, growing up, I watched All My Children with my mother and/or grandmother every lunch hour that I was home sick or on vacation from school. I watch because my grandmother still watches All My Children every day, and it's a area of conversation in which this amazing woman who claims she "don't know much of nothin" is still the expert and can school her overeducated grandaughter.

I watch because, by its very name (and the poem that used to be in the opening credits), All My Children presumes God as an omnipresent (if unseen) character, and it even occasionally engages the God stuff directly (usually around Christmastime, with the help of Father Clarence).

I watch because soaps get human sin and dysfunction. Certainly, they kick it up a notch. But honestly, after three years in the parish, it's only a notch or two beyond the kind of stuff that shakes down in real life. So it's - weirdly - kind of a relief and somewhat normalizing to watch and realize, this is just how people are. And oddly cathartic to see lives that are messy or melting down that I am no way responsible to help sort out.

I watch because soaps get tragedy and comedy, fall and redemption. I watch because All My Children, at its best, is true to its genre - it is operatic, dealing in archetypes, telling an epic story that is far greater than the sum of its parts. In the end, then, I love All My Children for the same reasons I love Harry Potter, the same reasons I love Star Wars - because I am a literary nerd and a well-told epic tale sucks me in every time.

Turns out, I am not the only one. Thanks to Mary's blog, I found out there is an MIT doctoral student actually writing their PhD dissertation on soaps, claiming they are one of the few "immersive story worlds" in our media culture right now (the other main two being DC or Marvel comics, and professional wrestling). Immersive story worlds, the author explains, are "narratives that are developed over time with a large volume of characters and text. Many of the reasons why people are attracted to these narratives deal with the depth and breadth of these stories and the feeling that these narratives are immortal."

In other words, in the face of our own fragility and finitude, we like to immerse ourselves in and yoke ourselves to stories that are bigger than ourselves, meta-narratives whose apparent immortality give us some sense of assurance that our story will carry on, even after we ourselves have returned to the dust from which we came.

I think this doctoral student is right on, and I think there are clear implications for the gospel in this line of thinking. After all, the great history of God's people, of God's desire to bring life and salvation to "all my children," is another immortal meta-narrative to which many of us yoke ourselves. But I'm not so sure we Christians, at least, immerse ourselves in that narrative in the same way.

I think our Jewish brothers and sisters do a much better job of this. I have admittedly limited experiences of observing Shabbat, but every time I have been overwhelmed by how alive the Scriptures seeemed to be within the worshipping community. It's not ancient history, it's immersive story world, it's ongoing meta-narrative of which they are very much a part.

By contrast, in much of the Christian worship I have experienced, the Scriptures feel like dead words on a page. Not that we don't take them seriously, not that we don't treat them reverently and read them with our slow, sober NPR voices. But they're just not alive in the same way among the body of worshippers. I'd like to blame it on the Joel Osteens and Joyce Meyers of the world, with their prosperity gospel and self-help sermons, turning the Bible into a glorified reference and rule book. But I think the problem predates them.

And while I'm not totally sure how to convince others to do this, how to get them to "get" it, I have a feeling in my gut that says re-immersing ourselves in the great story, reclaiming the living Word in our worship, is what we who call ourselves the Christian people of God ought to be up to. I have a feeling in my gut that says seeing ourselves as interconnected players in a story much bigger than our own might just change the way we live out our interactions with all of God's children today.

Peace,
Catrina

PS - I saw Juno tonight at The Campus. Some of the dialogue felt like it was trying a little too hard to be clever, but other than that, it was a well-done dark comedy. Bonus points for apparently taking place in Minnesota (never tells you where Juno actually lives, but based on the contextual references, I'm guessing the town is a stand-in for Elk River). Thumbs up.