Yeah, I can get how that sounds bad on paper. Maybe it even is bad. I think the reason that, for me, it doesn't set of OMG STEREOTYPE alarms is the way his religion is portrayed within the show.
As someone who's nonreligious and even actively hostile to using it as a moral barometer in social contexts the way Ellison does, I'm still convinced by both his faith and his existence as a rational and moral person independent of that fact, even though it informs his behaviour (or rather, he uses it to understand his behaviour).
It's interesting to me because generally if you're going to have a religious character on television, they are either Wrong and Short-Sighted and Judgemental, or they are Magically Right because it's God and being Religious makes you Better.
And I really don't feel that Agent Ellison comes down on one side or the other of that fence. I never get the sense he's moral because he's religious. In fact I get the sense that he recommits in some ways to his faith because of the events he witnesses, but that he doesn't use his faith as an excuse to simplify them. He uses it as a framework through which to understand his world and his own instinctive reactions to it, but never a rigid framework, and never to the detriment of rationality?
Like, I'm sure other arguments exist, and as I said, I'm not even sure they'd be wrong. But I guess that's why I actually like the super religious aspect of it. Because as a non-religious person he's one of the few super religious characters from an essentially conservative religious background who actually makes me want to understand that mentality and even respect it?
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Date: 2009-01-01 03:37 am (UTC)As someone who's nonreligious and even actively hostile to using it as a moral barometer in social contexts the way Ellison does, I'm still convinced by both his faith and his existence as a rational and moral person independent of that fact, even though it informs his behaviour (or rather, he uses it to understand his behaviour).
It's interesting to me because generally if you're going to have a religious character on television, they are either Wrong and Short-Sighted and Judgemental, or they are Magically Right because it's God and being Religious makes you Better.
And I really don't feel that Agent Ellison comes down on one side or the other of that fence. I never get the sense he's moral because he's religious. In fact I get the sense that he recommits in some ways to his faith because of the events he witnesses, but that he doesn't use his faith as an excuse to simplify them. He uses it as a framework through which to understand his world and his own instinctive reactions to it, but never a rigid framework, and never to the detriment of rationality?
Like, I'm sure other arguments exist, and as I said, I'm not even sure they'd be wrong. But I guess that's why I actually like the super religious aspect of it. Because as a non-religious person he's one of the few super religious characters from an essentially conservative religious background who actually makes me want to understand that mentality and even respect it?