The ultimate non-sense of Midnight Mass

First post here.

SPOILERALERTSPOILERALERTSPOILERALERT

If you are interested in watching the Netflix series Midnight Mass and don’t want to be spoiled – GO. AWAY.

There.

First of all, let me just say that while there were some good scenes in this series with moderately informed and realistic conversations about religious matters, there were enough fundamental plot holes, loose ends, and a basic metaphysical vacuum that renders it, in my mind, about a 5/10. I do think if it were a couple of episodes shorter, that tightening might have pushed it up to a 6. But nothing higher, given some basic problems.

There’s a lot that could be said about the theological and religious aspects of this series (and no, those are not the same thing). Some bullet points first:

• Religious material is a big part of this series. Obviously. But it’s not just in the scenery. Characters talk about spiritual matters a lot. I understand that creator and writer Mike Flanagan is known for his monologues, and if so, well he continues his streak with Midnight Mass. There are quite a few monologues, most of them on matters of faith, here. Free will and the afterlife get the most attention. That’s good to see and hear.
• Scripture all over the place. Quoted near and far – usually to rationalize nefarious deeds, though. Which is also not unrealistic, is it?
• There’s good use of certain Christian elements: for example the fact that angels, in Scripture, are not encountered as fluffy bunnies in space, but as strange, mysterious beings who prompt, you know, fear.
• The series takes place over Lent, with the primary events from Ash Wednesday to Easter Vigil er….Midnight Mass?

(Before I get into the plot, Iet me say that I thought almost all of the actors were quite good – Hamish Linklater as Fr. Paul is just fantastic, working his interesting, watchable face, his persona only vaguely, slightly odd at first, nailing a wise pastoral, non-smarmy tone, and then increasingly, subtly, more growing intense as time goes on.)

Let’s be forthright about the plot, offered here, not as it’s experienced in the series, but just in terms of the basics that we eventually learn.

And remember….spoilers ahead.

While on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the elderly and a little senile Monsignor Pruitt wanders from his tour group in Jerusalem into the desert (which is depicted as a windswept mass of sand….which is not what the “wilderness” or desert around Jerusalem looks like. It’s not the Sahara, in other words.)

He ends up in a cave where he’s attacked by a winged creature, which kills him, drinks his blood, then shares blood back with him.

Presto!

Pruitt figures out (off stage) that this is giving him eternal physical life. So he returns to Crockett Island, youthful now, presenting himself as Father Paul Hill, Pruitt’s temporary replacement. Somehow – somehow  – he has smuggled this creature back in a large trunk

(How did he convince the creature to come? How the hell did he get past any borders with a huge winged creature in a trunk? How did he figure out what was happening and what the consequences were?)

…and come up with a plan to share, as it were, this perverted Good News with the people of Crockett Island – one person in particular – which he does, without them knowing, by spiking Communion wine with blood.

Obviously dreamed up before Covid wiped out Communion under both species, right?

So, while the word “vampire” is not mentioned in the series, and the infected people don’t react to holy water or crosses the way vampiric lore has described – although they do react to sunshine, violently – this is what is happening. Infected with this blood, human beings not only have eternal physical life, but they also de-age (how far is left unsaid), and develop, of course, a deep hunger for blood. An addiction, as it were.

Things…do not go well.

There’s a lot at play here.

First, we have the theme of addiction and free will, working with the first main character we see, Riley, a recovering alcoholic, who killed a young woman in a drunken driving accident.

Secondly, we have the question of religion and control.

So – is Midnight Mass anti-religious? Anti-Catholic?

I don’t think so, although I suppose you could see it as such. You could make the case. I’ll discuss it with you.

But the way I looked at it – the authentically spiritual people in Midnight Mass are, indeed, good, sincere people. Pruitt was a good pastor. Beloved.

Once bitten, however, now Fr. Paul can use religion for his own end, which is a strange mix of selfishness, hunger and delusion. The piece ends up being a warning, not about religion in general, but about those who would manipulate other human beings by using religion – and showing, really, how easy it is to do just that.

Flanagan has said that two of his major inspirations here were Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and the Jonestown massacre.

This post could be a lot longer, and maybe I’ll come back to it, but I might as well hone in on what I thought were the major issues, not in terms of being “offensive” or anything like that – but in terms of coherence and thematic integrity.

First is this:

As I said, traditional vampire lore is a part of Midnight Mass, but creatively so. But the way it works itself out – since holy water, crosses, wooden stakes or silver bullets have apparently no power against this creature in this world, we are left wondering – is there any way to fight back against this force, either in its winged-creature state or as it manifests itself in humans? Or does it just come, feed on you or infect you, and there you are until you get burned up in the sun?

In human experience, there is no “evil” against which we are helpless. In the cosmology of good and evil, the two can battle it out. Evil, while it does spread (see Genesis 1-11), does so, not in the sense that a disease spreads, but via human will and choice. Which can then be turned to fight the evil, both within ourselves and without.

Even, as the series touches on, can addiction be fought this way. And it does work its way thematically through the piece as in the end, Riley himself is able to make a choice after he’s infected – a choice that results in his own reconciliation  with his past and, he trusts, rescue for the community, and then in the very end, his parents are able to dig deeply and say no to the impulses and hunger that the blood has sent coursing through their systems.

But other than that – without the traditional vampire-fighting tools or anything to replace them? How do we fight this? What’s the battle all about?

It’s a point brought out with even more force by a final monologue by a dying character.

Erin is one of our major characters – a young, single, pregnant woman, like Riley (her former high school flame), returned to the island after a turbulent life on the mainland. She’s one of the island’s schoolteachers.

At one point, Erin and Riley trade very long monologues about life after death. Riley makes his Eastern-we-are-all-particles-of-a-great-whole-and-that’s-where-we’ll-go speech and then Erin, for her part, meets him with a rather lovely description of heaven – a heaven she trusts her mysteriously disappeared unborn baby is dwelling in. She ends up warmly affirming that heaven is about being known and loved forever.

The scene includes Erin, have experienced the mysterious and devastating loss of her unborn child, inviting Riley, finding no redemption for his sin of killing the young woman, to pray with her. It’s quite moving, as they stand and join hands and she prays:

Please God, help me to understand. Mercy. Please have mercy on us. Our sorrow is too much. It’s too much. Mercy….

…and then pray the Lord’s prayer together.

Well, then, poor Erin. On the fateful night of the Easter Vigil, she, along with loads of others, is part of the carnage unleashed by Fr. Paul and the winged creature under the promise of “eternal life.” She’s lying there dying, looking up at the stars, and we get a flashback to her conversation with Riley, only this time, Erin’s speech is….basically Riley’s. She says things like…

There is no me…..there never was….God is the one and the cosmos and we are the cosmos…We are the cosmos…dreaming of itself…life is dreaming of myself and I always forget my dreams so I’ll forget this…there is no time..there is no death…it’s a wish made again and again…I am everything…I am all…I am that I am….

Well then…who cares?

If we’re all just like atoms being recycled from life form to life form to physical entity in an endless circle of conservation of energy, and that’s all this is about…

What did we just watch and why? Why the drama?

There’s no good, there’s no evil, there’s just existence, why should we care? In this cosmos, there’s no room for anything like love, hate, fear, sacrifice, commitment or even a reason to run from something that’s trying to drain the blood from your arteries.

Shrug.

What made it all the more appalling to me was that the music playing under Annie’s dying Monologue-of-Brahma was – wait for it – Were You There?

Yes, a hymn about the self-giving love of Jesus, that Mercy for which she was praying earlier, is the soundtrack of a woman’s soul turning from a conviction of the primacy of love, both divine and human, to an indifferent scattering of atoms to the stars. What was actually a little distressing to me was that the Dying Erin corrects her Sad-But-Hopeful-Former-Self by noting that her error was focusing on the self – “myself” – when picturing life after death. The point being, I suppose, the Eastern vision of loss of the illusion of self as the ideal. But to infer that a vision based on love and communion with others, brought to life by the self-giving love of God – is self-centered? That’s disappointing, to say the least. And maybe evidence of a catechetical failure more profound than featuring hot dogs on Ash Wednesday.

So no. I’m not here to bang on Midnight Mass about its use of Catholic imagery – even the Blood of Christ – or whatever it has to say about organized religion. That is what it is, and can be interpreted in various ways.

No, in the end, my major problem with Midnight Mass was about the non-sensical metaphysics, for Erin’s monologue isn’t presented as her insight alone – there’s an authoritative, defining nature about it, and it renders everything that went before empty.

If life is simply an arrangement of elements with no particular value – where’s the value? Why bother to fight, resist or change if nothing is really evil in the end? What’s there to treasure? What’s there to mourn? What do my choices matter? What’s there to care about, protect or defend?

What stories are left to tell?