Why? Because my wife liked the venue, we both wanted a traditional ceremony, and we thought it would be a better fit with our families, many of whom are devout Christians.
Fortunately the Japanese don’t feel like they are othering, or appropriating or anything like that. They just want to enjoy something, something different.
But Christianity isn’t the default, secular is the default. When there are identifiably Christian characters, they are often some cringey stereotype (the religious clique in “Easy A”, for example). See also the link about “Hollywood’s religion problem” for many more examples. Hollywood clearly, starkly distinguishes between “normal” characters and “Christian” characters.
> Furthermore, given the sheer imbalance of identities in the country, it’s a disingenuous to claim that say Batman is equally likely to be Zoroastrian, because he’s not explicitly stated not to be.
Right, because that would be unjust. Justice demands proportional representation, and you can’t have proportional representation and equal representation. If I create a cult tomorrow I shouldn’t have the same representation as Atheists or Hindus, who constitute a much larger share of the country.
Says whom?
Not-strongly-denominational non-to-weakly (note the “a”; not a typo for “weekly”) practicing Christian, or similarly weakly-attached Jewish, seems to be the norm, outside of showed focussing on a distinct and different subculture.
> When there are identifiably Christian characters, they are often some cringey stereotype
I don't think that's really all that much more true than other identities, and it tends to be most true in the same genres and places that there same thing is done with other, including nonreligious identities. I mean, its probably true of most identities in most of TV and film, but that’s Sturgeon’s Law, not a particular problem of Christian characters.
I suspect just about every avid connoisseur of American media who isn’t out to peddle a narrative, but I didn’t do a survey at our last quarterly meeting so I can’t tell for sure. :)
> Not-strongly-denominational non-to-weakly (note the “a”; not a typo for “weekly”) practicing Christian, or similarly weakly-attached Jewish, seems to be the norm, outside of showed focussing on a distinct and different subculture.
Of the characters who are identifiably religious I could agree that Christians and Jews are a majority, but I strongly suspect that they outnumber irreligious characters.
Consider that the mainstay of virtually all pop culture are drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex, most or all of which are embraced by the “normal” characters but taboo among American Christians. When a character is identifiably Christian, they are almost always portrayed as judgmental of those things, which is to say they contrast from the “normal” characters. The default has to be some identity which jives with the popular culture, and since Christian ethos are incompatible with the bread and butter of pop culture, I am certain that the default is not Christian.
> I don't think that's really all that much more true than other identities
It seems to be different for the irreligious identities. Pop culture doesn’t rarely leans on cliches to identify a character that doesn’t believe, because it doesn’t need to, they are the default. But yes, I agree that for other identities, writers need to do something to indicate the identity and per Sturgeon’s Law (TIL, thanks) most of that is lazy stereotyping.
Leaving aside the question of whether those are the mainstays of popular culture (the traditional formulation would drop alcohol and add rock-and-roll), that seems...distorted.
While attitudes on some of those things differ between American Christians and the general public, it doesn't really seem at all defensible to claim that either drugs, alcohol, or premarital sex are “taboo” among America Christians, generally.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/31/half-of-u-s...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/26/religious-a...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/06/americans-d...
Anecdotally, I also ran this past my wife and a few friends and the consensus was pretty unanimous that the default character since at least the early 90s was secular. I did a little Googling for something more authoritative but couldn't find anything. It's an interesting question in any case.
You seem to believe that in your face conservative white evangelical Protestants are the only Christians. This speaks more to your own biases than society’s.
Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the most popular choice. There is simply no way to square your idea that nonreligious is the default when over 70% of Americans identify as Christian.[0]
As for representation, I have no way verifying this, but I suspect there are more Roman Catholic characters in American film and television than conservative white evangelicals Protestants. If for no other reason than mass, iconography, and religious tchotchkes photography well. Hell, Catholics have the entire horror genre on lock. WEPs have what? Footloose?
GP is talking about representation in film. That's what this whole subthread is about.
Not true.
> there's no reason to believe that the character is anything except the most common case in society
Not true.
You are simply throwing out baseless assertions.
I can tell this, because you’ve never considered what representation means to you.
You crow about how being the default isn’t representation, but you have nothing to back that statement up except your hurt feelings, because it doesn’t even hold up to even a cursorily examination of popular culture, or history as it’s commonly taught.
Wrong. Looks like your psychic powers need a lot of work.
But thanks for further weakening your "case" with more baseless assertions.
Furthermore, I checked your profile and it looks like this describes your background. Ironic.
> I can tell this, because you’ve never considered what representation means to you.
1. This is a non-sequitur.
2. This is just some brazen projection on your part, as your comments in this discussion make clear. You're the one who comically equated population statistics with arts & media representation, which proves you haven't given much thought to the matter at all.
> how being the default isn’t representation
The point is that it isn't the default in film. Maybe take a deep breath and try reading the thread again?
> you have nothing to back that statement up except your hurt feelings, because it doesn’t even hold up to even a cursorily examination
More brazen projection on your part, given that you've been utterly unable to substantiate any of your baseless claims, despite being prompted multiple (!) times to do so, not just by me.
> it doesn’t even hold up to even a cursorily examination of popular culture, or history
Oh boy. Are you really going to claim that arts & media representation has always reflected population statistics? Your claims just keep getting more bizarre.
I’d wish you’d luck, but I honestly don’t care about irrelevant people.
I accept your concession.
I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus", etc but carry on.
> Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the most popular choice.
More popular choice of what? Music? Films? Television?
> There is simply no way to square your idea that nonreligious is the default when over 70% of Americans identify as Christian.
Sure there is. The simplest conceivable explanation is that Hollywood doesn't represent a cross-section of the United States; that Hollywood skews more secular, and that those biases are what get represented in film. I suspect it's a bit more complex than that; I think the fact that the upper classes in general skew secular has a fair bit to do with it (not only the people who create the content, but also the people for whom the content is created). However, that's harder for me to defend.
> As for representation, I have no way verifying this, but I suspect there are more Roman Catholic characters in American film and television than conservative white evangelicals Protestants. If for no other reason than mass, iconography, and religious tchotchkes photography well. Hell, Catholics have the entire horror genre on lock. WEPs have what? Footloose?
I don't doubt this. I'm really not sure why you're framing this as a Catholic vs Protestant thing. I get the feeling you think I'm using "Christian" to mean "white evangelical protestant", but for the life of me I can't figure out why.
Of AMERICANS. I even gave you a link. Do the minimum amount of work.
> I don't doubt this. I'm really not sure why you're framing this as a Catholic vs Protestant thing. I get the feeling you think I'm using "Christian" to mean "white evangelical protestant", but for the life of me I can't figure out why
Because all the examples you give are coded that way. You could have used any of numerous examples of explicitly observing Christians in media that aren’t WEPs, but that’s not what you went with
Even if no one of a non-Christian background celebrated secular Christmas, “celebrating secular Christmas” still wouldn’t suffice to identify someone as Christian, but rather as either Christian or “from a Christian background”.
And of course lots of people from Jewish, Hindu, secular etc backgrounds also celebrate secular Christmas, as many have attested in this thread.
Maybe that is what you're debating. It was only one example that I gave in my original post.
It seems to me that a lot of people who grew up in the dominant culture of the US are jumping to defend Christmas as a wholly secular thing. It would be interesting to watch if it weren't so typical.
You know, because the context of the thread is characters’ religious identities.
Maybe in US it’s more strongly christian. But not necessarily everywhere.