John Mihelich, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Justice
Studies
University of Idaho
Jennifer Gatzke, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Justice
Studies
University of Idaho
Abstract
Through an analysis of the
text of Northern Exposure, this paper
discusses its spiritual narrative and argues that it resonates with broader
emerging patterns of spiritual questing in the United States. Drawing from key characters and spiritual
themes from several episodes, we delineate four alternative modes of “reflexive
spirituality” and various ways individuals and spiritual communities reconcile
spiritual meaning with the challenges of modernity.” The analysis both reveals the role of popular culture in portraying
and encoding religious meaning and patterns of religiosity and enhances the broader
understanding of reflexive spirituality.
[1] In recalling the airing
of the television show Northern Exposure (NE), viewers might remember a number
of things, but anyone with a recollection of the programme probably remembers
some of the religious themes woven throughout the storyline. Those with better recall may remember
how the show deconstructed and reconstructed religious ideas from a number of
traditions as it manipulated history, tradition, ritual and symbols to fit the
context and experience of the fictional lives of characters residing in
“Cicely,” Alaska. The successful
television series aired from 1990 to 1995, but the programme’s popularity
persists many years after cancellation as dedicated fans continue to enjoy
reruns, recorded episodes on VHS or the recently released first four seasons
available on DVD. Among the
thousands of continuing NE fans,
many refer to the program on a daily basis to interpret, endure, and celebrate
their everyday experience. The
text and its interpreted themes have become an essential part of their personal
narratives, and fans actively construct audience practices ranging from annual
gatherings to online discussion groups through which they interact with other
fans of the show. Some of these
fans understand their NE practice
to be of a spiritual nature and use spiritual discourse to describe their
experience with NE and its role in
assisting them to interpret their experience. As such, NE represents one confluence of popular culture, audience practice, and contemporary
patterns of religiosity in the quest for meaning.
[2] The quest for religious
or spiritual meaning in the United States today involves a good degree of
individualized focus on the self and its transformation (for personal religion,
see, for example, Bell 1977; Loy 1997; Roof 2001; Swatos and Christiano 1999;
Wuthnow 1998. On self, identity and consumption see, for example, Beck 1992;
Bocock 1993; Csordas 1997; Giddens 1991; Hall 1992; McRobbie 1994; Sweetman
2003; Wagner 1993.). The quest
takes place in a context of postmodernity with its dissociation of symbols from
their referents, the decentering of authority, and the globalization of
culture, consumerism, and information (Csordas 1997, cited in Roof 2001, 141). In this context, cultural narratives,
including historical religious ones, become decentered, open to reframing
through manipulation, reflection and recombination. Wade Clark Roof identifies one emerging form of spiritual
questing, and its confrontation with the effects of modernity, as “reflexive
spirituality” which requires intentional engagement on the part of individuals
reflecting on the plurality of possibilities and the “positioned nature of all
our perspectives” as they consider how a variety of narratives may contribute
to their direct personal religious experience (Roof 2001, 75). Along with individual personal
reframing, denominations, churches, congregations, and other religious groups
and organizations engage in reframing their mythologies and interpretations to
accommodate broader social change and the expectations of questers. As Peter Berger anticipated in his
discussion of the emerging “market situation” of religion in the throes of
secularization, a “spiritual marketplace” has emerged with providers and
consumers negotiating spiritual terrain (Berger 1967; Roof 2001).
[3] The spiritual terrain in
the contemporary United States includes a number of religious producers, each
with their own narrative to parlay, and a multitude of individuals making often
confounding spiritual choices in search of meaning. In framing a personal religious narrative, reflexive
spirituality requires each individual to negotiate among a variety of religious
“truth” claims and confront a rationalized social context that often does not
treat spiritual pursuit kindly. The challenge is to seek out and select from whatever sources are
available for spiritual “wisdom” to construct a personal religious narrative
that is relevant, convincing and meaningful in the face of pluralism. The reflexive narrative assumes and
embraces, rather than shrinks from, fluidity and uncertainty. In an expansive quest for spiritual
sources, some people have found spiritual relevance in popular culture. Of the many forms of popular culture that
engage spiritual themes, among television programs NE may be the most comprehensive and diverse, and it
certainly resonates with broader cultural patterns of religiosity. In this paper, our textual analysis
demonstrates how NE provides an
important spiritual cultural resource as it effectively represents, or models,
the process of reflexive spirituality.
[4] NE’s narrative frequently references Joseph Campbell,
the late scholar of mythic traditions, who argued that the contemporary world
needs new metaphoric symbolization, a reinvigorated mythology, and insists that
artists share in the calling to provide such bases for people (Campbell 2001, 6).
The traditional religious formulations and symbols represented in NE are obvious—Judaism, animism, Native American
spirituality, Christianity, Buddhism, etc., but the text as representing a new religious
practice itself, one of reflexive spirituality, is not explicitly fully
recognizable. NE formulates a
quest for spiritual meaning shaped by a cultural emphasis on individualism and
self transformation in a context of pluralism and rationalization that celebrates
spiritual uncertainty and fluidity. As such, the artists that created NE spawned, perhaps unintentionally and unbeknownst to
them, a text offering a narrative, a “creative mythology” (Mihelich 2006) about
modern meaning-making, that resonates with many Americans engaged in reflexive
spirituality. The broader
sociological explication of contemporary religious patterns, particularly
reflexive spirituality, helps us identify the narrative many NE fans have found satisfying. In doing so, we discover some of the social and spiritual
relevance of the text of NE, and, by
extension, popular culture in general. In the process, our analysis of the text enhances the understanding of an
important emerging mode of relating to religion in the United States.
A Mythology of the Quest
[5] Robert Wuthnow commented
that, as they discussed the decline of the sacred in response to secularization
in the United States, scholars “failed to see how understandings of the sacred
were changing” (Wuthnow 1998, 3). Organized religion and a fervent interest in spirituality have
persisted, regardless of the much debated effects of secularization, perhaps
because “the existential questions which confront all cultures in the demand
for meanings” endure (Bell 1977, 441). Daniel Bell predicted the return of the sacred in new religious modes
and indicated that sustainable religious discourses would entail “a return to
some mythic … modes of thought” that challenge disenchantment by looking to the
past and transforming traditional religious modes into congruency that links
the past with current direct personal experience—a direct experience of
the sacred that generates existential meaning (Bell 1977, 445).
[6] Enduring existential
questions provide at least some of the energy for religious reformulation
unfolding in a “market situation” (Berger 1967) as religious choices expand
along with the “voluntaristic adoption of sacred themes and ideas” (Hills 2000,
76; see also Luckmann 1967; Roof 2001; Wuthnow 1998). Religion “in a mediated and consumption oriented society”
becomes a “cultural resource broadly available to the masses” through the “spiritual marketplace” (Roof
2001, 75, 81, italics in original). In this context, Wade Clark Roof explains the rise of a “quest culture” as personal religious narrative style shifts from one based on
established religious authority to one premised on the understandings arrived
at by ordinary people in their individual search for religious meaning. Religion becomes a cultural resource to
be engaged and consumed for subjective gratification like other resources in
consumer society. The problem
people face in “quest culture” is finding a suitable and “sustainable
discourse” that is both spiritual and responsive to their existential concerns
and their subjective experiential desires (Roof 2001, 59, referencing Ronald
Inglehart 1990).
[7] For some people, the
quest takes the form of a “reflexive spirituality” whereby individuals cobble
together, “a religious world from available images, symbols, moral codes, and
doctrines” and, through their agency, define and shape “what is considered to
be religiously meaningful” in a “situation encouraging a more deliberate,
engaging effort on people’s part for their own spiritual formation” (Roof 2001,
75). In the “highly reflexive act”
of “reframing,” people use religious speech and symbols to “weave a coherent
narrative of meaning and life… a comprehensive belief system, embodied in myth,
symbol, ritual and narrative” that “structures human experience, emotions and
conceptions of the self in relation to a larger world” (Roof 2001, 169,
174).
[8] People engage in
reflexive spirituality as a move toward constructing a personal religious
narrative, culled from the spiritual formulations of traditions, providers and
personal history, characterized by a dynamic fluidity and requiring a high
level of maintenance. The fluidity
and freedom of reflexive spirituality engender a degree of uncertainty and a
pursuit for groundedness in broader cultural discourse (Roof 2001). Many people in their spiritual quest stay anchored to a
traditional denomination while others keep at least a line attached to
traditional, Christian or otherwise, narratives (Roof 2001, 209). Others cobble together pieces of
several culturally available religious narratives, some of which are also
recent innovations, but for Roof reflexive spirituality remains “grounded” in
existing traditions and symbols. Kelly Besecke argues that reflexive spirituality is not simply,
following Roof, a “personal way of relating to religion,” nor is it a
“tradition-eschewing method of personal spiritual fulfillment” as individual
religion is conceptualized by Wuthnow (Besecke 2001, 368). She argues that reflexive spirituality offers
a language in that people use “the
themes and assumptions of reflexive spirituality,” the self-directed approach
and critical engagement with pluralism and its variety of religious meanings,
“to engage with each other in talk
about meaning in the modern world” (2001, 367, emphasis added). People employ the language of reflexive
spirituality, both individually and in groups, to communicate about
transcendent meaning and affirm its importance. The language recognizes “wisdom” of religious traditions,
rather than discarding them, and “is primarily a method of making religious
traditions meaningful for a rationalized social context” (Besecke 2001,
368). The “method,” then, is a
resource through which people, united by a common language, can creatively
discover the relevance of religious ideas in a rational world and maintain a
groundedness in a variety of spiritual traditions while reconciling reason and
rationality with spirituality.
[9] The deliberate and
engaging reflection and exploration of spiritual alternatives sets reflexive
spirituality apart from other contemporary trends in religiosity such as the
fervent adherence to tradition or the adaptations of denominationalism,
fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Its open-endedness brings a broader cultural array of symbols to bear on
questions of meaning and embraces pluralism with relativity. In quest culture, Roof argues, religion
is being reformulated, reinforcing “the view that…religious consciousness
involves an active process of meaning making, of interpreting one’s own
situation in relation to media discourses as well as those in traditional religious institutions” (Roof 2001,
69-70, italics added). Popular
culture partially assumes some of the functions religious myth and ritual once
held as the “Visual scripts provoke powerful moments of reflection about characters
and situations and make possible the extension of those reflections to people’s
own lives” (Roof 2001, 70).
[10] Contrary to the
predictions of secularization theorists, many researchers have argued that
continued religiosity in the U.S. demonstrates that, while modernity has
exerted a force of change in modes of relating to religion, spirituality and
rationality are not necessarily incompatible. Both Roof and Besecke conceptualizations
of reflexive spirituality engage with this challenge of finding spiritual meaning
in a context of pluralism, rationality and the conditions of modernity. Our textual analysis addresses the mode
of reflexive spirituality and its confrontation with the forces of modernity in
two ways. First, it reveals how NE,
as a media discourse, illustrates Roof’s and Besecke’s ideas and delineates
four modes of reflexive spirituality. Second, our analysis extends their work
by theorizing its application to fans’ interaction with forms of popular
culture that shape their spiritual quest, and it further explicates the
creative potential for reflexive spirituality to reconcile spirituality and
rationality. Popular culture and the artists who contribute to its creation can
become, in essence, suppliers in the spiritual marketplace. Also, while NE demonstrates both how traditions can be reframed and
how people can use the language of reflexive spirituality to reconcile
spirituality with rationality, the text demonstrates that religious ideas can
be both applied to and emanate from everyday experience. This is an important aspect of
reflexive spirituality as people draw from a variety of religious ideas and
meanings and test the boundaries between the spiritual, historically the
purview of traditions, by locating spiritual meaning in creative and everyday
experiences.
[11] The discovery of
spiritual meanings in everyday experience subject to the conditions of
rationality reveals the relevance of sacred ideas contained in traditional
religious narratives and demonstrates that everyday practice and experience
encompasses such ideas conceived as sacred.
In the process, reflexive
spirituality renders mute the discord between spirituality and
rationality. NE puts a narrative to this practice and provides one of
the earliest recognizable popular narratives symbolically encoding reflexive
spirituality. In constructing its
narrative for relating to transcendent meaning, NE depicts at least four modes of engaging in reflexive
spirituality through the characters of Joel, Chris, Ed and Marilyn and represents
the reflexive manipulation and consideration of symbols and traditions in
episode plots. People encountering
their own reflexive spirituality, from the early 1990s on, could find in NE a narrative product, a cultural resource, with which
to engage as they frame and reframe a personal spiritual narrative. In the analysis of the narrative of NE, we, like Bell, find a reemergence of “the power of
myth” and find that popular culture can act as an intermediary between
traditional religious mythology, people’s experience in a rationalized world,
and the individual construction of religious narrative (Bell 1977, 446).
Methods
[12] Our interpretation of
the text of NE emerges from a
broader study of a group of NE fans who actively pursue the religious significances of the text. We observed and engaged in NE-oriented online discussion groups.[1] We examined over 100 fan profiles in NE websites that specifically addressed questions of religious and
spiritual meaning, and we collected 35 of our own surveys with qualitative
information from both online participants and attendees at NE events we participated in including Moose Days and
Snowfest, in Roslyn, Washington, where many of the episodes were filmed. We also conducted in-depth interviews
with NE fans and directed
discussions with focus groups. In
these formats we talked with over 25 NE fans about their interpretations of the show and its meaning in their
lives. It
should be noted that one of the authors of this paper is a NE fan. The
liminality involved in the status of fan-scholar, sometimes with contradictory
influences, advantaged this research. The NE fan-scholar contributed as a fan subjectivity during the interview process, and
that perspective, unapologetically, also continuously informed that author’s
contributions to this essay (for a discussion of fan-scholar issues, see Hills
2002).
[13] In this paper we focus
on a textual analysis of NE. Space prohibits the inclusion of an
analysis of fan practice in this essay, but our knowledge of fan practice
informs the analysis of the creative process embodied in this text. However, this textual analysis is
fan-guided as we have privileged particular episodes and scenes discussed by
fans themselves as significant in terms of religious meaning as well as scenes that
reflect the ideas and categories of meaning suggested by fans. We have selected recommended episodes
or scenes from the plethora of options to illustrate key points and condensed
them in detail. Finally, along
with recommending episodes, some fans reviewed and commented on our findings in
a process of dialogic editing (see Cavicchi 1998; Feld 1989, 1990). We have incorporated many of the
suggestions fans offered about the representation of characters, episode
descriptions, and the overall characterization of the show.
Welcome to Cicely
[14] Set in the quirky
fictional town of Cicely Alaska, NE portrays the conflicts, interactions, and existential issues of a diverse group
of characters. Joel, a Jewish New
York doctor with clear leanings toward scientific materialism on matters
outside his own faith, reluctantly practices medicine in the remote Cicely
because of contractual obligations involving his medical school expenses. Chris, a white eccentric
intellectual disk jockey with sporadic and impulsive tendencies, vacillates
between experiencing the numenousity of life
directly and reflecting “objectively” about it. Ed, a young Native Alaskan shaman in training, expresses the
curiosity and naiveté incumbent upon a neophyte spiritual leader. Marilyn, a Native Alaskan woman,
embodies, clearly and assuredly, the presence of existential satisfaction. Maurice, a white consummate capitalist, views the world through his materialism,
rationalism, and ex-Marine bravado masculinity—all tempered by a subtle
curiosity, not quite overwhelmed by his convictions, concerning matters that
lay outside his perceptive realm. Holling, a mysterious but stable and good-hearted white middle-aged bar
owner with a few deep-seated internal conflicts, Shelly, a wide-eyed young,
white Canadian woman
with a wild-child/beauty pageant past who lives with and
then marries a much older Holling,
Maggie, a privileged white prodigal child bush
pilot with a strong-will determination, and Ruth Ann, a middle-aged white shopkeeper with wisdom and strength to dispense it,
rounds out the set of characters. While the show entertains a myriad of themes, its engagement with
religious matters is prominent and is the focus of this analysis. NE consistently portrays the “quests for spirituality,” which, according
to Wade Clark Roof, are driven by “yearnings for a reconstructed interior life …
transcending the given” and involve an “inner awareness” and “values and
meaning beyond oneself” (Roof, 1999, 35). Ed and Chris, in particular, willfully, explicitly and consciously
engage in their own versions of an individual religious quest that frequently
enter the episodes. The process of
Joel’s transformation in spirituality and values, however, provides the
enduring tension for the storyline on religion. The thread of his transformation over the course of the
program hooked many fans and demonstrates the heart of NE’s religious mythology.
Reflexive
Spirituality Cicelean Style
[15] NE differentiates the individual spiritual questing
among its characters while depicting its connectedness with others and
legitimizing the quest itself.
[16] Key characters in NE demonstrate at least four avenues for reflexive
spirituality and individual transformation as they pursue their spiritual paths and help others with their
pursuit. Chris is a religious
explorer. His consciously
reflexive, critically thinking approach offers little certainty or definition,
but it recognizes the importance of the pursuit of the religious realm of human
life. He engages the language of
reflexive spirituality on his radio show as he contemplates religious
traditions, concepts and meanings and provides knowledge about various
religious ideas. He also experiments
with new experiences that might lead toward enlightenment–expanding his
spiritual repertoire to include transcendental meditation, dream manipulation,
Catholicism, monasticism, Hinduism and reincarnation, spirits of nature (elk),
etc. He is a mail-order-minister
versed in eastern traditions, is heavily influenced by Carlos Casteneda and
Trancendentalists, and he has studied religious culture and ritual from
non-western societies.
[17] Ed’s spiritual pursuit
centers on his apprenticeship as a shaman or healer. His is a focused exploration loyal to one tradition, that of
a shaman, but he recognizes that he can learn from other traditions and
incorporate their truths and practices into his own. Leonard, the local tribal healer and Ed’s mentor, helps
young Ed learn about his “call” to be a healer. Because a particular tradition provides the roots for his
quest, Ed finds a degree of certainty and confidence, but he is open to
revision, adaptation and incorporation. He openly embraces the wisdom of a variety of traditions and recognizes
the capacity for all humans to pursue and obtain that wisdom in their own
journey. Leonard taught Ed that he
“has no monopoly on wisdom,” and that everyone can equally access insight. Ed provides his services to both
Natives and non-Natives, and his learning as a spiritual leader continuously
shapes his experience and identity. As an aspiring filmmaker, he uses film and television as his repertoire
of oral tradition and healing stories. Similarly, Marilyn embodies an Alaskan ntive spirituality, representing
one generally “in touch with the old ways” and spiritually centered. She helps people struggling to find
their way by providing insightful stories and allowing them to find the answers
they sought through their own individual processes. Marilyn’s occasional
struggles with ethical dilemmas and spiritual crises require the help of others
in her community and reveal that one’s quest is never complete. While Ed and Marilyn provide important
examples of reflexive spirituality for our analysis, we include them with a
precautionary note. In its portrayal of Ed and Marilyn, two “native”
characters, NE in some ways added
a welcome complexity to the representations of Indians and Alaska natives in
popular culture. The text
represents relatively complex individuals in a contemporary setting, not common
in popular portrayals (See Taylor 1996 and Mihelich 2001). However, Annette Taylor argues that NE, because it presented characters devoid of specific
native cultural contexts, continued the tradition of representing “native”
characters as generic Indians, composite characters devoid of accurate
background information from any particular Indian or Native Alaskan group (1996). Taylor argues that “dismissing NE Exposure’s treatment of Alaska Native cultures …perpetuates
the attitude that native cultures are unimportant and insignificant” (1996,
241). We agree with Taylor’s critique and the history of particular effects
this has had on imagery and knowledge of native people. We extend the critique to NE’s reductionism of ethnic groups and religious
traditions in general even while we acknowledge the creative license of
efficiency often extended to dramatic television as it unfortunately is not
held to the standards of television documentary.
[18] Joel represents yet another
aspect of spiritual questing, although he is not always certain he is on such a
quest. Joel believes that his deep
history and tradition of Judaism has prepared him for any crisis and provides a
stable certainty in existential matters. But he soon realizes that his urban background and scientific mind often
conflict with this tradition, as does the religiously diverse community of
Cicely. Others in the community
often inquire about his traditions, but Joel hesitates to let them into his
exclusive circle of faith. As
Joel’s journey provides the main storyline of the series, many episodes feature
his struggle with his tradition, entertaining audiences with many facets of
Judaism. Over the course of the
program, Joel engages in an “emergent quest” and experiences a spiritual
transformation—a process of awakening to the quest itself and the
capacity to “see” it, late in the series when he became both aware of and consumed
by his spiritual quest. Joel even
“goes native” in the final season of the show when he seeks and experiences a
blended Native American/Buddhist transformation of living in tune with nature,
including his own, and simply “being.”
[19] NE portrays these characters as engaged in individual
quests, but its goes a step further to point out the role of interpersonal
relations in their spiritual discovery. Each character’s quest both plays out in a broader set of relations with
others and is dependent on and informed by those relationships. Ed seeks to develop his own spiritual
understanding to enhance the tradition that formed the base for his
spirituality, but he also strives to be a healer, something that necessarily
engages others, he embraces the mentorship of Leonard, and he seeks
interactions with others through which he can explore of a variety of
traditions. Marilyn provides words
and examples of wisdom from her spirituality to others in times of need, and
she also benefits in a reciprocal way. While Joel is the epitome of the theme of subjective transformation and
he represents both the long-term consequences of reflexive spirituality for a
believer and the difficulties it can present to individual existence as he
struggles to understand his received Jewish tradition, his interactions with
others, as much experiential as intellectual interaction, generate the key
occurrences which force him to confront uncertainty, angst and discontent and
critically reflect on his tradition. Finally, Chris not only engages in his
enthusiastic spiritual exploration, he shares it with others. As a spiritual
guide in Cicely, he performs the community’s non-native spiritual ceremonies
and uses his artwork and his radio broadcast to engage the community in his
quest. Each of these characters vividly demonstrates that reflexive
spirituality and its meanings, while undertaken in and to some degree enabled
by a cultural and spiritual emphasis on individualism, is fundamentally a
social endeavour enabled largely through collaboration, argument, disagreement,
circumstance and meaning construction in interaction with others. This point,
dynamically illustrated in NE,
parallels Besecke’s findings as she illustrates that engagement with others in
reflexive spirituality potentially facilitates the deepening of personal religious
meaning (Besecke 2001, 369-72).
[20] Particularly through the
characters of Chris and Joel, NE brings the focus to the foundational narrative of reflexive spirituality. Chris offers Cicelians a general
analytical narrative for reflexive spirituality dramatized through his
spiritual guidance. He introduces
religious choices, models choice behaviour, and provides other important
analytical tools as he presents religious content as relative, which, although
a useful dialectic, provides less certainty. Chris also models basic individualist tools. He offers his reflections on
traditions, wonders about essences, and tries various things himself—like
spending a week in a monastery. The manner in which Chris presents content, and what he expects from
people who consider that content, emulate the process of reflexive spirituality
that requires the individual to decide what “works” from the range of cultural
religious possibilities under pressure from rationality. Joel reflects the awakening in general to the essence of
the quest—an awakening that stems from a degree of doubt and tentative
uncertainty, the recognition of the value of spirituality and the “soul” in
human experience, and the individualist perspective that the actual content or
symbols used are relative and relevant and irrelevant depending upon personal
choice.
[21] Through the development
of Chris, Marilyn, Ed, and Joel, NE depicts four characters a questing person could identify with and, in the
process, legitimates the questing process itself.
Each of the key characters
turns the spiritual focus on the dominant characteristics of reflexive
spirituality, individualism and the centrality of direct subjective experience,
while making clear that such an endeavor also benefits from interaction, the
basic principle being one of connectedness with others. By its very existence in mass media, NE offers a green light for individualizing religion and
provides the culturally relevant building blocks of religious meanings and
processes. Thus, NE portrays a sort of spiritual “pull yourself up by the
bootstraps” myth, or a “Horatio Alger meets Jesus” scenario of reflexive
spirituality—if tempered a bit by its interactive possibilities.
NE Narrative Guides
[22] The fictional
experiences of NE’s characters
demonstrate a reflexive spirituality that embraces pluralism and its
uncertainty but maintains the relevance of spiritual meaning in a rational
world. Traditional narratives are portrayed and manipulated while the episodes
also demonstrate the novel application of spiritual ideas to everyday
experiences, the innovation of substitutes for traditional symbols and
practices, and the emanation of spiritual meaning from creative forms. Such
manipulation, application and innovation shift the boundaries between
transcendent meaning and mundane experience. An episode about Christmas serves
to introduce NE’s perspective, and
we have selected other episodes to further elucidate key principles for an
effective reflexive spirituality NE style.
[23] “Seoul Mates” (1991) exemplifies
the many episodes that incorporate a variety of references to differing
religious traditions. The episode
opens with Marilyn narrating the Tlinkit story of Raven, a creation story
involving the introduction of light in the world. Shelly becomes homesick for her Catholic Mass, which depicts
another creation story, stating that it just doesn’t feel like a “good old
fashioned Charlie Brown Christmas” without it. Holling asks Chris to do a short Mass to cheer her up, but
Chris admits to being “out of his league” when it comes to such a “heavy duty
ritual,” offering instead to read something in Latin or to provide a Buddhist
chant. Holling later goes to the
church before Shelly, lights candles, and, when Shelly arrives, is dressed
formally and sings “Ave Maria” a cappella in an attempt to simulate the Catholic atmosphere. Meanwhile, Joel tries to enjoy “owning”
the Christmas tree he was denied as a Jewish child, but it does not provide the
“magic” he anticipated so he gives it as a surprise to Maggie who is feeling
homesick and abandoned on Christmas. She smiles in appreciation and wonder at the lit tree. At the end of the episode, Shelly kneels
and prays, and it is evident that Holling has succeeded. Through creating the symbols and ritual
contexts required for individual spiritual replenishment holidays can offer,
the characters assist one another in generating “spiritual” meaning.
[24] The pluralistic
situation is characterized by the co-existence of a number of traditions,
beliefs and practices pointing to, and often claiming, “truth.” The integration of two creation
stories, a Latin or a Buddhist chant as possible substitutes for mass, the
Christmas tree representing a number of sacred and secular holiday meanings,
and the creative methods for generating appropriate meaning establishes a
particular relationship to and understanding of the pluralistic situation.
Tradition is relativized and repositioned and symbols are dissociated from
context and recombined in novel ways alongside innovative means to mark the
occasion of Christmas. However,
one could also interpret this particular episode as showing that sometimes
symbols are meaningless without their appropriate context. The
tree means nothing to Joel, though he gives it a try, but he knows it means
something to Maggie and gives it to her as a gift. Sometimes the juxtaposing of symbols, contexts and
traditions might not work, but this episode illustrates that it is still worth
the effort to try to learn something about self and others. Far from failing in their attempt to
satisfy what might be lacking in the community, they realize they can assist
one another in providing necessary symbols and context amidst diversity to
achieve the ritual ends. This example
of reflexive spirituality portrays pluralism as a dynamic context, rather than
a threat, in which people can select from a number of options and create
spiritual meaning individually and in communion.
[25] In the NE narrative, pluralism offers the possibility of
rendering or unmasking the “truth” at the foundation of particular symbols and
practices. One particularly
explicit example, the episode “Shofar, So Good” (1994), begins as Joel prepares to celebrate
Yom Kippur and “carbo-loads” before ritual fasting. Ed sits with Joel and asks him questions about Yom Kippur
out of interest in comparative religion. Joel explains the process of atoning for sins, including the ancient
symbolic placement of the sins of people onto the head of a goat, with the goat
then driven out of town along with the sins of the people. Earlier Ed had listened to Holling’s
dilemma with his estranged daughter Jackie – a daughter he never knew he
had and who harbored resentment toward him all her life. Feeling tremendous guilt, Holling tried
but failed in building a relationship with her. Recognizing he had no hope for forgiveness or redemption,
Holling said, “I’ve made a big hole in the world Ed, that I can’t fix.” The
episode also features Maurice conducting a fox hunt for a visiting dignitary,
and, after the fox escaped confinement and found sanctuary with RuthAnn, Ed
offers to help both Holling and Maurice. Maurice needs a quarry for his foxhunt. Ed offers to run the chase as the fox and to symbolically
carry Holling’s “sins” in the hopes that it will lighten his burden. Holling thinks the idea is foolish
because, as an agnostic, he can not see how the gesture could help his
situation. However, persuaded by
Ed’s commitment, Holling reluctantly agrees. At Ed’s request, Holling awkwardly symbolically places his
hands on Ed’s head, to “make it official.” Maurice, Chris, and Holling participate in the chase, and,
when Ed twists his ankle and falls down a hillside exhausted, Holling races to
his side to see to his condition. In a sunlit moment of exchange between the two men, Holling smiles
exuberantly and simply says, “thank you Ed.” Ed smiles warmly and replies,
“you’re welcome Holling.”
[26] Ironically, Joel
experiences Yom Kippur through a Dickensian dream of his recent past in Cicely
including the ghost of what is to come should he continue his selfish and
arrogant behaviour. He awakens to
the sound of the fox hunt bugle and barking dogs as Ed races past his
window. Upon discovering that he
has not missed Yom Kippur, he spends the day repairing his social
mistakes. The parallels between
Holling’s atonement and Joel’s, with the juxtaposition of very different ritual
“means,” one traditional and one spontaneous, points to an end that might
transcend the means. It also
emphasizes that some means are necessary and possible through the creativity of
everyday experience.
[27] Similar to how
pluralism is said to lead to the decentering of religious authority, both the
institutional authority and the claims of exclusive “truth” of various
narratives, NE’s juxtapositions of
symbols and traditions decenters them. Yom Kippur, while respectfully portrayed
and explained, is not elevated above the spontaneous experience of
Holling. However, the decentering
of authority is not a desecration of truth or a destructive force. It is creative and constructive and
turns the focus to possibilities and alternatives rather than limitations. It also demonstrates the potential
spiritual meanings in everyday experience. In NE mythology,
as in reflexive spirituality, questioning taken-for-granted truth and received
traditions is something to be encouraged.
[28] While the “Seoul Mates”
episode illustrates the difficulties incurred when moving outside the
traditions with which one was raised, as Shelly and Joel discovered, the
example illustrates the promise of doing so, and NE helps guide the reflexive spiritualist through that
dilemma, partially by opening explicit questions concerning traditions. For example, in “The Robe” (1994) the
Devil comes to Cicely as a spa salesman and tries to convince Shelley, a “pure
soul,” to lie. Shelly discusses
the existence of the Devil with Ed. She questions, for the first time, her whole notion of the Devil, how he
operates in the world, and how she relates to him. Shelly almost sells her soul to temptation, but rejects the
Devil’s proposition. She and the Devil nearly become friends at the end,
exchanging a heartfelt moment. In
“A Wing and a Prayer” (1994) Shelley invites a Catholic priest to come to
Cicely and perform the sacrament of baptism for her newborn daughter Miranda.
Her husband Holling befriends the Irish priest at Shelley’s request, and they
begin to drink whiskey, play cards, and arm wrestle–all the while
debating the existence of a supreme being. Chris also befriends the priest and secures himself an
apprentice position as “altar boy” during the ceremony–a chance for him
to “learn from the best.” Shelley is
horrified at the priest’s behaviour and begins to doubt that he could behave in
such a manner and still perform the work of God. He explains to her that these things are not “sins” and that
all humans are human, including the clergy. He assures her that on the day of her daughter’s baptism,
when her community is gathered around, and he dons his vestments that she will
feel the presence of God. As
promised, the presence of “God” is felt at the baptism on the cliffs outside of
town. Both of these episodes
employ the dialogue of questioning long-held religious traditions, raise key
points upon which the questioning can take place, and demonstrate the promise
of spiritual exploration while commenting on human frailty and diversity of
experiential capacity.
[29] While questioning,
decentering and recombinations can lead spiritual exploration to unforeseen and
gratifying discoveries, reflexive spirituality in the context of pluralism
entails an enduring uncertainty. Again, NE mythology embraces this
condition that might otherwise prove fatal to spiritual questing. In “The Robe” (1994) episode, Chris and his
ventriloquist “dummy,” Esau, demonstrate the capacity to embrace the conditions
of pluralism, with its fluid, debated, open-ended questions, multivocal
responses, and lack of clear, definitive answers. Shelley asks Chris for advice and becomes upset when he can
not give her a straight answer like his “friend Esau.” She explains, “At least
you know where he stands.” After
leaving Esau on a bus-stop bench, Chris closes the episode with the following
wisdom:
… I hope the next wayward soul who finds him [Esau] learns as much as I
did from my brief intense apprenticeship. It’s funny, all the qualities that
flow so naturally from Esau like water from the spring melt, are qualities that
are in me. Embracing them means embracing Esau’s black and white world, and
turning my back on the rainbow. And in one piercing note drown out the
orchestra with one persuasive voice, silence the clamoring chorus. I don’t know, Esau, maybe your cornpone
platitudes and straight from the hip answers ring truer than my own fuzzy
search for enlightenment. But sometimes you just need the uncertainty. If I ever figure out exactly why, I may
just look you up. Maybe then we’ll have an act worth taking on the road, huh?
Paralleling sociological
insights into quest culture, this episode explicitly embraces the uncertainty
and the challenges faced by actively questioning tradition in the searching for
spiritual meaning through reflexive spirituality at the cost of certainty.
[30] These episodes featuring
the priest as a modern everyday person and the Devil as a spa salesman also
denote the process in reflexive spirituality for developing contemporary
translations and utilizations of traditional myths and symbols. Traditional myths and symbols are often
envisioned as time specific, historical and even dated, inviting questions
about their continued applicability. NE brings the traditional
stories to life in a modern world and demonstrates to fans how they may still
apply when inserted in a ‘living’ narrative of experience, much in the same way
as the words Chris reads on the air, from Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Carl Jung, and
Joseph Campbell, are given contemporary relevance. “Shofar, So Good” (1994) serves similar purposes by drawing
parallels between traditional practice and creative spontaneous means, demonstrating
the experiential application of the religious idea and the essence of the
religious experience in both. In
the manner of reflexive spirituality, episodes like this demonstrate and
legitimate the exploration of various traditions in the pursuit of
spirituality. In the process, they
reveal an underlying idea accessible, referring back to the words of Ed’s
mentor Leonard, to everyone through a variety of “chosen” means. Although one can draw selectively from
religious tradition for religious experience, one can also rely on, draw from,
and participate in creative means to experience transcendence and to construct spiritual
meaning out of everyday life experience.
[31] The “Northern Lights”
(1993) episode extends the NE mythological portrayal of how a creative act, Chris creating a cobbled together
light sculpture, can celebrate the winter solstice and the meaning of light. Throughout the episode Chris informs
Cicelians about the significance of light to humanity through his musings on
his radio show and his randomly assorted sources. Meanwhile, Cicelians are
dealing with how to approach homelessness when a man named Lance finds his way
to Cicely and Maurice learns he is a former US Marine. He is homeless because he had
experienced something irrational that he could not explain, and now he doesn’t
believe in anything rational and material anymore. Maurice comes to realize
that he could be like Lance since homelessness is a question of chance and
circumstance, and, in the case of Lance, also choice. Joel struggles with the
declined request for his vacation time (and his planned excursion to tropical
weather and “civilization”) due to the inability to find a physician temporarily
to replace him. He goes on strike and is evicted from his cabin by Maurice and
the residents of Cicely for breach of contract, joining Lance in Cicely’s new
and growing homeless population. He tries to rally support for such injustice,
but finds little support. After
much inner searching and struggle, he decides he has a choice when faced with
such adversity. He can swim against the tide, swim with the current, or let the
tide take him where it wants to take him. When he decides to let it take him where it wants to take him,
Marilyn is impressed. The residents of Cicely sympathetically welcome Joel
back, and, while recognizing the inadequacy of their gestures to substitute for
his prized vacation, offer gifts to alleviate his loss. Ed offers to take him ice fishing and
Ruth Ann gives him a new painting to enliven his office. The final scene is the Main Street of
Cicely at night, a pastiche of light sources from the community–neon bar
signs and lampshades, light bulbs and flashlights borrowed from everyone in
town–all connected to form a twist of metal, plastic and fabric. After a
brief but theatrical speech about the power of light, Chris turns the switch to
reveal a warm transcending display of light generated by everyone standing
together. The characters look on, reveling in the beauty and wonder of a light
show. Chris appears exuberant in acknowledging the success of his performance
art.
[32] While there are many
themes in this episode and no real resolution for Lance, its relevance for the
argument here is the effect of a completely creative ritual of light. The ritual is not linked to any
religious tradition, although Chris refers to “Goethe’s final words, ‘More
light’” at the end of the episode, and it is not even recognized as a ritual per
se by its participants. But it serves the purpose of
recognizing, in an implicit ritual sort of way, the compassion of humanity,
represented by light and community members’ actions, and the celebrating of its
emergence. It also reinforces the NE mythological contention that spirituality is not
necessarily something achieved in solitary or linked with a religious tradition.
One final episode example reinforces this point. In “Kaddish for Uncle Manny” (1993), Joel needs to say
Kaddish, but, to do so, he needs a minyan, and there are no other Jews in
Cicely. The episode features
Cicelians trying to find enough Jews in Alaska to form a minyan. As the Jews, who Maurice paid to come
to Cicely, begin to assemble, Joel discovers that Jews do not all come in the
New York variety he was used to—a stereotype he was unaware of having. One point of the minyan is to have a
sense of community for Kaddish, but Joel discovers that the diverse group of
unfamiliar Jews provided very little in the way of “feeling” community. In the end, he rejects the mustered
Jewish strangers in favor of the non-Jewish “community” he finds in his
Cicelian neighbors. In this case,
the tradition of a minyan, a group of religious community members, is analyzed
for its essence, and, as it turns out, it resides in the presence of
Cicelians—the importance of having a community.
[33] The “god” behind the
mask is revealed, and, in the process, god turns out to be readily available in
experience. The foundation for
reflexive spirituality is an individual pursuit of religious meaningusing a degree of critical analysis and reflection. Inherent in such a quest for meaning is a recognition that
something more matters in life than the meaning gained through
material pursuits or social significance. Inherent
in such a quest for meaning is a recognition that something more matters in
life than the quest for meaning (and commodities) through material or social
significance. Reflexive spirituality acknowledges the import of a value system,
one with a very ancient and near-culturally universal history and essence, which
at the very least balances material pursuit with the meaning potentials of the
non-material realm of existence (See Gatzke 2003 for further discussion). Individual reflexive spirituality or
that shared with others, regardless of its specific symbolic manifestations,
legitimates such a value system in everyday practice. This alone generates energy and tension in a culture
increasingly promoting, the ideology and values of materialism, what David Loy
calls the “religion of the market” (1997), in maintenance of hegemony that may
not be in members’ best interests.
[34] However, reflexive
spirituality also challenges the hegemony of traditional religions,
particularly the hegemony of Christianity in the United States. It examines, revises, and reformulates
Christian tradition, questions traditional religious authority, and opens up
religious legitimacy to a variety of longstanding religious traditions. It makes space for new alternatives and
recombinations of traditions in the contested terrain of American culture. And it does so without necessarily
sacrificing the rationality characteristic of contemporary American culture as
it engages in “intentional, deliberate consideration of the meaning” of
religious symbols (Besecke 2001, 372).
The Return of
the Sacred
[35] A full understanding of the
contemporary pursuit of religion in the United States can benefit from an
exploration of how popular culture, fan practice, and religion intersect,
particularly in the ways that it can help generate sustainable religious
narrative. Fan practice is located
a cultural context with a plethora of options and fetishized commodities to
select from and consume in the individual assembly of a pastiche of metaphor
aimed toward constructing individual meaning, directing religious practice, and
generating sacred space upon which to ground the practice individually and
collectively. Swatos and
Christiano argue that “spirituality-religion-sacredness finds its roots in the
limitless dissatisfaction that is a species characteristic of homo sapiens…we keep thinking we can do better” (1999, 224,
italics in original). Reflexive
spirituality is one response to dissatisfaction when other religious cultural
formulations are “not fulfilling the quest dynamic…within the human psyche”
(Swatos and Christiano1999, 225), and popular culture facilitates the creative
process of reflexive spirituality.
[36] Our textual analysis provides
an important example for the study of the role popular culture plays in forging
new religious narrative forms. Drawing from Wade Clark Roof, we demonstrate the use of popular culture
in the reframing of religious narrative, a mythology of reflexive spirituality
of quest culture, and, in the process, shed some light on the specific
characteristics and manifestations of reflexive spirituality. Quest culture and the opportunities it
provides for reflexive spirituality on an individual level is a double-edged
sword. It enhances individual
freedom in the spiritual realm, but it also potentially contributes to anxiety
on an existential plane because of the degree of uncertainty it engenders and
the difficulties of plausibility, as Berger once argued, in finding a larger
cultural realm that reinforces and helps maintain a personal religious
narrative. The uncertainty could be one reason that many Americans have turned
to fundamentalism and denominations that tightly constrain and define religious
thinking and practice with certainty (for example, see Iannaccone 1994). But,
because, for some, the constriction stifles freedom and individual creativity,
many people venture outside well-defined denominations, choosing autonomy over
certainty. Roof demonstrates that
some people respond by obtaining spiritual meaning through selectively invoking
and reframing various traditional narratives, rituals and symbols. They may
also embrace a commitment to the rationality of modernism, and reflexive
spirituality involves a collective language people use to reconcile
transcendent meaning with emerging rational discourse (Besecke 2001), and they
may find spiritual support in a community.
[37] The discord between
spirituality and rationality is at least partially premised upon a conception
that spiritual meaning is cordoned off from and operates by different rules
than mundane experience and the rules of rationality. They are epistemologically mutually exclusive realms of
meaning. While this has long
seemed the case in traditional religious practice, the fluidity of reflexive
spirituality potentially blurs these conceptual boundaries, both by softening
the demands of rationality and by shifting the rules of spirituality. According to our analysis, reflexive spirituality helps people not
only accommodate rationality within spirituality through discourse and the
language of critical analysis, following Besecke, but enables them to discover
spiritual meaning in everyday endeavors, activities undertaken without
challenge to the demands of rationality. The juxtaposition of traditional religious ideas with everyday events
draws parallels between the spiritual and the mundane and illustrates how
traditional ideas can shed spiritual insight into the meanings of everyday
practice. The portrayal of creative, experimental practices generating
spiritual meanings demonstrates how the innovative practices themselves serve
as surrogates or even replacements for traditional religious symbols. Ideas, or
narrative reflections on experience, in the mundane realm sometimes are made
sacred through human action and meaning making. Ideas become objects of awareness and invested with meaning,
then become sacred in their capacity to denote and, subsequently, evoke similar
meanings. NE depicts how a reflexive posture toward spirituality
generates sacred meaning from the stuff of everyday life. Thus, the sacred is not as far from
rationality as one might think.
[38] NE mythology represents one narrative of questing fully
situated in the tension between a rational world and the promise of
transcendent meaning. In its
mythological narrative, NE gives
us a glimpse of what Bell’s return of the sacred may look like. The ubiquity of popular culture,
including the recent release of the first four seasons of NE on DVD, ensures it a role in the quest process and in
the restructuring of religious experience in contemporary American society.
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Episode References:
“A Wing and a Prayer.” 1994.
R. Green and M. Burgess. NE Exposure Episode Production No. 77720.
“Northern Exposure Lights.” 1993. D. Frolov and A. Schneider. NE Exposure Episode Production No. 77617.
“The Robe.” S. Egan. 1994. NE Exposure Episode Production No.77802.
“Seoul Mates.” 1991. D. Frolov
and A. Schneider. NE Exposure
Episode Production No.77511.
“Kaddish for Uncle Manny.” 1993.
J. Melvoin. NE Exposure Episode
Production No. 77624.
“Shofar, So Good.” 1994. J. Melvoin. NE Exposure Episode Production No.
77804.
Notes
