TV drama, the narrative of our times?

July 2, 2008 at 12:13 am · Filed under Nehemiah & Blake and tagged: Bible, narrative, novel

Nehemiah & Blake wrote recently that there “is some truth to the argument that the novel replaced the Bible as the culture’s central ‘text’.” Leigh Holmwood, on the Guardian’s organ grinder has posted the comment “Has the TV drama really supplanted the novel as the ‘narrative of our times?’” He asks the question in relation to a comment made by the head of BBC fiction, Jane Tranter, that it had.

What follows Holmwood’s piece is a lively debate of comments well worth the read. One element that seems to have been overlooked in this debate, however, is that the TV drama is supplementary to its written screenplay. Moreover, as the Holmwood’s question and Tranter’s comment suggest, the TV drama screenplay is supplementary to the novel. In that sense then, the TV drama is the serialised novel in screenplay form. It becomes the lectio saecularis in liturgical form for a post-literate populace.

Pushing this argument one step further, if the novel replaced the Bible as the culture’s central text or narrative, then the novel itself is supplementary to the Bible, which therefore incorporates the TV drama screenplay via the novel into a form that is open to the possibilities of lectio divina in liturgical form. This is an exciting prospect for the Nehemiah & Blake project, for it means that neither the novel nor the Bible has lost its centrality to the UK narrative, but have merely been respectively displaced by supplements, supplements which both substitute the prior text, and yet also add to it.

What does this mean? Take for instance, the orthodox Christian belief that the Bible is written by the Spirit of God. As God is an inaccessible transcendent being, the Bible acts as God’s written signifier, a proof of existence so to speak. The traditional Christian argument for this view is to offer a binary option: Either the Bible is the Word of God, or it is not the Word of God. To say it is not the Word of God is to say the Bible acts as a replacement for God; God himself, an invention of God. This is the “liberal” option.

Under supplementary logic however, because a supplement both substitutes and adds, it is possible for the Bible to be both the Word of God and God’s supplement. As Barbara Johnson has noted, the supplement is “simultaneously bridging and widening the gap between God and the speaker”¹ (Johnson, 2005:345).

We see this at work in our culture. The Bible was supplemented by the novel, which has been supplemented, or so it has been suggested, by the TV drama. This is the ever-widening gap between God and speaker/writer/viewer. Yet at the same time, we see a bridge linking the Bible to the TV drama, allowing for the possibility of the speaker/writer/viewer to close that very gap. There is room for both the conservative and the liberal to inhabit the same space.

For too long, the binary opposition has held sway, pushing the conservative and liberal views into respective changing rooms, but allowing no game to take place between them. Fortunately that is beginning to change, and Nehemiah & Blake wants to be part of that change. Slowly, a game is beginning to emerge on the playing field. Interesting stories are about to unfold. Nehemiah & Blake sits in the commentary box and in the media centre, ready to start publishing those stories.

Footnote:

1. Johnson, B. 2005. Writing. In Rivkin, J. & Ryan, M. (ed.), Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2005:340-7. 2^nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

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