Sacred mystery: Blockbuster
ratings for ‘The Bible’ confound Hollywood
Sure, it’s easy to criticize Hollywood, but try to remember that
the entertainment industry today is an intellectually demanding environment,
fraught with cognitively challenging, even intractable, questions, like, to
take one recent example: How can the cable mini-series “The Bible” be such a
ratings hit when there is no audience for overtly religious entertainment
programming?
According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s
telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett
and Roma Downey
for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than
anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire
week.
The second installment of this five-part mini-series airing at
8-10 p.m. Sundays through Easter — the first foray
into scripted drama for “Survivor” creator Burnett
— drew 10.8 million viewers, good for number one in its timeslot and number 11
overall for the week.
Even bigger was part one the week before, which amassed an
audience of 13.1 million viewers, cable’s largest of the year. That series
premiere topped the ratings for both of the week’s episodes of “American Idol.”
(Not the first time the Almighty has bested idols in head-to-head competition
in this ancient rivalry — but, still, an impressive feat, even if Fox’s
longtime ratings juggernaut is showing signs of slippage.)
Blockbuster
ratings for a compilation of bible stories from a reality TV producer taking
his first crack at drama? Can’t be. If there was a market for biblical epics,
then Hollywood wouldn’t have long ago abandoned the genre, a staple of the
feature film industry back in the days of Cinerama. Or was it Cinemascope?
Don’t ask me. I wasn’t even alive. Or if I was, I was only just beginning to
grasp the essentials of widescreen projection techniques, which was offered as
an elective at the nursery school where I was then enrolled.
Makes no sense. It’s not as if “The Bible” got any help from TV
critics. Its Metacritic
scores averaged just 44, the low end of the “mixed reviews” range as measured
by the review aggregation site.
As a cable series, “The Bible” lacked the ready-made, large scale
promotional platform and popular lead-in that can drive strong ratings for a
new show on a major broadcast network, of the kind NBC was, for many
years.
And we all know better than to credit the mini-series’ success to
its unembarrassed reverence for its sacred source material. After all, last year
History had an even bigger hit with “Hatfields and McCoys” — and that was a
bloody saga of trigger-happy mountain clans who were not big on turning the
other cheek.
Of course, “Hatfields and McCoys” did star Kevin Costner.
No, he’s not still the leading male star in Hollywood — but nobody’s
perfect. He’ll do for basic cable.
As for “The Bible’s” cast — aside from Miss Downey (Mother Mary),
arguably still semi-famous from her long run on the CBS hit “Touched By an
Angel,” it’s devoid of name actors. Unless you count series star Diogo Morcaldo
(Jesus Christ).
Mr. Morcaldo
is indeed a household name, all up and down the western littoral of the Iberian
Peninsula, in fact, in his native Portugal.
No critical love. No marketing oomph. No-name cast. Together equal
— what else? — ratings smash!
Probably just coincidence, but the same kind of paradox confounded
Hollywood some years ago, as it pondered the improbable success of another
biblical movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” Of course, that international
blockbuster had movie icon Mel Gibson. Not on screen, no. But it did land Jim Caviezel
for the lead role. CAVIEZEL.
That’s C-A-V …
And once Jim Caviezel
was attached to star, it was practically inevitable that “The Passion of the
Christ” would go on to become the all-time top-grossing R-rated movie in the
U.S., and rake in over $600 million worldwide. As if. No, here again, we
must admit, answers are elusive.
Now and then a right-wing critic will come out of the woodwork to
fantasize about some imaginary silent majority of viewers hungry for inspiring,
all-ages popular entertainment. But if there was some vast, under-served market
for bible stories, then, obviously, Hollywood would be producing them. After
all, the entertainment business is a business, run by unsentimental capitalists,
single-focused on their bottom lines. Capitalists don’t have ideological
agendas, save, perhaps, for some minor few exceptions, like Big Oil … and Coal
… the fossil fuel industry, let’s say. And Wall Street, of course. Yah, and the
Health Care Lobby. Agribusiness and Big Pharma and the junk-food industry. Oh,
and firearms manufacturers, along with other merchants of death — defense
contractors and such. The objectively racist prison construction industry might
have to be included. And — a biggie — the Corporate Media Structure.
OK, but even if some capitalists — like, say, the
Republican-leaning ones — have ideological agendas, that doesn’t mean they all
do. Some capitalists do remain unencumbered by any ideological baggage
that might deflect them from their undeviating course of profit-maximization.
And your Hollywood capitalist would be of this type, a more pure strain of
capitalist — almost, you might even say, a Randian. Pervaded as Hollywood is by
near-Randians, it will, naturally, surprise some that it ultimately fell to an
outsider — fellow by the name of John Aglialoro, a fitness equipment executive
without a prior film credit to his name — to bring Ayn Rand’s own defining work
“Atlas Shrugged” to the screen independently, after his efforts to secure
backing for the project within Hollywood fell short after 20 years, a span
which perhaps gives some idea of the sheer numbers of interested prospective
collaborators a patient Mr. Aglialoro must have had to work his way through —
Hollywood Randians, perhaps, who felt called by Rand’s powerful source material
but couldn’t quite commit in the end to throwing themselves into the great work
of producing the first screen adaptation of her enduringly popular literary
monument to the spirit of free enterprise.
If this line of reasoning doesn’t ring entirely true,
well, it may be that we are here faced with yet another insoluble paradox of
the kind that bedevils decision-makers in today’s entertainment industry. At
least there is one constant amidst the uncertainties that plague the industry:
The business
culture of Hollwyood is inveterately imitative, a milieu in which nothing worth
making isn’t worth remaking, then being milked for, oh, V or VI sequels, then
shamelessly ripped off by competitors, before — finally — being rebooted
as an origins saga in prequel Parts -I through -III.
Some of the best minds in Hollywood may already be at work
wrestling with the knotty conundrum of why the breakout success of “The Bible”
will not have opened the floodgates to a tide of copycat biblical dramas
engulfing the primetime schedules of the Big 4 networks — and I can tell you I
don’t envy them.
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