Gratuitous virtue

Promised Land's faith makes prime-time, but faith in what? | Arsenio Orteza

When people say, "There's nothing good on television," they usually mean "There's too much gratuitous sex-violence-obscenity." And they're right.

But, as Shakespeare proved, there's no metal so base that a talented dramatist can't turn it into gold. Therein lies the real reason standard-issue TV should rub us the wrong way: Its sex, violence, and obscenity function not as elements of a serious conflict that will end meaningfully resolved but as meaningless titillation.

Viewers of Promised Land, a spin-off of Christian producer Martha Williamson's hit Touched by an Angel, need to ask whether the virtues it celebrates serve a similarly meaningless function: Do its faith, hope, and love suggest a deeper reality of which they are the fruit? Or do they exist merely to provide an alternative to sex, violence, and obscenity, guaranteeing nothing more than that shallow-minded regenerates stay as glued to the screen as shallow-minded degenerates?

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