I won’t claim to have read every modern retelling of the Arthurian Legend, but I have read the most important and well known, and some of the lesser known, iterations. And all of them are trying to use the archetypal story of Camelot as the background to say something about our contemporary world – which is what good authors do. Good authors look at King Arthur, and they say, “OK, this story is a tragedy about how even the best and most beautiful thing can and will be broken, and often broken by the people who stand to gain the most. Lancelots and Guineveres betray Arthurs and destroy Camelots.” They see the Arthurian Legend as an extended form of the aphorism: this too shall pass. Or perhaps you’re fascinated with Arthur’s rise – perhaps the sword-in-the-stone motif from the most famousest of all Arthurian Legendarians: Malory – you will probably be fascinated with the idea of prophecy, and its Christian and Christological significance. It’s the “chosen one” motif. Or maybe you are drawn to the Quest for the Graal. The idea of a quest is clearly a medieval romantic trope that has its modern iteration in cop-dramas. But a quest is always the basis of a good story. Or maybe, like Lewis, you’re entranced by Merlin and the fact that a pagan Druid is the personal confidante to the Christian King. Who is Merlin? Is he human, is he a man out-of-time, is he something else entirely?
Good writers all know that there are no new stories. There are only new ways of telling old stories. Great writers know that there is only ONE story and all stories are pieces of the Great Story, the Metanarrative. And because good writers know this, when they retell old stories, they want to give us the same message in an updated fashion. Or perhaps, they think the old story got it wrong and wants to try a new version. Bad writers…hacks…they just use the old characters like tools to tell whatever story they want. This is lazy and cheap. It’s what hacks do. And, generally, people dislike these retellings. Why? Because it feels like a rip-off. Like the author wanted to say something but was too lazy to create characters that would fit in that story. Instead they rip characters out of their context, and rely on them being a known quantity to save time and effort.
Cursed, on Netflix, does the latter. The, ironically and unintentionally appropriately titled offering, is a cheap rip-off of Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, and an even cheaper and more hackneyed rip-off of the Arthurian Legend. And like Mists, this story relies on the conflict between Christian and Pagan in post-Roman Britain. Like in Mists, the Pagan gods are real and so is magic – but Christianity seems to have absolutely zero actual supernatural power. All real power is centered in Paganism and Druidism. Like in Mists, Christians are ignorant, fundamentalist bigots. Like in Mists, Cursed wants to play a game where magic and gods are real and the authors want to go toe-to-toe with Christianity, but they never address any of the metaphysical issues that are clearly necessary: are the gods eternal? Is the earth eternal? How do we know the gods aren’t demons, as the Christians claim? We are simply supposed to take for granted that Paganism is true and Christianity false: but don’t ask anyone to prove it. Certainly, don’t ask why so many native Britons would have become Christians if Christianity didn’t have supernatural power to combat Paganism! The authors of these stories aren’t interested in these questions.
Now, in Zimmer-Bradley’s case, we know why: she was a child-molester. Mists of Avalon, which was supposed to be all about how Christianity is bad and pre-Christian matriarchal feminism and goddess-worship is good, was also molesting her own daughter and complicit in her husband’s child molestation as well. She’s a good storyteller – and a rotten person. And she’s really not someone whose opinion on morals particularly interests me. In fact, I’d say it’s fair to say, that when you molest your daughter, you don’t have the right to call Christianity misogynistic. You don’t get to call anything misogynistic.
But the question is, why is Netflix telling this story? We tell stories for lots of reasons, but the main reason writers write is to change people. The story is supposed to say something important about the world. And I have to say, that if you simply try following the plot and dialogue of Cursed, you’re going to have trouble finding anything meaningful. It’s a cavalcade of clichés and tropes and rip-offs and teeny-bopper romance. It hits all the low-notes of lazy writing: girl falls in love with bad boy and they immediately begin having the best sex of their lives the first time they lie together, with multiple simultaneous orgasms – the really realistic stuff. Oh, don’t forget how there are large numbers of women who are capable of hand-to-hand combat with sword and spear against grown men. Ahh, of course, there’s the tough-guy leader who needs to be taken down a peg. And the self-doubting heroine, who is also very sure of herself when the plot needs her to be. There’s the powerful item that has a mind of its own…I could go on. I won’t. Because the most tired of the tropes is also, seemingly, the point of the story.
The plot revolves around a group of Priests who are trying to exterminate the Fey: in this iteration they aren’t fairies, but a race of people who look funny, sometimes. They say that the Fey are demons, so the begin a genocidal purge, because it’s God’s will that they kill the demons hiding in human flesh. This of course suits the pope, just fine! but they discover Excalibur is out there and the pope wants it (for reasons) and then there’s a big fight.
The point of the story seems to be that the biggest threat to humanity and peace are Christian, white men. The greatest warrior of the Red Paladins, a stupid and impossible name if you know what “Paladin” means (or at least meant), is a Fey warrior who converted to Christianity. And, of course, there is the usual misogyny and closemindedness and bloodlust and religious tyranny and all that.
So, my question is: does this story need to be told? Is Christianity, and are Christian, white men, the greatest threat to peace and harmony in the world today? Is religious fundamentalism really a danger to society? Cursed would have you believe so.
This story has so many problems, really significant problems, with how it presents its theology, that it makes my head hurt. I don’t know that the authors have read a single book of Church history. But the audience isn’t supposed to care. They’re supposed to take for granted that this is how the world operates and let the story wash over them and condition them to mistrust Christianity as an oppressive and genocidal regime which suppresses real and true religion.
If there’s another reason to tell this story this way, I’d like to hear it. But remember, all authors have something they want to say. They want to change their audience – not just their minds, but THEM. Cursed’s authors want to change you. They want you to live as though Christianity were an invention of power-hungry, cynical, white men and that it is, at its core, power-hungry and genocidal. It tells this message lazily, and cowardly, and poorly. Like I said, the title is unintentionally appropriate.