Culture Part 1
I feel like, being in the USA where it was born by predominately white Christian males, we still see so many cases of Christian religious themes in popular culture. It is everywhere. Sometimes it is hidden and not-so-obvious and other times it is blatant. There are religious roots in almost every aspect of culture, and I think it might be indeed in every aspect.
One of my current favorite shows is Lucifer on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. The basis of it is that Lucifer Morningstar, the king of Hell, decides to take a vacation and goes to Los Angeles. And he becomes a consultant for the LAPD. Pretty obvious the religious themes in this show, huh? They explore more about Lucifer’s history as the leader of the rebellion against God, his role in free will, his power of being able to draw desires out from people, deals made with the devil himself, other angels, and we even met the one and only Eve. It is an interesting take on a story most of us are very familiar with and at the same time, it doesn’t feel to be pushing an agenda. Lucifer is not cast as inherently evil but as a person — he even sees a therapist to help work out his problems. But this is a very obvious form of religion on popular culture, clear Christian themes in a TV show on probably the most used streaming platform.
But what seems to sneak up on us are where we don’t necessarily catch the obvious religious themes or influences in popular culture. We can enjoy a song, and then someone can say ‘that song is about drugs’ and we’ll swear up and down that it’s not, then go home and pull up the lyrics we already know and go, ‘oh. I guess it kinda is.’ So let’s discuss something with obvious themes to certain cultures and religions and its not-so-obvious but extremely heavy influence on popular culture. Something I hope we all spent quarantine rewatching.
I grew up tuning in each week to watch Avatar: the Last Airbender. My whole family sat around and excitedly watched the series 4-part finale. I remember after certain episodes, the creators would come on and do a quick discussion about the different fighting styles and how excited I was to learn that each element had its own individual style of fighting that fit the characteristics associated with the particular element.
ATLA is not only beautiful in its real world problems, writing, and character development, but it is the perfect blend of culture, religion, and, now, popular culture. ATLA is obviously based on Asian cultures — we see this in the clothes the characters are drawn in, the music they listen to, the stories they tell, the fighting styles that originated in Asia, what they eat, and what they value. We see the different religious beliefs explored; every Avatar is reincarnated (Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism), yin and yang when we see the koi fish of the moon and ocean spirit (Taoism, and Chinese culture as a whole), the seven chakras as Aang learns to control his Avatar state by Guru Pathik (Hinduism, Buddhism), and even the focus of spirits in the spirit world (similar to Pokémon, Shintoism).
Our beloved General Iroh and his tea, focusing on the aspect of Asian cultures of tea while handing down wisdom blends culture and religion. Aang’s sole purpose to bring the world back into balance (a belief in both Asian cultures and religions) and how he is a vegetarian because he believes all life is sacred as taught to him by the monks. There are thousands of examples within ATLA of Asian religions and cultures blending together.
But ATLA was created in the USA and, in March, was just loaded back onto Netflix. And the internet exploded. For weeks, I watched as ATLA entered back into popular culture years later and popular culture accepted it and cherished it. As memes and gifs were created of favorite moments within the series and then turned into reaction gifs to respond to events we’re currently facing. A cartoon based on Asian popular cultures and religions has now become a major part of American popular culture, perhaps even creating its own little religion.
