Not Exactly a Selling Point? Religion and Reality TV

Abstract

In May 2005 BBC2 transmitted a three-part television documentary series entitled The Monastery, which featured five men living alongside a monastic community for six weeks. The stated aim of this ‘unique experiment’ was to see if there was anything about the 1500-year-old Benedictine tradition that might be relevant in the twenty-first century. The men, most of whom had never so much as set foot in a monastery before, were required to participate fully in the life of the community, almost as if they were novices. As well as attending all the religious services in the Abbey church, eating silent meals in the refectory and working in the garden, they had bible classes and received instruction in basic Christian and monastic principles: principles, we are meant to infer, somewhat at odds with contemporary societal norms. In one of the opening scenes, the Abbot sets out the agenda:

We find more and more nowadays that people say to us that life is too individualistic, that their lifestyle is too materialistic, that there’s consumerism everywhere, and that they’ve got more and more of all these superficial pleasures in life and yet at a deeper level they’re not happy. We believe that what we’re offering is the answer to that dissatisfaction with life.