Changing old habits? ‘New Age’ Catholicism, subjectivity and gender in BBC2’s The Monastery and its reception

Bibliographic Data

ID12599652
AuthorsLyn Thomas (0009-0003-3925-2352, London Metropolitan University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume14
Issue5
Pages558-572
Publication date2011-10-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1367-5494 • E-ISSN: 1460-3551
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1367549411412204
OpenAlexW2061803763
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited12

This article focuses on a recent BBC television programme, The Monastery, and its reception. The analysis demonstrates how religion becomes visible here through a hybrid televisual form merging ‘reality’ conventions with those of quality television. It argues that this ‘quality reality’ format both participates in, and nuances the making of class and gender in reality television. The analysis suggests that the religious culture represented here is also hybrid, combining elements of the alternative and subjectively focused spiritual practices researched by Heelas and Woodhead with Catholicism. The second part of the article discusses the responses to these representations of a small number of engaged viewers recruited at retreats at the filmed monastery, Worth Abbey in Sussex. It argues that the programme’s hybrid forms and representations, and particularly its representation of caring and spiritual masculinity, can explain its appeal to predominantly middle-class, white women viewers

Aesthetics · Appeal · Art · Class (philosophy · Epistemology · Masculinity · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Quality (philosophy · Reality television · Representation (politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · White (mutation · Gender Studies · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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