7th Heaven Does Sudan

[lapsedmodernist]

7th Heaven has sensitively dealt with many pressing issues of today: the Taliban, rap music, the connection between homosexuality and child abuse, how smoking cigarettes will cause you to burn down your house and how smoking pot will result in you and your bike being run over by a car, with everyone, including your grief-stricken parents, agreeing that it was your fault, because of the pot. But tonight 7th Heaven tackled the Issue of Sudanese refugees.

Allow me to reproduce a fraction of the dialogue verbatum, because it is priceless:

[Context: Ruthie, the phenotypically biracial, presumably adopted daughter of the Waspy Camden parents, unnatural sibling to her Aryan-looking step-spawn, has managed to get lost on a field trip to the zoo, along with her dumb, rodential boyfriend. They have managed to take five wrong buses in their attempts to get to a train station, because they are stupid, and have consequently run out of money. Ruthie executive-decides to ask for help and approaches two young men heading in her direction, despite her boyfriend's stirrings of macho concern, because the guys are, like, black. Well, what do you expect when they live in a town of Glenoak that's whiter than the KKK special powwow retreat in the Bible Belt, with the only exception being a black police officer (whose big secret is that his brother is in jail, natch) and his family that has a bizzarre, almost Biblical structural correspondence to the Camdens in the number of children, and their respective ages and genders.]

Ruthie: Hi! I am Ruthie. And this is my friend Peter. We're from Glenoak and we are lost.

Boy #1: I'm Jacob. And this is Nikodemos. We are from Sudan, and they call us the lost boys.^*

In the next fifteen minutes, they all bond, after Ruthie and Peter tell the Lost Boys about how they had to walk for several hours in a row, and all they had to eat all day was two hot dogs, and the Lost Boys tell them about how their kin was slaughtered and they had to walk across Sudan to Ethiopia, then back across Sudan to Kenya, eating leaves and mud. But now it's all good because they are in America. Because they were rescued by Americans, just like they rescued Ruthie and Peter. Are you getting the parallels?

Miracle of miracles, the soon-to-be-exoticized Lost Boys have a cell phone, which they loan to Ruthie. She calls her father, RevCam, who, upon hearing that she is with the Lost Boys, repeats several times: "you are in good hands." Because, apparently, all Lost Boys from Sudan are noble savages. Wait a minute, Ruthie didn't explain the Sudan part. Maybe RevCam thinks his daughter is kicking it with Peter Pan & Co.

Upon a safe return home, Ruthie, overwhelmed with emotion tells her father that the Lost Boys' story was "terrible...but also wonderful." The fuck? And finally, RevCam delivers the episode-concluding sermon, peppered with a few facts about "the Sudan," encourages everyone to appreciate every moment of their American privilege in a gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may-by-way-of-suffering-in-the-Dark-Continent-contrast, and leaves us all to ponder Nikodemos' quote: "Maybe I am a lost boy, but I was never lost...to God." Amen. Oy.

^*For the record, yes, I know that Sudanese orphans are referred to in the media as the lost boys. There's the recent documentary, The Lost Boys, which I haven't seen, but I hear is worth seeing, and the one from a couple of years ago, Benjamin and his Brother, directed by Arthur Howes, which I saw at the Mead festival, and it's definitely worth seeing. So I'm not making fun of the term--it's just upon incorporation into the 7th Heaven universe, the term starts to seem really insane. But then again, 7th Heaven can make everything completely insane, through a classical strategy of ostranenie. Shklovsky would be so proud.

Comments

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

7th Heaven is...okay there are no words for it. It is like anti EVERYTHING I feel positively about. From every possible angle. In other words, that show scares the shit out of me (I'm not going to even start, mostly because I've had a bit too much wine and don't have the kind of attention span necessary to go through all the grievances point by point), yet I also get a perverse pleasure from watching it. (As apparently you do, or else you would have switched the channel, no?) I would pay to see you have it out with the writers/producer.

Ruthie is old enough to have a boyfriend? Oh wait, I forgot, they all start dating when they are twelve so that they can marry the dude when they turn nineteen.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

19? Try, like, 17. Also, dating in 7th Heaven-verse resembles nothing in our universe, nothing at all, not dating, not anything, so I don't really understand it.

I am obsessed with 7th Heaven. I think sometimes it achieves the affect of a Pinter play, but in a "found object" kind of way.

[lizallium.livejournal.com]

i just saw this episode & then was going through my friendsfriends list and saw your post which was perfect. i added you to my friends list because of how accurately you represented such a weird episode. i wish i'd have seen the pot smoking one. i remember the episode where somebody had a bag of weed and mr. camden kept saying "whose baggie of marijuana is this? is this your baggie?"

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, 7th Heaven likes to recycle its PSAs, so there were a few episodes dealing with pot (no pun intended); there was one where Annie tearfully revealed that when she was young she smoked pot once with her best friend, and immediately her best friend was killed in a car crash, there was one where Simon ran over a stoned kid on a bike with his car (do you sense a theme?), and in one episode the olderst sister, Mary, sat near a joint (literally), and got sent away to Buffalo for "reform."

me oh my

[remsaverem.livejournal.com]

wow. i need to start watching since my mom still hasn't sent me buffy seasons... when is it on? and why are people always getting run over by things when they smoke pot? everyone knows that if you smoke pot, you get knocked up.

Re: me oh my

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oh, pnts, you will enjoy it. The new episodes air on Mondays 8PM Eastern time, and it also gets rerun on the Family Channel every day at...4? 5? You can search for it in listings in TVguide.com

And I dunno whatchatalkingabout, everyone knows that if you smoke pot, babies you are supposed to be watching drown in the pool.

You get pregnant if you swallow after blowjobs. How else do you think babies get into your stomach?

Re: me oh my

[remsaverem.livejournal.com]

but you have to smoke pot (and swallow) to get knocked up and have the baby that you will then watch drown in the pool because of, you know, the pot.

i sure hope babies can coexist in the stomachs of people who eat lots of watermelon seeds. i would imagine that when they grow they take up a considerable amount of space.

wha?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

wait, you lost me with the watermelon seeds.

Re: me oh my

[seltix.livejournal.com]

um, anthrochica, i'm afraid that seeing a split-second's worth of a fading pop star's bare nipple must have made you forget the *other* important message that the superbowl taught us this year (and possibly last year too, but i forget - nipples and all). indeed, smoking pot gets you pregnant. the details are sketchy, so it may very well also come from a pot-induced blow job (definitely not something cbs was able to sell ad time for, let alone get past the censors). and it's also very possible, if not likely that the drowned baby was being watched by the very same pregnant pothead, or at the very least the babysitter bought her pot from the preggers slut.

but i think my point is that pot makes babies drown in your stomach.

Re: me oh my

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I don't know, dude, I didn't see the Superbowl, but while TV taught me about drowned babies, and I am also now accessing my repressed memories in the PSAs section of my brain and remembering that smoking pot will get you raped, I don't know about pregnancy, though.

Re: me oh my

[hadaly.livejournal.com]

The pregnancy one caused a big stir not at the most recent superbowl, but the one before that. Though, its stir was probably outshadowed by the "smoke pot and you support terrorists" stir. Anyway, the pregancy one goes like this:
couple in the bathroom awaiting the results of a pregnancy test. it's positive, but wait! they're not happy. couple walks into bedroom where teenage girl is waiting. she got knocked up while high!!

Re: me oh my

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I see. I missed that one. I like the "misdirection" ads like that--like when the parents are yelling at each other things like "this is my room!" "I can't believe you went through my stuff!" but then it turns out they are practicing for a Pot Talk with their daughter.

[lizallium.livejournal.com]

i guess there are only so many big issues to cover...i am just waiting for the police brutality espisode. the setup is so perfect already. dominating asshole cop boyfriend? come on. let's see him abuse his authority already.

i like going on the 7th heaven message boards on livejournal. they're hilarious. "i can't believe simon was drinking!! i thought he learned from his dad that drinking is bad!!"

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

ah no, you forget that menfold don't abuse womenfolk on that show...womenfold are just hysterical and crazy. also, cops are, like, worshipped on that show. no way would kevin ever "abuse his authority" since his and lucy's dynamic is build exclusively upon him educating his little crazy wifey, but loving her despite her infantalized self despite her craziness.

[klingrap.livejournal.com]

The episode where the girl who smoked cigarettes BURNED HER HOUSE ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE GROUND actually made me start smoking again. Sometimes 7th Heaven makes me cry, because I'm mortally scared of zealous Christians.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

as you well should be!

And that girl who burned down the ENTIRE house (which is, like, not even possible, I think), was the best character ever!

[lizallium.livejournal.com]

the door was still standing, actually - the WHOLE house didn't go down!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

you're right! that made it extra-weird.