The Confession
March 28, 2011 Leave a comment
Last week I was invited onto Thinking Unenslaved, a live podcast hosted by Synthaetica. We had some good discussion. One of my blog posts we discussed as about House MD, which led to a conversation about atheist characters (or lack thereof) on television. Now we have one more.
Kiefer Sutherland’s The Confession is a 10 episode web series, the first three of which debuted today, exclusively on Hulu. Each five-minute webisode stars Sutherland as a hitman relaying his stories to a Catholic preist, portrayed by John Hurt.
Sutherland’s character, listed only as “The Confessor” on IMDB in the credits, expresses an atheistic or agnostic view point in the first webisode. He goes on to paint himself as a sociopath seeking to understand good and evil, and forces the preist to help him through philosophical and theological discussion.
Now, I certainly don’t like that it reinforces the misconception that atheists lack moral integrity, but that’s more in the eye of the beholder. Someone with that belief will see a cause and effect relationship between his behavior an lack of faith. Someone like me will understand that he behaves badly because he lacks empathy—he could just as easily be a Catholic or Muslim sociopath. Though, it would be nice to get an atheist character someday that isn’t narcissistic, malevolent, or a social outcast.
That being said, I find The Confession to be very entertaining. The Confessor can be thought of as the anti-Jack Bauer. It takes a certain type of person to be able to torture and kill people, whether it be for the greater good or for a paycheck. Bauer and the Confessor both have the necessary traits to do similar jobs on opposite sides of the law. They differ completely in terms of empathy and values—Bauer cares deeply for those around him and is ashamed of some things he’s done to protect them, while the Confessor feels no guilt, no remorse—yet they use they same means to achieve their very different goals.
Well, that’s my take. You can watch the first three chapters right here if you’d like:
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