Not too Dark, Not too Bright

stories of hope, part 1

The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. 

-Harold Clarke Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 2

What stories do we love and believe in these days?

It’s probably not obvious from the finished product, but Hope: A User’s Manual grew out of that very question. 

Specifically, my initial interest was to explore why people seem so drawn to apocalyptic, end-of-the-world, disaster stories these days. What is it about a show like The Walking Dead, for example? It attracted a huge viewership, especially among the coveted 18-49 age group, and was a ratings juggernaut for much of its eleven-season run. Was it a success despite its bleak subject matter, or because of it? (See also: Game of Thrones.)

Meanwhile, Marvel Studios made billions of dollars telling superhero stories that routinely featured a high-stakes battle in which our heroes need to save the planet, the galaxy, or the whole danged universe. Gone were the more intimate, “friendly neighborhood” stories a la Spider-Man… though they’re coming back a little bit with the rise of the MCU on the small screen.

Even realistic fiction often has a gloomy cast; antihero stories like Breaking Bad and Succession were hugely popular prestige TV shows. Are these bleak tales mere escapism tinged with some schadenfreude? Do they speak to a broad feeling of pessimism? Or do we find hope lurking even in these unlikely places? 

These questions were personal too. I have friends who declare Breaking Bad the best show ever created, but it’s just not for MaryAnns. I appreciate the creative challenge showrunner Vince Gilligan gave himself, to turn a protagonist into an antagonist—Mr. Chips into Scarface—but that’s just not a project I’m interested in. (No judgment whatsoever to those who love it—it’s not a character flaw to consume gritty content.) On the other hand, I couldn’t get enough of Station Eleven, an HBO series about a global pandemic, which I watched around the same time the US hit one million covid deaths. Why on earth did I find that watchable?

These questions are why I started writing Hope: A User’s Manual, though as readers know, the finished product grew way beyond the story stuff (though it’s there in section four of the book). But as a pastor and writer, and one who finds Christianity more compelling as a narrative in which we live than as a series of static doctrinal propositions, “story stuff” is my life’s work. And it turns out not all dystopias are built the same.