Culture
WHITE KNUCKLES | The Young Pope, Liquid Modernity and Indignation
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This year, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino impacted my break and my liberal college student intersectional-feminist-relativistic-somewhat nihilistic philosophy more deeply than I like to admit. His miniseries The Young Pope had me glued to the television in my colorful (green and red-walled) living room in Italy, caught up in a story that I never saw coming. The show opens with a balding yet ever-attractive Jude Law interpreting a newly elected, 47-year-old Pope giving his first address in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome. His speech is groundbreaking: it celebrates homosexuality and free love, different religions, abortions and premarital sex. The next scene reveals that it was all a dream; the attractive Pope will actually be unforgiving, conservative, homophobic and cruelly unwavering in his dogmatic beliefs.