Signs of Contradiction: Understanding the Church, the Papacy, and the World around Us through a Textual Analysis of HBO’s The Young Pope

Abstract

This paper examines hbo’s The Young Pope through a cultural approach and ritual view to communication first developed by James W. Carey (2009). After a discussion of mediatization of society and its impacts on culture, the essay explores the deeper meanings The Young Pope conveys about self-discovery and the power of love through a textual analysis of the mythic structure of the hero’s journey (Campbell, 1949/2008; Kluckhohn, 1959) in order to understand how religious belief systems and media content paired together can offer a particular view of the world to those who ascribe to them. Ultimately, this paper serves as a piece of media criticism that suggests that television series like The Young Pope can operate as “sites of interpretive struggle” (Peterson, 2008, p. 119) for viewers as they draw conclusions about and question the world around them.