This post is (obviously) the third in a series. If you haven't read Cult of Morris, Part 1, you may want to do so now. Then, unless you are the world's laziest ass, read the second part too.
Saved by the Bell: the New Class is beyond a shadow of a doubt the worst show on television except for any episode of JAG in which Catherine Bell does not appear. It is in fact worse than Everybody Loves Raymond. It is worse than the last season of Roseanne, after they won the lotto. It is in fact even worse than Manimal. Also, while I'm at it: how the fuck is Hawthorne still on the air?
Not ruled out: Possibility that everyone except me is retarded.
Even the falcon couldn't find work after this
Saved by the Bell: The New Class a terrible show, and it pains me to admit that I have watched more episodes and partial episodes on YouTube in the week I spent researching this post than I have in the 33 years preceding. It pains me to admit this almost as much as it pained me to watch the damn things in the first place. The worst part is that complete episodes are difficult to find - hulu, youtube, vimeo - only a few complete episodes are readily available online, and those are usually broken up into 2 or 3 segments.
In other words, this isn't like looking for Jessi Spano's "I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so...scared" bit - finding an episode of SBTB: TNC online is a fucking quest. You need your Omni for this shit. That's from Voyagers! - I got kind of carried away with this 80's TV thing. That's why I converted to Airwolfitarianism.
But as bad as it is, it's a useful show because it illustrates a few points about Western Religion that are worthy of consideration.
One angle we can take is to evaluate SBTB: TNC as a reflection of cultural repetition - are the terrible characters in this show conforming to the same archetypes as those presented in the original show? That's one perfectly viable, and even useful, interpretation - Thor is Apollo is Slater is Tommy D. However, we already know how analogs work, and there's no reason to beat a dead horse unless the reason the horse is dead in the first place is that it really pissed you off, in which case I say: keep kicking.
SBTB: TNC offers us an exploration of a common tertiary phase of Western Religion: the apostolic phase.
A disclaimer first: I'm not writing all this out to actually get into any sort of cosmogonical debate. I am looking at religion as a cultural phenomena here, and I'm not making any claims to anything beyond an anthropological perspective. My own beliefs are pretty well documented and don't have a lot to do with anything here. So I say: Atheists - suck it up, religion is a part of culture and you're not going to get rid of it anytime soon no matter how many times you suck off Richard Dawkins. Religious people - your faith is just one of many and they all pretty much just have different words for the same crap.
Now, with that being said, we're going to get all hella meta for a second, and I'm going to explain what makes SBTB: TNC interestingly different from the previous SBTB series.
The offensiveness of this image pretty much disproves any belief in a kind and loving god
SBTB: TNC lives in the deep shadow of the preceding series, and this goes beyond the cultural relevance of the show (e.g. - we all watched Saved by the Bell and we, on this side of the screen, are comparing this show to that). The titular new class, in the contextual universe of the show, lives in the shadow of the preceding class. Their every action is taken within the context of those taken by Zack, Kelli, Jessi, and all the others. The first class was free from such impediment. Sure, in the Good Morning Miss Bliss years, Zack joined a "cool kid club" composed of upper classmen, and occasionally a senior would be mentioned in passing, usually just as "a senior," but there was no doubt who really ruled Olympus.
But the New Class has inherited a legacy by way of two prophets: Screech and Mr. Belding. They are perpetual reminders that every situation the New Class will have encountered, the original class encountered it first Every day of their lives is an imitation of what came before, and they are the first class to whom this has happened. Sure, the original class had to deal with some historical weight (like the fact that Jessi's ancestors were slave traders which, coincidentally, is about all the mention Lisa's blackness ever gets), but mostly the old class had free reign over their own actions. The world was theirs to explore, to rule, and to codify.
The interesting thing about SBTB: TNC then is that we're not watching the gods themselves - we are not ourselves members of the Bayside cult. Rather, we are watching the conversion and inculcation of other mortals. As we have been preached to, so too must these new young Tigers.
The gods no longer walk among the mortals, though of course in this context Screech makes for a compelling Christ figure from almost any interpretation (triune, unitarian, etc) - he can be god-made-man, the son of the gods, or he can be shoehorned into just about any interpretation you like, but let's leave that alone since I'm not interested in discussing the finer points of Christianity. Again, looking at cultural implications and affects of that religion here. To clarify: he makes a fine Mohammed, or Job, or Jesus, or Saul - the point of Screech's existence at Bayside is to spread The Word.
But the New Class has inherited a legacy by way of two prophets: Screech and Mr. Belding. They are perpetual reminders that every situation the New Class will have encountered, the original class encountered it first Every day of their lives is an imitation of what came before, and they are the first class to whom this has happened. Sure, the original class had to deal with some historical weight (like the fact that Jessi's ancestors were slave traders which, coincidentally, is about all the mention Lisa's blackness ever gets), but mostly the old class had free reign over their own actions. The world was theirs to explore, to rule, and to codify.
Not pictured: Donkey, Damascus
The interesting thing about SBTB: TNC then is that we're not watching the gods themselves - we are not ourselves members of the Bayside cult. Rather, we are watching the conversion and inculcation of other mortals. As we have been preached to, so too must these new young Tigers.
The gods no longer walk among the mortals, though of course in this context Screech makes for a compelling Christ figure from almost any interpretation (triune, unitarian, etc) - he can be god-made-man, the son of the gods, or he can be shoehorned into just about any interpretation you like, but let's leave that alone since I'm not interested in discussing the finer points of Christianity. Again, looking at cultural implications and affects of that religion here. To clarify: he makes a fine Mohammed, or Job, or Jesus, or Saul - the point of Screech's existence at Bayside is to spread The Word.
Something tells me the cheerleader's outfits are going to be less sexy
So that in a nutshell (a three-post nutshell) is how Western religion evolved: just like Saved by the Bell. People start by worshipping the earth and sky, then as their lives get more complex and the old models don't fit they begin worshipping aspect deities - forge gods, messenger gods, war gods - along with sky gods and sea gods. Eventually, and personally I think this is an indication of increasing complexity extending beyond the capability of the human mind to easily grasp, someone just says "Fuck it, know what? There's only one god, and he does everything." Divine intervention (or miracles) is (are) in large part removed from every day life, and is (are) experienced in sublime ways: Zeus no longer hurls angry lightning form Olympus, and Zack no longer calls "time out" in order to sneakily fix whatever problem ails him. Rather - the parables of the past are handed down as examples to the present through the machinations of a prophetic clergy, differing from an oracular clergy in that they make no claim to ongoing divine contact, but rather are recounting the tales of divine deeds past.
The leap from Polytheism to Monotheism in a cultural context is only possible with these prophets and apostles - messengers who can unify large populaces in coordinated worship under a single banner, uttering a single name. This also requires a certain disillusionment with complex polytheistic systems - first, the gods have to provably fail, second, the established clergy has to be corrupt, ineffectual, or unsatisfying, and third, the complexity of the potential follower's lives must allow for a certain degree of inexplicable mystery. While SBTB: TNC lives in a polytheistic society, there can be no doubt that by the end of the entire franchise' run, most of the old pantheon has been whittled away, and that there is only one who is most high: Screech be his prophet, Morris be thy name.
More like SAVED by the Bell, amirite?
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