At this link you can read peoples posted comments about the show:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/revelations/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1
With this link you can watch the programme until it expires in two weeks time:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/revelations/4od#2926795
The soundtrack by the idiosyncratic artist Jeffrey Lewis was sensitively placed over the footage, enhancing the tenderness of the people in the film. It reminded me of the soundtrack to a documentary about weird outsider art that Jarvis Cocker presented in 1998 using a similarly outlandish yet light soundtrack. Quirky music set the tone for viewing beautiful to look at but arguably and maybe mysteriously pointlessly over-decorated built environments.
It sets the mood of the program. It helped to communicate from the start, the film maker Jon Ronsons conclusions about Alpha- that he summarised at the end as having a ‘mathematical structure of niceness’ where people share their lives and only put pressure on the attendees once (in the form of exposing them to teaching about speaking in tongues on a weekend away)in an engagingly flaky way.
The presenter Jon Ronson came across this way too, as likable, light, funny and quirky. He chose to include footage of himself where he accidentally leaves the camera on and talks to one of the Alpha guests about his new shoes.
Ronson seemed to emphasise:
1. Agnosticism.
He repeatedly defined people attending the course as agnostics. I don’t know if he interviewed each person who entered the group and asked them how they define themselves, maybe he did. Ronson opens the program with an assumption that his audience knows what this term means. Maybe he intentionally wants to knee-jerk/challenge the viewer to place themselves as Christian or some other identity as they begin to watch.
As Ronson repeatedly describes the Alpha attendees as agnostics, the lightly alien, ousiderish mood of the film is built upon. You might aswell exchange the word ‘Agnostic’ for ‘Alien’. We the viewers are now Aliens, watching Aliens being part of a super-alien Christian ‘structure’
2. Structure.
Ronson refers to St Aldates as ‘routinely’ transforming non believers. And the hostility of attendees or their non-conversion, he refers to as marking a less successful Alpha.
I’ve been on an Alpha training day, having been involved with running a course. Ronson shows us video footage of the Toronto revival of the 1980’s and tells us that for Nicky Gumbel who attended this event, speaking in tongues is a vital part of the course and the weekend away.
It’s the first time I’ve seen footage of the Toronto blessing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard people speaking in tongues on an alpha course but maybe I’ve just forgotten. At the training day I attended it was emphasised to encourage people who attend the course to come to the Holy Spirit weekend or day, to do the whole course, to be taught about the Holy Spirit. This needn’t mean speaking in tongues has to be demonstrated.
Teaching on water baptism isn’t written into the Alpha course but in our group we used to add in a session to answer questions about this subject. Alpha can be a flexible teaching guide not a cult structure by a weird leader longing for a toronto spectacle of yesterday. There are as Ronson points out 30,0000 UK courses. This is not the outplaying of a mans strange vision for people everywhere to speak in tongues. It’s more likely because it is useful teaching material that you can easily apply to your own church, and as Ronson points out the value of a small group where because there are inherently spiritual people there, relational, emotional things happen.
3. Peoples Stupidity.
Ronson encourages us to have empathy with and take the conclusive viewpoint of Ed, to respect the selflessness and decency of the Alpha leaders who’ve spent themselves serving and praying for the people attending the course. Yet he laughs over the speakers and mocks them outrageously at points. Near the start of the film he hints that the small group leaders ‘cleverness’ is in an overdependence on their pamphlets and the main vicar and speker is merely copying Nicky Gumbels video in his talk.
Student Daves drunken nights out are again just lovable human stupidity to the filmmaker. Like some beautifully worked up yet pointless mosaic…
Ronson refers to Daves 12 pint night out as a ‘normal student night out’. Daves willingness to be prayed for and ecstatic corridor wandering are presented as light and amusing matters.
Well maybe to some of the Jeffrey Lewis fan-base audience of today perhaps it is. However, there are two different pictures of Dave in my mind, of what he might look like in ten to twenty years time, depending on what choices Dave makes at the next Alpha course he joins.
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