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The Young Pope
2016 · TV series · 55 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Paolo Sorrentino
Lenny Belardo, the youngest and first American Pope in the history of the Church, must establish his new papacy and navigate the power struggles of the closed, secretive Vatican.
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6 comments on Hacker News
I've probably seen a dozen movies and TV shows about various conclaves. This movie seemed like a well-made and perfectly normal movie about the subject... with a couple lines tacked on at the very end in a grasping attempt to seem edgy.
Jude Law's The Young Pope or even Jeremy Iron's The Borgias covered the subject better imho.
Another hand gesture you will frequently see in religious art is a figure (usually a Pope or bishop) pointing upwards with their index and middle finger. This is somewhat unnatural since you would generally point with your index finger alone. The use of two fingers represents the divine and human natures of Christ.
A few examples:
https://i2.wp.com/catholicism.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2000/12/Saint_Ambrose_of_Milan.jpg
https://jimmyakin.com/wp-content/uploads/st-augustine-and-four-states-of-a-fraternity.jpg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_VIII#/media/File%3ADankaerts-Historis-9264.tif
It shows up in formal photographs of the Pope in the 20th century:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ch3pBw3dBY0/WeG5Oo9_k1I/AAAAAAAACw8/OwKF4oCfvekKvukHBKJtILG26slM7pDuACLcBGAs/s1600/Papst_Pius_XII.%252C_Kr%25C3%25B6nung_1939JS.jpg
And the TV series The Young Pope even included this gesture as a detail: https://youngpopesart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/vlcsnap-1204-09-21-12h53m45s1382.jpg
Endorsement always happens at the aesthetic level, there's never anything explicitly political about genuinely fascist work.
Take Fight Club which you're 'supposed to' take as criticism of explosive violence but it still basks in it. Or superficially anti-war movies like Black Hawk Down which are basically war porn aesthetically. The Young Pope is another good recent example. Superficially it's satire but on every other level obviously sympathetic to what it portrays.
Kind of off topic, but that show (The Young Pope Season 1) is very very well written, and is a good commentary on how to understand culture and realize how keeping things mysterious and hidden is a way to seed obsession. This scene[0] in particular is a good one.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY8C3cIMR4o
> You can do a lot more damage as a trusted friend than you can as a known enemy.
Reminds me of the Young Pope's first episode.
"Friendly relationships are dangerous. They lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and conflicts, and they always end badly. Formal relationships, on the other hand, are as clear as spring water."
I find HBO shows equal or better in quality than the best Netflix shows. Westworld was fantastic. My wife and I just started watching The Young Pope. In a few months GoT and SV will be back on. HBO is learning from Netflix and coming out with some fantastic shows. I also like catching recent movies on HBO before they show up on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc.
Of course, Netflix is well worth the subscription and if you don't watch a lot of TV, it has enough content to keep you entertained for a while. But I've noticed that I discuss HBO shows more with my friends/family than Netflix ones.