Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
LBCF, No. 225: ‘An approved wanton’

LBCF, No. 225: ‘An approved wanton’

Last updated on: March 1, 2019 at 11:42 am by Fred Clark

LBCF, No. 225: ‘An approved wanton’ 2019-03-01T11:42:18-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Originally posted October 16, 2009.

You can read this entire series, for free, via the convenient Left Behind Index. The ebook collection The Anti-Christ Handbook: Volume 1, is available on Amazon for just $2.99. Ask your local super market to stop shoving the National Enquirer in customers’ faces. Volume 2 of The Anti-Christ Handbook, completing all the posts on the first Left Behind book, is also now available. Volume 3 is coming soon(ish).

Tribulation Force, pp. 104-105

We’ve read the set-up for this.

Buck Williams has headed off to New York without telling Chloe because he didn’t want her to talk him out of his meeting with Nicolae. Meanwhile he’s given spiky Alice the key to his apartment so that she can drop off the things arriving from his old office before she heads to the airport herself to pick up her fiancé. So the stage is set and here we come to the scene.

It unfolds, of course, on the telephone. Rayford dials his daughter, who is screening her calls with the answering machine:

Chloe grabbed the phone. She sounded awful. “Hi, Dad,” she mumbled.

“You under the weather?”

“No. Just upset. Dad, did you know that Buck Williams is living with someone?”

“What!?”

“It’s true. And they’re engaged! I saw her. She was carrying boxes into his condo. A skinny little spiky-haired girl in a short skirt.”

You can’t miss with the classics. Unless you’re Jerry Jenkins. Because here, in Tribulation Force, even this standard, tried-and-true plot device is mishandled.

It should be automatic. The instructions from the Acme Romantic Comedy factory are clearly written and all Jenkins needed to do was remove the prefabricated plot device from its packaging and insert it into his novel.

The Not What It Looks Like confusion of innocent behavior as infidelity may not be the most sophisticated plot device in the catalog, but if installed properly it works. Sure, it’s a gimmick, but it’s a reliable gimmick. It turned Julia Roberts into a movie star in Mystic Pizza. It generates conflict through innocent confusion, allowing audiences to sympathize with both parties without finding fault in either. And the conflict is easily resolved, lasting only as long as it is needed to introduce just enough tension or to bring to the surface the characters’ unspoken or unrecognized affection.

Shakespeare employed several variations of this device. Don John, the poor man’s Iago, sets the plot of Much Ado About Nothing* in motion by deliberately creating just such a case of Not What It Looks Like (or, actually, Not Who It Looks Like, since Borachio and Margaret really are doing what it looks like they’re doing). That play illustrates both the sturdy reliability of this plot gimmick and its limitations. The manufactured conflict between Claudio and Hero works, but it’s never as interesting as the character-driven conflict between Benedick and Beatrice.

Here in Tribulation Force Jenkins — being Jenkins — makes a hash of this classic can’t-miss plot twist. First he botches the set-up, then he puts the thing in backwards, and then he compounds the problem by dragging the whole thing out far longer than it could ever reasonably be sustained, and then longer still, and then even longer still, and then a bit more until finally the reader winds up wishing Iago himself would show up and hand someone a pillow.

Before we get to those problems in more detail, here’s a bit more of Jenkins’ description of how this played out. After seeing Alice carrying boxes into Buck’s condo, Chloe says:

“I was so mad I just drove around a while, then sat in a parking lot and cried. Then around noon I went to see him at the Global Weekly office, and there she was, getting out of her car. I said, ‘Do you work here?’ and she said, ‘Yes, may I help you?’ and I said, ‘I think I saw you earlier today,’ and she said, ‘You might have. I was with my fiancé. Is there someone here you need to see?’ I just turned and left, Dad.”

“You didn’t talk to Buck then?”

“Are you kidding? I may never talk to him again.”

The first problem with all of this is that Chloe isn’t really wrong. We’ve seen Buck and “Anything for you” Alice in action and theirs does not seem to be a wholly innocent professional relationship. Alice seems, in fact, like she really is a rival for Buck’s affection, one who appears so far to be winning. All that giggling and wide-eyed leaning forward and jumping at the chance to drive all over lugging boxes for Buck shows us that Alice is clearly smitten. And Buck finds nothing quite so attractive as a woman with the good judgment to be smitten with him.

The guiltily belated reference to the existence of Alice’s fiancé didn’t do anything to dispel the sense that those two need to get a room. The mention of this fiancé didn’t communicate to readers that Alice is engaged and therefore not interested in Buck, but rather that this poor schmo of a fiancé just doesn’t realize he is losing his girl to a superior man.

I think Jenkins wanted the fiancé to signal that Alice was spoken for and therefore not a rival of Chloe’s, but he just couldn’t resist his compulsion to demonstrate that Buck is the Alpha Male and that Alice’s fiancé can have her affection only if Buck allows it. Buck/Rayford has to be given first dibs on any woman in the story, otherwise the authors fear that we might suspect that woman impossibly might actually prefer some other man over our heroes/authors.

That’s all part of the insufferable perfection the authors intend for us to see in their heroes. Such perfect men, of course, can never be wrong — not even innocently mistaken. And that’s why Jenkins decided to stick this plot device in backwards. Instead of having his protagonist confused by an innocent mistake, he forces this confusion onto poor Chloe — the object of the protagonist’s affection.

That’s not how the gimmick works and it creates several problems here.

Chloe isn’t a point-of-view character in this book, so we’re only able to see her confusion and her sense of betrayal second-hand via Rayford. This makes her seem less sympathetic — more petulant and vindictive than she might have seemed if we had been given her reaction first-hand. We aren’t invited to consider the conflict as it appears to Chloe, but rather as it appears to Buck. This makes our hero Hero — virtuous and wrongfully accused (reinforcing the persecution complex at the heart of these books). Chloe comes across less like the innocently deceived Claudio than she does like Don John — a cruel, spiteful accuser. At best, in the authors’ view, she is meant to seem foolish, since only a fool could ever suspect Buck Williams of wrongdoing or, for that matter, of having any flaw whatsoever.

It doesn’t help Chloe any that we readers know all along that she is mistaken. We know better, so we never participate with her in her confusion. We may try to understand it, but we don’t share it. It’s her mistake, not ours.**

The implicit message thus is not “We humans sometimes jump to the wrong conclusions based on incomplete information and a fear of losing what we cannot live without,” but rather, “Chloe is a girl and girls are silly.”

And that’s really the fundamental problem here. The rest of this might be surmountable — even the authors’ suffocating self-love for Buck as Mr. Perfect — were it not for the way this subplot reinforces these books’ relentless misogyny.

Chloe isn’t portrayed throughout this episode as a victim of circumstance making an innocent mistake. She’s just a woman, and in LaHaye and Jenkins’ universe, women are inherently foolish, rash and unreliable. They are drama queens in need of firm guidance from men, who are far more reasonable and wise and fully human.***

This Not What It Looks Like subplot, dragged on ad nauseum over the next several chapters, offers the authors’ neatly circular defense of this misogyny. Chloe is portrayed as foolish because she is a woman. And it’s not unfair to portray women this way, because just look at what Chloe is doing.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* In Elizabethan slang, “something” and “nothing” were sometimes used to refer, respectively, to male and female genitalia. The title of Much Ado About Nothing is thus not simply a reference to the illusory conflict at the heart of the plot, but also a nifty dirty pun.

** This is something Mystic Pizza actually does better than Much Ado, in which the audience knows all along that Claudio is deceived and never shares in that same deception. This can make Claudio unsympathetic — a potential disaster, since Hero’s restoration and happiness involves her receiving Claudio as her reward, and if the audience doesn’t like him, then it seems like she’s getting doubly cheated. This is why I think the actor playing Claudio has to have a beautiful singing voice. If he sings like an angel in Act V, the audience will usually forgive him for acting like a prick in Act IV.

*** This is just a theory, but this pervasive disdain for women — the sense that their opinions do not really matter — may be one factor (if not the only one) in these books’ hilariously omnipresent homoerotic subtext.

Buck and Steele are presented as paragons of manliness who, by definition, deserve the adoration of every woman. And yet, also by definition, no woman can be presented as genuinely deserving them. This creates a problem. Illustrating their virile manliness requires that readers be shown others as perceiving them and responding to them as irresistibly sexually desirable. Yet for that desire to be credible and respectable it cannot come only from mere women. Women’s opinions don’t really count. Thus it falls to the other men in the story to express that sexual desire in a way that is, for the authors, credible and convincing.

Oscar Wilde, I think, made playfully deliberate use of something like this in The Importance of Being Earnest, employing his male protagonists’ chauvinism as a kind of mask for their clear preference for flirting with one another, a la Beatrice and Benedick.

A darker example might be Frank T.J. Mackey, Tom Cruise’s predatory sex guru in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Mackey seems like the inverse of what we have here in Tribulation Force. His repressed homosexuality is channeled into a vicious misogyny. The authors here fully embrace Mackey’s credo: “Respect the cock! Tame the [nothing]!” but for them the dynamic works the other way — with their vicious misogyny getting channeled into an inadvertent homoeroticism.

But like I said, it’s just a theory.

Uncategorized

Left Behind

Previous Post

February 28, 2019

Without getting killed or caught

Next Post

March 5, 2019 The shock jocks are in charge now

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Gethsemane" mean in Aramaic?

Select your answer to see how you score.

House of God Olive press Place of rest Holy ground