Unless you caught HBO’s new show when it aired in the UK or Italy, two purgatorial obstacles stand between you and viewing paradise.
One is the avalanche of Young Pope memes online. The other is a gauntlet of inevitable but ultimately lazy comparisons to Donald Trump’s rise to power.
Speaking to USA Today, Jude Law said he was worried his character Pius XIII might “be conceived as far-fetched” – but said events in Washington now make it seem “it seems totally plausible”.
However, in our present world, currently turned up to 11, it’s easy to see everything as a mirror.
Before we go there, here’s what the show is actually about: Lenny Belardo, a seemingly innocuous American cardinal in his late forties, is surprisingly made Pope in what is supposed to be a clever PR move.
Sometimes "The Young Pope" really feels like it’s about Trump https://t.co/SwqXpazRjw pic.twitter.com/VwJ5fL2M5v
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 16, 2017
His good looks and seemingly moderate position should make him the posterboy for a Catholic Church whose popular appeal has been in decline for half a millennium.
As Trump might say at the end of one of his tweets: Wrong!
From the moment Belardo is elected he proves himself radically reactionary and intransigent.
He makes nuns cry, bribes confessors to reveal other priest’s sins and refuses to show his face before an “undeserving” St Peter’s Square. Generally, he just punishes the world for his abandonment by his parents as a child.
Taking the name Pius XIII, he is intent on making the Church unpopular so that it can be rebuilt by those who are willing to be as pious as him.
It’s one of the most imaginative, and decidedly un-TV premises for a TV series.
But though they are the least interesting thing about the show, it’s hard not to credit the parallels people can make with Trump.
The Daily Beast observed a Pope “unfit to lead by traditional measures” who “refuse[s] to bend to standards, propriety, or even popular opinion”, ending with: “Does any of this sound familiar?”
Vulture ran “How Trumpish is The Young Pope?“, likening Pius XIII’s isolationism to Trump’s Mexico border wall.
Law himself also expanded on his character being “unpredictable and unknown in that environment, just as Trump is in the political world” and, in a separate interview with Deadline, called the show a warning about where “voting into the unknown can lead you.”
'The Young Pope': cuando el papa quiso ser Donald Trump https://t.co/6KTbuOg4Fo En @gonzoonews pic.twitter.com/R0eEvF7Ab8
— 20minutos.es (@20m) December 18, 2016
There are parallels. But parallels are all they are. Allegory is one of those very tricky, clever things that – nonetheless – is almost always interpreted and reemployed in the laziest way.
So before one half of America boycotts this operatic, lush and bizarre show for being offensive about their political saviour, and the other half finds it too close to home – it is worth noting that the director has said he wrote it before the rise of Trump could be observed.
Also worth noting is that the most striking things in The Young Pope aren’t worldly at all.
Pius XIII is relentlessly non-populist – refusing to travel, visit his faithful or even appear before people directly outside his palace.
But he is also avant garde, at least for a Pope, in that he admires Banksy and Daft Punk for their anonymity. He was chosen by the elite in the hope that he’d be accessible, and proved to be mysterious.
There are beautiful bits of magic which aren’t laboured or over-explained. One desiccated-looking Cardinal is seen supporting the “heavy but fragile” weight of God. Pope Pius XIII, we become aware, is capable of performing miracles or coincidences, such as taming a kangaroo (don’t ask) and, later, curing a woman’s infertility.
By groping her, no less. (I’m genuinely shocked no one has piped up with a Trump joke on this front yet.)
The show plays up the Biblical idea that God’s conduits never arrive fully worthy of him. And Lenny Belardo is a hateful, sympathetically wizened creature: not an anti-hero, but a villain capable of miracles.
And that is the true reason why the Trump comparison will never be sufficient. Pius XIII is a saint with possibly catastrophic intentions, or an anti-Christ who can perform God’s work.
The President, inaugurated on Friday, can never occupy two positions at once. He is either anti-Christ or saint, depending on your perspective. The Young Pope is a show with simply too much subtlety to be a Trump metaphor.
