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A man was elected. A man was elected into one of the highest offices in the modern world and given complete control, but not because he was proven to be the best for this position. No, this inexperienced man was elected because the powers that be for this society were so obsessed with manipulating votes to ensure certain people wouldn’t be elected, they let him slip by. This man was elected because of compromise. A man, who has little patience or respect for tradition, was given complete control by a society that has no idea what he will do with said power. A man was elected.
That’s the plot of Paolo Sorrentino’s miniseries, The Young Pope.
I’m not the first critic to say this and I certainly won’t be the last: The Young Pope is eerily similar to the election of Donald Trump. One of the questions asked during the show’s panel at the TCA Winter Tour was how Jude Law’s Pope Pius XIII compared to other figures, including Tyler Oakley, Marcus Aurelius, St. Francis, the Dalai Lama, Damien, and Donald Trump. (Law noted that the difference between his character and the others is that “he’s not a liar.”) Vulture’s Jen Chaney recently published a thoroughly detailed, point-by-point analysis, comparing Trump’s campaign, path to the White House, and statements to that of HBO’s young pope, Lenny. Even if you don’t want to see them, the connections are overwhelmingly there.
As Chaney notes in her article, many shows and movies from this point forward are going to inevitably be tied to the Trump administration. That’s a given considering Hollywood’s outspoken disapproval of the now-president (If you need proof of that, turn to any awards show). However, The Young Pope is not a show that’s consciously tied to Trump or even Brexit. The series premiered in Italy on October 21, 2016, weeks before the U.S. election, and the beautifully scripted series was created between 2014 and 2016. The Young Pope is not about Trump in any way, and claiming that it is is reductive to a complicated series that explores the politics of the Catholic church, religion, and the complications that accompany being human. My colleague, Meghan O’Keefe, has been watching the series through a Catholic lens and has such come to completely different conclusions than I have. But, to me, this is a series about the unexpected overthrow of an established and powerful system by a wildcard. Few things feel more Trumpian right now than that.
I won’t lie. Watching Lenny brush away tradition every episode to do whatever he wants is highly entertaining. Through its established and almost expected beats, the first five episodes of the series (which have been released to critics) almost watch like a laughless sitcom: Every episode Lenny wants to do something. The Church opposes it. Lenny does it anyway. Everyone begrudgingly moves on. It’s a great dynamic I don’t think I’ll ever tire of watching. However, when you’re in the middle of this new world instead of binging it, it’s far less amusing.
It’s not the particulars that bind Lenny and Trump but their larger stories. A consistent theme throughout The Young Pope is that no one knows what the Pope’s going to do. Lenny’s rise to power involves several members of the Church who were fearful of a too-conservative leader. As a result, they elected a man whom they knew next to nothing about. Lenny doesn’t have the rallies surrounding him that Trump did during his campaign, but for anyone who watched the 2016 presidential campaign, it’s next to impossible to argue that Trump was the Republican party’s most comfortable pick. And then there’s the upheaval of tradition. Much like how Lenny has embraced smoking in the church and insists of keeping his face hidden, so too has Trump done away with several practices we as a society have honored for so long they are practically considered law. Trump’s treatment of the press and intensely antagonistic social media presence are certainly departures from tradition. We have yet to see Trump’s tax returns.
So what can we take away from this reading of The Young Pope? It’s far too early to say. We’re far from the series finale, and Season 2 is already in production, which means there’s more papal drama in our futures. Who’s to say whether Lenny’s untraditional methods destroy a sacred institution or give it the modern wake up call it needed? It’s looking to be more like the former than the latter, but there’s still time, and I still have hope. However, it is bizarre that so many clear parallels can be made between a fictional pope who has claimed he doesn’t believe in God and the new president of the United States.
