Catholicism was having a pretty good year before Netflix’s The Body; Pope Leo XIV’s progressive anti-AI stance welcomed a wave of good press, US Catholic churches reported a rise in Gen Z converts, and Rosalía’s ecclesiastical Lux Tour had fans accessorizing with veils and rosary beads in the name of fashion.
It was up to The Body creator Quinn Shephard to bring us back down to earth, expertly balancing the trendy aesthetics of the 2000s and Catholicism with a healthy reality check about the church’s regressive core values and the traps of Catholic guilt. Shephard’s series explores teen sexuality, female friendships, guilt, and rebellion, but a few campy nods to satanic ritual have given some conservative parents grounds to call for the show to be pulled from Netflix.
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Over 80,000 people signed a petition calling for the show’s removal. “Netflix walks straight into your home. It sits in your living room and on your family television. It glows on the phone in your teenager’s bedroom after lights out,” the petition reads. “Parents cannot screen every show their teenagers watch. Netflix is counting on that.”
“The show’s own tagline promises that the girls ‘pray hard and sin harder,'” it continues. “You spend years teaching your daughter to pray. Netflix wants to teach her that prayer leads to the Devil.”
The petition doesn’t mention the show’s inclusion of a queer relationship between two of the girls or its interrogation of how the Catholic Church’s culture of shame wreaks havoc on teens’ lives, but it’s hard not to imagine those elements might be the real concern for conservative parents seeking to control the media their kids consume.
Polarizing media is important in a culture that is shifting right. The Body knows that and seeks to represent the secrets that run deep in religious communities. As a counter-petition on Change.org that is begging Netflix to not cancel the show says, “Just because you see something thats ‘different,’ does not mean it’s evil, it’s human. We should be able to look our sins in the eye without being utterly afraid and push it away. The characters in this show make many mistakes as we all do in life.”
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