The Ark, BBC1. Why Does God Hate Cities?

The Ark

What has God got against cities. Watching The Ark on BBC1 the other night I came away thinking that the Lord had an almighty grudge against urban life in general.

From the beginning we are presented with a pastoral idyll (well, as idyllic as it gets in the desert.) A happy bunch of strapping lads splash in a pond, a carefree respite from hoeing and sewing the scrap of land they share. Dad reminds them about the honest toil they are neglecting, then jumps in and dunks his sons to general hilarity. They arrive home to share a meal around a rustic table with their wives and mother who spent their day washing bedding, beating carpets and cooking industrial amounts of flatbread. “Thank you God for the gift of family,” Noah says. Very wholesome.

Five minutes in and it’s nighttime. Noah is blowing out the candles and looking at the stars, no doubt contemplating the immensity of God’s creation and the utter insignificance of human attempts to understand the world. Canaan, the youngest son, stirs. But he’s not looking upwards at God’s glorious handiwork. His eye is fixed on the horizon. At the bright lights. The big city. It’s a look we know spells trouble. The city introduces a note of discord, a promise of forbidden delights and the temptation to transgress against all that’s good and sure and familiar.

Noah has to deliver a boat he’s built. He tells Emmie, his wife, that he’s thinking of taking Canaan along. She’s aghast. Canaan is too young to cope with the city. He is not strong enough. Noah explains; “God wants us to see everything that’s open to us, good or bad.” There’s no doubt the city is bad. Noah thinks Canaan is old enough see for himself how completely corrupt the city is.

Cut to Noah and Canaan entering the city. Beggars, limbless men, babies on knees, young women hanging around gossiping, worshippers of idols, semi-naked dye workers, inexplicable machinery, traders hawking exotic fruits, a thriving marketplace; it’s an eye opener for the naive young lad.

“Aren’t there any laws here?” He asks his dad.

“What laws there are are made by those who crave power and wealth and nothing else. How can laws made by men like that have any meaning? dad says.

“What about God’s law?”

“People don’t believe God exists.”

“And that’s wrong?”

Noah delivers a rhetorical refutation of atheism – a ploy reprised by Canaan himself at the end of the film, right before his careens off the monotheistic rails – then this crucial observation about the city:

“The simple truth is that man would rather live in a world of his own design… And this is what it looks like.”

The next moment Canaan loses sight of Noah and is set upon by a couple of thugs. Noah, played by David Threlfall, suddenly terminates the theologising and turns into an antediluvian Frank Gallagher, nutting the first robber and kneeing the other sharply in the balls. His righteous wrath is swift, merciless and devastating.

“Don’t tell your mother” he advises, dispatching the first robber with a powerful kick in the face. You can hear the crunch of the skull fracturing as he slumps to the ground. Nobody intervenes. That’s how to deal with city dwellers. They don’t have God. All they understand is violence, force and superior strength.

Back home on the family farm Noah gets a visit from an angel. It’s not good news for the city. God is in no mood for regeneration.

There is violence, arrogance, hatred of those who are different to you, a world run by money-lenders and warmongers, where one man grows fat, yet happily watches whilst another starves, where old men use the bodies of children to feed their desires …

The thing is, none of those allegations are borne out in the city scene. Apart from the attempted robbery – and Noah’s massively out of proportion reaction to it – the city seemed quite a cheerful, colourful, convivial place. It would have got 5 stars from Mary Portas. If it had a Wetherspoons I’d have been perfectly at home there too.

I didn’t notice any war-mongerers, celebrity paedophiles, payday lenders or queues at food banks. And, so far from “hatred of those who are different” the city seemed blissfully diverse and remarkably tolerant. I’ve encountered more lawlessness and immorality in Kirkgate market last thing on a Saturday afternoon to be honest.

What is God’s problem with cities?

5 comments

  1. A pedant writes:

    I don’t know where the scriptwriter did his/her research for this but it certainly wasn’t the Pentateuch. Canaan was in fact the grandson of Noah. Canaan’s Dad was Noah’s second son, Ham. The dialogue sounds rather as though it should be between Abraham and his nephew, Lot. Furthermore, God had no more of a downer on cities than he did on the countryside; when the Almighty decided to destroy the whole world with a flood, it was the iniquity of rural folk as much as of urbanites that was being punished, and farmer Ham and his pastoralist descendants were recipients of a lasting divine curse for indulgence in the sort of naughtiness that subsequently settled the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nor should the destruction of these Cities of the Plain lead one to conclude that Yahweh hated cities per se. On the contrary, he sanctioned Jerusalem and insisted that the landless Levite tribe be given 48 cities: “Command the children of Israel, that they give unto the Levites of the inheritance of their possession cities to dwell in; and ye shall give also unto the Levites suburbs for the cities round about them” (Numbers 35:2)

    By the way, when I first saw that pub near the railway station called Friends of Ham I fondly believed it was a belated acknowledgement of Noah’s least-favoured son and was inclined to patronise it. Although I find it far too crowded nowadays for comfort and rarely go, it was the site of quite the finest product of the Ilkley Brewery I have tasted, The Mayan, a gorgeous chocolate stout. Read all about it here:

    http://www.ilkleybrewery.co.uk/our-beers/item/the-mayan-chocolate-chipotle-stout

    1. This Noah is lifted from the Koran. That’s where the superfluous son comes from too (mainly 11.42-46).

      I don’t know where the names come from.

      1. Thanks for the clarification, Phil. I haven’t read that scripture so stand corrected and (hopefully) edified.

  2. Good work. How often as a writer, do you get chance to use ‘antediluvian’ literally?

  3. Personally I don’t believe there is a god so the question is a bit irrelevant for me.

    But what I do believe is that there is a pervasive streak of anti-urbanism that runs through the heart of British culture so in the respect however the programme was actually framed I would expect it to reflect this.

    So which pressure group in Britain has the most members? – that’s right the National Trust.

    When the post-war planning system was set up what was the key measure put in place to contain city expansion for needed housing and to protect middle class property values? – that’s right the Green Belt.

    Stereotypically where do the despised “underclass” live? – that’s right in the “inner city” and on “rundown” – (they are always rundown in the popular media) social housing estates.

    Why do we have so much surveillance in cities? – that’s right because we believe that any behaviour which annoys us is “anti-social” or we have learned to suspect that the person next us on the bus is a possible terrorist.

    Of course cities have always been the targets of reform – rightly so considering some of the conditions people have to live in- but where have these come from and whose values do they represent? – that’s right those with Faith who believe it is their calling to do good in the world: technocrats and their advocates imposing their (at the time) fashionable ideas through the local political system: and other members of the political class who generally speaking would like to make the city into somewhere they might ideally like to live.

    But where does this class actually live or aspire to live? – that’s right in Harewood House, Chipping Norton, and the “Golden Triangle” outside York Harrogate and Leeds.

    And what am I going to watch on the tele tonight – You got it in one – “Country File”, “Springwatch”, “Coast” and of course “Escape to the Country”.

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