Reading Evil: Exploring Hall’s Decoding Categories

Paramount Plus’s series Evil follows a trio of truth-seekers—a priest-in-training, a working-class tech wizz, and a Scully-coded psychologist—hired by the Catholic church to work through their backlog of investigation requests into various supernatural phenomena, from demonic possession to medical miracles. I started watching it for a few reasons. First, the first three episodes were available to watch on the plane home for spring break. Second, reading the series description faintly reminded me of an article my mom had sent me about it (she thought it seemed up my alley and she was correct). Third, and perhaps most importantly, I liked the poster advertising the show on the tiny TV screen implanted into the headrest of the seat in front of me. It was hyper-stylized, showing a closeup of a woman’s face turned toward the heavens, impossible things reflected in her tears.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying I’ve watched a whopping four episodes of the entire show, whose last season airs in May. I’m reading this text based on the arcs I’ve seen develop over the first quarter of the first season. That said, with only four episodes under my belt, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this show and the way it problematizes questions concerning science and faith.

Startlingly different readings of the series arise through the use of television studies theorist Stuart Hall’s definitions of three broad categories of interpretation, as outlined in his 1980 essay “Encoding/Decoding”: dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. A dominant decoding involves the television viewer ‘correctly’ interpreting the text; that is, deriving the meaning from it that the creators, producers, distributors, etc. encoded into it, whether intentionally or not. An oppositional reading actively resists a ‘clear’ or dominant understanding of the text, instead opting to “retotalize the message within some alternative framework of reference” (173). Finally, the negotiated reading exists between the realms of the dominant and the oppositional, flirting with both lenses and ultimately drawing a more dynamic, ‘complete’ conclusion than either of the other two can on their own.

A few different readings of Evil thus far, per Hall:

Dominant- Many superstitions and “miracles”/religion-based beliefs are rooted in ignorance and stigma around mental illness, as well as structures of power created and sustained to upkeep and emphasize the institution of Catholicism. Many “miraculous”/“unexplainable” things in the world can be explained through close observation and scientific reasoning. Earthly explanations. Science does not, however, explain everything—some things truly cannot be explained through empirical means, or at the very least humankind hasn’t caught up enough to effectively explore these phenomena.

Negotiated- This program is capitalistic in nature but still contains artistic merit and relevant/thoughtful discourse on the human experience and the various ways we make sense of the world around us—through empirical or subjective lenses, or, ideally, both.

Oppositional- Though Evil appears well-intentioned, it, like all television, is simply another cog in the capitalist machine disguised as a legitimate artistic/philosophical effort. It is a part of the same intricate systems of oppression it fictionalizes and seeks to explore. The fact that the three main characters in the series are all employed by the Catholic church exposes their corrupt intentions and morals in this seemingly charitable pursuit of truth and rightness, as well as their creators’ inability to truly challenge this system. Did the individuals involved truly care about debunking harmful religion-based societal assumptions designed to disempower those most affected by systems of oppression, they would refuse to work with the Church and instead strike out on their own as a nonsecular effort to right centuries of lies perpetrated by religions like Catholicism. This program, by having its protagonists employed by the Church, reestablishes the very systems of power it markets itself as challenging. It is nothing more than yet another money-grabbing, formulaic attempt by a dying streaming platform to stay relevant in a world increasingly populated by sensationalist media. True art is not for profit.

In my opinion, this show is an ambitious and complicated effort by makers legitimately interested in problematizing the world around them through the lenses of science and religion, exploring what happens when the two intersect. It is neither patronizing toward religion nor blindly trusting of science. It grapples with modernity through three strikingly different characters of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, asking more questions that providing definitive answers.