You Know Who Else Was a Carpenter?
G.O.T.H.S. honors the top Catholic newsmaker of 2023.
I usually try to take December off from publishing things, just because there’s so much going on with my family and the holidays, and also this is a hobby so I can step away from a hobby if I don’t have time for it. But there were plenty of Catholic news stories in December, important ones, that I didn’t write anything about: Raymond Burke got kicked out of his apartment, and Pope Francis wrote a letter about blessing people in same-sex relationships, and there was a big embezzlement trial at the Vatican, and Church Militant is collapsing so quickly that it can't even be saved by Michael Voris’ unwavering commitment to professionalism. I can’t cover everything if for no other reason than time, and looking back on the last few weeks of 2023, I have to ask myself if there are any stories that I regret not being able to dig into when they originally broke. And there is, of course, one critically important story in the American church where I do think I have something important to say, where I do want to contribute to the discourse. You likely have already guessed what it is, and yes, it's the Sabrina Carpenter music video.
Sabrina Carpenter, supporting cast member of Netflix’s Tall Girl and Netflix’s Tall Girl 2, is a former Disney Channel starlet turned pop singer, following a decades-old career path through media aimed at children. She’s definitely achieved some level of success as a singer, with a couple of singles that charted and a spot opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras tour. I didn’t actually know her name until she ended up in the late November Catholic news cycle, but I suppose I knew, indirectly, who she was, because she may be most famous not for her own music, but for being the subject of someone else’s music: Sabrina Carpenter was the “other woman” in the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series love triangle that megastar Olivia Rodrigo sang about on her debut album, SOUR. When Rodrigo sang “Deja Vu” and said “Do you call her/Almost say my name?/‘Cause let's be honest/We kinda do sound the same/Another actress/I hate to think that I was just your type,” she was singing about Sabrina Carpenter. Out of everyone in that love triangle, Olivia Rodrigo ended up as the clear “winner”, because she made an album about it and the album was so good that she got to meet the president.
All of that said, Sabrina may not have any selfies with Joe Biden, but she clearly landed on her feet, and that’s fine or whatever, but we gotta talk about the music video for her most recent single, “Feather”, which was shot at Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary church in Brooklyn. After the video was released on Halloween, a statement from the “appalled” diocese of Brooklyn denounced the video. The pastor at Annunciation, who signed off of Sabrina’s crew filming the video in his church, has been removed from the parish. The bishop of Brooklyn, Robert J. Brennan, said a “Mass of Reparation” in the church to try and heal the spiritual damage done to the sanctuary; the exact wording from the diocese was “restored the sanctity of this church and repaired the harm.” The parishoners at Annunciation seem hopelessly polarized over whether this series of punishments and corrective steps was too harsh.
I want to be very clear: I have spent four years writing about things that I find funny or interesting or infuriating in the American Catholic church. This story is, without question, the funniest thing that I have ever written about. Because I cannot, absolutely cannot, stop thinking about the bishop calling the pastor into his office and saying “this is completely unacceptable, I cannot believe you allowed this to happen in a sacred space”, and I cannot stop thinking about the pastor saying, in a comically exaggerated tone, “well, how bad could it POSSIBLY be?”, and I cannot stop thinking about the bishop pressing play on this:
Already: hell yes. Bells tolling, Virgin Mary statue, pink hearse pulling up.
Okay, so we cut to the streets of Brooklyn, and Sabrina’s wearing a midriff top and booty shorts and six-inch spike heels, men are clearly lusting after her ass, I love this. This is hilarious. The diocese of Brooklyn faulted the pastor for straying from “diocesan policy regarding the filming on church property, which includes a review of the scenes and script.” The pastor responded to the New York Times that “After a search online to learn more about the singer “did not reveal anything questionable,” he said he approved the project, citing an “effort to further strengthen the bonds between the young creative artists who make up a large part of this community”.”
I should mention that the song is just okay. I like stupid pop music, but this song does not stand out in a year where Olivia Rodrigo made GUTS and Chappell Roan made The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Anyways, let’s see what happens to the men who are trailing after Sabrina’s swaying ass and catcalling her, here's second 0:56:
And here's second 0:57:
All three men are run over by a truck and die. Sabrina wonders where they went, since she had her headphones on, but then she goes “ah well” and we hit that first chorus, baby.
All right, for the chorus, we move to the gym with the fellas, Sabrina is like thirty percent clothed, I already feel a stronger relationship between young artists and the diocese of Brooklyn. As the men in the gym start fistfighting over her, we hit the line “your signals are mixed/you act like a bitch”:
And we all know where this is going, right? The men are going to violently beat each other to death over Sabrina’s hot body while she takes selfies?
I wasn’t joking. They violently beat each other to death. Sabrina gets splattered with blood:
It is right and just:
New scene! Elevator with this dude! Can’t possibly end in violent bloodshed! Ah but wait, he’s taking a picture of her famously fatal ass, there’s gotta be consequences for that:
Uh oh oh no oh no oh no GUY WHO LOOKS LIKE PAUL RUST YOU'RE IN DANGER TAKE THE TIE OFF TAKE THE TIE OFF QUICKLY:
The body count on this video is, I believe, twelve:
“Okay Tony, that’s messed up, but none of that is really set in a church building except the establishing shot” GUESS WHAT BITCH WE GOT ONE CHORUS LEFT AND SHE’S GOT A TULLE DRESS THAT ENDS ONE INCH ABOVE THAT MURDEROUS ASS:
SHE’S DANCING! IN THE SANCTUARY! SHE PUT A BUNCH OF SHIT ON THE ALTAR AND FAKE COFFINS FOR THE MEN SHE KILLED IN THE FIRST TWO MINUTES AND FORTY-SIX SECONDS OF THE VIDEO! ARE YOU KIDDING ME! THIS IS THE HARDEST I’VE LAUGHED IN SIX MONTHS:
The bishop just looking at the pastor when the video ends and asking “so how do YOU think it went?”
The best part of all of this is that the New York Times had to call a professor at Fordham for background information on “hey why would a music video have Catholic stuff in it?”:
“The use of Catholic imagery in pop culture — from photography to the Met Gala and music videos — is not new. Madonna, in her 1989 music video for “Like a Prayer,” kneels at the feet of a statue, which brings the Catholic saint to life, and the two kiss in front of a burning cross. Unlike Ms. Carpenter’s video, Madonna’s was shot in a studio, not an operating church. Ms. Carpenter, who performs the opening act for parts of Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour, often covers Madonna’s music in her live performances. Catholic imagery is employed in popular culture more than other Christian sects because its churches have a recognizable visual style that viewers instantly associate with sacredness, said Kathryn Reklis, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University. “An unadorned Methodist church or a storefront Pentecostal church just don’t.””
That’s right, suck on that Pentecostals, enjoy your sanctuary that clearly used to be the counter at an Arby’s.
Every year, National Catholic Reporter names their “Newsmaker of the Year”, picking one person to summarize the past year of Catholic news. For 2023, the Newsmaker of the Year was Sr. Jeannine Gramick, the co-founder of New Ways Ministry and a longtime advocate for LGBTQ Catholics. This year, she met Pope Francis in person and began corresponding directly with him, and NCR talked about Sr. Gramick’s story in the context of a decade-long shift in the church’s tone when it comes to serving the LGBTQ members of our church. NCR’s opinion of how much the church has accomplished in this area is rosier than mine, but there’s no question that Sr. Gramick has done and continues to do important ministry for those that the church is often happy to ignore.
There is also, however, no question that Sr. Gramick will not be the G.O.T.H.S. 2023 Newsmaker of the Year, because that is obviously Sabrina Carpenter. I’m not even sure that Sabrina is Catholic, but who else could I possibly put in this spot? I don’t think it’s that funny that people are upset by this; I totally understand why practicing Catholics would be upset by this, and I honestly would rather something like this not happen at my parish (although I think relieving the pastor of his duties feels like overkill). But, the fact that a series of poorly made decisions led to something so over-the-top egregious being made at all? I mean, come on, that’s hilarious. The video for “Feather” led to officials in the fifth-largest diocese in the country running around saying “oh shit oh shit oh shit”, which I always appreciate, but I’m more impressed with how Sabrina Carpenter pulled it all off. The structure and pacing of this video, in terms of “how offensive would a Catholic diocesan official find this”, is incredible. You tease the church in the opening shot, then you go to “slightly sexualized starlet”, which might be reason enough for a bishop to get pissed off, but all of a sudden you hit a run of “unexpected bloody deaths”, and, just when you’ve forgotten about the whole church thing, you get to “much more sexualized starlet, in the sanctuary, having decorated the altar, like the real altar in a real church, with reminders of the unexpected bloody deaths, and dancing all sexy like”. In an earlier era in my life, I spent countless hours and thousands of dollars taking improv and sketch writing classes, working hard to understand what made good comedy and how to put together these elements to make people laugh. Nothing I have ever done since has come anywhere close to that video; I felt like I was watching The Producers for the first time. Sabrina Carpenter, congratulations on being named G.O.T.H.S. Newsmaker of the Year 2023. The bar is set very high for 2024, but I have faith in Chappell Roan getting 100 drag queens together to do the “HOT TO GO!” dance in front of the tabernacle at Saint Patrick's Cathedral before the year is out.