In today’s streaming-media world, we’re inundated with visual stories. A good number are well done: Engaging and stylish. Well-acted. Killer soundtrack. Meme-worthy moments. We might finish watching and—in a burst of short-lived enthusiasm—tell a friend or post on social media about it, noting some of these “well done” elements. But a week later, we’ve moved on and largely forgotten about it (even though, in many cases, we gave it 10-plus hours of our attention). A few years later, we hardly remember anything about it.
Such is the nature of contemporary media. Most of it is quickly forgotten and leaves us empty. But why? Aren’t we supposed to be living in the “golden age of television” (a.k.a. “peak TV”), where streamers present us with a never-ending buffet of top-shelf series and auteur-helmed movies? We’re glutted with “prestige” narratives. But it’s an abundance that feels oddly meager. It doesn’t satisfy or nourish; if anything, it makes us queasy.
We’re glutted with ‘prestige’ narratives. But it’s an abundance that feels oddly meager.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, Peggy Noonan chalks up the current aesthetic malaise to “the uglification of everything.” She describes it as an artistic attitude that “speaks of self-hatred, and a society that hates itself, and hates life, won’t last. Because it gives those who are young nothing to love.”
She’s partially right. But a distinction needs to be made between form and content. From my vantage point, the paradox is that we have a beautification of form alongside an uglification of content. Televisual technique is ascendent but meaningful stories are in decline. This is why so many shows and films look stunning but leave us confused and depressed.
Renaissance of Style. Dark Ages of Story.
Contemporary visual storytelling is stylistically advanced but morally regressive. We’re in a renaissance of style but a dark ages of story.
The new Netflix show Ripley is a good case study for this theory. Noonan discusses Ripley (the latest adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley), but I disagree with her assessment that the series is “unrelievedly ugly.” I’d argue that Ripley, like countless other streaming series these days, is beautifully done on a stylistic level. The Caravaggio-inspired black-and-white cinematography is lush and moody, evoking the best of post-war noir style. The presence of stairs throughout the series underscores the moral elevations the story inhabits. And in the hands of cinematographer Robert Elswit, Italy has never looked so timeless.
But Ripley as a whole feels like an exercise in decadent style more than a consequential narrative with clear ideas. It’s a crime story that boils down to a cat-and-mouse drama (will he get away with it?), but no character is particularly appealing, and viewers leave the show with that all-too-familiar feeling in modern media consumption: “So what?”
Ripley feels like an exercise in decadent style more than a consequential narrative with clear ideas.
In its highly stylized, almost elegant portrayal of skilled criminal behavior, Ripley reminded me of David Fincher’s hit-man drama The Killer, released on Netflix last year. Fincher is one of cinema’s greatest living artisans. He can do style like no one else. But The Killer was all style and no substance; it naturally left viewers empty. The coolest shots, most jaw-dropping set pieces, and most elegant editing sequences only go so far in cultivating resonance within the audience. Much more than a cool vibe is needed—namely, we need a compelling story with a “So what?” purpose and a raison d’être that goes beyond an exercise in genre or style.
Why Style Has Become Everything
Unfortunately, visual storytellers in our secular age increasingly can’t muster a raison d’être beyond style.
This makes sense for a couple reasons. The emerging generation of visual storytellers came of age in a screen-based world, with a highly attuned vocabulary of visual aesthetics. Reared on YouTube, Instagram, iMovie, and Pinterest-style mood boards, they’re saturated in style and speak that language fluently.
Unfortunately, they’re far less literate in the language of virtue and their moral vocabulary is underdeveloped. Having exercised the muscles of scrolling through eye-catching ephemera more than the muscles of flipping through the pages of brain-engaging Great Books, they’re more proficient in the visual logic of good design than in the moral logic of goodness.
A Gen Z friend recently told me not to underestimate how much a good design aesthetic matters in reaching his generation. They’re highly drawn to what’s well-branded and aesthetically fresh, to the point that this can become more important than the substance. In a world where feelings, vibes, and appearances matter more than facts, logic, and reality, it makes sense that form in storytelling would matter more than content.
The other major reason for this style-over-substance dynamic is that a secular culture has little consensus on what constitutes “good.” There’s no longer a transcendent basis on which to determine a “good” story, “good” characters, or “good” endings. There’s no objective grounding for what would make someone heroic or villainous, so the lines are blurred. Most drama now consists of “complicating” those categories and transgressing all established norms, lines, and expectations. Fluidity and ambiguity reign, both in gender and in morality.
This is a major theme in Ripley, where Tom Ripley and almost all the major characters are hard to pin down both morally and sexually. Freddie Miles, for example (portrayed in the 1999 film version by the great Philip Seymour Hoffman), is here played by a woman (Sting’s daughter Eliot Sumner), further underscoring the story’s compassless moral commitments.
But we also see it in the trend of Hollywood films about classic villains, whether Maleficent (2014), Venom (2018), Joker (2019), or Cruella (2021)—the latter of which is essentially a movie-length showcase for Vivienne Westwood–style punk couture. And it was a box office hit! Bespoke costume design and a 1970s Brit-rock soundtrack mattered more to audiences than Cruella’s repulsive, vice-celebrating story. Vibes over vision.
Some might argue there is a moral vision and purpose to these stories because they show the nature of sin and corruption. I think that’s going too far. You might be able to argue this with a “turning inward on himself” series like Breaking Bad. But most of Hollywood’s villain-centric stories don’t explore sin’s nature. They use sin as an occasion for stylish world-building.
Filmmakers keep returning to the Joker not because they want to seriously explore the nature of his depravity but because he’s an irresistible canvas for costume designers, makeup artists, actors, and other creatives. His anarchic sartorial vibe and transgressive brand are tailor-made for the spectacle-addicted social media age.
Christian Mission in an Age of Aesthetics
If it’s true that good design matters more to Gen Z than substance, how should the church respond? The answer is decidedly not to focus on packaging the church or the gospel in trendy branding and cool vibes. But this isn’t to say the church shouldn’t prioritize beauty. Good design isn’t the same thing as beauty. Design is for selling products to consumers; it’s always tied to trends. Beauty is for bearing witness to a higher glory; it’s always tethered to transcendence.
One way the church can connect with young people in an aesthetics-obsessed age is to show how transcendent beauty is far more satisfying than trendy branding. We should lean into the cultural attraction to nice aesthetics but show how unsatisfying this ultimately is. When we notice something aesthetically pleasing, it’s a whispered reminder we were made to worship the God who is the source, standard, and arbiter of beauty. Good design scratches a topical itch. God’s beauty nourishes our whole being.
One way the church can connect with young people in an aesthetics-obsessed age is to show how transcendent beauty is far more satisfying than trendy branding.
The church should also lean into the angst and emptiness people feel in an entertainment world so advanced in style but remedial in substance. We should point people to Scripture as a narrative that celebrates style (poetry, genre, metaphor, imagery, and so on) but in a way that conveys real substance.
The Bible is the perfect fusion of form and content, and Christian storytellers should model this in how we communicate biblical truth. If fewer and fewer secular artists are able to present both impressive artistic technique and a meaningful, compelling narrative, Christian artists are well positioned to do both.
So let’s enter the cultural void and answer the “uglification” with gospel beauty. Let’s tell stories full of style and substance—not to grab the attention of scrolling eyes or the clicks of fidgety fingers but to point restless souls to the satisfaction they need.