NBC’s Grimm (and other things that bump in the night)

I’ve been enjoying NBC’s new crime/fantasy drama Grimm. It’s an interesting play on a traditional police procedural drama, where the criminals are often supernatural creatures ripped from the pages of the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. To everyone else, a murderer is just another deranged human being, but to Nick Burkhardt, he’s a werewolf or a snake — literally. The show opens with him discovering this ability, being warned about its implications, and eventually befriending the big bad wolf (who has retired from killing human beings.)

It’s in a long line of shows with similar themes: worldwide conspiracy, shadowy evil, things being other than as they seem, and secret agents of good who fight the evil and seek to preserve normality for the rest of us. It has much in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and The Twilight Zone.

For as far back as you can look in history and storytelling, you can find stories about dark, frightening forces that lurk in the shadows. Whether it’s the shadowy figures that surround Hades and his underworld, the bunyip of Australia, or any one of a thousand other demon, ghost or spirit myths, there is long tradition of belief in something dark, just beyond what we can see.

The apostle Paul speaks to that sense of a haunted world when he tells us, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) Likewise, Peter warns us, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

It’s that very real, looming darkness that we seek to explain with our stories. Some stories are openly fictional – like the storytelling of Stephen King and Wes Craven – and others are religious constructions that try to give names and faces to invisible evil. Shows like Buffy and The X-Files gain fanatically loyal followings because they feel true. And just as Paul was able to affirm the Romans’ sense that God was real and present in Acts 17, we can affirm that the darkness, too, is very real.