Article

Character

Comment

Film & TV

12 February 2025

5 min read

Traitors reflects an age of deceit and disappointment

Behind the game play, we're yearning for authenticity and connection.

Alex Stewart

Alex Stewart is a lawyer, trustee and photographer.

A montage shows a Scottish castle, the host of the V show the Traitors and a dark scary scene.

BBC.

‘What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.’

Some people, it seems, are not cut out to be liars. I felt for Freddie, one of the last contestants to survive on The Traitors, who found out the hard way. A fumbled recounting of a fabricated conversation with fellow Traitor Minah was enough to seal his fate, and soon he too was banished from the castle. The sad irony was that until his last-minute recruitment as a Traitor, Freddy had in fact been a Faithful for most of the show, insistently proclaiming his innocence and now cruelly denied his chance of vindication. But that’s all part of the game: shifting identities and alliances mean nothing is at it seems, and trusting is fraught with risk.

Part of the success of The Traitors is that it has very successfully tapped into a pervasive national mood: the feeling that we are constantly being deceived, misled, spun or manipulated. This is hardly surprising. Trust in politicians and institutions is at an all-time low, eroded by scandals, misinformation and truth dodging. From the Post Office and the contaminated blood scandals to the manipulation of unpalatable facts to the non-apologies of the guilty, the British public has become increasingly sceptical of those in power.

The 2024 British Social Attitudes survey, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research, revealed that public trust in the UK's system of government has reached a record low, while a similar survey by the OECD reported that only 27 per cent of people in the UK reported high or moderately high trust in government, well below the OECD average of 39 per cent.

But it’s not just politicians and institutions that we distrust. The new world of deep fakes, misinformation, and AI-generated content seems also to have had a corrosive effect on our ability to trust one another. A recent CREST Insights report indicates that only 41 per cent of respondents now trust their neighbours, while the Edelman Trust Barometer tells us that this distrust has, for some, moved from resignation to outright hostility, with one in two young adults approving of hostile activism as driver of change - including attacking people online and intentionally spreading disinformation.

With this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that the contestants of The Traitors are susceptible to high levels of paranoia, and see Machiavellian deceit and betrayal as their only way to survive and have any chance of winning.

But the human cost of betrayal is high and psychologically taxing. The constant need to fabricate stories, remember lies, and manage the stress of potential exposure requires huge cognitive and emotional effort. The effects are tangible as the contestants suffer variously from anxiety, paranoia, and emotional exhaustion.

Meanwhile the building paranoia is stoked by regular invocations of the dark supernatural as cloaked figures and effigies shift the atmosphere from wink murder to The Wicker Man, and Claudia presides over proceedings with the authority of a pagan high priestess. Even the game operates within a quasi-religious framework of sin, confession, and punishment. Players who lie and deceive will eventually face judgment, from their fellow contestants and the millions watching at home

What appeared to be crocodile tears turned out to be genuine tears of despair as the demands of the game took its toll on her conscience and integrity. “I hate it. I hate how I was.”

Although everyone knows it’s just a game, the prolonged deception has real world repercussions that continue beyond the show's end. Many of the contestants struggled to reintegrate into their daily lives, facing challenges in rebuilding trust with loved ones and grappling with their actions during the game. The vicar, Lisa, told of the discomfort of having to explain away her absence on the show as a ‘retreat’, while the winners, Jake and Leanne, both said how difficult it had been to adjust post-show, pointing to a lingering paranoia and the strain of having to keep their victory a secret.

And yet, while betrayal and deceit define the show, it is often the genuine friendships and moments of trust that resonate most. Few will forget the ‘mother to mother’ pact made by Frankie and Leanne in the kitchen and the emotional final banquet when the suspicion and distrust were briefly lifted. Behind all the game playing, the yearning for authenticity and connection as an antidote to isolation could not be suppressed.

There are also inspiring moments of hope, vulnerability and redemption. Alexander, the charming diplomat, tells his heartfelt story about his late brother, who had developmental disabilities, which prompted his fans to donate over £30,000 to Mencap. Jake, who suffers from cerebral palsy, overcomes great odds to become one of the winners, and Leanne and Charlotte open up about their struggles to conceive. Each contestant had a back story that humanised them. Even the aloof high priestess herself shed tears, albeit in unaired footage, over her contestants’ traumas.

But it was Charlotte’s struggles that I found most inspiring. As the final Traitor, she seemed at first to relish her role with a very convincing series of lies, even turning on her fellow Traitor Minah. But it became apparent towards the end that, inside, she was in turmoil. What appeared to be crocodile tears turned out to be genuine tears of despair as the demands of the game took its toll on her conscience and integrity. “I hate it. I hate how I was,” she said later. “I felt so cruel. How I had to be to stay in the game – it was an immense pressure.”

Catharsis, when it came, was through forgiveness, especially from Frankie, the contestant who perhaps more than any other had reason to be hurt by Charlotte’s betrayal; they had after all been best friends within the confines of the castle. Charlotte later admitted to badly needing her forgiveness, which gracious Frankie was only too happy to give.

In an age of deceit and disappointment, Charlotte’s honesty, vulnerability and willingness face up to her actions and be reconciled with her victims, rather than justify them or offer a hollow non-apology, and Frankie’s willingness to forgive - offer us the hope that there can be a way out of the doom loop of deceit and broken trust.

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Article

Art

Culture

10 February 2025

5 min read

Why is religious art still popular?

What looters, curators and today's public find in a genre that survives the centuries.

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A painting depicts a man a prophet pointing skywards while another person sleeps on the ground

Detail from Parmigianino’s The Vision of St Jerome.

The National Gallery.

The museums of Europe and North America are filled with religious art. Why? Certainly, gallery goers of the nineteenth century, when many public museums were founded, were more likely to practice a faith than visitors in today’s global cities, but this does not explain religious art’s continuing appeal. If we are so much more secular than the folks in stiff collars and leg ‘o mutton sleeves who curated and donated to early museum collections, why is the religious art they championed still so popular?

Individual religious paintings’ chequered history, together with the formal elements of their composition, provide two lenses into the genre’s ability to resonate across multiple generations.

Celebrations around the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary, with its reappraisal of the earliest works to enter the collection, offers an ideal time to study the blueprints for public collections, which continue to shape the art we see today. The French Revolution is popularly credited as the genesis of public art institutions, as the art and fine furniture from displaced aristocrat’s palaces was put on display at the Louvre, opened in 1793. But the idea of a semi-public art collections had been present in Italy from the early eighteenth century, as families opened their palazzos and collections of classical art to visitors on the Grand Tour. Rome’s Capitoline Museum opened in 1734, as the papacy saw an opportunity to showcase the heritage of ancient Rome to the city’s wealthy tourists, and position themselves in the role of art patrons.

At the National Gallery, Parmigianino’s The Vision of St Jerome, 1526-1527, (reunited for the first time with rare preparatory drawings until 9 March) pulls on many of the threads that makes religious art, even in a secular age, enduringly powerful.

Painted when Parmigianino was only 24, and already being hailed as ‘Raphael reborn’, the painting is reputed to have stopped looting soldier in their tracks, when they saw it in the artist’s studio during the 1527 Sack of Rome. The painting itself had an adventurous life, spending far longer in secular surroundings than it ever did in the religious settings it was intended for.

Commissioned as an altarpiece for a funerary chapel in Rome, the upheaval of the city’s occupation by the troops of Charles V saw The Vision of St Jerome stored, but not publicly displayed, in the refectory of a nearby church. Somehow during the terror and mayhem, the 3.5 metres high altarpiece, weighing nearly 100 kilograms, was transported from the artist’s studio across the city to safety.

Thirty years later a great nephew of the original woman patron, Maria Bufalini, took the altarpiece from Rome to the family’s Umbrian hometown of Citta di Castello. Had it instead gone to its intended Roman church San Salvatore in Lauro, it would have been destroyed by the church fire of 1591. The Vision of St Jerome stayed in the family chapel of Sant’Agostino, inspiring artists from the region, until around 1772 when Cardinal Giovanni Bufalini moved the altarpiece to the restored Palazzo Bufalini, placing a copy in Sant’Agostino. If the original stayed in the church it would have been ruined by an earthquake in 1789.

Having spent just over 200 years in a sacred setting, the painting was sold by the Bufalini heirs to an English art agent in Rome, setting sail from Livorno in December 1791 for its new life in England.

After inheriting Parmigianino’s Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene (1535-40), George Watson Taylor, with his heiress wife Anna, added The Vision of Saint Jerome to the significant private art collection, displayed at their London Townhouse in Cavendish Square. In 1819 the painting was exhibited publicly in England for the first time when Watson Taylor lent it the British Institution, the forerunner of the National Gallery.

Four years later the painting fetched £3,202 at the sale of Watson Taylor’s collection, securing a higher price than Rubens’ Rainbow Landscape. It was purchased by the Reverend William Holwell Carr on behalf of the British Institution. The Vision of Saint Jerome hung in the National Gallery within two years of the institution’s foundation.

Once part of the nation’s collection, the mannerist style of Parmigianino, with its elongated limbs, twisted torsos, classical drapery and foreshortened perspective, provided a context to discuss the Biblical figures depicted in the work. A loosely draped, seated Virgin Mary holds a tussle haired child between her knees, who kicks one leg out, as if to step away. Beneath them John the Baptist points a massive arm towards the heavens, while a smaller scale St Jerome sleeps clutching a crucifix. Regency and Victorian Christians such as Howell Carr, and popular art historians Anna Jameson and Elizabeth Eastlake, wife of the Gallery’s first director Charles, saw the potential of art created 400 years ago to speak to the spiritual questions of their day. Shorn of a traditional religious setting, the message, and missional potential, of the work came across as powerfully as ever.

After surviving war, fire and earthquakes, The Vision of Saint Jerome was relocated to Manod Quarry in Wales from 1941 until the end of World War Two to escape the bombing of London. During this period, the National Gallery brought one painting out of storage to view in the empty Trafalgar Square landmark, the war weary public’s Picture of the Month. The tradition continues today.

For sleep -deprived, food -rationed, scared wartime Londoners Noli me Tangere offered a message of love, loss, transcendence and protection.

The first Picture of the Month, in 1942, was Titian’s Noli me Tangere, c. 1514. In a rather Italianate Garden of Gethsemane, with glowing sun and tumbling hills, Mary reaches out her hand to Christ. Having tended Christ’s crucified body in the tomb, Mary is grieving, and at first believes the figure before her is a gardener. To her astonishment he reveals himself to be the Christ, resurrected from the dead. Titian portrays the bittersweet moment after Christ’s miraculous return, when Mary comprehends that although Christ is present, she can no longer have any human contact with him, represented by her rebuffed gesture of touch. In common with all Christ’s followers, it is time to relinquish his earthly presence. While the kneeling Mary is bound to the earth, the standing Christ figure forms an arc over her, representing his protection of humanity.