Merry Christmas with Brother Stephen, Castle Rock’s Preacher

STEPHEN KING — J.J. ABRAMS — CASTLE ROCK — 2018–19–24 DECEMBER 2023

Most elements in the two seasons come from here and there in King’s works, in fact from short stories as far as I recognize some elements, particularly the second season. The first season is for me more complex, and yet some elements seem to be stored in some long memory of mine.

Some themes are really typical of Stephen King, but some are not. The first season apart from Shawshanks Prison which is outrageously well-known, except probably for obtuse people, should I say obtuse men, deals with a strangely bipolar racial problem. Every white family has a black man locked up in some closet, whereas all black families have a white man locked up somewhere in some closet. We could even be more universal and say that in the West, the USA particularly, everyone has a black or a white infamous character buried in some closet deep in the third-down basement under the surface, hence 9 yards under. And of course, this buried outcast that is fed and spoken to every day or nearly, is seen as the devil because he does not age and he is eternal. The season is strange because when the buried character is black, the concerned white family has a white son, and when the buried character is white, the concerned white family has an adopted black son. Quite clear: as limpid as black pudding juice in an ebony bottle. And the end is very Kingian. The buried man changes color in the last sequence. And we can start all over again from buried white to buried black.

The second season is vivid in my memory, at least most moments, actions, events, and situations. In Somalia, a US GI killed, the mother of two young children for no reason whatsoever, she was not really menacing the few GIs involved. Then he adopted the two children and took them to the US and made them his partners in his city, Castle Rock of course, with Jerusalem’s Lot on the other side of the railroad. The adopted boy becomes a commercial mall manager, and the step-father provides him with the means to build an important Somalian mall. The adopted daughter…