Yes, God, Yes: An Eerily Accurate Portrayal of Toxic Church and Purity Culture
contains spoilers
If you grew up in purity culture, you might watch Netflix’s Yes, God, Yes as exposure therapy, as it just exaggerates enough for laughs and is just awkward enough to bring up the uncomfortable memories from those glory days. Its depiction of awkward Jesus camp is spot on (can a parody be spot on?).
The story follows Alice as she’s discovering her sexual desires amidst an austere catholic high school which creates a culture of fear around sex and sexuality. It’s a world where girls don’t kiss because it leads to sex, and gay boys date them to cover their homosexuality.
The community teaches gender stereotypes such as, “Men are like microwaves and women are like convection ovens” emphasizing the greater sexual needs of men. This confuses Alice, as her sexual urges seem to heat up just as quicly as a microwave.
In the beginning, a rumor begins circulating about Alice that she “tossed Wade’s salad” and she spends the duration of the movie trying to figure out what it means. As Alice goes on her journey, she catches her friends in a series of lies at the church retreat—A retreat that cultishly won’t let the students talk about what happens at retreat when they return home.
On the retreat, group leader Nina turns Alice in for having a cell phone. It’s no wonder Alice is pissed when she witnesses Nina giving her boyfriend a blow job.
Father Murphy puts a lot of emphasis on remaining sexually pure and shames the students for having sexual feelings or being “turned on.” Then we cut to a scene of the father interacting with porn.
If you can get past the awkwardness, you’ll find a regular coming of age story with an eerily accurate exposure of toxic church and the hypocrisy so easily housed within. There is one major plot hole, however, all returning students talk about how amazing the retreat is, but you don’t get the picture anyone ever had fun. Mostly they just sit around listening to the father preach about remaining sexually pure (perhaps that was the point?).
The film does make you wonder if cultures which overemphasize purity are really just protecting their own sexual secrets. Due to the complex trauma resulting for many of us who grew up in purity culture, the theory likely has some foundation.
In the end, Alice finds out the answer to her questions from an ex-catholic bar owner (slightly cliché, but okay). She makes friends with one of the socially awkward girls who seems genuinely nice (not fake nice like the other students). She considers going away for college, rather than attending the local school, and she rewatches the sex scene in Titanic while masturbating.
If you grew up in purity culture, you’ll relate with exactly how confusing such a world can be for a teenager. Likely you’ll be crying, “Yes, yes!” at the TV screen