Understanding Theology and Popular Culture LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:54 PM Page Ii
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:54 PM Page i Understanding Theology and Popular Culture LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:54 PM Page ii To Robert Beckford, for all the help, support, and encouragement and to Stephen Philp, for all the quality pop culture moments LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:54 PM Page iii Understanding Theology and Popular Culture Gordon Lynch LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:54 PM Page iv © 2005 by Gordon Lynch BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Gordon Lynch to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lynch, Gordon, 1968– Understanding theology and popular culture / Gordon Lynch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4051-1747-8 (alk. paper) – ISBN 1-4051-1748-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Christianity and culture. 2. Theology. I. Title. BR115.C8L96 2004 261–dc22 2004009788 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10 on 13 pt Electra by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by MPG Books, Bodmin, Cornwall The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:54 PM Page v contents List of Figures and Tables vi Acknowledgments vii Preface viii Chapter 1 What is “Popular Culture”? 1 Chapter 2 Why Should Theologians and Scholars of Religion Study Popular Culture? 20 Chapter 3 Machines, TVs, and Shopping: The Shape of Everyday Life in Contemporary Western Society 43 Chapter 4 Can Popular Culture Be Bad For Your Health? 69 Chapter 5 Developing a Theological Approach to the Study of Popular Culture 93 Chapter 6 An Author-Focused Approach to Studying Popular Culture: Eminem and the Redemption Of Violence 111 Chapter 7 Text-Based Approaches To Studying Popular Culture: “Homer The Heretic” and Civil Religion 135 Chapter 8 An Ethnographic Approach to Studying Popular Culture: The Religious Significance of Club Culture 162 Chapter 9 Taking Steps Towards A Theological Aesthetics of Popular Culture 184 Notes 195 Bibliography 213 Index 231 LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:55 PM Page vi figures and tables figures Figure 1.1 Photographs of the House of Lords library, London, and women playing bingo in Glasgow 5 Figure 2.1 Photographs of Precious Moments porcelain figurines 26 Figure 3.1 Photograph of a production line of Ford Model T cars 45 Figure 3.2 Film still from The Terminator 47 Figure 3.3 Photograph of the interior of the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris, France 59 Figure 4.1 “Fun is now sponsored by Diesel,” advert by the Diesel clothing company 74 Figure 4.2 Photograph of nu-metal star, Marilyn Manson 87 Figure 5.1 A model of the process of theological reflection in relation to popular culture 108 Figure 6.1 Key approaches to analyzing popular culture texts and practices 113 Figure 6.2 Further approaches to the analysis of popular cultural texts and practices 114 Figure 6.3 Photograph of rap artist, Eminem 123 Figure 7.1 2002 advert for the Harley Davidson Road King Classic 143 tables Table 3.1 Significant dates in the development of electronic media 50 LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:55 PM Page vii acknowledgments The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book: Nick Danziger for the photographs of the House of Lords library and women playing bingo in Glasgow, taken from Nick Danziger, The British, Harper- Collins, 2001. Enesco Corporation for the images of figurines from the Precious Moments Chapel Exclusive range. Corbis picture library for the photographs of the production line of Ford Model T cars, the interior of the Galeries Lafayette, Marilyn Manson, and Eminem. Diesel Ltd for the image of the “Fun is now sponsored by Diesel” poster advert. Harley Davidson for the image of the 2002 Road King Classic advert. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their per- mission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:55 PM Page viii preface The study of theology, religion, and popular culture is a growth area. Every year there are increasing numbers of modules and courses exploring this subject, more papers are presented on it at academic conferences, and more and more journals and books are getting published in this area. Despite, or perhaps because of, this growth, it is also a very difficult area on which to get a clear overview. “Popular culture” may appear with increasing regularity in books and courses in theology and religious studies, but the reasons that lead scholars to explore this subject can be as wide ranging as their methods. One of the unfortunate characteristics of this subject area, in which most of the best literature still comes in the form of book chapters and journal articles, is that authors rarely have time to explain their aims or methods before launch- ing into the discussion of their particular topic. Similarly authors rarely explain how their particular work relates to other studies conducted in this area. For someone who is new to this subject, then, the literature can appear to be as fragmented as pieces of patchwork waiting to be sewn into a quilt and it can be difficult to perceive any order or coherence to it. One of the primary aims of this book is to provide more clarity to our understanding of aims and methods in the study of theology, religion and popular culture. Later in the book, I explore a range of reasons why theolo- gians and scholars of religion are interested in studying popular culture and consider how each of these different approaches can be helpful in answering questions relating to the nature of contemporary religious beliefs, values, and practices, as well as more normative questions about which beliefs, values, and practices might be better than others. I also go on to look in more detail about particular methods that can be used in this kind of study. At this level, I hope that the book will be useful for teachers, students, and researchers in terms of giving a clearer overview of this subject area and the kind of work that is being conducted within it. LYNPR 10/4/2004 3:55 PM Page ix PREFACE ix This book is not simply a summary of existing approaches to this area, however. In the chapters to come, I make my own pitch for what I see as the particular contribution that the discipline of theology can make to the acad- emic study of popular culture. Central to my argument is the notion that the study of popular culture should appropriately involve an element of evalua- tion. In everyday life, we continually make evaluative judgments about what kinds of popular cultural resources and practices are worthwhile, healthy, useful, or pleasurable. Yet, as Simon Frith (1998) observes, some more recent academic studies of popular culture have developed sophisticated analyses of social and cultural processes, but shied away from the question of whether some forms of popular culture are actually better in some sense than others. This has led to a certain style of popular culture studies which can be seen as indiscriminately celebratory of all forms of popular culture or which is simply banal. I would argue that a full academic engagement with popular culture requires that we engage in a rigorous analysis of the truthfulness, meaningfulness, goodness, justice, and beauty of popular cultural texts and practices. Furthermore I would suggest that theological traditions and methods have a distinctive role to play in this process of evaluation. Towards the end of this book, I describe this academic project in terms of developing a theological aesthetics of popular culture, a process which involves learning to develop a critical dialogue between theological norms and specific exam- ples of popular culture. In making the case for developing theological evaluations of popular culture, I am also conscious that I am wanting to distance my approach from certain forms of religious critique of popular culture that periodically break into wider public consciousness. It is not too hard, for example, to think of Christian responses to films such as The Last Temptation of Christ or Dogma, or to, say, the Harry Potter novels, which are very high on criticism and very low on thoughtful analysis. This is unfortunate as faith communities – even in the more ostensibly secularized parts of Western society – still have considerable potential to constructively as cultural agents, both by offering critiques of contemporary culture and through developing their own forms of cultural and artistic practice.