Editorial Exploring Religion and Popular Film

ARSR 21.3 (2008): 259-261 ARSR (print) ISSN 1031-2943 doi: 10.1558/arsr.v21i3.259 ARSR (online) ISSN 1744-9014

Editorial

Exploring Religion and Popular Film

During this second century of the age of Hollywood, popular films are making even deeper in-roads into contemporary culture as they continue to evolve from toy to tool to become a universal form of entertainment and education. Although ‘the movies’ are a fundamental part of the modern religious quest and have significantly aided society in the spiritual explora- tion, interpretation and construction of its meaning, they are often dismissed as escapism and overlooked as a serious site for study within both secular and ecclesiastical institutions. This is regrettable and a gross waste of a com- paratively inexpensive, readily accessible and valuable artistic resource that is already enthusiastically embraced by the video-cum-Internet generation. Furthermore, these proverbial children-of-the-media do not automatically deride popular films as inherently shallow, brain-deadening or philosophi- cally anaemic, as also attested by the ever-increasing publications in the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion-and-film (aka sacred cinema, spiritual cinema, holy film, cinematic theology, cinematheology, theo-film, celluloid religion, film-and-faith, film–faith dialogue). This special issue of the ARSR seeks to whet the reader’s appetite by exploring the ability of commercial feature films to delight, transport, enchant, inform, shape behaviour and reveal subtextual meta-messages, spiritual states and moral trajectories that are creatively embodied therein. These delightful essays deal with Western blockbusters and made-for-TV movies, classic and contemporary cinema, silent and sound films from American, Canadian, British and Italian directors. The writer’s topics range through the genres of film adaptation and drama to prison stories and comedy, from science fiction and westerns to biblical epics and Oriental biopics to reveal a plethora of fascinating insights into Scripture, religion and Western screen culture that are worthy of continuing debate beyond this special issue. Larry J. Kreitzer continues the three-way dialogue he started when exploring the Bible, Herman Melville and John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2008, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW. 260 ARSR 21.3 (2008) starring Gregory Peck in The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow by comparing and contrasting it with Franc Roddam’s Moby Dick (1998) starring Patrick Stewart. Kreitzer highlights the theological, hermeneutical and intertextual elements of this remarkable remake to demonstrate how film adaptations can reveal layers of christic meaning embodied within the classics of literature, as well as creatively expand upon its religious subtexts audiovisually. Similarly, Lloyd Baugh continues the dialogue he started about Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal (1989) in Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ- figures in Film by exploring deeper the direct and metaphorical representa- tion of Jesus in what is now a neo-classic Christ-event film. Baugh considers it a complex, metatextual, multi-layered narrative in dialogue with the Gospels, and which offers a provocatively original way of representing the resurrection of Christ alongside many other cinematic secrets. He dramati- cally demonstrates that popular films, far from being superficial and inane, can be as rich, deep and inspirational as the classics of literature and faith. Adele Reinhartz argues that Christ-figures in films are not just minor motifs, but a legitimate genre in their own right. After mapping out its basic features using The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as exemplar, she play- fully explores the potential of the paradigm by analysing C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) and Stranger than Fiction (2006) to highlight additional characteristics of the genre, notably, the interplay of convention and innovation, familiarity and novelty. Reinhartz delightfully demonstrates that there are still many more structural characteristics of the cinematic Christ-figure than currently under- stood, as well as the continuing scholarly fascination with this perennially important religion-and-film topic. Terry Lindvall argues that Protestant religious symbols, themes and doc- trines of sin, repentance and grace were purposely built into many of the silent Western films of Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson and William S. Hart, both famous cowboy icons of the silver screen, to enhance their public acceptability and evangelical educative function. With a special exegetical emphasis upon William S. Hart’s The Disciple (1915) and Charles Swickard’s Hell’s Hinges (1916), Lindvall further demonstrates how popular films were de facto pulpits designed to convert church-goers into movie audiences utilising a film genre not usually associated with religious sermonising. Anton Karl Kozlovic examines the often-neglected biblical artistry of Hollywood pioneer and pop culture professional, Cecil B. DeMille, and his cinematic construction of Mary Magdalene within his silent Jesus genre classic, The King of Kings (1927). This famous New Testament woman is briefly compared to some of her screen rivals to highlight the many scrip- tural uncertainties and relationship mysteries regarding her biblical status, and to highlight DeMille’s fundamentalist Episcopalian beliefs deftly encoded

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2008. Editorial 261 therein. Kozlovic demonstrates that DeMille, the cinematic lay preacher and early leader of the film–faith field was biblically insightful and just as relevant today as during his hey-day many decades ago. Scott Daniel Dunbar examines Hollywood’s use of Sanskrit mantras within Andy and Larry Wachowski’s The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and George Lucas’s Star Wars Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999), both successful American science fiction blockbusters. However, these distinctive soundtracks were deployed in contexts of war-and-strife rather than peace- and-tranquillity, thus creating a psychological dissonance between their Oriental origins and Western appropriation. Yet, coincidentally, mantras-as- weapons are also a strong feature of the history and mythology of Hindu- ism, which is tentatively explored within. Dunbar decisively demonstrates how Orientalism permeated popular Western science fiction to help spiritual- ise it while simultaneously highlighting that mood music is also a very rich source of religious insights and meaning. Continuing the Oriental theme (to be published in the following ARSR issue due to space limitations herein), Barbara Kameniar explores the religious education use of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha (1993) and Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) within Christian high school settings. Rooted in postcolonial theory and micro-ethnographic field research, she shows how teaching contemporary Western biopics of Eastern spiritual leaders is potentially problematic when white, middle class, heterosexual, gendered Christian subjectivities are taught instead of mainstream Buddhist and Hindu values. Kameniar highlights the difficulties of teaching Oriental religious ideas and sociocultural concepts to academic neophytes, while also pointing out new territory for religion-and-film scholars to pursue above- and-beyond their traditional analyses and pedagogic concerns.

Anton Karl Kozlovic Flinders University