Religion and Film 2024

  In a mythology course I took at UNC Asheville, we learned that folklore and fairytales were often passed down by women while they did laundry. They held messages of the dangers of the real world with horrific themes and horrible endings to warn their daughters and fellow women of the horrors of the world. The story of Persephone, in Greek mythology, is likely one such tale. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the story of Demeter’s daughter being promised in marriage against her will to a much older man and then being kidnapped and stolen from her. It is about Demeter’s grief and in this version of the story, it is easy to see how it could be a story that mothers give their daughters to explain how marriage works in a world where they often have so little choice in the matter. I read Paul Cowdell’s article, “‘Practicing Witchcraft Myself During the Filming’: Folk Horror, Folklore, and the Folkloresque.” He discusses the film subgenre of folk horror, its origins, and its development i

  I read “A Spiritual Blockbuster: Avatar, Environmentalism, and the New Religions,” by Cynthia Erb. The article discusses the relationship between spirituality and film. Erb states that the West has shifted away from traditional religion and towards spirituality as an expression of the sacred. She believes that Avatar is an expression of a “dark green religion,” which values nature as sacred, animism, and believes in Gaia or a “Mother Earth.” The followers of this new religion are activists. Their belief that nature is sacred and worth protecting, even militantly, is so strong that it becomes spiritual in nature. In Avatar, the Na’vi are fiercely protective of their environment. They feel a literal connection with the planet and the animals and are pained when it is hurt. The human, Jake, steps into the world and has to learn this spiritual connection to nature that comes to the Na’vi innately.  Erb writes that the film was criticized by Christian critics at the time for being panthei

  Midrash is a Jewish approach to understanding biblical texts. Peshat is the literal meaning of a text, remez is the deep meaning, darash is the comparative meaning, and sod is the secret meaning. Midrash is a mix of remez and darash , the deep and comparative meanings of a text. Film works well as a visual Midrash because it does not tell the viewers what to think of it. Many films do not even have a narrator leading the audience one way or another. The audience must simply watch the visuals, listen to the sounds, and make their own understanding of the story. The cinematography can push viewers towards the director’s intention, but it cannot force them to understand it in any way but their own. As it states in the assignment post, the commandments are only useful if the reader puts them into their own life. However, few people are going to act a certain way or truly believe something simply because it was told to them. They must decide it is applicable to their own lives. After th

       The Princess Bride deals with the reading from C.S. Lewis we were assigned when we watched Big Fish . The film is about the love story and adventures of Buttercup and Westley, set within a frame story about a grandfather reading to his sick grandson in bed. In the novel, the author, Goldman, has footnotes explaining that his father read him the story when he was young, but when he bought it as an adult he realized that it was a lengthy and boring history book. His father chose to read him only the “good” parts and he wants to share those good parts with his son. The story itself is a bit silly. I say this as someone who’s loved the film since I watched it with my mother when I was around six years old. The dialogue is hilariously unrealistic (Inigo and Westley’s “duel”), the characters are comically sure of themselves (Inigo’s revenge, Buttercup’s attitude), and the plot is fast moving and just… silly. However, it is a film about the importance of silly stories. The humanity of

  I read Connor Pitetti’s journal article, “Uses of the End of the World: Apocalypse and Postapocalypse as Narrative Modes,” while doing some research for a personal project of mine. In it, Pitetti defines the concepts of “apocalypse” narratives versus “postapocalypse” narratives in science fiction books and film. The definition of apocalypse has biblical roots, but beyond an etymological connection to our course, it got me thinking about the idea of the sacred and profane order in post apocalyptic film. Pitetti defines apocalypse as a story defined by a set beginning and end. It frames history as a clearly defined set of events and any world that may be created after an apocalypse is distinctly new and different from the one that came before. Post-apocalyptic narratives, on the other hand, are stories of after the end of the world where despite whatever dramatic changes it underwent, certain truths of the prior society still remain. It is less clean cut than the true, biblical “apoc

  I saw Dune: Part Two with my friend as part of our course and I very much enjoyed it. It was a fun experience and I got my family to go see it because I knew they’d like it as well. The most obvious religious aspect of the film was the Fremen fundamentalist religion that Paul ends up the leader of. The Fremen religion was founded to make sense of the chaos of Arrakis. The colonist expeditions to mine spice, the dangerous sandworms, and the hostility of the terrain itself are all an issue for the Fremen. They create rituals to survive on the planet, such as the special method of walking, or the sandworm riding coming of age ritual. Our lecture notes offer a three part definition of religion summed up by the statement, “When our experience of the chaos overwhelms cosmos, religion offers a way to maintain the cosmos, usually through ritual.” Ernesto Grassi defines religion as, “man’s endeavor to construct a ‘holy and intact’ cosmos which he conceives to be reality other than himself. T