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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Religion And Moral Injury In American Vietnam War Films, Mary F. Brewer Oct 2021

Religion And Moral Injury In American Vietnam War Films, Mary F. Brewer

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay focuses on the representation of religion in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and Brian de Palma’s Casualties of War (1989). It explores how religion intersects with the experience of moral trauma at an individual level, and how the films portray moral injury to be as damaging an aspect of war trauma for Vietnam veterans as grievous physical harm. Further, the essay considers how moral injury is a fundamental component of the collective trauma the nation experienced and, in turn, the culture wars that erupted during and after the …


“He Who Laughs Last!” Terrorists, Nihilists, And Jokers, William S. Chavez, Luke Mccracken Mar 2021

“He Who Laughs Last!” Terrorists, Nihilists, And Jokers, William S. Chavez, Luke Mccracken

Journal of Religion & Film

Since his debut in 1940, the Joker, famed adversary of the Batman, continues to permeate the American cultural mediascape not merely as an object of consumption but as an ongoing production of popular imagination. Joker mythmakers post-1986 have reimagined the character not as superhuman but as “depressingly ordinary,” inspiring audiences both to empathize with his existential plight and to fear his terroristic violence as an increasingly compelling model of reactionary resistance to institutionality. This article examines the recent history of modern terrorism in conjunction with the “pathological nihilism” diagnosed by Nietzsche in order to elucidate the stakes and implications of …


Stanley Kubrick, Jewish Filmmaker: A Review Essay, Michael Gibson Mar 2021

Stanley Kubrick, Jewish Filmmaker: A Review Essay, Michael Gibson

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a review of two books: Nathan Abrams, Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), and David Mikics, Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).