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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Radically Feminist Or Monstrously Feminine?: Witches And Goddesses In Guadagnino's Suspiria (2018), Lindsay Macumber
Radically Feminist Or Monstrously Feminine?: Witches And Goddesses In Guadagnino's Suspiria (2018), Lindsay Macumber
Journal of Religion & Film
Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria explicitly and implicitly incorporates two connected myths, witchcraft and goddess centered matriarchal prehistory. The fact that each of these myths have been claimed by feminists in myriad ways may explain Guadagnino’s claim that Suspiria is a great feminist film that escapes the male gaze. In this article, I argue that Guadagnino’s representation of these myths lays bare their misogynistic origins and perpetuates, rather than subverts, patriarchal power structures.
Myth And Monstrosity: Teaching Indigenous Films, Ken Derry
Myth And Monstrosity: Teaching Indigenous Films, Ken Derry
Journal of Religion & Film
The past few times that I have taught my course on religion and film I have included a number of Indigenous movies. The response from students has been entirely positive, in part because most of them have rarely encountered Indigenous cultural products of any kind, especially contemporary ones. Students also respond well to the way in which many of these films use notions of the monstrous to explore, and explode, colonial myths. Goldstone, for example, by Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen, draws on noir tropes to peel back the smiling masks of the people responsible for the mining town’s success, …
Myth And Ritual In Moonrise Kingdom, Sarah F. Haynes
Myth And Ritual In Moonrise Kingdom, Sarah F. Haynes
Journal of Religion & Film
This essay examines religious themes in Wes Anderson's film Moonrise Kingdom. An analysis of the film reveals the characters utilize ritual and myth as a means of creating knowledge and as the catalyst for a transformation of self. This essay argues that Anderson’s characters construct and interpret their reality, of self and world, by engaging with ritual, myth, and community.
Now That Was A Nice Hanging: The Hateful Eight As Parable?, Richard G. Walsh
Now That Was A Nice Hanging: The Hateful Eight As Parable?, Richard G. Walsh
Journal of Religion & Film
The opening of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight conjoins the iconic landscape of the Western, Christianity’s chief symbol the crucifix, and Tarantino’s oeuvre. The film gives the crucifix so much screen time that one wonders what its significance might be. That the film climaxes with the lynching of Daisy Domergue renders the crucifix teasingly parabolic. The opening-closing frame parallels the two hangings, as do the various eulogies associated with the lynching. That Daisy’s lynching takes place at the hands of the film’s two surviving characters—who, like the horses that lead the stagecoach team delivering Daisy to her fate, are black …
King Of Masks: The Myth Of Miao-Shan And The Empowerment Of Women, Kevin Dodd
King Of Masks: The Myth Of Miao-Shan And The Empowerment Of Women, Kevin Dodd
Journal of Religion & Film
King of Masks represents a particular type of mythic film that includes within it references to an ancient sacred story and is itself a contemporary recapitulation of it. The movie also belongs to a further subcategory of mythic cinema, using the double citation of the myth—in its original integrity and its re-enactment—to critique the subordinate position of women to men in the narrated world. To do this, the Buddhist myth of Miao-shan, which centralizes the Confucian value of filiality, is re-applied beyond its traditional scope and context. Thereby two prominent features of contemporary China are creatively addressed: the revival of …
Menstruation As Heroine’S Journey In Pan’S Labyrinth, Richard Lindsay
Menstruation As Heroine’S Journey In Pan’S Labyrinth, Richard Lindsay
Journal of Religion & Film
I propose that the Guillermo del Toro film, Pan's Labyrinth (2006) follows the narrative outline of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey as experienced through the biological process of onset of menstruation in its young protagonist. I suggest a reading of the film that takes into account the visual and mythological symbolism of the figure of Pan, as well as the cultural context of menstruation in mythology and religion. I offer interviews from the director that support this interpretation, but ultimately I value a folk interpretation, or a "viewer's hunch" that the strange and fertile symbolism of the film represents a coming-of-age …