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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr
From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr
Journal of Religion & Film
Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …
Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic
Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic
Journal of Religion & Film
This paper examines cinematic representations of religion and religious communities in the early cinema of the Yugoslav space. This paper introduces the readers to the rich heritage of the cinema of the Yugoslav space by providing 1) the first study of the representations of religion and the concepts of faith in the early film, and 2) novel approaches in reading religion and history through film. Film is used as a primary rather than supplementary source in historical research on diverse religious and ethnic communities in this part of the Balkan Peninsula. This is the first study that investigates the importance, …
Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart
Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart
Journal of Religion & Film
Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …
Stanley Kubrick, Jewish Filmmaker: A Review Essay, Michael Gibson
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).
Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (2nd Edition), Michael Gibson
Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (2nd Edition), Michael Gibson
Journal of Religion & Film
This is a book review of Paul Schrader's Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, 2nd edition (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018).
Divine Love, John C. Lyden
Divine Love, John C. Lyden
Journal of Religion & Film
This is a film review of Divine Love (2019) directed by Gabriel Mascaro.
Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper
Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper
Journal of Religion & Film
This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …
Problem-Based Learning And Two Studies Of The Journal Of Religion And Film: Self-Sacrifice And Music, Ken Derry
Problem-Based Learning And Two Studies Of The Journal Of Religion And Film: Self-Sacrifice And Music, Ken Derry
Journal of Religion & Film
This article offers a case study for using problem-based learning (PBL) in a religion and film course. PBL is an open-ended, experiential approach to teaching, which requires students to engage with a real world problem in groups. While many university classes are based on a lecture format and variations of that format, PBL asks students to take greater ownership of their learning. The problem drives what students will learn, how they will learn it, and what they produce to assess that learning. Students in a fourth-year PBL class at the University of Toronto Mississauga were given the following problem: analyze …
“It’S Not A Fucking Book, It’S A Weapon!”: Authority, Power, And Mediation In The Book Of Eli, Seth M. Walker
“It’S Not A Fucking Book, It’S A Weapon!”: Authority, Power, And Mediation In The Book Of Eli, Seth M. Walker
Journal of Religion & Film
The mediation of religious narratives through sacred texts is intimately bound to the power relations involved in their transmission and maintenance. Those who possess such mediated messages and control their access and interpretation have historically held privileged positions of authority, especially when those positions are not easily contested. The 2010 film The Book of Eli uniquely engages these elements by placing the alleged last copy of the King James Version of the Christian Bible at the forefront of a clash between different individuals in a post-nuclear wasteland. This paper, drawing on Max Weber’s notion of “charisma,” and scholars addressing religion, …
Bearing Witness: The Sight Of A Sacrifice In Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills, Megan Girdwood
Bearing Witness: The Sight Of A Sacrifice In Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills, Megan Girdwood
Journal of Religion & Film
Drawing on the theories of sacrifice advanced by Sigmund Freud (1913) and René Girard (1972; 1982), this article interprets the exorcism depicted by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu in Beyond the Hills (2012) as a sacrifice. Explicating Girard’s defence of Freud, I use his framing of sacrifice as a function of religion to reassess scholarship addressing the parallels between liturgical and cinematic forms of representation. If, as some scholars propose, the practices of the cinema-goer and the worshipper mirror each other, then the sacrificial witness portrayed by Mungiu constitutes a third pillar in this discourse. I argue that Mungiu dramatizes the …
From Marseille To Mecca: Reconciling The Secular And The Religious In Le Grand Voyage (The Big Trip) (2004), Yahya Laayouni
From Marseille To Mecca: Reconciling The Secular And The Religious In Le Grand Voyage (The Big Trip) (2004), Yahya Laayouni
Journal of Religion & Film
By the early 1980’s, a generation of children of Maghrebi (North African) parents born and/or raised in France started to become more visible, particularly after they organized a march in 1983 from Marseille to Paris under the slogan “For Equality and against Racism.” This generation was introduced to the public as the “Beur generation.” The word ‘Beur,’ coined by this generation, is the result of a Parisian back slang and means ‘Arab.’ It quickly gained popularity and has been used to refer to children of Maghrebi origins living in France. As much as it has been hard for the Beurs …
You’Ve Gotta Keep The Faith: Making Sense Of Disaster In Post 9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema, Matthew Leggatt
You’Ve Gotta Keep The Faith: Making Sense Of Disaster In Post 9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema, Matthew Leggatt
Journal of Religion & Film
Abstract: Chronologically examining the role of faith based narratives in the Hollywood apocalypse since the mid-90s, this article charts their reintroduction in the period after 9/11. Through the study of an extensive array of contemporary films the different structures of faith they offer and an exploration of how such faith is used in order to make meaning from disaster, I assert that post 9/11 apocalyptic movies have grappled with issues of faith and meaning in a far more complex way than in the films of the 90s, questioning the value of such faith in a post-disaster world. In concluding, I …
Ironic Faith In Monty Python’S Life Of Brian, Steven A. Benko
Ironic Faith In Monty Python’S Life Of Brian, Steven A. Benko
Journal of Religion & Film
Monty Python’s Life of Brian tells the story of Brian, a contemporary of Jesus whose life becomes chaotic when he is mistaken for a messiah. Standard comedic devices are used to mock and ridicule those who use their authority or office to claim that they are more than human. In this case, laughter humbles those individuals and brings them back to the human community. Second, an ironic faith perspective allows the Pythons to assert that it is up to each individual to define the meaning of his/her own life. While some interpretations of ironic faith suggest the possibility of an …
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 …
Irruptions Of The Sacred In A “World Of Shit”: Profanity, Sacred Words, And Cinematic Hierophanies In Stanley Kubrick’S Full Metal Jacket (1987), Joseph E. Bisson
Irruptions Of The Sacred In A “World Of Shit”: Profanity, Sacred Words, And Cinematic Hierophanies In Stanley Kubrick’S Full Metal Jacket (1987), Joseph E. Bisson
Journal of Religion & Film
Full Metal Jacket remains embedded in the consciousness of the popular culture mainly because of its abundance of profane language, violent imagery, and salacious set pieces. The juxtaposition of profane language and imagery with sacred language and religious symbolism reveals that Kubrick’s Vietnam film has powerful religious overtones that comprise an important element of the film’s critique of homo religiosus and the modern human condition. By continually juxtaposing the sacred and profane, Kubrick created “cinematic hierophanies” that advanced a cultural critique that inventively integrated ideas from some of the mid-20th Century’s greatest interpreters of myths -- Carl Jung, Joseph …