Title of Interest – “Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences””

0 | June 27th, 2014 | Posted in anime, Titles of Interest

519+BWM-6uL._SY300_Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences by Eriko Ogihara-Schuck (McFarland, 2014)

After winning an Oscar for Spirited Away, the Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films were dubbed into many languages. Some of the films are saturated with religious themes distinctive to Japanese culture. How were these themes, or what Miyazaki describes as “animism,” received abroad, especially considering that they are challenging to translate?  This book examines how American and German audiences, grounded on Judeo-Christian traditions, responded to the animism in Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1998), Spirited Away (2001), and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008). By a close reading of adaptations and film reviews, and a study of transitions in their verbal and visual approaches to animism, this book demonstrates that the American and German receptions transcended the conventional view of an antagonistic relationship between animism and Christianity. With the ability to change their shapes into forms easily accessible to other cultural arenas, the anime films make a significant contribution to inter-religious dialogue in the age of secularization.

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‘Joss Whedon and Religion’ Nominated for “Mr. Pointy Award”

0 | June 11th, 2014 | Posted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon

PrintAlong with my co-editors, J. Ryan Parker and Tony Mills, I was quite pleased to receive this notification via email today. See all the 2014 finalists here:

On behalf of the Whedon Studies Association’s Mr. Pointy jury, I am honored to notify you that your work, Joss Whedon and Religion: Essays on an Angry Atheist’s Explorations of the Sacred, has been selected as a finalist for a 2014 Mr. Pointy award, in the long category for book-length work published during the previous year. As you may know, the Mr. Pointy award annually recognizes outstanding scholarship in the field of Whedon Studies.

The jury was impressed with the quality and originality of your scholarship, and you are to be congratulated for your contributions to the field of Whedon Studies!

This year’s winners will be announced at the 2014 Slayage Conference on the Works of Joss Whedon, June 19-22 in Sacramento, California.

Again, congratulations!

Sincerely,

Tamy Burnett, PhD
Chair, Mr. Pointy Jury

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Pop Culture Reactions to “Salem”

0 | June 2nd, 2014 | Posted in horror, Satan, television, Wicca, Witchcraft

If you haven’t seen the Salem television series on WGN it’s worth checking out. It eagerly scoops up Christian mythologies of the Witch as the consort of Satan, a frequent trope in horror films, and uses this as the major element in a reframing of the events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Given these aspects of the series it is worth considering how various segments of American culture have reacted to the popular program.

First let’s consider a conservative response. In a piece at The Blaze, Dan Gainor sees the series as part of a larger cultural attack on Christians. He laments:

The first episode of this occult rewrite of history featured sex, devil worship, and a satanic abortion. The Christians in good ol’ Salem are anything but. The town’s first guide in faith hangs people he thinks are witches and brands fornicators before becoming bewitched himself. The next one kills a man under a pile of stones – when he’s not seen in a graphic sex scene with what appears to be a prostitute.

All of that fun was delivered into your home … on Easter Sunday.

No, of course that wasn’t an accident. Few things in TV programming are accidental. Network execs study, analyze, test market, and focus group everything. WGN was trying to create controversy by bashing Christians on the holiest of days.

In Gainor’s view, Salem is one of several expressions of “post-Christian America.”

The Pagan community, which includes contemporary Wiccans or Witches, has reacted to Salem as well. How do they react to a Christian stereotype they have fought so long to counteract, and in connection with an unfortunate aspect of America’s religious history?

In an essay in The Wild Hunt, Crystal Blanton introduces the subject by stating:

Much like with the American Horror Story franchise, Salem is a fantasy horror show that capitalizes on the fears of its audience. These fears are that witchcraft is about pacts with the devil, animal sacrifice and being decorated with blood in the woods. They are based on old-fashioned bigotry and rekindle a lot of misconceptions of those on the Pagan path. Concerns of modern-day witch hunts and fears around the identification of practitioners continues to expand among modern day Witches.

Blanton then goes on to cite various Pagan sources which document a variety of responses to the series, from those who fear the program may fuel stereotypes and witch hunts to those who see the program as pure entertainment.

Surprisingly, my Google search for Evangelical Christian reaction to Salem turned up nothing. The Gainor piece cited above came up in that search, but I can’t verify whether he is an Evangelical. The lack of reaction among Evangelicals to a series that purposefully draws upon Christian mythology related to the Witch and demonology is surprising, especially in light of how this community opposed the Harry Potter phenomenon.

For my own perspective, I must disagree with Gainor as I watch the program and consider my Christian faith in the process. This program reminds us that there is much to be ashamed of in Christianity’s past and present. The Salem Witch Trials were an awful time that ended with the scapegoating and murder of many individuals out of religious fears fueled by hysteria, suspicion, and paranoia. Similar things have happened from time to time with various “satanic panics,” and this happens in the present when Christians perpetuate stereotypes of Pagans and Wiccans, and in places like South Africa with Witch-Hunts. Christians and conservatives may not like what they see in the depiction of hypocritical and abusive Christians, but if we can step back and be self-critical programs like this provide helpful forums for reflection.

But regardless of the reactions to Salem by differing segments of popular culture, the series adds to the many horror programs currently on television, leading some to wonder whether we are witnessing a golden age in this area.

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“In the Flesh” Teases on the Redeemed

0 | May 25th, 2014 | Posted in In the Flesh, television, zombie

SimonITFPreviously I’ve commented on the interesting program airing on the BBC/BBC America, In the Flesh, which represents a thought provoking subgenre of the zombie narrative. One of the areas of interest to TheoFantastique is the incorporation of a religious element. In this case it’s an eschatological aspect, of sorts, wherein a group of Partial Deceased Syndrome sufferers come to believe that they are not pariahs to be feared as the living tend to view them. Instead, the Undead Prophet who leads the Undead Liberation Army, and who has a group of twelve disciples, teaches that those with PDS are the redeemed, destined for something special.

In Season 2, Episode 3, Simon Monroe, one of the Twelve, provided a bit of a tease on the theological foundation for such views. Simon (a name echoing that of one of Jesus’ closest disciples), sits while quoting from the New Testament to himself. He recites and modifies a text from Revelation 1:18 – “we were dead, and behold, we are alive forevermore, and have the keys of death and of Hades.” The interesting thing about this quotation and application is that in its original context is comes from the resurrected Christ to an individual and for communication to a specific group of Christians. With the reworking from In the Flesh we are not told how the original context relates to the application which is in the plural to PDS individuals rather than singularly to Christ.

Several aspects of this eschatology (doctrine of “last things”) are unclear in the series. The Undead Prophet has sent Simon to recruit new disciples (who in this episode performed a baptism-like ritual with a wet rag used to remove makeup that makes PDS individuals look like the living, revealing the true self underneath, a kind of rebirth), but to what end? Viewers have also heard of a future “second rising” that some of the religiously devout living look forward to. But this second rising seems to be in conflict with the PDS individuals coming back from the dead, so viewers are left with conflicting conceptions of the “resurrection.” Is this a play on the New Testament’s idea of the resurrection of the just and the unjust?

It will be interesting to watch how these theological elements are developed and come together over the rest of Season 2. For those who enjoy thought provoking commentary on social and religious phenomena in their zombie entertainment, In the Flesh is a rewarding experience.

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Tablet: “What Science Fiction Tried To Teach Us About Jihad, and Why No One Listened”

0 | May 1st, 2014 | Posted in Judaism, New Age, science fiction, social commentary

herbertduneThere is an interesting item that appeared in Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life titled “What Science Fiction Tried To Teach Us About Jihad, and Why No One Listened.” The subtitle explains a little further: “How Alejandro Jodorowsky muddled sci-fi by turning Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ into a New Age manifesto.”

In the piece by Liel Liebovitz introduces the subject matter with reference to a documentary film. In his view Herbert’s novel was turned into something far less powerful in terms of social commentary than it could have been. He writes:

The storyboard and its illustrious creator are the stars of a new documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune. Its thesis is simple and convincing: By taking a stab at filming the sprawling 1965 desert-based novel by Frank Herbert, Jodorowsky had assembled in 1974 a team of inspired artists who had given contemporary sci-fi its visual language, from the light sabers of the Jedi to the face-huggers of Alien, and helped propel the genre to the peak of pop culture cool.

It’s all true—but it pales next to Jodorowsky’s even grander and more questionable achievement, which was to move Dune—and, with it, much of the sci-fi genre—away from the thorny questions of ideology and social conflict and toward a softer, more luminescent set of concerns, like identity and self-empowerment, that now reign supreme. To adopt for a moment the director’s colorful, inflamed language, Jodorowsky was the prophet of the flight from the real. Instead of Herbert’s geopolitical toughness, he gave us rainbows and unicorns of self-revelation. And the rest of us are paying the price.

Later in the essay Liebovtiz describes how Jodorowsky changed Herbert’s Dune into something more in keeping with the spirit of the age of the 1960s than the original vision of the author:

It’s a testament to Jodorowsky’s uncanny ability to so perfectly capture the spirit of the age that his Dune intuited that with the political predilections of the 1960s leaning heavily toward the throbbing questions of identity, science fiction could serve as an intellectual and spiritual Petri dish in which to allow radical ideas to grow. Jungian theories of collective consciousness, Freudian notions of personal psychology, jitters about authority, and an approach to technology that embraces its potential as a tool of salvation while simultaneously recognizing its power to corrode all that is human—these would be the themes of the new art. The novels and stories of writers like Philip K. Dick, the advent of the Internet, and the rise of the cyberpunk movement placed Jodorowsky’s themes at the crux of popular culture, giving us one complex meditation on the nature of the self after another. Some of these meditations are intriguing and inspired. Many others are inane. But none have anything to do with the world of Frank Herbert.

Read Liebovitz’s piece here. And learn more about Jodorowsky’s Dune documentary here. The trailer is below.

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Toronto Jewish Film Festival and Jewish Horror

0 | May 1st, 2014 | Posted in horror, Jewish monsters, Judaism, monsters, religion

imagesCarl Rosenberg, a reader of this blog, made me aware of an interesting facet of the 22nd Toronto Jewish Film Festival. It features a section on horror titled “The Search for a Jewish Horror Film: Golems, Dybbuks and Other Movie Monsters.” This is described as follows and features the following films:

With a series of screenings and talks, this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival attempts to define the Jewish horror film. Horror movies traditionally suggest a Christian worldview; however, recent scholarship is starting to look at the work of Jewish filmmakers, and how they represent the metaphysical and spiritual worlds of horror movies. Add to this, the recent growth of horror movies coming out of Israel such as Rabies, Big Bad Wolves and this year’s very creepy Goldberg & Eisenberg and Jewish horror seems to add an exciting new variation to the genre. This series is based on the recent scholarship of professor and author Dr. Mikel Koven who will introduce most of the screenings.

Films:

The Dybbuk

The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck

God Told Me To

Goldberg and Eisenberg

The X-Files: Kaddish

Zeitgeist

There will also be a discussion by Mikel Koven:

Jewish film scholar and horror movie buff, Dr. Mikel Koven, has been searching for evidence of Jewishness in horror movies for as long as he can remember. This FREE TALK is a personal journey through Jewish representation in horror movies (in films like The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London), where Jewish characters exist on the margins of a Christian cosmos. Koven will also discuss some recent films rooted (not unproblematically) within a more Jewish universe, like The Unborn and The Possession (which are based on Dybbuk stories). He will also touch on the various incarnations of The Golem.

Mikel Koven is Senior Lecturer & Course Leader in Film Studies at the University of Worcester (in the UK). He has published extensively on topics such as Jewish Cinema, horror movies and folklore. His books include La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (2006), Film, Folklore & Urban Legends (2007) and Blaxploitation Films (2010). Eighteen years ago, as part of his doctoral study on Jewish cinema, he participated in the 5th Toronto Jewish Film Festival, interviewing a number of audience members.

Read more on this in a piece at TheStar.com.

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Verhoeven: Robocop’s Theological Significance

0 | April 23rd, 2014 | Posted in documentary, robotics, science fiction

robocop-predicted--the-notion-of-singularityThe Real History of Science Fiction aired with its first installment last weekend on BBC America as it tackled the subject of robots. This series is narrated by Mark Gatiss who has done some great documentary work on horror featured here at TheoFantastique previously. It is difficult to tell from the series website whether Gatiss is involved in the project beyond narration.

Like many such documentaries there was little new or in-depth for those immersed in genre. In addition, the choice of characters to focus on in discussing the theme skipped over some major possibilities that could have helped illustrate the points they wanted to make.

But there was one highlight in keeping with the focus of TheoFantastique. At one point in the program Paul Verhoeven, director of Robocop (1987), shares his thoughts on the subject, specifically about cyborgs and how much humanity is left in the machine-human hybrid. He includes some interesting and unexpected commentary on the “deeper meaning” behind the film. He speaks of the police officer slain and transformed into “robocop” as an expression of the symbolism of crucifixion and resurrection. For Verhoeven the symbolism had definite theological meaning.

Next week’s episode of The Real History of Science Fiction focuses on the general theme of space.

Related posts:

“Robert Geraci: Robots and the Sacred in Science Fiction”

“Cautious Consideration of Christ Figures”

“Documentary: Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss”

“BBC Four Documentary: A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss”

 

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Titles of Interest – ‘The Birth of the Dracula Myth: Bram Stoker’s Transylvania’

0 | April 20th, 2014 | Posted in Dracula, Titles of Interest, vampire

Copyright by UJMAG.roI just learned of the following volume, one difficult to find information about online. The following comes from an abstract and other online information by Marius-Mircea Crisjan.

The volume Impactul uni mit: Dracula și reprezentarea ficțională a spațiului românesc (The Impact of a Myth: Dracula and the Fictional representation of the Romanian space) is an interdisciplinary study that combines an imagological perspective with an approach based on Dracula Studies. This book continues the research presented in my previous volume, published in English: The Birth of the Dracula Myth: Bram Stoker’s Transylvania (București: Pro Universitaria, 2013). The Birth of the Dracula Myth analysed the image of Transylvania in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, drawing a parallel between the novel and the sources consulted by Stoker on Transylvania, and focusing on what Stoker read and what he wrote about this region of contemporary Romania.

Impactul uni mit: Dracula și reprezentarea ficțională a spațiului  românesc (The Impact of a Myth: Dracula and the Fictional representation of the Romanian space) discusses the complexity of the Dracula myth and its impact on the reflection of Romania in British and American literary representations. This volume also analyses some literary responses of several Romanian writers to the vampiric myth invented by Bram Stoker.

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‘JINN’ horror film and Muslim folklore

0 | April 12th, 2014 | Posted in folklore, Islam, religion

The Huffington Post recently featured an essay discussing the forthcoming horror film Jinn. The interesting thing about the piece is that it comes from the Religious News Service, authored by Omar Sacirbey, and HuffPo describes the film with the title “‘Jinn’ Horror Movie Features Elements of Muslim Folklore, Interfaith Themes.” When these elements come together they are prime fodder for a mention at TheoFantastique.

Sacirbey writes that “the release of ‘Jinn’ is a sign that there are a growing number of Muslims in the American film industry who are ready to introduce audiences to stories from their cultural traditions, even in the form of a horror movie featuring supernatural creatures from Islamic and Arabic folklore.” He continues:

Drawing on Islamic lore, the movie’s narrator opens by saying: “In the beginning, three were created. Man, made of clay. Angels, made of light. And a third … made of fire.” The story goes on to explain that man has come to rule the Earth, having all but forgotten about the jinn, who live invisibly in another dimension.

The plot centers on Shawn Walker (Dominic Rains), a handsome Michigan auto designer, and his beautiful wife, Jasmine (Serinda Swan), who learn that because of a family curse, they are stalked by a powerful and evil jinn. To break the curse, Walker must kill the jinn. He receives help from a priest and a Jewish jinn. The thriller is fast-paced and action-packed.

The interfaith themes aren’t coincidental. “I thought, this is a good opportunity to show that we have more similarities amongst us than differences,” Ahmad said. “The jinn idea is very old, and we can find this through all the different faiths.”

Read the entire essay on this interesting film here.

Related posts:

“Jewish Monstrosity”

“Of Folklore and Fatherhood: THE UNBORN and Cinematic Reflection”

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Margot Adler’s “Vampires Are Us”

0 | April 5th, 2014 | Posted in Titles of Interest, vampire

BC_VampiresAreUs_1Margot Adler has written a volume titled Vampires Are Us: Understanding Our Love Affair with the Immortal Dark Side (Weiser Books, 2014). The synopsis and promotional statements include:

In a culture that does not do death particularly well, we are obsessed with mortality. Margot Adler writes, “Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury.”

As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband’s bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years–by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic–she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. Dracula, an Eastern European monster, was the perfect vehicle for 19th-century England’s fear of outsiders and of disease seeping in through its large ports. In 1960s America, Dark Shadows gave us the morally conflicted vampire struggling against his own predatory nature, who still enthralls us today. Think Spike and Angel, Stefan and Damon, Bill and Eric, the Cullens.

Vampires Are Us explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us.

What People Are Saying

“An illuminating and fascinating work!”
—Starhawk, author of The Spiral Dance and The Fifth Sacred Thing

“Insightful and compelling… as a tool for understanding the drift of human culture over the last two centuries. The ever-morphing vampire, powerful and at the same time significantly flawed, invites us to reflect on our own life as we seek control, community, and some sense of self-worth.”
—J. Gordon Melton, Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

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