Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals

Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals

Language: English

Pages: 289

ISBN: 0814751814

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2003

Film as Religion argues that popular films perform a religious function in our culture. Like more formal religious institutions, films can provide us with ways to view the world and values to confront it. Lyden contends that approaches which interpret films only ideologically or theologically miss the mark in understanding their appeal to viewers. He develops an alternative method which shows how films can be understood as representing a “religious” worldview in their own right.

Lyden surveys the state of the study of religion and film, offering an overview of previous methods before presenting his own. Rather than seeking to uncover hidden meanings in film detectable only to scholars, Lyden emphasizes how film functions for its audiencesᾹthe beliefs and values it conveys, and its ritual power to provide emotional catharsis. He includes a number of brief cases studies in which he applies this method to the study of film genres—including westerns and action movies, children's films, and romantic comedies—and individual films from The Godfather to E.T., showing how films can function religiously.

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as performing a religious function. In my first chapter I consider past and present work in the field of reli gion and film, assessing the methods that have been proposed and their advantages and disadvantages. Most of the approaches can be understood as falling into one of two categories (or a combination thereof) that I would define as “theological” and “ideological.” The latter is more charac teristic of film studies in general, seeking to critique the aspects of films that perpetuate racial,

were an ultimate has committed idolatry by giving 40 | The Definition of Religion ultimate status to that which he should not. In this way a judgment is im plied upon those religions that do not focus on a single ultimate concern, as they commit idolatry in their failure to properly conceptualize their ul timate. The insistence upon a transcendent is still present here, albeit in veiled form. In spite of the Christian biases present in his definition, Tillich made it clear toward the end of

function for those who like and watch them, and we should realize that to speak of the “religious” qualities of film is not simply a way of issuing ideological judgments on “popular” cinema and its audiences. This brings us to the fourth aspect of Geertz’s definition of religion: the aura of factuality provided through the ritualization of the mythic worldview and its values. Although the worldview and ethics of films have been examined by some scholars, there has been almost no examination of the

am attempting to mimic), and he sometimes criticized his prede cessors and their understandings of religion and myth—most notably Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. These sociologically oriented theorists tended to view reli gion and myth as expressions of social integration or social conflict, and so effectively reduced myth to a by-product of social forces, not unlike Marx. Durkheim, the main founder of sociological analysis of religion, es

studies, as ethnography by its very nature really only allows one to draw conclusions about the population surveyed (although the conclusions may have wider applicability, if one grants that the survey group is typi cal). Given that no amount of data guarantees certainty regarding general ized conclusions, I have not allowed the absence of extensive data to prevent me from drawing some tentative conclusions about the ways some audiences may appropriate some films. And, after all, using a little

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