Border Crossing with the Uninvited in Matthew’s Wedding Feast Parable and Jacques Tourneur’s 'I Walked with a Zombie'
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i1.97Keywords:
Matthew, parables, zombieAbstract
This article is a theological (re)reading of Matthew’s wedding feast parable (22:1–14) through one of the parable’s specific disruptions: the man without a wedding garment. It argues that the plight of this enigmatic figure critiques Matthew’s dualistic anti-imperial reversal on its own terms and unveils the theology of empire embedded within its narrative. The man without a wedding garment is a border crosser whose presence unleashes a violent reaction from the anti-imperial king of the parable: the king has the man thrown into the “outer darkness.” The second half of the paper crosses into the world of B-horror, where the zombies in the Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton collaboration, I Walked with a Zombie (RKO: 1943), are border crossers who not only disrupt colonial space, but also achieve a narrative and spatial takeover. Tourneur’s zombie film is offered as a way out of Matthew’s “outer darkness” and into a space of subversive hope. This article argues that border crossing is a subaltern strategy of resistance for the uprooted, dislocated, and excluded of the world.
References
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Warrior, Robert Allen. 1995. “A Native American Perspective: Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians.” In Sugirtharajah 1995, 277–85.
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Williams, Linda. 1996. “When the Woman Looks.” In Grant 1996, 15–34.
Wood, Robin. 1986. Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1995. “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences.” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 206–9. New York: Routledge.
Boff, Clodovis. 1996. “Methodology of the Theology of Liberation.” In Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology, ed. Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuría, 1–21. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Brown, Raymond E., et al., eds. 1990. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. London: Geoffrey Chapman.
Carroll, Noël. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge.
Carter, Warren. 2001. Matthew and Empire. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
———. 2000. Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Clover, Carol J. 1992. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
DeGiglio-Bellemare, Mario. 2004a. “The Passion of the Christ: A Review.” Journal of Religion and Film 8/1. Online: www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No1/Reviews/Passion.htm.
———. 2004b. “Vodou Hybridity and ‘Voodoo Economics’: Crossroads Theology at the Intersection of the Local and Global.” In DeGiglio-Bellemare and Miranda García 2004, 190–222.
———. 2005a. “ ‘Even a Man Who is Pure in Heart’: Filmic Horror, Popular Religion and the Spectral Underside of History.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 10 (Summer). Online: www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art10-filmichorror.html.
———. 2005b. “Land of the Dead: A Review.”Journal of Religion and Film 9/2, Online: www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol9No2/Reviews/LandDead.htm.
DeGiglio-Bellemare, Mario, and Gabriela Miranda García, eds. 2004. Talitha Cum! The Grace of Solidarity in a Globalized World. Geneva: WSCF Publications.
Deren, Maya. 1970. Divine Horseman: The Living Gods of Haiti. New York: Documentext, McPherson & Company.
Desmangles, Leslie G. 1992. The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Farmer, Paul. 2003. The Uses of Haiti. Monroe, MA: Common Courage Press.
———. 2004. “Who Removed Aristide?” London Review of Books, April 13. Online: http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=5318.
Fujiwara, Chris. 1998. Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Gandhi, Leela. 1998. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. New York: International Publishers.
Grant, Barry Keith, ed. 1996. The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Gutiérrez, Gustavo. 1981. “The Irruption of the Poor in Latin America and the Christian Communities of the Common People.” In The Challenge of Basic Christian Commnuities, ed. Sergio Torres and John Eagleson, 107–23. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Hollinger, Karen. 1996. “The Monster as Woman: Two Generations of Cat People.” In Grant 1996, 296–308.
Irarrázaval, Diego. 2000. Inculturation: New Dawn of the Church in Latin America. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Jones, Ivor Harold. 1995. The Matthean Parables: A Literary and Historical Commentary. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Lambrecht, Jan. 1992. Out of the Treasure: The Parables in the Gospel of Matthew. Louvain: Peeters Press.
Modleski, Tania. 2000. “The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmodern Theory.” In The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder, 285–93. New York: Routledge.
Moore, Alexander, and Ronald LeBaron. 1986. “The Case for a Haitian Origin of the AIDS Epidemic.” In The Social Dimensions of AIDS: Method and Theory, ed. Douglas Feldman and Thomas Johnson, 77–93. New York: Praeger.
Pawlikowski, John. 1982. Christ in the Light of Christian–Jewish Dialogue. New York: Paulist Press.
Pieris, Aloysius. 1996. Fire and Water. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Richard, Pablo. 1995. Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Rodley, Chris, ed. 1992. Cronenberg on Cronenberg. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1974. Faith and Fratricide. Minneapolis: Seabury Press.
Schillebeeckx, Edward. 1979. Jesus: An Experiment in Christology. New York: Crossroad.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
———. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.
Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1991. Revelation: Vision of a Just World. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sim, David C. 1990. “The Man Without the Wedding Garment (Matthew 22:11–13).” Heythrop Journal 31: 165–78. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2265.1990.tb00129.x.
Sobrino, Jon. 1978. Christology at the Crossroads. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
———. 1993. Jesus the Liberator. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Sugirtharajah, R. S., ed. 1995. Voices from the Margins: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
-----, ed. 1998. The Postcolonial Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
-----. 2002. Post-Colonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tavernier, Bertand. 1971. “Propos de Jacques Tourneur.” Positif 132: 1–8.
Warrior, Robert Allen. 1995. “A Native American Perspective: Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians.” In Sugirtharajah 1995, 277–85.
Welch, Sharon D. 1997. “Dancing with Chaos: Reflections on Power, Contingency, and Social Change.” In Batstone et al., 125–27.
Williams, Linda. 1996. “When the Woman Looks.” In Grant 1996, 15–34.
Wood, Robin. 1986. Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press.
Published
2008-09-23
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
DeGiglio-Bellemare, M. (2008). Border Crossing with the Uninvited in Matthew’s Wedding Feast Parable and Jacques Tourneur’s ’I Walked with a Zombie’. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 3(1), 97-122. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i1.97
