Religious Remediations
Pentacostal Views in Ghanaian Video-Movies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.155Keywords:
Pentacostal-Charismatic Christianity, African Christianity, religion and filmAbstract
This article addresses the interface of video-films and Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in Ghana. This interface, it is argued, needs to be examined from a position that transcends the confines of film studies and religious studies and leaves behind a secularist perspective on the relationship between religion and film. On the basis of detailed ethnographic research, it is shown that, far from standing apart from the realm of religious beliefs, video-films call upon audio-visual technologies so as to remediate Pentecostal views of the invisible world around which Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity evolves. Video-films invoke a “techno-religious realism” that addresses spectators in such a way that they authorize video representations as authentic. Transcending facile oppositions of technology and belief, media and authenticity, and entertainment and religion, video-films are shown to achieve immediacy and authenticity not at the expense of, but thanks to, media technologies and practices of remediation.
References
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———.“Commodities and the Power of Prayer. Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana.” Development and Change 29 (1998): 751–76.
———.Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
———.“Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 447–74.
———.“‘Praise the Lord….’: Popular Cinema and Pentecostalite Style in Ghana’s New Public Sphere.” American Ethnologist 31 (2004): 92–110.
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———. “Insight, Secrecy, Beasts, and Beauty: Struggles over the Making of a Ghanaian Documentary on ‘AfricanTraditional Religion.’ ” Postscripts 1.2/1.3 (2005): 277–300.
———.“The Spectacular and the Spirits: Charismatics and Neo-Traditionalists on Ghanaian Television.” Material Religion 1 (2005): 314–35.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999.
Christianson, Eric S., Peter Francis, and William R. Telford, eds. Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology, and the Bible in Film. London: SCM Press, 2005.
Cosandey, Roland, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning, eds. Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion. Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de L’Université Laval, 1992.
Derrida, Jacques. “ ‘Above All, No Journalists!” ’ In de Vries and Weber, Religion and Media, 56–93.
Gifford, Paul. Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy. London: Hurst, 2004.
Hackett, Rosalind I. J. “Charismatic/Pentecostal Appropriation of Media Technologies in Nigeria and Ghana.” Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (1998): 258–77.
Haynes, Jonathan, ed. Nigerian Video Films. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000.
Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Keil, Charles. “From the Manger to the Cross: The New Testament Narrative and the Question of Stylistic Retardation.” In Cosandey, Gaudreault, and Gunning, Une invention du diable?, 112–20.
Krings, Matthias. “Muslim Martyrs and Pagan Vampires: Popular Video Films and the Propagation of Religion in Northern Nigeria.” Postscripts 1.2/1.3 (2005): 183–205.
Mazzarella, William. “Culture, Globalization, Mediation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 345–67.
Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Meyer, Birgit.
———.“ ‘Delivered from the Powers of Darkness’: Confessions about Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana.” Africa 65 (1995): 236–55.
———.“Commodities and the Power of Prayer. Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana.” Development and Change 29 (1998): 751–76.
———.Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
———.“Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 447–74.
———.“‘Praise the Lord….’: Popular Cinema and Pentecostalite Style in Ghana’s New Public Sphere.” American Ethnologist 31 (2004): 92–110.
———.“Mediating Tradition: Pentecostal Pastors, African Priests, and Chiefs in Ghanaian Popular Films.” In Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honor of J.D.Y. Peel, ed. Toyin Falola, 275–306. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2005.
———.“Impossible Representations: Pentecostalism, Vision and Video Technology in Ghana.” In Meyer and Moors, Religion, Media and the Public Sphere, 290–312.
Meyer, Birgit, and Annelies Moors, eds. Religion, Media and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Moore, Rachel O. Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000.
Morgan, David. Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Oha, Obododimma. “The Rhetoric of Nigerian Christian Videos: The War Paradigm of The Great Mistake.” In Haynes, Nigerian Video Films, 192–99.
Peperkamp, Esther. “Being a Christian the Catholic Way: Protestant and Catholic Versions of the Jesus Film and the Evangelization of Poland.” Postscripts 1.2/1.3 (2005): 351–74.
Plate, S. Brent. “Introduction: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making.” In Representing Religion in World Cinema. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
———. “Religious Cinematics: The Immediate Body in the Media of Film.” Postscripts 1.2/1.3 (2005): 259–75.
Port, Mattijs van de. “Priests and Stars: Candomblé, Celebrity Discourses, and the Authentication of Religious Authority in Bahia’s Public Sphere.” Postscripts 1.2/1.3 (2005): 301–24.
Reinhartz, Adele. Scripture on the Silver-Screen. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003.
Sanchez, Rafael. “Channel-Surfing: Media, Mediumship, and State Authority in the María Lionza Possession Cult (Venezuela).” In de Vries and Weber, Religion and Media, 388–434.
Stern, Richard C., Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric DeBona. Savior on the Silver Screen. New York: Paulist Press, 1999.
Stolow, Jeremy. “Religion and/as Media.” Theory, Culture & Society 22, no. 4 (2005): 119–45.
Vries, Hent de. “In Media Res: Global Religion, Public Spheres, and the Task of Contemporary Religious Studies.” In de Vries and Weber, Religion and Media, 23–29.
Vries, Hent de, and Samuel Weber, eds. Religion and Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Wendl, Tobias. “Visions of Modernity in Ghana: Mami Wata Shrines, Photo Studios and Horror Films.” Visual Anthropology 14 (2001): 269–92.
Witte, Marleen de. “Altar Media’s Living Word: Televised Christianity in Ghana.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2003): 172–202.
———. “Insight, Secrecy, Beasts, and Beauty: Struggles over the Making of a Ghanaian Documentary on ‘AfricanTraditional Religion.’ ” Postscripts 1.2/1.3 (2005): 277–300.
———.“The Spectacular and the Spirits: Charismatics and Neo-Traditionalists on Ghanaian Television.” Material Religion 1 (2005): 314–35.
Published
2005-12-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Meyer, B. (2005). Religious Remediations: Pentacostal Views in Ghanaian Video-Movies. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 1(2-3), 155-181. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.155
