Film, Religion and Education in the Twenty-First Century
The Hollywood Hermeneutic
Keywords:
Hollywood and film, hermeneutics, film and religion, religion and the MediaAbstract
We live in a post-modern, post-Christian and post-literate world where popular films have become the lingua franca of the video generation. Regrettably, their pedagogic utilisation as an extra-ecclesiastical resource within Religion Studies, Theology and Religious Education has frequently been under-utilised, unappreciated or deliberately ignored. For the profession to remain culturally relevant in the twenty-first century, it needs to integrate popular films into the pulpit, home and classroom as soon as practicable. Consciousness-raising via thematic surveys of the field is a valid first step in demonstrating how extensively religion permeates the medium. Consequently, the popular Hollywood cinema was scanned, the critical literature was reviewed, and textually-based, humanist film criticism was employed as the analytical lens. Three taxonomic categories were identified and explicated herein. Namely: (1) Christ-figures: The re-enfleshment of Jesus Christ, (2) Subtextual sacredness: Biblical props, characters and themes, and (3) Holy words: Explicit scriptural references and Bible-quoting. It was concluded that the Hollywood hermeneutic has immense value for both the children-of-the-media and religion scholarship. Further research into the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion-and-film and its pedagogic application was recommended.
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Filmography
Babette’s Feast (a.k.a. Babette’s Gastebud) (1987, dir. Gabriel Axel)
The Birds (1963, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Braveheart (1995, dir. Mel Gibson)
Dead Man Walking (1995, dir. Tim Robbins)
End of Days (1999, dir. Peter Hyams)
The Graduate (1967, dir. Mike Nichols)
Jesus (1999, dir. Roger Young)
Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999, dir. Kevin Connor)
The Matrix (1999, dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski)
The Miracle Maker (2000, dir. Derek W. Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov)
Moonraker (1979, dir. Lewis Gilbert)
Nell (1994, dir. Michael Apted)
Northfork (2003, dir. Michael Polish)
Pale Rider (1985, dir. Clint Eastwod)
The Passion of the Christ (2004, dir. Mel Gibson)
The Pillow Book (1996, dir. Peter Greenaway)
Pleasantville (1998, dir. Gary Ross)
Samson and Delilah (1949, dir. Cecil B. DeMille)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Shane (1953, dir. George Stevens)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004, dir. Kerry Conran)
The Ten Commandments (1956, dir. Cecil B. DeMille)
The Truman Show (1998, dir. Peter Weir)
When Worlds Collide (1951, dir. Rudolph Mate)
