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Religions
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Religious Representation and the Philosophy of Film
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Religious Representation and the Philosophy of Film

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 March 2022) | Viewed by 15881

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Adam Barkman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Philosophy, Redeemer University, Ancaster, ON L9K 1J4, Canada
Interests: C. S. Lewis; philosophy in film; ethics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In this Special Issue, we are interested in critical thinking about the nature of religious representation in film. The philosophy of film should be understood loosely and broadly, where the concerns of the philosophy of film overlap with film theory and aesthetic theory in general. As such, we welcome contributors from a variety of disciplines, such as Religion and Theology, Philosophy, Film Studies, English Literature, Sociology, Psychology, and others who are interested in critically examining how the Divine, religions and/or religious practitioners are depicted or communicated in film either explicitly or implicitly. We are particularly interested in fresh, nuanced perspectives on traditional films as well as engagement with the latest films, both commercial hits such as Pixar’s Soul and Wonder Woman 1984, and award favorites such as The Father, as well as international films which have reached a wider audience.

Prof. Dr. Adam Barkman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • religious representation
  • philosophy of film
  • divine representation
  • religious films
  • international films
  • aesthetics
  • film theory
  • religious practitioners
  • God
  • Christ-type

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 262 KiB  
Article
Harold and Maude, towards an Aesthetic Hedonism
by Christopher Ketcham
Religions 2022, 13(1), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010009 - 23 Dec 2021
Viewed by 3376
Abstract
Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision for humanity after he declares the death of God is both atheistic and aesthetic, the freedom to live life as it comes (amor fati). Therefore, we can call his existential vision aesthetic atheism. Maude, in the movie Harold [...] Read more.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision for humanity after he declares the death of God is both atheistic and aesthetic, the freedom to live life as it comes (amor fati). Therefore, we can call his existential vision aesthetic atheism. Maude, in the movie Harold and Maude, has a different take on living without God. Rather than take down Christianity, she tries to reform it. She lives freely but is not the intellectual free spirit that Nietzsche hoped would emerge after his proclamation. Rather, her way of existence we can call aesthetic hedonism. She understands that life is contingent, but she loves life for what it is and tries to free others, including animals, saints, and Harold, to experience the same. She does not urge the atheistic turn. I turn to Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of cosmological necessary contingency that, while he agrees with Nietzsche that God is at present inexistent, a necessary contingent cosmology cannot rule out the emergence of a divinity. He wonders just what kind of divinity might emerge. I argue that the divinity that might emerge, using Meillassoux’s term ‘divinology’, would depend upon the prevailing attitude, and consider this through both aesthetic atheism and aesthetic hedonism attitudes towards the world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Representation and the Philosophy of Film)
14 pages, 294 KiB  
Article
From Impulse to Action—Noah (2014) and Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) as Secular Bible Epics
by Sylvie Magerstädt
Religions 2021, 12(11), 1025; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12111025 - 22 Nov 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2684
Abstract
Several large-scale Bible epics have been produced in the decade after the revival of epic cinema at the turn of the millennium. Yet, while many biblical films of this period were primarily aimed at religious audiences, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) and Ridley Scott’s [...] Read more.
Several large-scale Bible epics have been produced in the decade after the revival of epic cinema at the turn of the millennium. Yet, while many biblical films of this period were primarily aimed at religious audiences, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) and Ridley Scott’s Exodus:Gods and Kings (2014) stand out due to their broader epic appeal and religious skepticism. Using Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of the impulse-image and the action-image as framework, this article analyses some of the nuances and complexities of both films. It argues that although both films offer scale and spectacle consistent with older biblical epics, the portrayal of their lead characters as a man determined on destruction (Noah) and religious skeptic and warrior (Exodus) differentiates them from traditional biblical cinema. Additionally, comparing both films helps articulate nuances within Deleuze’s movement-image that are often overlooked. Having proclaimed that modern cinema brings with it a crisis of truth that challenges the certainties of classic American cinema and its clear ideas on morality and belief, Deleuze ultimately calls for a leap of faith to reinstate the possibility of action. The article concludes that Noah and Exodus offer us a bit of both—spiritual uncertainty and a return of classic epic cinema. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Representation and the Philosophy of Film)
7 pages, 197 KiB  
Article
“Make What You Can of It If You Are a Philosopher”: An Essay on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Christian Spiritualism”
by Adam Barkman
Religions 2021, 12(11), 1015; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12111015 - 18 Nov 2021
Viewed by 3991
Abstract
A number of years ago, renowned English biographer Andrew Lycett wrote a short piece about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that highlighted the seemingly irreconcilable tension between Doyle the creator of the “super-rational” detective Sherlock Holmes, and Doyle the passionate defender of “Christian Spiritualism”. [...] Read more.
A number of years ago, renowned English biographer Andrew Lycett wrote a short piece about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that highlighted the seemingly irreconcilable tension between Doyle the creator of the “super-rational” detective Sherlock Holmes, and Doyle the passionate defender of “Christian Spiritualism”. In this essay, I aim to explore this alleged tension, ultimately arguing that these two Doyles need not be in tension—the only true tension being between the two terms in Doyle’s preferred philosophy, “Christian Spiritualism”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Representation and the Philosophy of Film)
19 pages, 508 KiB  
Article
The Appearance and Resonance of Apocalyptic Archetypes in Contemporary Disaster Films
by Chi-Ying Yu
Religions 2021, 12(11), 913; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110913 - 21 Oct 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4809
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has roused the apocalyptic fear that was foreseen in religious prophecies. This research will focus on the post-9/11 and pre-COVID-19 disaster films, in an attempt to understand the representation and pre-presentation of the collective disaster psychology. Aligned with Jungian film [...] Read more.
The COVID-19 pandemic has roused the apocalyptic fear that was foreseen in religious prophecies. This research will focus on the post-9/11 and pre-COVID-19 disaster films, in an attempt to understand the representation and pre-presentation of the collective disaster psychology. Aligned with Jungian film studies, this essay regards films as a convergence of generations’ collective unconscious. Apocalypse may as well be considered the psychic archetypes that emerge in our civilization in the name of religion. This essay aims to construe the ways that apocalyptic archetypes appear and are elaborated in contemporary films, in hope of recognizing the new apocalyptic aesthetics formed in the interval between the two disastrous events. Consistent with the meaning in classic doomsday narratives, the archetypal symbols in these films are found to have carried a dual connotation of destruction and rebirth. Through empirical cinematographic style, these archetypal images are revealed in an immersive way. Disaster films from this time place emphasis on death itself, fiercely protesting against the stagnation of life, and in turn triggering a transcendental transformation of the psyche. Unlike those in the late 1990s, viewing the doomsday crisis through the lens of spectacularity, disaster in these films is seen as a state of body and mind, and death a thought-provoking life experience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Representation and the Philosophy of Film)
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