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Religion and Film: two compendia
Recensie, Bijdragen, 17-06-10
 In 2009 two impressive collections of articles about religion and film were published: one by Routledge and the other by Continuum. “Film is a legitimate object of academic study” both agree, but “still very young” and therefore still underdeveloped compared to other fields of academic studies in the regions of culture and religion. Everyone agrees that movies have an unique power to influence people and reflect heavily the culture of their makers and viewers.
Both the Routledge and the Continuum compendium acknowledge the different possibilities with regard to the relation between film and religion. Films can criticize faith (for example in The Mission or Priest) but religion can also provide an apparatus by which a specific movie can be interpreted and analyzed. Religious themes can be found throughout the majority of block buster movies. In popular and successful films like The Matrix, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Pale Rider Christ-like heroes are presented. The hero has to sacrifice voluntarily his own life for the redemption and salvation of the group he belongs to. Especially in the Routledge book a lot of effort is made to contemplate the narrative structures of the Jesus- (like The Kings of Kings and The Passion) and Christ-narratives (like The Matrix and Star Wars). The Continuum book ventures more into specific religious themes (redemption, Holocaust, karma, the Apocalypse and Satan).
It was a bit puzzling to be confronted with the total absence in both compendia of the theories of Joseph Campbell (The Hero of the Thousand Faces, 1949, 3 2008). His theory about the ‘mono myth’ is very illustrative in the field of religion and film. According to Campbell all great stories that have survived the ages, have some formative elements in common, linking the stories of Abraham and Joseph to those of Odysseus and Orpheus, and those of Jesus and Buddha to Spiderman and Batman.
 With the exception of one or two names both compendia feature different authors, but Lyden and Blizek both present a section of articles about films and other than the Christian religion like Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam. The Continuum book includes articles about film, cultural studies and ethics, while the Routledge book does the same with a couple of different academic approaches to film, like feminist reading, audience reception and psychoanalysis
The authors of both compendia are to be praised for introducing the reader into this rather young field of religion and film. It is recommended to read both books side by side for comparison. It is regrettable however that none of the two compendia addresses the question about the criteria or boundaries of religious interpretation of films. No one would disagree if one named Neo from The Matrix a Christ-like savior, but where does this process end? Is it all in the eye of the (religious) beholder? Maybe all films can be called religious simply because all films-that-matter address religious themes as salvation, redemption or atonement. But if all films-that-matter are to be called religious, hasn’t the word ‘religion’ been deprived from all real distinctive meaning? Neither Blizek or Lyden can give the answer.
John Lyden (red.), The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, Routledge: London (2009)
William L. Blizek, The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film,
Continuum: Oxford (2009)
Bron: Deze recensie is gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrijft Bijdragen 71 (2010, nr. 1), p. 107-108.
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