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From Cecil B. DeMille's production of King of Kings in 1927, to Mel Gibson's recent The Passion of the Christ, films that discuss the meaning of Jesus have provoked interest, discussion, and reevaluation on a large scale. Hollywood films that deal with this subject have consistently managed to augment their inherent power by commenting simultaneously on political and cultural matters, and drawing from alternative cultural and mythological sources. The Greatest Story Ever Told, for instance, uses a landscape similar to that of the American West, while The Last Temptation of Christ deals with themes related to modern American notions of sexuality and sin. This timely examination considers the life of Jesus as it has been portrayed in such films as King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Jesus of Nazareth, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Passion of the Christ, as well as the more allusive and implicit use of Christ-related themes in Spartacus, Shane, and The Matrix. It looks at the diverse content and often-surprising impact of these and other films, and reveals how these depictions have helped determine, and been determined by, particularly American notions of who Jesus was, how he lived and died, and what he means for both our religious and secular cultures. Through an objective consideration of these movies, the emergent religious culture of mainstream American film becomes apparent as a central element in Hollywood movies—and in American popular culture at large.
In this book, Eric Trenkamp addresses a question that many American cinema fans may have asked themselves over the past 20 years – “why is everything superheroes now?” Although it might be easy to dismiss Hollywood’s last two decades of comic book movies as nothing more than overly simplified morality tales, the reality is much more complex. The pervasiveness of the comic book genre throughout American culture, Trenkamp argues, perpetuates a subtextual myth about what it means to be an “American” in the contemporary world. At the core of this myth is the image of who Hollywood considers to be the ideal American hero – the White male savior. This book explores the evolution of this ever-changing image of White superiority in American cinema, which can be traced from the earliest silent Westerns, through decades of war films, and up to the modern day comic book genre. Through provocative and engaging analysis of a wide variety of Hollywood films, Trenkamp demonstrates the industry’s history of popularizing White supremacy and the ways in which these films can act as propaganda to support various dehumanizing U.S. policies, both abroad and at home. Scholars of film studies, comic studies, genre studies, American studies, race studies, pop culture, and history will find this book particularly useful.
Originally published as the The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film, this Companion offers the definitive guide to study in this growing area. Now available in paperback, the Bloomsbury Companion to Religion and Film covers all the most pressing and important themes and categories in the field - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Twenty-nine specifically commissioned essays from a team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and provide a map of this evolving research area. Featuring chapters on methodology, religions of the world, and popular religious themes, as well as an extensive bibliography and filmography, this is the essential tool for anyone with an interest in the intersection between religion and film.
Salvation from Cinema offers something new to the burgeoning field of "religion and film": the religious significance of film technique. Discussing the history of both cinematic devices and film theory, Crystal Downing argues that attention to the material medium echoes Christian doctrine about the materiality of Christ’s body as the medium of salvation. Downing cites Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu perspectives on film in order to compare and clarify the significance of medium within the frameworks of multiple traditions. This book will be useful to professors and students interested in the relationship between religion and film.
From Cecil B. DeMille's production of King of Kings in 1927, to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, films that discuss the meaning of Jesus have provoked interest, discussion, and reevaluation on a large scale. The Hollywood films that deal with this subject have consistently managed to augment their power by commenting simultaneously on political and cultural matters, and drawing from alternative cultural and mythological sources. The Greatest Story Ever Told, for instance, uses a landscape similar to that of the American West, while The Last Temptation of Christ deals with themes related to modern American notions of sexuality and sin. Humprhies-Brooks looks at the diverse content and often-surprising impact of these and other films to reveal how these depictions have helped determine, and been determined by, particularly American notions of who Jesus was, how he died, and what he means for both our religious and secular cultures.
Jesus films arose with cinema itself. Richard Walsh and Jeffrey L. Staley introduce students to these films with a general overview of the Jesus film tradition and with specific analyses of 22 of its most influential exemplars, stretching from La vie du Christ (1906) to Mary Magdalene (2018). The introduction to each film includes discussion of plot, characters, visuals, appeal to authority, and cultural location as well as consideration of the director's (and/or other filmmakers') achievements and style. Several film chapters end with reflections on problematic issues bedeviling the tradition, such as cultural imperialism and patriarchy. To assist teachers and researchers, each chapter includes a listing of DVD chapters and the approximate “time” (for both DVDs and streaming platforms) at which key film moments occur. The book also includes a Gospels Harmony cataloging the time at which key gospel incidents appear in these films. Extensive endnotes point readers to other important work on the tradition and specific films. While the authors strive to set the Jesus film tradition within cinema and its interpretation, the DVD/streaming listing and the Gospels Harmony facilitate the comparison of these films to gospel interpretation and the Jesus tradition.
Jeffrey Richards examines the cultural, social, economic and technological circumstances that dictated the rise and decline of each successive cycle of Ancient World epics, from the silent film era, to the "golden age" of the 1950s, right up to the present day (Gladiator, 300, Rome). Analysis reveals that historical films are always as much about the time in which they are made as they are about the time in which they are set. The ancient world is often used to deliver messages to the contemporary audience about the present: hostility to totalitarian regimes both Fascist and Communist, concern at the decline of Christianity, support for the new state of Israel, celebrations of equality and democracy, and concern about changing gender roles. The whole adds up to a fresh look at a body of films that people think they know, but about which they will learn a good deal more.
The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film brings together a lively and experienced team of contributors to investigate the ways in which this exciting discipline is developing.
The T&T Clark Handbook of Jesus and Film introduces postgraduate readers to the critical field of Jesus and/on film. The bulk of biblical films feature Jesus, as protagonist, in cameo, or as a looming background presence or pattern. The handbook assesses the field in light of the work of important biblical film critics including chapters from the leading voices in the field and showcasing the diversity of work done by scholars in the field. Movies discussed include The Passion of the Christ, The King of Kings, Jesus of Nazareth, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Son of Man, and Mary Magdalene. The chapters range across two broad areas: 1) Jesus films, understood broadly as filmed passion plays, other relocations of Jesus, historical Jesus treatments, and Jesus adjacent cinema (privileging invented characters or “minor” gospel characters); and 2) other cinematic Jesuses, including followers who imitate Jesus devotionally or aesthetically, (Christian) Christ figures, antichrists, yet other messiahs, and competing Jesuses in a pluralist world. As one leaves the confines of Christian theology, the question of what a film or interpreter is doing with Jesus or Christ becomes something to be determined, not necessarily something traditional.
While Jesus has attracted the sporadic interest of film-makers since the epics of the Sixties, it is often forgotten that between the advent of motion pictures in the 1890s and the close of the "silent" era at the end of the 1920s, some of the longest, most expensive and most watched films on both sides of the Atlantic were focused on the Life and Passion of the Christ. Drawing upon rarely seen archival footage and the work of both the era’s most important directors (e.g. Alice Guy, Ferdinand Zecca, Sidney Olcott, D.W. Griffith, Carl Dreyer, and C.B. DeMille) and others who have been all but forgotten, this collection of essays offers a representative survey of the Silents of Jesus, illustrating the ways in which the earliest films and those which followed were influenced by a multiplicity of factors. Written by leading scholars in biblical and early film studies this collection explores the ways in which the Silents of Jesus were shaped not only by the performing and visual arts of the nineteenth century and the technological challenges and opportunities of a new medium and industry, but also by the artistic, theological and ideological predilections of studios and directors, and the expectations of audiences as the genre evolved. Taken together, the essays collected here offer a seminal treatment of the genesis and early evolution of the cinematic Jesus.