using the readings, please complete test 1450 PS. there is also a book that i will pass onto you once you download the rest of the class readings

Some religious leaders and institutions welcome new forms of media as an opportunity to better serve their own religious goals or as a potential location for ethical dialog and/or for reflection on the humancondition.

For others, resistance to new forms of media is rooted in a religious resistance to image itself, or in broader moral and ethical concerns about media content and its assumed effects.

Religions have had a mixed relationship with art and media. As argued throughout this book, it is impossible to separate religion from its mediations, which include the expression of religion in art, music, literature, andfilm. Yet, religions have often been concerned that, while image can lead people toward the sacred, it can also lead them away. After briefly describing this ambivalent relationship between religion and art this chapter looks at the presence of religion as a subject in the movies before turning to consider Christian responses to the cinema, particularly in the United States, as one example of the range of ways in which religious communities have responded to media.

Some of the earliest extant human art that we know of, Paleolithic cave paintings located in France, are religious or spiritual in nature. According to one scholar,“These grottos were probably thefirst temples and cathedrals.… Certainly they set the scene for a profound meeting between men and the god-like, archetypal animals that adorn the cavern walls and ceilings”(Armstrong 2005:

32–33). Other powerful esthetic mediations of religion are easy tofind. Seek out the great Buddha statue in Bodh Gaya, India, or any of the countless images of the Hindu god Ganesh with his elephant head. Consider the icons of their saints treasured by Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, or visit the Torah-themed Marc Chagall stained glass windows at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Ponder the spare beauty of a New England Quaker meeting house or Istanbul’s soaring and ornate Blue Mosque. Art and architecture are primary mediators of religion.Understanding how the sacred finds expression through art and architecture, through image, sound, and movement expands the description of religion. Yet, for all the evidence that religion is embedded in image, art, and architecture, art evokes a twofold religious anxiety. First, people in some traditions are concerned that the esthetic e ffort to express those sacred realities within the physical realm will become a substitute for the sacred they are intended to represent. Second, at some level art is a competing space of ritual and life-shaping narratives that like religion may call forth reverie, re flection, and emulation. Religion ’s com- plicated relationship with the cinema provides one illustration of the range of ways that religion relates to art and media more broadly. Religious images have such power that religious con flict is often expressed through attacks by one religious group on the images and objects that mediate other religions. Indeed, the word iconoclastis rooted in the destruction of religious images. Near the Roman Forum you can visit a Christian church built triumphantly within the columns of a collapsed Roman temple. When fourteenth-century Ottoman Turks captured the region of Cappadocia in present-day Turkey, they scratched out the eyes on the paintings of Christian saints in order to counteract the power of these images (Figure 7.1). During the sixteenth cen- tury, Christian followers of the Radical Reformation destroyed stained glass windows and art that they regarded as blasphemous. The theological, political, and esthetic con flicts that led to the destruction of religious art and architecture continue in more recent times. Seeing some forms of popular culture as a competing source of ritual and meaning, religious leaders sometimes seek to control or destroy them. In areas of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, music and movies are banned, in part for their capacity to carry with them Western values. When rock and roll emerged in the United States, Figure 7.1 Frescoes, Turkey 106Ethics and esthetics clergy preached against it as“the devil’s music”or, noting its rooting in African American musical forms, used the racist term“jungle music”to describe it. To this day conservative Christian congregations sometimes destroy CDs and DVDs theyfind immoral or blasphemous. The publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaperJyllands-Postenin 2005, and subsequently elsewhere in Europe and the United States, can be seen as a reversal of this pattern. The secular society asserts its moral power over religion, not by destroying religious art, but by publishing images that some Muslims regard as blasphemous.

The development of the movies, both as a technology and as a set of narra- tive and visual genres, happened fairly quickly, moving from quirky innovation to popular entertainment over a period of just 25 to 30 years. Considering how religious communities expressed their attitudes, and sometimes anxieties, about the new medium helps to illustrate the range of ways that religious communities reflect on mediation more generally.

Religion in the movies The movie camera was developed simultaneously by the Lumière brothers in France and Thomas Edison in the United States in the late 1880s. By the turn of the twentieth century the cinema was becoming a common public entertainment.

Between 1913 and 1916, 21,000 movie theaters opened in the United States (Johnston 2000: 20). While the earliest viewers were fascinated by simply watch- ing movement onfilm,film-makers quickly seized on the new medium as a way to tell stories and began to adapt the popular literary genres for subject matter, and the early public screenings included westerns, romances and biblical tales.

Motion pictures continued to be a location for religion. It is reported that films about the life of Jesus were among thefirstfilms shown in the United States (Mahan) and religion continued to be a subject in Hollywood. Although much of that work has been lost, some silent-era religiousfilms, like Cecil B.

DeMille’s (1923)Ten Commandments, are still available. Later Technicolor and big budgets enabled Hollywood“Biblical spectaculars”likeThe Robe(1953) and DeMille’s return to the Decalogue with his 1956The Ten Commandments.

Americans are not the only ones to make the cinema a location of religion.

Europeans and Africans also turn to Christian subject matters infilms such as Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’sThe Passion of Joan of Arc(1928) and Cheick Sissoko of Mali’sLa Genese(1999). Buddhist content and sensibility are evident infilms from a number of countries, with Korean director Bae Yong- Kyun’sWhy has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?(1989) a notable example.

While Muslims object to the portrayal of Muhammad, the Islamic faith and worldview are evident infilms, perhaps most notably those from Iran such as Majid Majid’sChildren of Heaven(1997) and Abbas Kiarostami’sTaste of Cherry, which won thePalme d’Orat Cannes the same year.

In thefirst decade of the twentieth century Dadasaheb Phalke wrote about his experience in a Bombay theater watching afilm calledThe Life of Christ. To censor, shape, or engage with media and the arts?107 While the life of Christ was rolling fast before my physical eyes I was mentally visualizing the Gods, Shri Krishna, Shri Ramchandra, then Gokul and Ayodhya. I was gripped by a strange spell.…Could we the sons of India, ever be able to see the Indian images on the screen? (Phalke in Mitchell and Plate 2007: 25) Phalke would make the first feature-length motion picture produced in India, Raja Harishchandra (1913), drawing its narrative from the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana . He went on to establish the Indian film industry that has become known as “Bollywood, ”a vast industry informed by Hindu esthetics and worldview and often explicitly populated by the Hindu gods (Figure 7.2). People working within the film industry, with varying degrees of religious sensibility, create theatrical movies about religious subjects. Examples include fi lms like Martin Scorsese ’s Kundun (1997), which sought to express a Buddhist sensibility in telling the story of the Dalai Lama. The presence of religion in fi lm is of course not limited to movies with obvious religious subjects or those made with pious intent. Religious images and figures appear in films for a number of reasons, including the criticism of religion or the provision of a visual language to evoke particular emotions or discuss particular concerns. They include exploitation films like Joseph Guzman ’s Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2010) in which corrupt, drug-dealing priests provide the backdrop for an action adventure comedy, and films that draw on implicit or overt religious themes and images Figure 7.2Shree Ganesh movie poster 108Ethics and esthetics in more complicated ways to explore moral questions. This is often seen in horrorfilms likeRosemary’s Baby(1968) that use religious images, characters, or language to explore the question of evil.

Religious responses to the movies Though religion has been a consistent subject of the movies, religious com- munities were both intrigued and apprehensive about the new medium and its content. The range of their early responses provides a clue as to the complexities of the relationship between religion and media.

For some, the movies were a godsend. In 1910 the Rev. Herbert Jump wrote a pamphlet titledThe Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture.While acknowledging a widespread religious“prejudice against motion pictures,”Jump argued that this relatively new medium might serve religion in a beneficial way.

He described how a few churches were beginning to provide screenings of films as a form of wholesome entertainment and how images of the“holy land”were being used in religious education. He imagined thatfilmed pre- sentations of stories from the Bible or church history might be used in religious education and concluded that the crowning possibility of the motion picture, though, is its usefulness to the preacher as he proclaims moral truth. It will provide the element of illustration for his discourse far better than it can be provided by the spoken word. It will make his gospel vivid, pictorial, dramatic, and above all, interesting. The motion picture preacher will have crowded congregations, not because he is sensational but because he is appealing to human nature.

(Jump in Mitchell and Plate 2007: 23) While religious leaders like Jump embraced the possibilities of the movies, others expressed moral qualms about the content of the movies. Concerned aboutfilm’s capacity to illustrate and encourage immoral behavior, religious critics raised alarm about the growth of the cinema. As“talkies”emerged, R.G. Burnett and E.D. Martell wroteThe Devil’s Camera, a sensationalist religious warning about the social dangers of the movies. They offered an account of“a school boy and a school girl [who are]…‘film fans,’steeped in the artificial sentimentality of the modern screen, familiar with the whole sordid concoction of adultery, deception and murder.”After the boy and girl leave a London theater, the boy stabs and murders the girl.

The lad was put on trial for his life; but he ought not to have stood alone in the dock. What of those who, for the lowest of all human ends, had exploited his immature imagination with their screen crimes?…Nothing is sacred.…Our very civilization is at stake. The cinema, as at present debased, is the Hun of the modern world.

(Burnett and Martell in Mitchell and Plate 2007: 33, 34)To censor, shape, or engage with media and the arts?109 In 1936, while acknowledging that“good motion pictures are capable of exercising a profoundly moral influence,”Pope Pius XI expressed similar though less sensationalist reservations aboutfilm’s potential to affect people’s moral sensibilities. In an encyclical letter supporting the American Bishops’establish- ment of the Legion of Decency and its role in establishing the Hollywood Production Code, the pope wrote:

The power of the motion picture consists in this: that it speaks by means of vivid and concrete imagery, which the mind takes in with enjoyment and without fatigue.…Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. They are occasions of sin; they seduce young people along the way of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals;…They are capable also of creating prejudices among individuals, misunderstandings among nations, among social classes, and among entire races.

(Vigilanti Cura, in Mitchell and Plate 2007: 39) A range of religious strategies It is possible to think of the movies themselves as a form of religion. Some see the experience of going to the movie theater, sitting in the dark, and being engaged by mythic stories as itself a form of religious ritual (Lyden 2003). Certainly the responses of some religious groups and leaders to the movies suggest that they understand them to be a competing source of powerful and compelling stories.

By no means do these anxieties tell the entire story of how religious people have thought about the movie industry. Those who are largely at peace with the wider culture see at least most movies as relatively innocuous expressions of popular culture. Some religious voices recognized that movies can provide reflections on significant social concerns even when they do not overtly address religious topics. Esthetically inclined religious critics see thatfilm can have the power to give expression to the human condition in ways that can instruct the religious viewer. Where this is so, conversation aboutfilm provides an opportunity for dialog with wider cultural issues and ideas.

Vibrant examples of these various strategies can be seen in the response of American religious communities to the movies. Some religious communitiesavoided contact with movies and other forms of popular culture as part of a wider strategy of separatist religious identity, others were quick toadoptthe new medium, some attempted tocontrolor shape their content, and still others entered intoreflection onor dialog withthe world offilm. These strategies are not mutually exclusive; individuals and groups move among them and may practice themsimultaneously.

Avoidance For those who share Burnett and Martell’s sense that the movie camera is the tool of the devil, the possibility thatfilm’s power over the imagination can be 110Ethics and esthetics harnessed to tell religious stories is overshadowed by anxiety about the potentially negative influence of movies and the industry that produces them. Those in this tradition often follow a strategy of avoidance. For American Protestants in the holiness traditions that developed prior to the American Civil War, personal morality and the avoidance of worldly distractions are an important expression of the search for religious perfection. Their religious identity is expressed as much in the Christian witness of things they donotdo as in their acts of piety, charity, and service; thus, as with strictures against dancing or the use of alco- hol, avoidance of the movies is regarded as an expression of their Christian faith. From such a perspective, it is not simply that particular movies have bad content. For these religious practitioners going to the movies means partici- pating in a culture that is indolent, choosing a cultural narrative over a religious narrative, and exalting a shallow celebrity culture.

The National Legion of Decency, formed in the 1930s by Roman Catholic bishops, combined a strategy of censorship for the protection of the community with one of avoidance as a primary expression of religious identity. The Legion was involved in developing the Production Code described below that sought to control the content offilms. At the same time their original membership pledge read:

I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoralfilms, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.

Pietistic practices such as these have become far less common among con- temporary American Christians, though they continue among some groups. As the holiness traditions adapted to the surrounding culture they have become more open to previously banned activities, often moving from total avoidance to stan- dards of moderation. This move toward a greater participation in the wider society led to a gradual softening of the stricture against attending the movies.

Adoption A contrasting response to that of the avoiders can be seen in that of the adopters who embraced the new medium as a form through which religion could be expressed. Some, like Jump and Phalke, were quick to see that the gods, their saints and followers might appear in visual form on the movie screen. Further, religiously orientedfilm-makers could use the medium to tell contemporary tales aligned with religious values and worldview.

There are a variety of contemporary expressions of the effort to adoptfilm to tell religious stories. As Jump hoped in 1910, some pastors and religiousTo censor, shape, or engage with media and the arts?111 educators incorporatefilm into the worship and educational life of congrega- tions using secular movies to illustrate religious claims. The previous chapter looked at the development of religious television, which brought worship and religious conversation into people’s homes. There is a ready market in churches and synagogues for shortfilms with religious themes.

For somefilm-makers, who may or may not identify with particular religious communities, movies can be a location to explore religious and theological questions. Ingmar Bergman, the questioning son of a stern Swedish pastor, often madefilms that ponder a dark Christian theological world, as inThe Seventh Seal(1957), with its emblematic image of death playing chess with the protagonist. More recently, Terrence Malick’sThe Tree of Life(2011) usesfilm to visualize a world infused with religious meaning and picture the inhabitants who strive, or do not strive, to experience the sacredness of creation.

Mel Gibson famously brought his own pre-Vatican II traditionalist Catholicism to the screen inThe Passion of the Christ(2004). The violence and radical ato- nement theology of thefilm were debated vigorously by both supporters and opponents. Lessfinancially and critically successful was celebrity Scientologist John Travolta’seffort to bring Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s novel Battlefield Earth(2000) to the screen.

While the celebrity offilm-makers like Travolta and Gibson allowed them to occasionally produce movies that reflect their religious worldview within the Hollywood system, others with less clout who wanted to work more con- sistently in a religious mode have moved away from the predominantly secular movie-making industry to create separate production companies and distribu- tion systems within which they could make religiously motivated movies. One such company is Affirm Films, a wing of Sony Pictures, that most famously released Sean McNamara’s successfulSoul Surfer(2011), the story of a young surfer whose Christian faith helps her recover from a shark attack and return to surfing. Others with an apocalyptic theology came together to produceLeft Behind(2001) and its sequels, all starring former child star Kirk Cameron. The films explore the idea of a“rapture”in which believers are taken to heaven and non-believers left behind to face a“tribulation,”and were widely promoted within the Evangelical community. There have been many such low-budget efforts by people of a variety of faiths. Qasim Basir’sMooz-Lum(2011) uses a melodramatic form to tell the story of Muslim life in America. First promoted through social media, thefilm saw a brief theatrical release. Thesefilms often depend on such alternative distribution strategies and are promoted within particular religious communities.

For the religiously inspired Hollywoodfilm-makers described above, and others like them, movies are an outlet for the religious imagination. Thesefilm-makers, however, have generally used their celebrity to make room for religious projects in a largely secular industry, or created alternative structures of production and distribution at the edges of the industry. In Nigeria and Ghana an independent industry has developed that produces movies in inexpensive video formats that reflect the Pentecostal worldview of the region. Films like Kenneth Nnebue’s 112Ethics and esthetics Living in Bondage(1992) established a tradition of cinematic storylines in which Pentecostal Christians are victorious over those who maintain traditional African religious practices.

Controlling the movies: censorship and the Production Code By the early twentieth century, evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics began to participate more fully in the wider society in the United States. For many, the separatist religious strictures urging people to entirely avoid the movies eased and began to be replaced by other strategies. They came to see the cinema as a potentially acceptable place of wholesome entertainment or reflection on society and the human condition. Nonetheless, religious leaders and institutions continued to have reservations about the power of the movies to shape personal and public morality. These reservations led them to strategies that attempted to influence or control the content of the movies. This theoretical acceptance of the movies was constrained by concerns about content, which has been the dominant religious response to the movies in the United States.

Though the religious sensibility that suggested that the movies were to be avoided has become, for most American Christians, a distant memory, religious institutions or individuals often seek to use their own moral and political influence to affect or control the content of the movies. A concern for what Pope Pius called“the passions”often leads to religiously based criticism of the movies focused on concerns around individual morality, particularly in terms of sex, violence, and crime. A wider social critique is expressed by Christians who share Pius’s concern that the movies“are capable also of creating prejudices among individuals, misunderstandings among nations, among social classes, and among entire races”(Mitchell and Plate 2007: 38). Religious critique of the movies also includes misgivings about the way that popular entertainment sometimes draws on common prejudices, devalues women, marginalizes already oppressed minorities, and celebrates a life of consumption that rests on inequality and exploitation. Certainly many of these concerns are shared by other social critics.

While some religious communities were beginning to regard moviegoing as a potentially acceptable activity in the teens and early 1920s, the religious shared with many others a sense of alarm about the licentiousness of some films. Legislators across the United States were debating movie censorship.

While it was not only religious people and institutions raising concerns about movie content, much of the concern was framed in religious language. Because the US Supreme Court had earlier ruled that movies were not constitutionally protected free speech, there was a real possibility that each community might set its own standards, each title might have to be submitted to multiple boards of review, each of which might ask for revisions, and that theater owners and movie producers might face prosecution in more than one jurisdiction. This was a daunting situation for thefilm industry.

In 1922 the Hollywood studios turned to former head of the Republican Party and Presbyterian layperson Will H. Hays to advise them and clean up theTo censor, shape, or engage with media and the arts?113 film industry’s public image. By 1930 Roman Catholic leaders proposed a binding code and in 1934, fearing government censorship, the studios adopted this proposal for self-censorship and the“Hays Code”set limits onfilm content until 1968.

The Code set out three“Guiding Principles:” 1 No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin.

2 Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3 Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

The role of religion in shaping the Code can be seen in its incorporation of the doctrines of sin and natural law. The Principles were followed by a discussion of“Particular Applications.”Among the many Particular Applications were limits on how sexual attraction could be portrayed, emphasizing support for the institution of heterosexual marriage, as well as limits on nudity, costuming, and the presentation of the body. There were also limits on the depiction of crime and criminals, requiring that crime always be punished. Religion was protected with restrictions against the ridicule of religion and the portrayal of religious leaders as villains or comicfigures; moreover, religious services should be “carefully and respectfully handled.” The 1950s and’60s were a period of considerable social change in the United States. Normative values about sex, race, and religion were liberalizing andfilm-makers would increasingly challenge Hays-office rulings on movies that reflected the changing culture. Struggles overfilm censorship came to a head in 1952, when the distributors of the 1948 Roberto RossellinifilmL’amore(The Miracle) defended thefilm in the US Supreme Court, establishing the principle thatfilms were a form of constitutionally protected speech. With this decision, the argument that the Hays Code defended Hollywood against government censorship was weakened. By the end of the 1960s the combination of new understandings about free speech and changing social values led to the collapse of the regulation of whichfilms could be produced and distributed in the United States. But it did not bring an end to the religious community’s wariness of the movies.

Protest Where efforts to ban particular movies have failed, religious groups have sometimes turned to acts of public protest. There is a long history of picketing theaters to shame patrons and theater managers and sometimes to elicit conversa- tion. For those whose religious identity was constructed in opposition to the wider society, movies and other media are simply the presenting face of a wider culture 114Ethics and esthetics that they reject. Various conservative Christian groups argued for boycotts of movies ranging fromThe Da Vinci Code(2006) toThe Hobbit(2012). This sometimes brings them into coalition with other social reformers. The protest offilms deemed pornographic, for instance, brought Christian conservatives together with religious and secular feminists.

Other coalitions come together to oppose movies that they regard as blas- phemous. One notable example of a movie that drew strong objections was The Last Temptation of Christ, the 1988film by Martin Scorsese that explores what the life of Jesus might have been like had he not been crucified. While Scorsese argued that thefilm explored the doctrine of the incarnation, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Evangelicals, and representatives from other denomina- tions protested thefilm. In Paris the protests included the burning of a theater, a throwback to the desire to obliterate art regarded as blasphemous that emerges in many traditions at various points in their history.

Rating systems Yet another strategy, also rooted in concern about the movies’content and influ- ence, was the development of ratings systems. Recognizing that the US courts increasingly treated movies as a form of art protected by standards of free speech, the development of motion picture rating systems provided guidance to audiences about afilm’s content without seeking to ban the particularfilm. Reli- gious communities were often involved in developing or supporting ratingsystems.

Religiously motivated raters sought to differentiate betweenfilms that they considered appropriate and those they deemed disturbing or morally dangerous.

Following the collapse of the Hays Code, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), under the leadership of Jack Valenti, developed a rating system, established in 1968 and modified slightly over the years. Religious leaders from the National Council of Churches and National Catholic Council participated in the development of the standards. The MPAA ratings are not meant to be a judgment of the quality of the movie but of its suitability for particular audiences. There have been some changes over the years, both in the rating categories themselves and in what content would produce a particular rating. Raters look at the amount of profanity, nudity, drug use, sex, violence, and what the MPAA calls“mature”or“adult”themes in afilm in considering how to place it in one offive categories. Movies rated“G”are judged to be appropriate for a general audience, and all ages can be admitted into the theater.

“PG”indicates that parental guidance is called for, as some of thefilm’s mate- rial, according to the raters, may not be appropriate for children.“PG-13” indicates a stronger caution to parents, especially parents with children under the age of 13.“R”indicates that children under 17 cannot be admitted to the theater to see thefilm unless they are accompanied by an adult, while a rating of“NC-17”means that no children under 17 are to be admitted.

Wanting to give expression to their own worldview and ethical concerns, some religious communities have established their own ratings. Perhaps the bestTo censor, shape, or engage with media and the arts?115 known of these was established by The National Legion of Decency to guide Catholic viewers. The system made distinctions betweenfilms which were“A:

Morally unobjectionable,”“B: Morally objectionable in part,”or“C: Con- demned by the Legion of Decency.”Those rated A were further subdivided between those that were“suitable for all audiences,”“suitable for adults and adolescents,”“suitable for adults only,”or“for adults with reservations.”For groups like the Legion of Decency, it was important to have ratings more explicitly rooted in their own religious framework.

Other religious groups also established their own rating systems. Where the avoiders have argued that all movies are implicated in a system of moral illu- sion, the religious leaders and communities involved in ratingfilms acknowl- edged that there were movies that do no harm and even some which are morally uplifting or otherwise serve positive ethical and social goals. Overall, the religious groups’strategies of ratings, censorship, and avoidance reflect a suspicion of the Hollywood dream machine as a source of seductive illusions.

Theological reflection on and dialogue with the movies A shifting of attitudes toward culture, and a readiness to engage with it in new ways, can be seen in the decision of the Catholic bishops in the 1960s to replace the Legion of Decency with the Film and Broadcast Office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Where the Legion had focused on warning viewers away from things that the raters thought they should not see, the new Film and Broadcast Office was charged with a wider conversation with and about the movies. Though the Office continues a Catholic rating system, ratings are part of a broader strategy offilm reviews that model ways of thinking about movies as part of a larger Catholic conversation with culture.

In doing so the Film and Broadcast Office moved toward the strategy of esthetic, social, and theological dialog with the movies.

The greater openness to the movies suggests that religious communities have come to understand themselves to be in an esthetic and ethical conversation with culture. Culture is not inherently fallen. Approached in this way, the movies are a location for reflection on the beautiful, the good, and their opposites. While such religious viewers may have concerns about particularfilms, they see the movies in general as a form of art to be engaged with.

For some religious critics,film primarily provides illustration of theological arguments that they are making. But others go beyond this to tease out the theological implications that are internal to particularfilms, valuingfilms and film-makers for their unique worldviews and artistic accomplishments. James M. Wall, for many years the editor and publisher of the progressive Christian journalThe Christian Century, is one who models a public conversation about religion andfilm that is thoughtfully about the esthetic nature offilm.

Film-makers are often frustrated or perplexed by their religious critics. Faced with religious boycotts, negative ratings, or religiously motivated complaints that they only producefilms that celebrate a culture of violence, shallow 116Ethics and esthetics sexuality and consumption,film-makers often respond that religious leaders fail to understand the economic and esthetic complexities within which they work.

Further,film-makers suggest, their religious critics fail to turn out to support films whose values they might have celebrated. Attempting to respond to this criticism, some religiously motivatedfilm critics and academic and religious media professionals have tried to create opportunities for more conversation between the church andfilm-makers. One expression of this has been to establish religious juries at a number of internationalfilm festivals. Organized by the World Catholic Association for Communication and the equivalent Pro- testant body, the International Interchurch Film Organization, these juries review thefilms in the official competition at internationalfilm festivals at Cannes, Berlin, Montreal, and a number of other cities. They give an award to thefilm that most represents what the jurors understand to be religious and human values and use the award to create conversations withfilm-makers and other critics about how esthetic and theological interests might come together.

Media education and activism Another dialogical strategy that religious groups have used in engaging with film and television has been that of media education, with the participants generally recognizing the way in which media, religion, and culture interact and overlay each other. Assuming that media are deeply implicated in social sins such as sexism, racism, consumption, and stereotyping, religious educators have responded by attempting to teach the consumers of mass media, particularly young people, about the content, narrative, and economic structures of mass media.

Groups like the World Alliance of Christian Communication also work with reporters and editors in developing countries to encourage alternative voices.

The media education approach shares the sense of some of the groups described above thatfilm and other forms of media are powerful shapers of the imagination. However, the media educators differ from other religious critics of media in two ways. Their ethical concern is focused less on individual piety and more on social issues. Further, the avoiders and raters described above function as though people, particularly young people, are passive viewers who absorb the values, assumptions, and prejudices of whatever they watch, and who therefore need to be protected from negative media. In contrast, the media education movement teaches“active viewing”that encourages viewers to identify the assumed values of media entertainments, ask who benefits from those narrative assumptions, and bring those values into dialog with their own.

These religiously motivated efforts to understand and critique the values embedded in popular narratives and advertising have been paralleled by more secular efforts within the public schools. Particularly in Canada, a strong media education movement has developed among public educators. A long-standing example of media education work in the United States can be seen in that of the Center for Media Literacy, an organizationfirst launched by religious communities that now functions as a non-aligned not-for-profit. To censor, shape, or engage with media and the arts?117 Looking at the range of ways that religious leaders and communities have engaged with the movies, it appears that religion’s relationship to the arts reflects both a recognition that religion’s work is dependent on art and media and the recognition that art forms also serve other systems of value and com- munity. The varied strategies through which religious communities engage with the movies reflect differing theological assumptions about the role of religion in society and the possibility that the good and the beautiful may be found outside as well as inside religion.

Discussion questions 1 How have art and architecture, and attacks upon them, been used to express religious and power relationships? Identify examples of this from the chapter or your own observation.

2 What concerns have led some religious communities to avoid, or to seek to control, the movies? What values and assumptions are expres- sed in the Production Code and the current rating system?

3 What strategies have other religious communities developed to adopt the movies as a tool for religious practice or education? Can you think of particular good or bad examples of this?

4 What is theologicalfilm criticism, and what are its goals? What is the goal of media education, and why have religious communities been interested in this approach?

5 In the following reflection,“Muslim Monsters,”Shafireflects on the film300(2007) and discusses the response of Iranians to thefilm’s portrayal of ancient Persia. What is the effect of repeatedly portraying a particular people as monstrous? Do you think these extreme por- trayals contribute to prejudice against Muslims?

6 Campbell’sreflection considers the development of a kosher cell phone system to serve ultra-Orthodox Jews. What does this example teach us about the religiously motivated anxieties about media and their content, and about their appeal? What does it suggest about how religion can shape media? References Armstrong, Karen (2005)A Short History of Myth,New York: Cannongate Books.

Johnston, Robert K. (2000)Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue,Grand Rapids:

Baker Academic.

Lyden, John C. (2003)Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals, New York: New York University Press.

Mahan, Jeffrey H. (2002)“Celuloid Savior: Jesus in the Movies,”Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 1, April.

Mitchell, Jolyon and S. Brent Plate, eds. (2007)The Religion and Film Reader, New York:

Routledge.

118Ethics and esthetics Reflection Koshering the cell phone Heidi A. Campbell In March 2005 MIRS Communication, an Israeli wireless company, announced the launch of a cellular phone designed specifically for the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. The idea for such a phone began in 2004 when ultra-Orthodox rabbis and community members became concerned that cell phones might be enabling immoral content to infil- trate the community. Key to these concerns was the transformation of the cell phone from a simple communication device to one knitting social networking, communication, and entertainment options. The rise of 3G phones in Israel meant people now had easy access to problematic media like the Internet and mainstream media content.

This raised some concerns that the cell phone might also encourage more privatized communication, that was not as easily monitored by parents or religious leaders. This was highly problematic for a community that tries to keep strict boundaries between the sacred and secular world and avoid any contact with any images or content that could encourage sinful thoughts or behaviors. This led to a lengthy negotiation process between a group of Rabbis, who later became known as the Rabbinical Council for Communication Affairs, and a number of Israeli cell phone providers. Eventually MIRS agreed to produce a“kosher phone,”a reconditionedfirst-generation phone where Internet access, SMS text messaging, and video and voice mail application were stripped or disabled.

This was coupled with community-specific calling plans that made it very cheap to call other kosher phones and created penalties for calling outside this community network or using the phone on Shabbat. These phones are visibly marked with a stamp signifying approval by the Rabbinical Committee, similar to the symbol found on kosher food products.

Only these phones were seen as“kosher,”meaning approved or acceptable under rabbinical, religious law, for devout religious Jews, and the launch was coupled with a media campaign linking use of the device as symbolic of one’s religious devotion and faithfulness to the boundaries of the community (Campbell 2010). As one ultra-Orthodox journalist wrote about this campaign,“Maran verabonon(masters and sages) defined the battle for kosher communication as an existential battle, a battle for the soul, and that every effort must be made to insure its success.”Several years on, a number of other Israeli phone providers offer their own versions of the kosher phone, sold in shops only in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods endorsed by specific rabbis and coming with a special phone pre fixso that even one ’s phone number becomes a marker as to whether or not one honored the Rabbinical edict. The kosher cell phone has become a symbol of ultra-Orthodox values of honoring those in authority and living a lifestyle de fined by constraining behaviors that “draw a tight fence around the Torah ”so that the individual and the community do not fall into sin. It also highlights how conservative religious communities may be motivated to innovate and cultivate technologies in light of their values, rather than outright rejecting them, if they are seen as valuable resources but potentially problematic in their current form (Figure 7.3).

Reference Campbell, Heidi A. (2010) When Religion Meets New Media , Abingdon: Routledge.

Figure 7.3Orthodox Jewish man using cell phone 120Ethics and esthetics Reflection Muslim monsters Sophia Sha fi The visions created about individuals outside one ’s own social group can be highly instructive, providing insights about both the perceiver and how they construct the bodies of others, whether real or imagined. The representation of Muslims in Hollywood is such a case. As documented in the work of scholars like Jack Shaheen, Ella Shohat, and Robert Stam, Muslim villains are common fixtures in movies. Muslim monsters —characters who exhibit non-human and, at times, terrifying attributes —are part of the history of film as well.

The movie 300(2007), which grossed over $500 million at the box o ffice, is one of the recent films that includes these monsters. It is based on Frank Miller ’s popular 1998 graphic novel about an epic battle between the Spartans and the Persians. With a few additions made by the film ’s director, Zach Snyder, 300is an almost frame-by-frame movie version of the text. The film fictionalizes a famous battle that took place in 480 BCE between the Persians and an alliance of Greek city-states that included the Spartans. In 300, this battle is transformed into an argument that the Christian and modern West must subdue and civilize the Islamic and pre-modern East. This con flict between the West and Islam begins with the first scenes, in which Persia is described as a “beast ”that will devour the West if it is not stopped. The Persians are a collection of deformed hunchbacks, giants, sexual deviants, and other frights. Although the film is set in ancient times, Persians represent the existential threat of Islam, a danger expressed in imagery including Orientalist costume and references to the barbarian East (Figure 7.4). The Persians of 300are monsters su ffering from a variety of racial and sexual degeneracies, many of them situated in medieval fantasies about Muslim bodies. Xerxes, the Persian king, towers over the Spartan king Leonidas like the giants of medieval tales who dwarfed Christian knights.

Xerxes serves as a tableau of a long list of medieval tropes about Muslims —they are giants; they have black, purple, or brown skin; they are bisexual; they have sex with boys; they are inhuman. Beside Xerxes, Persian monsters in the film include the 10-foot tall giants with lobster claws and filed teeth, giants with missing arms and metal prosthetics, and the dis figured lesbians and other Persians who occupy Xerxes ’harem.

Film critics have identi fied the grossly inaccurate ways in which Persians are represented, including the characterization of Xerxes as a cross-dressing gay man. Asfilm reviewer Dana Stephens put it, “The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes [Rodrigo Santoro] is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him. ”Other reviewers have noted, for instance, the way the Persians are depicted as an army of freaks and monsters. Iranians did not appreciate the film ’s treatment of Xerxes or of Persians in general. A cultural adviser to then President Ahmadinejad characterized 300 as psychological warfare and the government ’s UNESCO repre- sentative filed a complaint with that organization. Iranian expatriates voiced similar objections, criticizing the movie for its mischaracterization of ancient Persia as well as what was viewed as gross racial and cultural stereotyping. The sequel to 300is due to be released in the spring of 2014, focusing on Xerxes and his rise to power, the events leading up to and following the Battle of Thermopylae, and the Battle of Artemisium. One can only wonder what horrors will await.

Figure 7.4300 movie poster 122Ethics and esthetics