ABSTRACT
While the last five or six years have seen a rapid growth in the number of academic publications on religion and film, this is still a relatively embryonic area of scholarly discourse, albeit one which has already made crucial inroads into the relevant academic disciplines – most notably, theology, religious studies, biblical studies and film studies. Just a decade ago, it was rare for a university faculty or department of theology and religious studies, in particular, to run courses on various facets of the relationship between the movies and religion. Now, however, the question is not so much ‘Can or ought the theologian bring one of the most powerful manifestations of secular, popular culture into the classroom?’ as ‘Which films, or genres of film, are most susceptible to religious or theological enquiry?’ A cursory glance at the syllabus of a degree course in Theology in a British or American university perhaps best bears this out. While the prospective student will have the opportunity to pursue modules in various aspects of Christian history, from the New Testament through the Patristic period, the Middle Ages, Reformation and the Enlightenment, as well as to examine the philosophy or psychology of religion, ethics, Christian doctrine, liturgy and systematic theology, it is not uncommon for the student also to be able to choose to study a course, or even a range of courses, on religion and contemporary, popular culture in general, or, as in the case of my own teaching in the University of Wales, on religion and the medium of film in particular. This course proved popular with students – both in terms of student numbers, and as evinced by the nature of the mandatory feedback from students that is now required for teaching quality assessment purposes. Moreover, many of them achieved their highest marks of the year in this course, finding that the opportunity afforded them to study films in the classroom was refreshing, and enabled them to apprehend in a new light a medium with which they were already acquainted. But, whatever the merits of studying film in the theology lecture hall, is this
not to overlook the crucial fact that the study of film is not the preserve of the academic? There may be multiple articles in journals or chapters in books – or, with ever-increasing frequency, on internet sites such as the Journal of Religion and Film1 – on the way films such as Niki Karo’s Whale Rider (2002), Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003), Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) or Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) have pertinent value for the theologian or religious studies scholar, but were these films ever meant to be open to serious scrutiny?
What is film if not a part of the international entertainment industry, competing as it does for global marketing shares alongside soft drinks, sportswear and popular music, often within the same commercial, multinational enterprise (Browne, 1997, p. 9)? Their ostensive aim is to entertain audiences, and make money. Whether or not films are amenable to intellectual scrutiny, it is a rare film indeed that is conceived with that function in mind. At least as far as popular film is concerned, the experience of ‘going to the movies’ is simply, as Richard Maltby puts it:
