ABSTRACT
Religion and film constitute two, but certainly not all, of those forms of life that define society and thereby constitute valid sources of investigation for the search for meaning in culture. Religion is "a descriptive category that names the process of creating meaning" and discovering value systems. In addition to offering a theory of culture that locates crucial existential meaning in popular modes of cultural expression, specifically in particular visual modes of cultural expression, this study does not isolate these modes of popular expression. The paradigms and typologies employed throughout this chapter derive from critical methods appropriate to the academic study of religion, but the use of these methodologies is based upon a larger, broader concept of culture that views film itself as part of a cultural matrix, similarly inhabited by religion and other cultural forms. Film represents a particularly effective medium for providing this experience of otherness.
