| By
S. Brent Plate
Hamilton College
Respondents:
Crystal
Downing, Messiah College
Jean
Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago
Robert
Johnston, Fuller Theological Seminary
William
Paden, University of Vermont
This month, drawing on his most recent book, Religion
and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World, Brent
Plate takes a look at the ways that film and religion reinterpret
the everyday world:
Religions and films each create alternate worlds utilizing
the raw, abstract material of space and time, bending them each
in new ways and forcing them to fit particular standards and desires.
Film does this through camera angles and movements, framing devices,
lighting, costuming, acting, editing, and other aspects of production.
Religions achieve this through setting apart particular objects
and periods of time and deeming them “sacred,” through attention
to specially charged objects (symbols), through the telling of
stories (myths), and by gathering people together to focus on
some particular event (ritual). The result of both religion and
film is a re-created world: a world of recreation, a world of
fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we may long to live in or
a world we wish to avoid at all costs. The world presented at
the altar and on the screen connects a projected world to the
world of the everyday.
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