religion

17

RELIGION AND FILM
Making Movies, Making Worlds

S. Brent Plate

n September 1, 2008, Don LaFontaine, the

Udisembodied, narrating voice of film trail- is not unlike the activities of religion. ers acros the English-speaking world, died. He

on-screen and given over to an audience. Which

Religions and films each create alternate
had an unmistakable intonation and catchphrase worlds utilizing the raw, abstract material of that filmgoers recognized without even knowing space and time, bending them each in new ways

and forcing them to fit particular standards and
desires. Film does this through camera angles

his name. In a deep voice, while images of cos-
mic importance lit up the theater, we heard the

words:”In a world where…” He discussed this and movements, framing devices, lighting, cos-
tuming, acting, editing, and other aspects of
production. Religions achieve this through set-
ting 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 peo-

ple 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

srategy of introducing films in an interview, not
long before he died.

We have to very rapidly establish the world We are transporting them to?’ he said of his Viewers. “That’s very easily done by saying, In a World where.. . violence rules. ‘In a world wnere…men are slaves and women are the Onquerors-you very rapidly set the scene.
hon and cinema: films create worlds. The cin-
Viewers into another, previously unknown, nagined world. Films do not passively

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. In this way, religion
and ilm

are akin. This is not to say they
are equated but

rather to say there are analogies
that can be pro-

ontaine knew the secret that binds reli-
ematic experience

mimic
directly display what is “out there

of watching them brings

Dut actively reshape
and twist them

in new ways that are projected ductively drawn between them.
Eshape elements of the lived world

349

Part 3 Religion and Culture in the Space of Aesthetics

the sun, but there are new relationships betweenold substances. Along these lines, I adopt the language of the great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who once wrote of the social valueof “intellectual montage, in which new and revolutionary ideas might spring from the jux- taposition of previously separate images. On the other side of the disciplinary divide, I juxtapose Eisenstein with the words of religionist Wendy Doniger, who suggests of the comparative study of religion: “The comparatist, like the surrealist,selects pieces of objets trouvés; the comparatist is not a painter but a collagist, indeed a bricolagist(or a bricoleur), just like the mythmakers them- selves. Worlds, religious and filmic, are made old aesthetic tactics from religions-at the dawn up of borrowed fragments and pasted togetherin ever-new ways; myths are updated and trans-self-conscious about this then they are at the mediated, rituals reinvented, symbols morphed.start of the twenty-first century-but contempo- By lighting up religious studies and film studiesrary religious practices are likewise modified by side by side, I hope to re-create the understand-
ing of the relation between religion and film.

In the remainder of this essay,I examine the
concept of world-making and re-creation from
a religious studies and a film studies standpoint.
Along the way, I suggest that both activities
can be seen in light of the other and can offer
examples of how religious myths and rituals cor-
respond to the formal structures of filmmaking
I interject the theoretical approaches with spe-
cific examples from specific, though quite var-
ied, films, in hopes that this will provide some
rounding to the theory, and also a model tor

how a religious-studies-oriented approach to

My approach in this chapter is to relate the
world “out there” to the re-created world on- en
screen and at the altar, and how these worlds
mutually influence one another. The impact, fur- thermore, is often so great that participants do not see differences in the worlds but view them as

a seamless whole. Religious worlds are so encom-
passing that devotees cannot understand their
personal worlds any other way; filmic worlds
are so influential that personal relationships can only be seen through what has already been seen
on-screen. My hypothesis is that by paying atten- tion to the ways films are constructed, we can shed
light on the ways religions are constructed, and
vice versa. Film production borrows millennia-
of the twentieth century, filmmakers were more

the pervasive influence film has had on modern
society. This is not about “spotting the Christ
figure” in the film, or finding choice sayings
that could have been the words of the Buddha,
or finding ethical parables that parallel ancient
Jewish teachings. Instead, religion and film are
sutured on a much more primal level.

To create this relationship, I play the roleeof
editor, or perhaps of bricoleur, juxtaposing film
theory and religious theory in order to highlightthe ways both religion and film are engaged in
the practice of world-making, and even world-
creating.The avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren
intimates as much when she claims, “All inven- film might be achieved.tion and creation consist primarily of a new rela-
tionship between known parts.”? Invention and
creation do not operate by bringing something
into being “out of nothing” (a troubling myth of
creativity Perpetuated by Christian theology and and tne lwo-Worlds View

CINEMATIC-RELIGIOUS WORLD CROSSINGS
ake One: Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo

and the Two-Worlds View
a romantic view of the modern artist alike), but
of taking what is already known and creating a
new relationship. There is nothing new under

The attraction and promise of cinema is uc

Way films offer glimpses into other worlds, even
if only for ninety minutes at a time. We walc,

50

Plate, Religion and Film

in which Cecilia (Mia Farrow) sits, seeking relief
from her otherwise troubled life. In Allen’s film,

two worlds cross and both characters are alteredetween because of their shared desires that transcend
the boundaries of the screen. Nonetheless, The

Purple Rose of Cairo does not let go of the fact
that there is a screen in place between Tom and

Cecilia. The screen is a border that is crossable.

Ma Fireos
t Driek

Dnav A

yet there are distinctions between the
two sides.

for example when Tom enters Cecilia’s world

and takes her out for a night on the town and

tries to pay for dinner with the
fake prop money

he has in his pocket. They eventually come to
realize they live in two worlds, and a permanent

connection is impossible. Of course, all this

paralis
icnlans
cs them

takes place on-Screen and not in the
real world

togete per se.
Woody Allen’s film, while delightfully self

referential about the experience of cinema, aiso
tells us much about the experience of religion.

Religions function like films, and vice
versa.

Among the myths, rituals, symbols, doctrines,
sacred times and places, and ethical compo

nents of religions, the faithful are presented with
alternate worlds, prescriptions tor a better lile

and imaginative tools for re-viewing the
worid

as it is. Religions provide promises, warnings
and compelling narratives tor behaving in par

ticular, and often peculiar, ways. In each, there

And tra

dErsand

Fim poster, The Purple Rose of Cairo
andpar

hopng to escape the world we live in, to find

ulopian projections for improving our world, or

dprophetic warnings for what our world
ght look like if we don’t change our ways and

projected, idealized world. ln
the midst ot this

communities of religious adherents work
out

their lives betwixt and between the
two worlds.

fight. In the theater we live in one world is an initial world lived in and then
a secondary,

e viewing another, catching a glimpse or what if?

wo wurlds begin to collide, leaking deas and

e, n the practice of film viewing, these

the mipermeable boundaries uel ween the
world-on-screen

8ious imaginations inspred,
vhile àe>thetic

pertorances in the torm of
rituals keep huiiai

bodies moving to a thythin. Even su,
whein the

story is over, when
the chanter has tinished

and/

or the lights go up, when the teast
has becu eiten

Powerful stories in the torm ot myth> keep
relt

nages atrOsb

the-stieels. sereen and the world-
5 hhn Purple Rose of belweer the worlds is

ertainingly exempplified in Woody Allens
Such world-colliding activity

of Cuiro. 1Here, the tluidity
ned ‘Tom Baxler (pla duwn off the scred

played by Jetf Daniels) steps day world, as Cecilia has to do. The two worlds
enacted when the actor and/or the credits run, we return to

our every

Screen and enters the “real world Seem to remain in a state of separition, yet
there

351

9
9

.
S

.

352

Plate, Religion and Film

available in the physical world, significantly incor-
porating common elements such as earth, air, fire,
metal, wood, and water. World-making is a per-
formative drama in which humans are the costume
designers and liturgists, scriptwriters and sermon
givers, saints and cinematographers, priests and

projectionists. All the world’s a stage, and all worlds
are stages. The dramatic activity is what humans
partake in when we attempt to make meaning of
the spaces, times, and people that constitute our
lives. And it is what filmmakers, artists, and reli-

offering evocative an

both religion
and film.

and acces

af
these

studies,

oftering

ys
to

approach

bo

den’s view, rel religions
posit

and construct

ersjon
of “the”

world through
various

n

categories

made up of
the activities,

their own

bol ages

olpersons

and
communities. By looking at

reli-

siolis Systems
as

“wo

organizing
hehaviors, belieeliefs,

language,
and symbs

cembodied

examination

of texts and doctrines,
“worlds,” as opposed

to the dis-

freligion
can come

to understand
the student of

the
broade

environmental.

constructions of reli-

gious figures offer to this human drama.
When we get to analytical descriptions of

mythic and ritualistic operations, we begin to
see the dramatic nature of world-making unfold.
Myths and rituals assist in the creation of worlds
through activities that frame, exclude, focus,

organize, and re-present elements of the known
world. Anthropologist Mary Douglas speaks
to the function of rituals, indirectly noting the

power of mythic story: “A ritual provides a
frame. The marked off time or place alerts a spe-

cial kind of expectancy, just as the oft-repeated
Once upon a time creates a mood receptive

to fantastic tales. .. . Framing and boxing limit

experience, shut in desired themes or shut out
intruding ones. Meanwhile, Paden offers this
definition for the function of ritual: “The basic

es and
traditions within particular

giouspractices.

places and times.

Paden says,
“Religions do not all

inhabit the

ut actually posit, structure, and same world
dwell within a

universe that is their own. . .

Alliving things
select and sense ‘the way things

are through their
own organs and modes of

activity “Any world, Paden states elsewhere,
“is an open-ended, interactive process, filled
with various and complex sensory and cogni-

tive domains, encompassing both representa
tion and practice, both imaginal objects and
bodies-in-performance.? Central here are the
processes of selection and organization, of an
active, pertormative, ongoing creation of the
world. Such language runs uncannily parallel
to the language of film production, as each film

and, indeed, the film industry as a whole) offers
specinc geographies, times, languages, and per Sonas; and is filled with many sensory details though, unlike religion, must remain limited to Sgt and sound, and arguably, touch), intellecC al Suggestions, imaginary and “real objects, and performing bodies.

World-making

feature of ritual is its power of focus… . In ritual,
what is out of focus is brought into focus. What

is implicit is made explicit. All ritual behavior

gains its basic effectiveness by virtue of such
undivided, intensified concentration and by

with the raw materials that make up
univers

Religions and films, as two varieties

bracketing off distraction and interference
These are not quotes from scholars directly

engaged with film, but the metaphorical dimen-
sions of framing, telling tales, creating moods,

focusing, and the intensification of concentra-
tion provide fertile grounds for investigations

across religion and film.

Similarly, for myth, Paden claims that it is “a
definitive voice that names the ultimate powers

is an active engagemethe strictest sense what is in
called the “earth’ and with the o world-maki

On the broadest and
ng enterprises, both achieve this.and most abstract level, world- aking makes use of the spa spaces and times that are

353

Part 3 Religion and Culture in the Space of Aesthetics

that create, maintain, and re-create one’s life,”

and that it works by “organizing and presenting
reality in a way that makes humans not just con-
ceivers but respondents and partakers.”2 I am
not suggesting these brief examples are compre is the first subtle disturbance in the so-far cosmi-

while watching daytime television. It is a beauti.
ful day in the neighborhood until we see what
the woman is watching: a black-and-white close-
up image of a mans hand holding a revolver. This

cally ordered world–not much, but enough to
knock the neat and tidy perspective off-kilter.

hensive definitions of these terms but am rather
introducing the ways myth and ritual participate
in the larger process of world-making. As should The next images bring us back outside toa man
be somewhat apparent, myths and rituals oper-watering his garden (later revealed to be the pro-
ate like films: they utilize techniques of framing, tagonist’s father, Mr. Beaumont), just as strange
thus including some themes, objects, and events
while excluding others; and they serve to focus
the participants’ attention in ways that invite

humans into its world to become participants.

noises begin to emerge from the water spigot.A
kink in the hose halts the water flow, and while

the man attempts to untangle it, he suffers a

stroke. The camera then resumes its downward

tilt, this time passing below Mr. Beaumont
who is now lying on the grass with water still

spurting out of the now-phallic hose and a dog
attempts to drink the water-delving into the
earth below. Here the creepy-crawly domain of
bugs and insects are revealed to be scampering
over each other, all of which is reinforced by an
eerie soundtrack, making the viewer feel as if

they are truly in that very underworld. The next

II. CINEMATIC-RELIGIOUS NORLD

CROSSINGS

Take Two: David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and the
Cinematic Making ofa World

The opening shots of filmmaker David Lynch’s
Blue Velvet (1986) introduce an orderly world

created through vertical and horizontal spatial 118 minutes of Blue Velvet continues with such

dimensions and primary colors. Shot One begins premonitions, surrealistically disturbinga as they
in the sky, blue with scattered clouds, as the cam-
era tilts down to the vertical array of a white picket
fence. Eventually red tulips appear against the
white fence with blue sky in the background. The
larger themes of the film could have fit anywhere,
and yet Lynch makes clear that this is the United

States, as the red, white, and blue composition of
the first shot is extended by the proverbial white

picket fences of US residential life. The next sev-
eral shots are edited so as to alternate between

are.

Lynch’s film imagistically begins by revealing
a world similar to what a great many films open-
ing shots reveal: Cosmos above, chaos below;

begin far away and high up, and then zoom
in, down to earth, down and up-close to a par-

ticular face/apartment/event. In this way, films he
present worlds both radically new and entirely
ancient, connecting macrocosmos and micro-

cosmos. In this most modern of visual media,
horizontal and vertical spatial orientations: verti-
cal tilts are followed by horizontal pans, and back

again. Meanwhile, red, white, blue, and yellow
colors dominate, as mundane, neighborly images
of fire trucks and crosswalks appear.

The viewer is eventually brought inside, to

a living room where a woman sits sipping coffee

we find filmmakers relying on primeval cos-

mologies where peace and harmony exist above,
and chaos subsists below. Rather than leavingus
in the mythically distant “long time ago and ra
far away Blue Velvet brings the cosmos down to

earth, to our neighborhood, connecting up win
the mundane tasks of watering the lawn, going

354

Film graphic, Blue Velvet

akin to the formal structures of ritual, a power

ful force in the maintenance of religious worids.
watching television. And then it

uhveuls the chaos that lies under the very ground

to school, and

on which we walk. The macrocosm is trans anted into the microcosm, the world out thereis Temade into the here and now.
IV. WORLD MAINTENANCE

capable of doing: bringing the Worlds are not merely
created once and tor all,

religiously-cons world and often to re- enact
Mractur the myths that help establish those world

AND RE-CREATION

but they also must be kept going,
maintained.

From time to time, people will see through
the

constructed nature of the world
and ask ques-

tions, poking holes in the
sacred canopy. So

Blue Velvet shows,
what rituals are o

ws, at least in one sense,
CoSmos into the present space al
ng people to inte

and mise-en–Scène of Blue Velvet is tinually legitimate the world that has been cre-

ent space and time, allow-
nteract with the alternative,

sructures. 1 am wgraphy itself a ritual but that at its formal structures are ated. World-making, in other words, is deeply
355

eland mise
1ot suggesting that the cinema- sociocultural systems like religion

have to con-

Part 3 Religion and Culture in the Space of Aesthetics

Diaz and Justin Timberlake might fall in love?1s Indeed, many priests and pastors are now incor. porating film clips into their very sermons, cre-

bound to what Berger calls “world-mainte-
nance” Because there is a dialectical process
between the projected societal views of the cos-
mos and individual inquiry and creativity, the ating a multimediated spectacle of the Sunday world must be maintained on a perpetual basis. I
transpose world-maintenance as “re-creation” in The Jewish tradition of the Sabbath is par- order to get at the dynamic dialectics that Berger, ticularly insightfiul as a way to approach the re-Goodman, and Paden highlight. The world is not creation of the world as it relates to film. “On the simply built but is constantly being maintained
through rebuilding, reconstruction, recombin- ical language at the beginning of Genesis. But in ing and retelling.

The hyphen is injected into re-creation to
remind us how to pronounce this word in a way that resonates with its deeper meaning. Modern
English has transformed the term into “recre-
ation-as in “recreational vehicle,” or depart-
ments of “parks and recreation-it is something
we do to get away from the world. Yet at the heart kadosh) according to the Scriptures: “God blessedof the idea, even if we forget it, is the activity of
creation. Recreation is a way to re-create the
world, which often means taking a step back
from the world to see how it is put together, if
only to figure out how it can be rearranged. On those days of re-creation, the world looks differ-
ent. We see what we should have seen all alongWe remember what is truly important.

That recreation, including moviegoing.

morning worship service.

seventh day, God rested we are told in the myth-
ZZIn the next chapter, we read that the Creator was not

so passive at this time. If religions, in contem-
porary religious studies language, are centered
on that which is “sacred,” then the Jewish and
Christian traditions would be first and foremost

Ues

eator
centered on the Sabbath day, for that is the first
thing that God blesses and makes holy (Hebrew

the seventh day and made it holy” (Gen. 2:3).
As Abraham Heschel puts it in his classic

little book on the Sabbath, “It is a day on which
we are called upon to share in what is eternal in
time, to turn from the results of creation to the

Open
ne tran

transt
ple in

mystery of creation; from the world of creation
to the creation of the world”l4 Contrary to public
opinion, the idea of the Sabbath is not one hol-
lowed out by a list of rules and regulations leaving
a community in a state of passivity but rather is an
active, vital time. Judaism has a strong tradition of understanding the Sabbath as the completion ot
creation; on the seventh day, God did not retrain

from creating as much as God created the Sab
bath. The Sabbath, on this view, is the “real world,
the rest of the week a necessary other word
The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays;
he weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath.
Indeed, Judith Shulevitz has more recently wri
ten on the topic and used precisely the language
for which I am arguing. The title of her book i
he Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Oruc
of Time.’ The Sabbath is its own world, an alte
native way of seeing so-called reality.

ontd on

most often occurs on the weekends in the mod-
ern world is not accidental. These two days coin- cide with the Jewish and Christian holy days, when the good folk of the world attend religious services, participate in their “true'” communities, and take time to be in touch with their Creator. At least, that’s the idea. As the Western worldhas grown restless with its religiosity, new forms of re-creation have emerged, one of which is of course the world of cinema. Indeed, what preach-er’s sermon can compete with multi-million dol- lar special effects? What Sabbath meal can steer us away from the possibilities that such beauti- ful people as Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman, Cameron native way of seeing so-called reality.356

Plate, Religion and Film

to

e tihe creation
of the

world,”
then filn

This
is not

to say
all film accomplishes

this, for

fthe
Sabbath

is the
dav

of creation

cess.
Film makes

us wonder about

imagination: a rabbit here, a human figure there, a turtle further on. Or perhaps you sit in a com- fortable seat and wear odd glasses and stare into the luminescent world of Pandora. Famil-

the day we
turn “to the mys-

and
“trom the

world of creatio:
then film mimics

sthis
very

process.

Film m.

the worldagain,.

makes us say
Wow!” Film offers

that allow
us to see things

in a new way.

iar stories begin to emerge, depending on your perspective and imagination: a tale of American
colonization, a cheap rip off of Pocahantas or
Dances with Wolves, or an allegory for the Chi-
nese industrialization process. Writing in the
New York Times, Dave Itzkoff outlined the many
ways in which James Cameron’s Avatar has been

praised and/or condemned, the ways viewers
have interpreted the movie as an allegory for this

or that, the way it might even serve as a “Ror-

schach test for your personal interests and anxi

eties Indeed, it is a curious phenomenon. Not
unlike staring at the clouds. But how and why

religious rituals in general:
“Traditional religious does Avatar evoke such a variety of responses?

Like many a great piece of art, literature,

music, or film, Avatar does the same things tra-

tap its transformative power”7 At its best, film
ditional mythologies do: it begs, borrows, and

steals from a variety of long-standing
human

stories, sights, sounds, and interests, puts
them

through the grinder, and
comes up with some-

image

there seems ms
to be

somewhat of an
inverse rela-

on between the pectacular images
of film and

he viewer’s imagination-the
the capacity for

more ore
dazzling the image,

the more depressed the

inagination-but
then again, the challah bread,

the candles,
the recitation of prayers,

are not fool-

oroof ways to
stir our minds and bodies

either.

Ais best, the
Sabbath puts people in touch with

their Creator, with
their family, and with the cre-

ated world. Bobby Alexander defines
the aims of

rituals open up ordinary life to ultimate reality

or some transcendent being or force in order to

puts people in touch with the world again in new

ways. In both of these, one is connected with
their world only by experiencing another world.

1o be active consumers, adherents, and

Pparticipants in front of the film screen, altar, or
abath table–in order to maintain the hyphen
Te-Creation-it is necessary at times to dis-
Ct and analyze, to take things apart and then

thing new, even as
the observers still, however

hazily, find familiar
elements.

In modern parlance, art,
movies, and myths

are “mashups,” achieving
their goals through the

same processes
that promoted the iPod

to inter-

national sales: rip. mix. burn.
All great

artworks,

all lasting mythologies,
even new

technologies,

operate in
the same way: a

dash of this, a cup

of that, a pinch
here and there.

There is noth-

ing new
under the sun.

And yet there
are

endless

varieties of the same
ole. Meanwhile,

it is up to

the viewers to
respond, to

make meaning
of the

reconfigured setting,
time, and

characters, in a

new time and place.

The process
of reappropriation

does not

make any of
it lesser art

or myth, for
it is pre-

cisely the mixing
and merging

of influences

that
interfaces with a larger

tradition,
knows

Tecombine them, as Goodman suggests. As stu
and think through the ways these worlds are
dents of religion and film, we must see, hear, feel,
made and re-created.

.CINEMATIC-RELIGIOUS WNORLD
Toke
ond Three: James Cameron’s Avatar
CROSSINGS
und Modern Mythologizing

18

lay on your
starin your back in a cool summer’s grass, at the clouds. Familiar shapes begin to Tge, depending on

on your perspective and 357

Part 3 Religion and Culture in the Space of Aesthetics

Avatar is unoriginal, but it is regenerative
and re-creative for many. It reaffirms age-old
narrative structures of “heroes” who must come

from elsewhere to achieve the task of salvation:
of power structures based on race, class, gender.

and disability; of the colonized and the colo-

nizers; and of the inspirations that come from
glimpses into other worlds. Ihese ongoing prod

ucts are not only regenerative, re-creative, and
imaginative, but they also have the added advan-

tage of using tried and tested stories. Moreover,

it’s not simply the tale, it’s the telling, and retell-

ing. The task of the teller of the renewed tales is
to demonstrate how relevant these stories con-

where it comes from, where it is, and where it is

going. The writers of Genesis 1 and
2 borrowed

from Babylonian and other ancient Near
East-

ern stories of the creation of the cosmos and

reused it for their own emerging monotheistic

society. Over a millennium later the
writer of

the Gospel of John proclaimed, “In the begin-

ning was the logos/Word,” a phrase appropri-

ated from the ancient Hebrew tradition (“In the

beginning God created. . ), mixed it with a
Greek philosophical understanding of the logos

that was crucial for Heraclitus and Plato as it

became identified across the Hellenized world,

and interlaced the older stories with the newly
tinue to be in contemporary settings. arisen notion of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ/

Messiah. Such results are always something bor-

rowed, something blue, something old, some-

thing new.

Before Cameron’s film are a range of exam-

ples of mythological borrowings: The Matrix

(a pastiche of Christian, Buddhist, and “Hol-
lywood” mythologies), Star Wars (“The Force

is the “Tao’ Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Bodhisat-

VI. RE-CREATING THE WORLD THROUGH

FILM

The re-creation of the world is perhaps so obvi-
ous in the cinema that we tend to overlook it. In

the beginning, every film begins with the produc-

tion studio’s logo. Many of these self-consciously

tva), The Legend of Bagger Vance (a retelling of
demonstrate the ways in which the world i is not

simply being reflected on-screen but also the way
the world is being actively reimagined, and the

way cinema functions to relate
the nomos and

cosmos. These moving logos continually portray
a predominant theme through their scenarios:

the heavens and earth are connected through
the

Krishna and “R. Juna” from the Bhagavad Gita),

and nearly every recent Disney and
Pixar ani-

mated film from Little Mermaid to Shrek, to Cars,

to Finding Nemo are all, to the tee, Hero
stories.

The birth of the Disney Corporation itself began

with the success of the 1928 Steamboat Willie,

and its introduction to a little big-eared mouse
later to be called Mickey. Meanwhile, that film

borrowed wholeheartedly from the great Buster

Keaton film Steamboat Bill from earlier in that

year. Likewise, Shakespeare’s King Lear is
retelling of an older Celtic legend, which is then
re-created on film in a Japanese setting in Akira

Kurosawa’s Ran and Ang Lee’s Chinese setting of
Eat Drink Man Woman. In a further turn, Lees

productions of cinema. The logo for Universal

Studios depicts a spinning earth, with a
thousand

points of light appearing across the
continents

(presumably movie theaters) as
the view z0oms

out to show the whole globe, and the
name “Uni-

versal spins into place as
a belt spanning

the

planet. Dreamworks’ logo begins
with an image

of still water, into which a fishing line
is dropped,

nen the camera
moves up to find

a boy cradled
n

the curve of the “D” of “Dreamworks”
as the name

film is rearranged into the Latino-oriented Tor
tilla Soup, and the African American-centered hangs, suspended in midair

and surrounded by

CIOuds, evoking a lunar look on
the world

below.

Soul Food20

358

Plate, Religion and Film

UNIVER`AL
DREAMWORKS

SKG
SEsalsds.cepY

nsgate
is especia

intriguing, as it has the

viewer
looking

at machinery that then
closes to

a door as
we

continue to peer through the door’s

kevrhole-in
a nice voyeuristic-implying

twist.

The door
then reopens on

to the light-infused

doudy heavens.
Elsewhere, Warner Brothers dis-

plays the “WB shield floating among
the clouds;

the now-defunct Orion
showed its eponymous

star sign; and
Paramount and Columbia both set

their icons so high up on a pedestal
that only the

clouds and a few other mountain peaks can join

them in their pantheon of world-imagining.

Through such examples, it is clear that filmn-

production companies are fully cognizant of
the other worlds and ethereal perspectives they

provide for their viewers, and they gleefully pro- duction companies, realize the re-creative activ-
mote these perspectives as they reaffirm a cos-
mology that evokes a “looking up” to where the understand world-making in terms of space

and

and macrocosm. Everything ‘here below has its

analogue ‘up above: By participating in the insti

tutional order men, ipso facto, participate in the
divine cosmos.21 Likewise, cinema “projects” a

particular human order onto a screen, promot-

ing its productions as a link between the “here
below” and “up above”-on mountaintops, in

the clouds, encircling the earth. At the same

time, the screen is literally created to be larger

than life. Transcendent of this-worldly concerns,
rules, or behaviors, the cinema enables a god’s-

eye view of things, even if we have long ago

given up the “heaven above/earth below” cosmic

separation.
Filmmakers and theorists, alongside pro

ity of film production as well, and they tend to

wondrous things are. In this way, cinema offers
a glimpse of the heavens, of other worlds above

ana beyond earthly existence, even as these
nEr Worlds must be relatable to the visible
worlds on earth.

time. Siegfried Kracauer, in his Theory of Film,

suggests the spatial significance of the larger-
than-life images and the ways in which worlds
are remade when projected on screen: “Any huge

close-up reveals new and unsuspected
torma-

for religious vorlds to legitimate
posturing is not far from the need tions of matter; skin textures are reminiscent of

aerial photographs, eyes turn into lakes
or vol-

canic craters. Such images blow up our
environ-

ment in a double sense: they enlarge it literally

and in doing so, they blast the prison
of conven-

tional reality, opening up expanses
which we

have explored at best in dreams
before.”2 And

editor Paul Hirsch connects world-making
to

the temporal dimensions of filmmaking
when

he claims, “Film is truth, but it’s all
an illusion.

maki aking activity. As Berger gests, “Religion
their world-

upon them an ultimately valid ontological sta-
and cosmic frame of reference” Further, “Prob-

is the conceptio of the relationship between

legitimates social institutions by bestowing
tus, that is, by loce Ocating them within a sacred
ably the mos

ncient form of this legitimation
ciety and cosmos : as one between microc

359

Part 3 Religion and Culture in the Space of Aesthetics

7. creational reality (the filmmaker’s inten.
It’s fake. Film is deceptive truth!.. . Editing is
very interesting and absorbing work because of
the illusions you can create. Yu can span thirty
years within an hour and a half. You can stretch
a moment in slow motion. You can play with
time in extraordinary ways.”23

tions)

I note these here to further evidence the multiple layers of reality that one must engage when dealing with hlm. It is not enough to Through the very technology of film, a new encapsulate the narrative arc and suggest some world is assembled-through the camera lens religious implications from a literary perspec-tive; rather, the edited, cinematographic, and on-screen. Viewers see the world but see it in projected layers of films re-creation of the world

and in the editing room-and then projected

entirely new ways because everyday perceptions must be taken into account.
of space and time are altered. Such time and
space travel are not foreign to the procedures of

And while these seven layers are each of
individual interest, the full implications compli religious world-making. In fact, if one were to cate the more general analogous relations I am substitute the word “myth” for “film” in Hirsch’s attempting here. One could, I suppose, discuss
each of these layers in ways that relate to Cliffordnition of myth: “Telling lies to tell the truth” Geertz’s extensive definition of religion, defined as
“(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) estab-
lish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods
and motivations in men by (3) formulating con-
ceptions of a general order of existence and (4)
clothing these conceptions with such an aura of
factuality that (5) the moods and motivations
seem uniquely realistic”25 Souriau’s level2 could

guishing several layers of “reality” when dealing relate to Geertz’s point 3, Souriau’s level 4 could
relate to Geertz’s point 4, Souriau’s level 6 could
relate to Geertz’s point 5, and so forth. Such sys-
tematizing may be of interest to a scholar some-
where but ultimately detracts from the broader
analogous dimensions I am recording here. The
key point I take from Souriau is the general dis-
tinction between the profilmic and afilmic reali-
ties, the world “on-screen, and the world “out
there” but also of their mutual implication.

Finally, to bring this theoretical filmic and
religious re-creating of the world down to a
nore concrete level, consider the following briet
note on the production of Terry Gillianms film

comment, we would come across a popular defi-

And through the re-creation of time and space,
we have a world, created anew.

VII. CONCLUSION: LAYERING REALITY

In the 1950s, the aesthetician-cum-film theorist
Etienne Souriau made a scientific stab at distin-

with film and inadvertently offers some sugges-
tions to religious studies scholars interested in
film. These are his levels.

1. afilmic reality (the reality that exists inde-
pendently of filmic reality)

2. profilmic reality (the reality photographed
by the camera)

3. filmographic reality (the film as physical
object, structured by techniques such as edit-
ing)

4. screenic (or filmophanic) reality (the film as
projected on a screen)

5. diegetic reality (the fictional story world
created by the film; the type of reality “sup- posed” by the signification of film.)

6. spectatorial reality (the spectator’s percep- tion and comprehension of a film)

Tideland (2005):

Terry Gilliam filmed his newest movie, 1hie
land, in Saskatchewan last fall, racing to com-

360

Plate, Religion and Film
before winter set in. This vignette tells much about the relation of the world-making activities of fhlm and religion. In the making of film-which is not far from the making of religion-through symbolic repre- sentational images, scenarios can be substituted, just as afilmic weather encroaches on profilmic realities, and even entropy can be created on-

screen. On the flip side, viewers end up seeingthis re-created world on-screen, believing in the
fiction, because such belief is how we humans

the location shots

The
Mitch

Cullin
novel

is mostly
set in West Texas, but Mr.

Gilliam.

had
stituted the nadian prairie

ed to
snow,

and the cast,
creW and director all

novel on which the film

s based is

Gliam
ad. The

evening after he wrapped,
it start-

saw this as an
omen…

M Most of
Tideland takes place inside a

ong-abandoned

a miracle of
grunginess

and dilapidation in

which cobwebs
had been applied, brand new

walls had been
distressed to look old and

water-stained, and ancient
household imple-

ments had been
knocked around until they

looked even older. But as
the camera tracked

around and the crew moved props in and out,

they accidentally created little pathways of
relative orderliness, and Mr. Gilliam several

lng-abandoned
farmhouse, and the set was

survive our everyday life. We go to the cinema
and to the temple for recreation, to escape, but
we also crave the re-creative aspects, maintain-
ing the canopy of meaning over our individual

and social lives as we imagine how the world

could be. What if?

times called for more dust.26

361