The other day I was waiting in line at the post office and was scanning the walls, bored enough to read the various posters. One of them promoted a new line of stamps that is available. As I looked at the familiar images I was reminded that for some time aspects of the entertainment industry have been using fantasy and film to promote magic to our children.
One of the more prevalent sources is reflected in this new series of stamps. I noted how the image looked innocent enough. Nevertheless, the image was that of a young sorcerer, or would-be sorcerer, who was using magic even while improperly schooled in it. In case the reader is wondering I’m not talking about Harry Potter, I’m talking about the various ways in which Disney Studios has presented magic in their cartoons over the years. And for those of you who might be worried, no, I write above with tongue in cheek.
The series of stamps I referenced featured Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I still remember that cartoon with its wonderful music, and the story of the sorcerer who steps out and leaves Mickey to mop up. He decides to use his sorcerer’s wand to animate mops and buckets, only to see it get out of control and needing to be rescued by the end of the cartoon by the returning sorcerer. Another stamp picking up on Disney’s magical theme was from Aladin, and yet another shows Tinker Bell with her magical dust.
I find it interesting that while Disney and other sources of popular entertainment have drawn upon fantasy magic for quite some time, in the past we did not see the outcry that we do in some segments of Protestant evangelicalism and fundamentalism today. Apparently a previous generation was able to recognize fairytale magic, even when it included sorcerers and magic wands.
This is not a major observation, but it presents a few items for our consideration, particularly since the most recent Harry Potter film is about to be released in theaters, and the last of the books will hit bookstores in the U.S. by month’s end. While it has been difficult to sustain anti-Potter rhetoric for an extended period of time, no doubt those Christians concerned with Potter’s alleged Witchcraft, occultism, and magic will sound their warnings soon.
I’d like to suggest that the Christian community needs to consider a few things in light of all of this. First, we need to reassess our understanding of fairytales and magic, and how this does nor does not connect to the real practices of Western esotericism. I commented on what has been called “occult-tinged fiction” a while back, and some interactions with colleagues provokes my continued reflection on this. Second, we need to reconsider the appropriate interpretation of literature and film. Even if we were to grant that an author or screenplay writer were drawing upon “occultic” or Pagan sources, the meaning of such elements are defined by the author within the story’s narrative, not from their supposed origin outside of the story. This is a basic hermeneutical principle, but one which is frequently neglected. Third, we need a good understanding of Western esotericism and Neo-Paganism. I’m afraid that Harry Potter and Hogwarts are closer to the Witches of The Wizard of Oz than they are Fiona Horn. The conflation of all such things including fairytales and real spiritualities like esotericism and covering them with the label “occult” is inaccurate, sensationalistic, and it makes Christian “experts” on such topics look just plain silly.
Perhaps the upcoming release of the Potter film and book will provide Christians with an opportunity for critical self-reflection, and will result in the ability to distinguish between a magical mouse and a Western form of spirituality.
At the recent Cornerstone Festival I had the opportunity to facilitate a film discussion in the Flickerings area surrounding a documentary Darkon that is based upon the fantasy role playing (FRP) game of the same name. It wasn’t until I viewed this film that I realized that FRP gaming goes beyond board games and the creation of fantasy characters of the imagination into the playing of the games to such an extent that it involves creating costumes, weapons, castles, and characters that at times engage in battle involving the old and the young.
The film looks at the lives of gamers involved with the Darkon Wargaming Club, self-described as a “full-contact medieval wargaming group, active in the Baltimore-Washington area.” The documentary alternates between scenes which show the game as it is played, and those showing the personal lives of game players who often talk about how the game impacts their lives. Several important issues and questions came to mind as I watched the film and listened to the game players. These included discussion about how the use of the imagination in FRP games is qualitatively no different than that necessary to enjoy a good film or book, how participation in the game helps build the character and confidence of players, and how the gaming community provides a sense of social identity and community for many of its players.
A trailer for the documentary can be viewed
here. For those interested in understanding another facet of popular culture as it relates to fantasy and myth
Darkon is must viewing.
I recently returned from Cornerstone Festival and one of the seminar series that I enjoyed throug the Imaginarium venue was that presented by Kim Paffenroth on the zombie Films of George Romero. Kim is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College in New York, and the author of Gospel of the Living Dead (Baylor University Press, 2006). I have written previously on this book and I would encourage those interested in religion and popular culture, particularly in the horror genre, to secure this book.
Kim graciously provided me with a copy of his fictional novel,
Dying to Live: a novel of life among the undead (Permutated Press, 2006). As a general rule I don’t read fiction. I don’t have enough time, and with a huge reading list of non-fiction I satisfy my imagination through the consumption of fantasy, science fiction, and horror primarily through movies and television programs. But given the quality of Kim’s work I made an exception and read his book on the way home from Cornerstone. It was a treat. I highly recommend
Dying to Live. It is entertaining and down right scary, and it makes a great contribution to the growing zombie literature and the horror genre.
Tomorrow morning I leave for Cornerstone Festival and I will not return until Sunday afternoon. I will likely not be able to check email, and I will not be able to participate in the blogging world until next week.
I hope I might have a chance to see some of my readers at the festival where I will be leading two seminar series, one on missions and syncretism, and the other on Burning Man and its lessons for the church. I will also be participating in various panel discussions on missions, emerging church, women and Wicca, and leading a film discussion on fantasy role playing games.
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The Religion Bookline section of Publisher’s Weekly includes the following news item:
Fantasy 4 Fiction Tour Highlights Nascent Genre
“Four Christian speculative fiction authors from four different publishers are teaming up for the Fantastic 4 Fantasy Fiction Tour. After a kickoff July 9 in Atlanta at the International Christian Retail Show, the writers will visit churches, bookstores, libraries and homeschool groups in a dozen cities July 10-18.
“While mainstream fantasy and science fiction fill shelves in general-interest bookstores, the genre has yet to really take off in the Christian market industry insiders told RBL. Suspicion of the books as too dark or occult, combined with a primary demographic that isn’t drawn to the edgy—white, evangelical American women of childbearing-to-empty-nest ages—make the books less than attractive to many Christian publishers and booksellers said freelance editor Jeff Gerke. According to the authors, the goal of the Fantastic 4 tour is to raise the profile of the genre and demonstrate the inspirational qualities of the novels.”
When I read this item I was struck that Christians seem to have many of the same fears of alleged darkness and occultism in science fiction as they do in the horror and fantasy genres. This was a little surprising in that science fiction makes a greater appeal to technology and rationalism, two elements that strongly influence modern evangelicalism. I would thank that science fiction would be perceived by Christians as closer to their worldview and thus less likely to be feared as fantasy or horror, but it appears that is not the case, at least for some.
I was also struck by how curious it is that science fiction or speculative fiction is a genre that tries to imagine what alternative worlds and realities might be possible beyond this one. This is a form of utopian thinking that would seem to overlap with Christian concepts and desires for a New Jerusalem, and a New Heavens and Earth. Have Christians lost their baptized imaginations in the contemporary age?
A friend and colleague of mine who is a reader of this blog sent me an email recently with some thoughts in response to my last post on “Occult-Tinged Television.” Since my friend sent this email to me privately in that he is working out his thoughts on this topic, I won’t mention his name, but his email has me thinking. I’d like to post some thoughts here for my readers consideration.
The substance of my friend’s email was to question whether the category of “occult-tinged” fiction is useful. He wondered whether such a broad label that includes programs like Heroes might also be so broad as to include Middle Earth, Narnia, Aladdin, and A Christmas Carol if such stories include elements, events, and people that engage in practices that violate the laws of physics or include practices that go beyond our normal perceptions of reality and thereby fold over into what some might label “the occult.”
As my friend’s email continued he wondered whether science fiction would be viewed as “occult-tinged” in that it frequently includes elements of the fantastic which in one context would be labeled fantasy, and in another “the occult,” but in science fiction such elements are given a veneer of technological plausibility through scientific sounding labels. This happened frequently in the Star Trek franchise where various forms of “techno babble” were invoked to not only rescue the Enterprise from whatever threat, but also to make the fantastic possible and believable for a scientific and rationally informed audience.
I remember several years ago when I was on a panel discussion on the Potter books at an evangelical conference on new religions how most were up in arms over the alleged occult in Potter. This seemed strange to me in that the fantasy magic I saw there seemed like a variation of the fantasy magic I enjoyed as a child (and still enjoy) in things like Ray Harryhausen’s films which frequently drew upon ancient myths.
My friend wonders why in one context when someone or something levitates, in a Harry Potter story for instance, some are quick to label this “occultic.” But if something similar were to take place, such as the levitation of Luke Skywalker’s speeder in Star Wars IV, this is understood as either fantasy, or with a television program I saw recently on the “Technology of Star Wars,” attempts are made to see how such things might be scientifically possible, or at least hope is held out that it might be so in the future. But no one is sounding alarm bells over 30 years of occult-tinged cinema through George Lucas.
I appreciate my friends thinking, and as a result, I want to make a few clarifications to my previous post related to this topic.
First, my previous post dealt with a post on another blog that picked up on a story from The New York Times on what it considered occult influenced television. My intention with the post was to draw attention to the story, to note that some aspects of popular culture are influenced by genuine esotericism and various forms of alternative spiritualities, and that this is significant in our understanding of popular culture and religious studies.
Second, what the Times failed to do, and what I probably should have done, was to make an important distinction between genuine occult- or esotericism-tinged television, and other expressions of the magical or the fantastic in various forms of fiction that are not accurately understood as representing esotericism and which are frequently mislabeled as such, especially in conservative evangelical Christianity.
Third, I hope my readers find some value in this issue, and I’d like to get some thoughtful feedback from you on this. Such a discussion will be especially helpful in light of the pending release of the last Harry Potter book and the latest film that I understand is about to be released. Perhaps some level-headed discussion here can contribute to a more reflective evangelical perspective on Potter and all things fantastic.
At the end of May The Wild Hunt Blog included an interesting post on the large number of “occult-tinged” television programs that were the focus of an article in The New York Times. Wildhunt discusses some of these programs:
Among the new supernaturally themed shows premiering is “Moonlight” a vampire-themed romantic detective series on CBS, “Eli Stone” concerning a lawyer who has visions, “Pushing Daisies” about a man who has the power to bring people back from the dead (both of those shows are on ABC), and Fox’s “New Amsterdam” about a immortal homicide detective. These shows (and several more fantasy/supernatural-themed programs) are, according to the article, much due to the success of the super-hero drama “Heroes”
I find this development interesting on a number of levels, including the increasing influence of alternative spiritualities in popular culture in general. This has been described by one scholar Christopher Partridge, as representing the existence of a popular “occulture,” which as he describes it “includes those often hidden, rejected, and oppositional beliefs and practices associated with esotericism, theosophy, mysticism, New Age, Paganism, and a range of other subcultural beliefs and practices.” This “reservoir of ideas, beliefs, practices and symbols” may be understood as having been part of a cultural underground in the past, but it has now moved to the surface of cultural discourse, so much so that the ideas are now part of the mainstream and surface as elements within television programs as well as fantasy literature, music, films, and video games. Further discussion of this may be found in Partridge’s The Re-Enchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture, Vol. 1 (London & New York, T & T Clark, 2004).
Jun 07 2007
Filed In: anime
Anime, or Japanese animation, is a popular form of entertainment in Japan, and it continues to attract a growing fan base in the United States. But how might American viewers best understand these expressions of Asian culture? Two articles by scholars writing on various anime films for http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/The Journal of Religion and Film (JR&F) provide discussion of two aspects for consideration.
The first article from the October 2004 issue is by James W. Boyd and Tetsuya Nishimura and it is titled “Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki’s Anime Film ‘Spirited Away’.” As the title indicates, this article looks at the film Spirited Away (2001) by noted director Hayao Miyazaki. As the authors describe various “Shinto perspectives embedded in the cultural vocabulary of the film,” it becomes clear that the only way that the film can be properly understood by Western viewers is if they gain some awareness of the way that folk and shrine Shintoism provide the meaning supporting the symbolism, characters, ethical virtues, and ultimate meaning of the story. Without this perspective Westerners who appreciate anime will still enjoy the film, but it will come across as little more than fantasy involving humans and strange creatures, and the proper interpretive meaning that comes through an understanding of facets of Japanese culture will be lost.
Another interesting facet of the author’s interpretation of this film is their use of the theories of liminality from Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner. As the authors draw upon liminality they descripe the journey of the main character, Chihiro, who “experientially moves from the mundane and everyday world, into a liminal realm.” As a result of her experiences in the liminal phase she eventually returns to the mundane “‘re-formed’ into a new persona.”
The notion of liminality is picked up as one of the major facets of interpretation for the film Princess Mononake (1999) in an article titled “Between the Worlds: Liminality and Self-Sacrifice in Princess Mononoke” by Christine Hoff Kraemer in the April 2004 issue of JR&F. In Kraemer’s view, the experience of liminality “empowers Ashitaka to play the Christ-like roles of mediator, martyr, and finally, savior.” To Kraemer’s credit, although she draws parallels between the salvific role of Ashitaka and Christ, she recognizes that the “character resonates with Buddhism’s commitment to asceticism, peace, and compassion, as well as Shinto’s call to harmony with the natural world and respect for tradition.” She draws the parallels between Ashitaka and Christ as a means of making the character understandable to Westerners who may have greater familiarity with the foundational religious mythos of Christianity, and as a means of discussing the cross-cultural aspects of the sacred.
As I read each of these articles I was struck by the importance of intercultural and religious studies to understanding aspects of popular culture. In addition, I noted the significance that the authors attributed to Turner’s liminality. Turner has been very influential in a number of academic areas, from his own discipline of anthropology to folk performance to alternative cultures and alternative cultural events, and also in popular culture studies.
These considerations remind us that anime provides a multi-layered phenomenon of popular culture for both our enjoyment as well as scholarly study.
I enjoy interviews with creative and artistic people, and one of the venues for this is a series called “The Directors” which appears on the Reelz Channel. Normally this series interviews film directors, but this last weekend they had a chance of pace when they interviewed comic book legend Stan Lee. The last question of the interview involved why comic books are so popular, to which Lee responded that in his view it is because they are fairytales for grown ups. He said that when we are children we enjoy fairytales, but then grow up and move beyond them. He thinks comics serve the same function as these stories, and they are so popular because they touch on various archetypes found in classic fairytales. I believe that Lee is correct, but with a few modifications. While graphic novels are becoming increasingly popular with adults, and comics are surely providing some of the best inspiration for Hollywood films, they are still largely the purvue of kids and teenagers in America, unlike in Japan where they are a popular form of adult entertainment. In addition, I’d say that comics do include archetypes, but I’d go a little further and argue that they also include myth, symbol, and folklore. On the latter element, Amanda Carson Banks and Elizabeth E. Wein have argued in an article titled “Folklore and the Comic Book: The Traditional Meets the Popular” for New Directions in Folklore 2 (January 1998) that:
“An analysis of three series published by DC Comics in the early 1990s (Swamp Thing, Sandman and Hellblazer) reveals a heavy dependence on traditional folk beliefs in the central story-lines and characterization, as well as in illustration and incidental dialogue. The writers of these series do more than merely borrow ideas from culture or one another, or employ stock motifs and themes in their narratives; they often incorporate themes from folklore and tradition wholesale and unaltered. By examining the use of traditional and contemporary folklore in these series it is possible to see not only the extent and manner to which folklore is utilized, but also how widespread certain folk vocabulary and beliefs are in the contemporary period.”
As the authors near the end of their treatment of this issue they state that, “As a genre that is at root fantasy literature, comic books are a safe and easy place for readers to explore parts of themselves and their sense of spiritualism and search for transcendence.”
Related to this is the latest issue of ReligionLink from June 4 titled
“Superheroes and spirituality: the religion of the comics.” The initial paragraphs for this issue state:
From last year’s summer blockbuster, Superman Returns, to this summer’s third installment of Spider-Man, comic book heroes are bringing their pseudo-religious characters to the cinema. Religion experts and observers of pop culture say these superheroes reflect — some more overtly than others — traditional religious archetypes and values in nontraditional settings. Yet the popularity of these heroic figures endures, no matter what media they inhabit. May 25, 2007, marked 30 years since the first Star Wars movie introduced Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and company. The series and its spinoffs have generated an estimated $20 billion in revenue, a figure that is likely to increase amid the anniversary hoopla.
Why it matters
Anyone tracking the religious currents streaming through American life cannot limit that search to institutional faith. Experts largely agree that many Americans — especially young people — who shun traditional expressions of faith are attracted to religious messages and symbols, most often in popular culture. Those symbols and messages are perhaps most overt in the superhero figures who are migrating from comic books to movies and television. Some experts see in many of the explicitly American superheroes a mixture of the patriotic and religious symbols that reveal the persistence of a “civil religion” in the United States.
It would appear that comic books provide a number of opportunities for engagement and enjoyment, from entertainment to scholarly study from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, including folklore, popular culture, and religious studies.
I was reminded tonight through television advertisements, and through a program broadcast live from southern California, that 30 years ago today the first Star Wars film began in U.S. theaters, and several months later it was on its way to becoming an international popular culture phenomenon. I thought I’d use the occasion to touch on two areas, my own personal reflections, and a few suggestions as to why this film series has been so successful.
First, my reflections. I remember just prior to this film’s release, as a young thirteen-year-old with a strong interest in science fiction and fantasy, that my brother and I were not really interested in seeing the film. The reason was because we had seen George Lucas’s previous film THX-1138, and in our estimation, the film was awful, and therefore we did not hold out much hope for another cinematic effort by the same director. Obviously we were wrong, and after we saw the film we were hooked. The fairytale and fantasy story was wonderful, and the special effects were unlike anything we had seen before (although those in 2001: A Space Odyssey came pretty close). It’s amazing that this film became a franchise that captured the imagination of not only one generation, but now going on to incorporate others. In my own family its magic went beyond myself to include my own children, and I hope in the near future my grandson.
How might we explain the success of
Star Wars? Two factors stand out in my thinking. First, Lucas consciously created a contemporary fairytale that drew upon
myths and archetypes that have spoken to the human imagination for centuries. They continue to resonate with us in the present. This first reason is related to the second, and that is the time frame and cultural circumstances surrounding the original release of the first film. Star Wars came out in the 1970s which, of course, followed on the heels of the 1960s. I’ve commented in a previous post on the significance of the counterculture of this period, but it appears as if the culture was experiencing a hunger for imagination, a hunger that was not being satisfied with standard Hollywood fare at the box office.
Star Wars and its mythology filled this vacuum, and the rest is history.
One last thought. As I sit here and watch a television special on the 30th anniversary two guests commented on Star Wars launching the first film franchise that made other franchises like The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, and Spiderman possible. I can understand how they might entertain this assumption in the heat of celebration, but it is inaccurate. Actually, it was another Twentieth Century Fox film became the first science fiction film franchise. The film was The Planet of the Apes, and it launched its own franchise through multiple films, a television series and merchandising that would open the door for the future megahit in the Star Wars franchise.
It’s great to reminisce about this film, but now I feel old.
The other day I was waiting in line at the post office and was scanning the walls, bored enough to read the various posters. One of them promoted a new line of stamps that is available. As I looked at the familiar images I was reminded that for some time aspects of the entertainment industry have been using fantasy and film to promote magic to our children.
