Download or read book American Theology Superhero Comics and Cinema written by Anthony Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stan Lee, who was the head writer of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, co-created such popular heroes as Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and Daredevil. This book traces the ways in which American theologians and comic books of the era were not only both saying things about what it means to be human, but, starting with Lee they were largely saying the same things. Author Anthony R. Mills argues that the shift away from individualistic ideas of human personhood and toward relational conceptions occurring within both American theology and American superhero comics and films does not occur simply on the ontological level, but is also inherent to epistemology and ethics, reflecting the comprehensive nature of human life in terms of being, knowing, and acting. This book explores the idea of the "American monomyth" that pervades American hero stories and examines its philosophical and theological origins and specific manifestations in early American superhero comics. Surveying the anthropologies of six American theologians who argue against many of the monomyth’s assumptions, principally the staunch individualism taken to be the model of humanity, and who offer relationality as a more realistic and ethical alternative, this book offers a detailed argument for the intimate historical relationship between the now disparate fields of comic book/superhero film creation, on the one hand, and Christian theology, on the other, in the United States. An understanding of the early connections between theology and American conceptions of heroism helps to further make sense of their contemporary parallels, wherein superhero stories and theology are not strictly separate phenomena but have shared origins and concerns.

Download or read book American Theology Superhero Comics and Cinema written by Anthony R. Mills and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stan Lee, who was the head writer of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, co-created such popular heroes as Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and Daredevil. This book traces the ways in which American theologians and comic books of the era were not only both saying things about what it means to be human, but, starting with Lee they were largely saying the same things. Author Anthony R. Mills argues that the shift away from individualistic ideas of human personhood and toward relational conceptions occurring within both American theology and American superhero comics and films does not occur simply on the ontological level, but is also inherent to epistemology and ethics, reflecting the comprehensive nature of human life in terms of being, knowing, and acting. This book explores the idea of the "American monomyth" that pervades American hero stories and examines its philosophical and theological origins and specific manifestations in early American superhero comics. Surveying the anthropologies of six American theologians who argue against many of the monomyth's assumptions, principally the staunch individualism taken to be the model of humanity, and who offer relationality as a more realistic and ethical alternative, this book offers a detailed argument for the intimate historical relationship between the now disparate fields of comic book/superhero film creation, on the one hand, and Christian theology, on the other, in the United States. An understanding of the early connections between theology and American conceptions of heroism helps to further make sense of their contemporary parallels, wherein superhero stories and theology are not strictly separate phenomena but have shared origins and concerns.

Download or read book The Gospel According to Superheroes written by B. J. Oropeza and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2005 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And 1970s, and the dark and violent creatures who embody the pre- and post-millennial crises of faith. Lavishly illustrated, the articles come to startling conclusions about what we have really been reading under the covers with flashlights for generations. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Download or read book Graven Images written by A. David Lewis and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic books have increasingly become a vehicle for serious social commentary and, specifically, for innovative religious thought. Practitioners of both traditional religions and new religious movements have begun to employ comics as a missionary tool, while humanists and religious progressives use comics' unique fusion of text and image to criticize traditional theologies and to offer alternatives. Addressing the increasing fervor with which the public has come to view comics as an art form and Americans' fraught but passionate relationship with religion, Graven Images explores with real insight the roles of religion in comic books and graphic novels. In essays by scholars and comics creators, Graven Images observes the frequency with which religious material—in devout, educational, satirical, or critical contexts—occurs in both independent and mainstream comics. Contributors identify the unique advantages of the comics medium for religious messages; analyze how comics communicate such messages; place the religious messages contained in comic books in appropriate cultural, social, and historical frameworks; and articulate the significance of the innovative theologies being developed in comics.

Download or read book Religion and Myth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe written by Michael D. Nichols and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaking box office records, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has achieved an unparalleled level of success with fans across the world, raising the films to a higher level of narrative: myth. This is the first book to analyze the Marvel output as modern myth, comparing it to epics, symbols, rituals, and stories from world religious traditions. This book places the exploits of Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, and the other stars of the Marvel films alongside the legends of Achilles, Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the Buddha, and many others. It examines their origin stories and rites of passage, the monsters, shadow-selves, and familial conflicts they contend with, and the symbols of death and the battle against it that stalk them at every turn. The films deal with timeless human dilemmas and questions, evoking an enduring sense of adventure and wonder common across world mythic traditions.

Download or read book Scripture Cultures and Criticism written by K. K. Yeo and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of nineteen representative essays is a Festschrift written by former colleagues and students in honor of Prof. Dr. Robert Jewett (1933–2020) and his legacy. Our hope is that future generations of Bible readers will find this textbook on biblical interpretation helpful for navigating through the strong winds of exegetical, theological, and hermeneutical methods. Jewett’s expansive research interests have inspired each author in this tribute volume, each of whom has witnessed to the ways that helmsman Jewett has navigated through the often-choppy ocean waters of biblical interpretation—as well as the complex, changing world of religion, sacred texts, films and popular culture, psychology and sociology, politics and Pauline studies.

Download or read book Film and the Afterlife written by David Rankin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how post-death existence is represented in popular film, looking at issues such as continuity, personal identity, and the nature of existence beyond the grave. Film often returns to the theme of dying, death and the afterlife, both directly and indirectly, because there are very few subjects as compelling and universal. The book compares the representation of death, dying and the afterlife in films to scholarly surveys of attitudes towards life-after-death through the analysis of twenty films made between the end of World War II and now. It looks at the portrayals of stages between death and a final destination; spatio-temporal and personal continuity; the nature of afterlife existence in terms of embodiment, or not; and the contact between the worlds of the living and the dead. This book offers a wide-ranging view on a compelling subject in film. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion and Film, Religion and Media, the Philosophy of Religion, and the Sociology of Religion, as well as Religion, Media and Film Studies more generally .

Download or read book Transnational Cinema and Ideology written by Milja Radovic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly, as the production, distribution and audience of films cross national boundaries, film scholars have begun to think in terms of ‘transnational’ rather than national cinema. This book is positioned within the emerging field of transnational cinema, and offers a groundbreaking study of the relationship between transnational cinema and ideology. The book focuses in particular on the complex ways in which religion, identity and cultural myths interact in specific cinematic representations of ideology. Author Milja Radovic approaches the selected films as national, regional products, and then moves on to comparative analysis and discussion of their transnational aspects. This book also addresses the question of whether transnationalism reinforces the nation or not; one of the possible answers to this question may be given through the exploration of the cinema of national states and its transnational aspects. Radovic illustrates the ways in which these issues, represented and framed by films, are transmitted beyond their nation-state borders and local ideologies in which they originated – and questions whether therefore one can have an understanding of transnational cinema as a platform for political dialogue.

Download or read book Multiplicity and Cultural Representation in Transmedia Storytelling written by Natalie Underberg-Goode and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the relationship between multiplicity and representation of non-European and European-American cultures, with a focus on comics and superheroes. The author employs a combination of research methodologies, including close reading of transmedia texts and interviews with transmedia storytellers and audiences, to better understand the way in which diverse cultures are employed as agents of multiplicity in transmedia narratives. The book addresses both commercial franchises such as superhero narratives, as well as smaller indie projects, in an attempt to elucidate the way in which key cultural symbols and concepts are utilized by writers, designers, and producers, and how these narrative choices affect audiences – both those who identify as members of the culture being represented and those who do not. Case studies include fan fiction based on Marvel’s Black Panther (2018), fan fiction and art created for the Moana (2016) and Mulan (2020) films, and creations by both U.S.-based and international indie comics artists and writers. This book will appeal to scholars and students of new media, narrative theory, cultural studies, sociocultural anthropology, folkloristics, English/literary studies, and popular culture, transmedia storytelling researchers, and both creators and fans of superhero comics.

Download or read book Noah as Antihero written by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by biblical scholars is the first book-length treatment of the 2014 film Noah, directed by Darren Aronofsky. The film has proved to be of great interest to scholars working on the interface between the Bible and popular culture, not only because it was heralded as the first of a new generation of biblical blockbusters, but also because of its bold, provocative, and yet unusually nuanced approach to the interpretation and use of the Noah tradition, in both its biblical and extra-biblical forms. The book’s chapters, written by both well-established and up-and-coming scholars, engage with and analyze a broad range of issues raised by the film, including: its employment and interpretation of the ancient Noah traditions; its engagement with contemporary environmental themes and representation of non-human animals; its place within the history of cinematic depictions of the flood, status as an ‘epic’, and associated relationship to spectacle; the theological implications of its representation of a hidden and silent Creator and responses to perceived revelation; the controversies surrounding its reception among religious audiences, especially in the Muslim world; and the nature and implications of its convoluted racial and gender politics. Noah as Antihero will be of considerable interest to scholars conducting research in the areas of religion and film, contemporary hermeneutics, reception history, religion and popular culture, feminist criticism, and ecological ethics.

Download or read book The Holy Fool in European Cinema written by Alina G. Birzache and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph explores the way that the profile and the critical functions of the holy fool have developed in European cinema, allowing this traditional figure to capture the imagination of new generations in an age of religious pluralism and secularization. Alina Birzache traces the cultural origins of the figure of the holy fool across a variety of European traditions. In so doing, she examines the critical functions of the holy fool as well as how filmmakers have used the figure to respond to and critique aspects of the modern world. Using a comparative approach, this study for the first time offers a comprehensive explanation of the enduring appeal of this protean and fascinating cinematic character. Birzache examines the trope of holy foolishness in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, French cinema, and Danish cinema, corresponding broadly to and permitting analysis of the three main orientations in European Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. This study will be of keen interest to scholars of religion and film, European cinema, and comparative religion.

Download or read book The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema 1897 1927 written by David Shepherd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Jesus has attracted the sporadic interest of film-makers since the epics of the Sixties, it is often forgotten that between the advent of motion pictures in the 1890s and the close of the "silent" era at the end of the 1920s, some of the longest, most expensive and most watched films on both sides of the Atlantic were focused on the Life and Passion of the Christ. Drawing upon rarely seen archival footage and the work of both the era’s most important directors (e.g. Alice Guy, Ferdinand Zecca, Sidney Olcott, D.W. Griffith, Carl Dreyer, and C.B. DeMille) and others who have been all but forgotten, this collection of essays offers a representative survey of the Silents of Jesus, illustrating the ways in which the earliest films and those which followed were influenced by a multiplicity of factors. Written by leading scholars in biblical and early film studies this collection explores the ways in which the Silents of Jesus were shaped not only by the performing and visual arts of the nineteenth century and the technological challenges and opportunities of a new medium and industry, but also by the artistic, theological and ideological predilections of studios and directors, and the expectations of audiences as the genre evolved. Taken together, the essays collected here offer a seminal treatment of the genesis and early evolution of the cinematic Jesus.

Download or read book Landscape and the Environment in Hollywood Film written by Ellen E. Moore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book systematically explores how popular Hollywood film portrays environmental issues through various genres. In so doing, it reveals the influence exerted by media consolidation and the drive for profit on Hollywood’s portrayal of the natural landscape, which ultimately shapes how environmental problems and their solutions are presented to audiences. Analysis is framed by a consideration of how cultural studies can make more theoretical and practical room for environmental concern, thereby expanding its capacity for critical examination. The book begins by introducing the theoretical underpinning of the research as it relates to cultural studies, landscape, and genre. In the chapters that follow, each genre is taken in turn, starting with popular animated family films and progressing through spy thrillers, eco-thrillers, science fiction, Westerns, superhero films, and drama. This book is ideal for students and scholars in a variety of disciplines, including film, environmental studies, communication, political economy, and cultural studies.

Download or read book Introducing Religion written by Robert S. Ellwood and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-22 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introducing Religion examines the different ways of looking at religion in the twenty-first century. Providing a broad overview to the discipline of religious studies, this new edition continues to introduce students to engaging and contemporary topics such as: sociology of religion psychology of religion history of religion religion and art religious ethics popular religion religion and violence Thoroughly updated throughout, this sixth edition includes new coverage of current debates and hot topics in the field, such as concerns about "essentialism" in religion, the importance of categorization, and the role of psychology in religious experience. This textbook is fundamental reading for students approaching this subject area for the first time.

Download or read book Embodying Antiracist Christianity written by Keun-joo Christine Pae and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a moment of notably rising levels of anti-Asian hate, this book offers antiracist resources informed by Asian/North American feminist theology and biblical scholarship. Although there exist scholarly books and articles on Asian American theology (broadly defined) have proliferated in response to the current ethical, political, and cultural environment have been prolific, there have been few concerted efforts to interrogate or dismantle anti-Asian racism inseparable from anti-black racism, and white settler colonialism that have often undermined the communal spirit and livelihood of Christian churches in the current political climate. In the current political climate, COVID-related anti-Asian hate and racial conflict, which all intersect with gender and sexuality-based violence, require theological, moral, and political inquiries. Hence, this book notes the current paucity of work with critical discussions on the multiple facets of racism from Asian American feminist theological perspectives. Contributors deepen the inter/transdisciplinary approaches concerning how to dismantle racist theological teachings, biblical interpretations, liturgical presentations, and the Christian church’s leadership structure.

Download or read book Analyzing the Marvel Universe written by Douglas Brode and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-30 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marvel, like other media "universes," is a collection of highly profitable and audience-satisfying products that exist not only as individual items of popular culture but coalesce to form a unique and all-encompassing identity. Within media studies, elements of popular culture once dismissed as low-brow entertainment are now studied with the seriousness that has always been afforded classics like Shakespeare's plays and ancient myth. Indeed, DC and Marvel might be thought of as competing myth systems. This book is a collection of diverse essays covering all aspects of the Marvel Universe, from in-print graphic novels to film and television variations. Contributors present in-depth, original and inclusive interpretations of numerous individual elements of Marvel, including analysis of key characters, themes and aesthetic elements. They also offer a vision of the essential "meaning" of Marvel, including aspects that set it apart from the DC Universe and other media. Individual readings apply feminist, ethnic, and queer theory, among others, and deal with the lesser known aspects of Marvel's offerings in order to provide the definitive collection on this subject. Beginning with an introduction by the editor that provides a complete overview of the Marvel canon, this book offers the broadest and most in-depth collection on the subject to date.

Download or read book The Ages of the Avengers written by Joseph J. Darowski and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic book audience expectations have fluctuated dramatically through the years, and comic book creators have had to adapt to shifting reader concerns. One of Marvel Comic's most popular franchises for five decades, the Avengers have always been reflective of their times, having adapted to an evolving readership to remain relevant. This collection of fresh essays by popular culture scholars examines Avengers story lines such as the Korvac Saga, Civil War, and Secret Invasion, and scrutinizes key characters including the Black Panther and Hank Pym. Essays explore how real-world events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the end of the Cold War, and 9/11 influenced popular entertainment in America.