Protestants on Screen Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in European and American Movies

by Espinosa, Gastón; Redling, Erik; Stevens, Jason

• ISBN13: 9780190058906
• ISBN10: 0190058900
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-09-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Protestants on Screen explores the Protestant contributions to American and European film from the silent era to the present day. The authors analyze how Protestant filmmakers, beliefs, theology, symbols, sensibilities, and cultural patterns have shaped the history of film. Challenging the stereotype of Protestants as world-denouncing-and-defying puritans and iconoclasts who stood in the way of film's maturation as an art, the authors contend that Protestants were among the key catalysts in the origins and development of film, bringing an identifiably Protestant aesthetic to the medium.

The essays in this volume track key Protestant themes like faith and doubt, sin and depravity, biblical literalism, personal conversion and personal redemption, holiness and sanctification, moralism and pietism, Providence and secularism, apocalypticism, righteousness and justice, religion and race, the priesthood of all believers and its offshoots-democratization and individualism. Protestants, the essays in this volume demonstrate, helped birth and shape the film industry and harness the power of motion pictures for spiritual instruction, edification, and cultural influence.

Author Biography

Gastón Espinosa is Department Chair and the Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Erik Redling is Professor of American Literature and Culture and Managing Director of the Muhlenberg Center for American Studies at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

Jason Stevens has taught at Harvard University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he has been a fellow of the National Humanities Center (Durham, NC) and the University of Pittsburgh, (Humanities Center).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Introduction Part I: Why Protestants and Film
Introduction Part II: What is Religion and Why is it Important in Film?
Introduction Part III: What is Protestantism?
Introduction Part IV: Protestantism and Film - Historical Overview
Introduction Part V: Protestant Film Aesthetics
Introduction Part VI: Chapter Overview

Part I. History and Theory of Protestantism in Religion and Film Studies
1 - Protestant Responses to Hollywood, Censorship, and Art Cinema
William D. Romanski
2 - Independent Protestant Film, from the Silent Era to its Resurgence
Andrew Quicke
3 - Protestant Themes within Secular Models of Salvation --"Redeemed" or just "A Bit Happier"'?: The Example of Crazy Heart
Clive Marsh

Part II. The Protestant Reformation on Screen
4 - "Here I stand I can do no other..." Martin Luther in German and American Biopics
Esther Wipfler
5 - The Vexed Man: Oliver Cromwell and the English Reformation and Civil War on Screen
Gastón Espinosa
6 - Propaganda, Blasphemy, and The Savage God in The Witchfinder General & The Wicker Man
Victor Sage

Part III. Protestant Influences in European Art Films
7 - Words versus "The Word": Language and Scripture in Ingmar Bergman's Films and Writings
Maaret Koskinen
8 - Protestant Miracle in Dreyer's Ordet
Marc LeFanu
9 - Babette's Feast: Protestant Pietism, the Conflict of Spirit and Flesh, and Reconciliatory Grace in the Danish Babette's Feast
Kjell O. Lejon
10 - Protestant Ambivalence Towards Allegory in Wim Wenders' The Scarlet Letter
Erik Redling

Part IV. Protestant Experience in American Movies
11 - Where Were You? The Problem of Evil in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life
Mark Scott
12 - "Holy Ghost Power!" in Robert Duvall's The Apostle
Gastón Espinosa and Jason Stevens
13 - Sinner or Saint?: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in Selma
Julius H. Bailey
14 - The Religious Motif of Mountains in Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?
Melanie Johnson
15 - A Tender View of Conservative Evangelicalism in Higher Ground
Paula M. Kane
16 - Evangelicals and Star Wars: Appropriating a Culture from a Galaxy Far Far Away
Alex Wainer

Part V. Protestant Themes in Film Genres
17 - The Rise and Fall of Evangelical Protestant Apocalyptic Horror: From A Thief in the Night to Left Behind and Beyond
Timothy Beal
18 - The Western. Radical Forgiveness in Unforgiven
Sara Anson Vaux
19 - Protestant Pacifist: War and Pacifism in Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge
Matthew S. Rindge
20 - Film Noir, Calvinism, and Self-Surveillance in Paul Schrader's Hardcore
Jason Stevens
21 - Lost in Adaptation: Aslan's Divinity and the Purpose of Real Pain in Narnia versus Fantasy Film
Devin Brown