Can Watching a Movie Be a Spiritual Experience?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Way

The moviegoing experience can transport viewers into another place or the presence of another—perhaps even an Other. In the process, they explore life's possibilities and contradictions, testing out solutions and even finding themselves surprised by joy or sorrow, by love and pain, by life itself. Given such experiences, it should not be surprising that commentators have since film's early days explored the spiritual dimensions of this experience. This chapter shows that evangelical responses to popular culture are hardly monolithic. It suggests that faith and culture are always in dialogue. It explores the way conversation with movies, even seemingly secular ones, can be a spiritual experience.

Unstoppable Decay and Relentless Hope: Study of Alterity in Popular Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-76
Author(s):  
Adrien Ordonneau
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Consequences of capitalism’s crises and their manifestations in arts have deeply modified the way we can approach mental health. As Mark Fisher pointed out in 2009 with his book Capitalist Realism, neoliberalism is using mental illness as a way to keep existing. The capacity to think a way out of alienation is deeply linked with arts and popular culture. The article proposes to study the uncanny dialogue between arts and politics in relationships to people, and mental health. The theoretical framework will show how arts are trying to build a way out of alienation, since 2009. The article will illustrate this research with the study of many artistic practices, including our own. The findings will show how the ambiguous and uncanny relationships with the world is used by artists as a way out of alienation, despite the difficulties occurring with mental health in time of crisis.

scholarly journals Mickey’s Trailer and Environmental Thought: Disney Cartoons and Countryside

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Joe Goddard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Automobile Ownership ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Environmental Cognition ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

The influence of popular cartoons on environmental cognition is explored in this essay through readings of Mickey’s Trailer, a 1938 cartoon directed by Ben Sharpsteen for Walt Disney. Other materials considered include Ford Motor Company’s 1937-38 film coproduced by Wilder Pictures, Glacier International Park, which promotes motor-tourism and automobile ownership, and Ben Sharpsteen’s other work for Walt Disney. The article also examines the ideas of physical and “illusional” zoning in the city, especially the way that they were applied in the mid-twentieth century. Physical zoning involved separating incompatible land uses, whereas illusional zoning entailed seeing what you wanted to see. What does Mickey’s Trailer say about how people can live, and can it inform where people choose to live? The essay muses that appreciations of nature and the environment are influenced by popular culture.

The Politics of Worldlessness

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-127
Author(s):  
Roland Végső
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Political World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

The chapter examines Hannah Arendt’s critique of martin Heidegger and concentrates on the way Arendt tries to subvert the Heideggerian paradigm of worldlessness. While for Heidegger, the ontological paradigm of worldlessness was the lifeless stone, in Arendt’s book biological life itself emerges as the worldless condition of the political world of publicity. The theoretical challenge bequeathed to us by Arendt is to draw the consequences of the simple fact that life is worldless. The worldlessness of life, therefore, becomes a genuine condition of impossibility for politics: it makes politics possible, but at the same time it threatens the very existence of politics. The chapter traces the development of this argument in three of Arendt’s major works: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind.

10. The letterless canon

2021 ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
Ilan Stavans
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Comedy Film ◽  
Film Scripts ◽  
The Way

“The letterless canon” argues that Jewish literature from the mid-twentieth century onward is not restricted to fiction, poetry, and theater. The book as a tool for the dissemination of knowledge has undergone a metamorphosis. Along the way, the border between high-brow and popular culture has been erased. Comic strips like Superman and graphic novels can be viewed as literary artifacts. Indeed we should consider the work of Will Eisner (A Contract with God), Art Spiegelman (Maus), and Alison Bechdel (Fun House), each of whom offers different contributions. There is also the matter of stand-up comedy, film scripts, and television shows which examine, from a Jewish perspective, gender, racial, and class issues.

Live Long and Prosper: Rebooting Star Trek and Reimagining Fandom

Film Reboots ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Erin Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Star Trek ◽  
First Century ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

This chapter looks to Star Trek, a reboot that employed a time travel narrative to simultaneously cast the Star Trek universe as a new continuity and strategically recast iconic characters in a parallel timeline. The chapter asserts that the reinvention of Star Trek property as a twenty-first-century blockbuster required an investment not only in its narrative strategies, but also in a discursively reimagined audience, one that included both pre-existing and future fans. It demonstrates the way in which Star Trek highlights the intersecting logics of the film reboot and the mainstreaming of fandom in popular culture, both of which grow out of serial strategies designed to exploit new and established markets.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-192
Author(s):  
Megan Woller
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Arthurian Legend ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Cultural Resonance ◽  
The Way ◽  
Traditional Stories

Traditional stories based on Arthurian legend continue to be told, and alongside these tales of romance and chivalry, a comedic tradition exists. This centuries-long tradition holds cultural resonance around the world, including having a strong presence in American popular culture. The musical as a genre has proven to be fertile ground for the insertion of American perspectives into the British legend. The use of song, in particular, can shape the way audiences understand familiar characters as well as the story itself. Given this context, the existence, popularity, and influence of Arthurian musicals represents an important contribution to the annals of myth.

Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society. Edited by Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen and Paul G. Pickowicz. [Lanham, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. 316 pp. Hardcover $75.00, ISBN 0-7425-1078-6; paperback $21.95, ISBN 0-7425-1079-4.]

2003 ◽  
Vol 176 ◽  
pp. 1100-1102
Author(s):  
Thomas Moran
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The People ◽  
Chinese Popular Culture ◽  
The Way

The dozen chapters in this book, based on papers for a 1999 conference, comprise an interdisciplinary glimpse into the increasingly diverse and contradictory world of Chinese popular culture. A theme of Popular China is representation: most of the chapters examine the way in which group and individual identity is represented (in newspapers, magazines, popular sayings, and advertisements, and in the stories people tell about their lives). Many of the authors draw on surveys and interviews – of young basketball fans, rural women, home owners in Shanghai, migrant workers, and entrepreneurs – allowing the people of China to speak for themselves. The book contains nothing that is revelatory (especially for anyone who visits China regularly and reads Chinese), but it provides a detailed, informed look at each of several phenomena often noted only in passing.

scholarly journals The Spirituality of Q

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Foster
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
The Way

The term spirituality is notoriously difficult to define, as is evidenced by the discussions between contemporary sociologists of religion. If there are any central elements to such a definition, they revolve around the search for the sacred, and the view that certain practices or beliefs lead to humans being placed in a position of privileged access to the transcendent dimension. Often such spiritual experiences and insights are the result of practices that seek deeper communication with the divine, or stem from contemplative reflection upon one’s purpose in a broader context of universal ontology. This discussion seeks to probe Q for its understanding of spirituality, both in terms of the way the text promotes communication with the divine, as well as offering heightened spiritual experience for adherents to its teaching. In essence, this is an exploration of the way the new religious movement reflected in Q offered its followers contact with the transcendent within the context of everyday human life.

BINARY COMPOSITION

Tempo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (293) ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
Alexander Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
New Music ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Binary Composition ◽  
Personal Significance ◽  
Compositional Approach ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article outlines and elucidates the methods used in my compositional work. I often find it impossible to limit my compositional approach to core theorems and describe them succinctly; my procedure and methodology often comprise opposing poles. As multi-polarity is a decisive criterion of my work, this specific dichotomy of methods and motivations is the overriding subject matter of this text. These characteristics also constitute my temperament, which is why I often perceive my pieces as very personal. This is not – at least not primarily – meant emotionally or subjectively, but in the way tasks, situations, musical works, or life itself are approached. I will examine numerous contradictory couplings within my work and explain their personal significance: Seriousness vs. Humour/Irony, Organism vs. Virtuality, Pop Music vs. New Music, Conception vs. Intuition, Expressivity vs. Introversion, and Technology vs. Romance.

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