Sacred Subtexts: Depictions of Girls as Christ Figure and Holy Fool in the Films Moana and Whale Rider

Christ figures and holy fools are familiar religious symbols often repeated and adapted in film making. They have historically most often been depicted as male, and among the slowly growing body of female filmic christ figures, they are usually depicted as adult White women. In this article, I consider two films, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider and Disney’s Moana, in which young Indigenous girls are depicted within this trope. I engage in close reading of the films, in relation to Anton Karl Kozlovic’s theoretical framework for structural characteristics of the filmic christ figure, as I focus my discussion here on the christological symbolism of the two female child figures in these films, while also folding this back to the long-standing religious and literary tradition of the holy fool. The aim of this article is to contribute to the growing body of critical and theoretical work about the representation and reading of women and religion in film.

God Below: A Faith Born in Hell—Life and Fate and the Otherwise Than Being

This essay examines the idea of kenosis and holy folly in the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. The primary focus will be Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, though it also will touch upon Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons and the ethics of the Lithuanian-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, speaking to their intersecting ideas. Dostoevsky, true enough, predates the Shoah, whereas Grossman was a Soviet Jew who served as a journalist (most famously at the Battle of Stalingrad), and Levinas was a soldier in the French army, captured by the Nazis and placed in a POW camp. Each of these writers wrestles with the problem of evil in various ways, Dostoevsky and Levinas as theists—one Christian, the other Jewish—and Grossman as an atheist; yet, despite their differences, there are ever deeper resonances in that all are drawn to the idea of kenosis and the holy fool, and each writer employs variations of this idea in their respective answers to the problem of evil. Each argues, more or less, that evil arises in totalizing utopian thought which reifies individual humans to abstractions—to The Human, and goodness to The Good. Each looks to kenosis as the “antidote” to this utopian reification.

Lo jurodivyj in Nostalghia. Genesi ed evoluzione di Domenico nella sceneggiatura di Tarkovskij e Guerra

This article aims to analyze the evolution of Domenico’s character in the different versions of Nostalghia’s script, written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra. By comparing the director’s diaries with the twelve original typescripts kept in the Tarkovsky’s archive, it is possible to trace the origin and the evolution of the character, which has some similarities with the holy fool of Russian tradition. In the first versions of the script, in which the character is still vague and undefined, there are some quotes from Dostoevsky’s works that refer to the theme of madness. These references disappear in the latest versions, when Domenico begins to acquire more importance in the narrative and often expresses himself about madness with quotes from Guerra’s works.

WHY DID AVVAKUM PLAY THE HOLY FOOL? AN АNALYSIS OF THE ARCHPRIEST AVVAKUM’S CREATIVE PROCESS IN WRITING HIS "LIFE"

The article studies the polemical orientation of the hagiographical Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself in relation to the author’s earlier works, The Answer of the Orthodox, and other texts that were included together with the Life in the Pustozersk Collection. An analysis of the creative evolution of Avvakum’s thought will demonstrate that the Life’s appeal to holy foolishness at its narrative climax was its strongest ideological weapon against the new Church elite (the Nikonians). This appeal gave rise to an unprecedented emphasis on the author’s personal life experience that was meant to be proof of the “theoretical” arguments against Nikonian rationalism in the The Answer to the Orthodox. As a demonstration of a mystical-experiential approach to knowledge of God, his dramatized holy foolishness justified his choice to present his own biography as a publicistic hagiographical narrative.

Asceticism and Foolishness of Christ in Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy

The article considers the phenomena of asceticism and foolishness for Christ in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The author substantiates the thesis that asceticism and foolishness for Christ are subjects of Nietzsche's philosophical reflections. The author also shows that the figures of the ascetic and the holy fool also act as “conceptual characters” of Nietzsche's philosophizing. The author suggests that Nietzsche himself felt a tendency towards self-identification with these characters and therefore tried to “dis-identify”, which he did not always succeed in. The article concludes that Nietzsche's position in relation to asceticism is ambiguous and internally contradictory. The philosopher exposed and criticized ascetic ideals, but this criticism is also directed at himself. Nietzsche himself, his character and way of thinking reveal a significant degree of kinship with ascetic views. Therefore, Nietzsche's criticism of asceticism is in many ways an attempt to overcome the ascetic in himself. For this task, Nietzsche appeals not only to the figures of an atheist and a pagan, but also to the image of a jester, a holy fool. The author substantiates the idea that one of the main distinguishing features of the holy fool's lifestyle is that he does not seem to be what he really is. A real fool, a real insane person is not a holy fool. The holy fool undertakes the feat of appearing to be a fool or insane, while he himself is not. In this way, the holy fool renounces the world and himself in the world, the state when his behavior corresponded to the norms and criteria of this world. Thus, a view of the world from a reverse perspective is achieved. Something close to this mode of thought and behavior is found in Nietzsche's philosophy. His philosophizing is deeply personal, but, at the same time, he constantly does not show the reader who he really is. Nietzsche's style is a constant play with masks and disguises. As a result of the study, the author concludes that Nietzsche's position in the history of European philosophy can be characterized as foolishness for Christ. His doctrine is formed during the crisis of European metaphysics and is the self-awareness of this crisis. Belief in reason, in the ability to comprehend God in terms of reason, characteristic of Western philosophy, is denied. This conviction in the omnipotence of reason was criticized already in Kantian philosophy, but criticized by means of reason itself. This was the peculiar “cunning of reason”, which, having preserved itself as a tool of criticism, subsequently triumphed in Hegel's philosophy. The claim of reason to absolute significance cannot be refuted by means of reason itself. Nietzsche understood this. He realized that breaking the impasse in which Western metaphysics found itself thanks to the deification of reason requires a completely different path.

Encolpion of the 14th century from the St Andrew Monastery on Sitka near Novgorod

During archaeological investigations of 2020 at the settlement of Sitka I situated to the south from Novgorod, the necropolis of the Church of St Andrew the Holy Fool on Sitka of the Sitka Monastery was excavated. In the mixed strata between burials of the 17th–18th century, the face valve of an encolpion with the Crucifix was found dated through analogues to the 14th century. Apparently, it came from a disturbed later grave and belonged to a representative of the clergy.

Can a Hasidic Tzaddik be called a Holy Fool? (Perception of the Rybnitser Rebbe in the USSR)

The article examines the reflection in oral stories and written hagiographic collections of the image of Rybnitser rebbe, Chaim Zanvl Abramovich (1896–1995) as a holy fool – a person who does not conform to social norms of behavior regarded as having a compensating divine blessing or inspiration. The combination of two characteristics – the canonization of the charismatic leader, and the adherence of this leader to some kind of deliberate strange behavior make it possible to draw certain parallels between the image of the tzaddik in Hasidism and the holy fool in the Christian tradition. The image of the Hasidic tzaddik is ambivalent; he combines two worlds, profane and sacred at the same time. He is understandable to his followers and strange to the uninitiated, which brings his perception closer to the attitude towards him as a holy fool among those who observe his actions and deeds from the outside. In the stories about the Rybnitser Rebbe, two opposite tendencies can be clearly traced. On the one hand, his customs such as to sprinkle ashes on his head, to immerse ritualy daily, stripping naked in any weather, and so on are not understandable for outsiders, not only for non-Jews, but even for Jews who have already managed to move away from the Jewish tradition or are far from the ideas of Hasidism. In this case, he is called crazy, blissful, etc. On the other hand, for the devoted Hasids of the rebbe, all his strange actions are endowed with a huge religious meaning, and only in order to escape from the authorities, he is forced to pretend to be crazy. In both cases, we can see clear parallels between the figure of tzaddiks and the image of holy fools as strange people out of this world who reveal the true pain points of the material world and help other people with their spiritual exploits.

LIFE AS OPPOSED TO THE NORM

The article examines human life as opposed to the norm through foolishness. In different periods of history, the cult of foolishness underwent changes in the attitude towards it from the side of the common people and the authorities. The holy fools were revered as saints and canonized, and at the same time they tried to ban them, destroy them physically, and isolate them. Through foolishness, the abnormal in society and in the individual was opposed to the other abnormal. The abnormal was revealed through the imaginary abnormal. Choosing foolishness, most often consciously, as the way of life, the fool through his abnormality, pointed to the abnormal in society. Thanks to this trick, the holy fools got the opportunity to influence the life of not only an average person, but also those who could change society as a whole. The price of this opposition was the life of the holy fool.