Handcrafting the Sacred on the

Screen

The Sacred and Pop Culture

•Borrowing both from the sanctimonious and the political to make a religion spectacle

•James Cameron’s Avatar as the Cathedral (intention: build a sense of awe to cherish creation or even the Creator)

•The role of technology in creating the effect of awe

Avatar and spectacle

•The metaphor of the “Garden” Pandora: Pure nature delight or digital delight?

•How is this text a truly religious statement of creation and respect of nature?

•Lines blur between cinematic and religious spectacle

•Why should we study these texts?

Oriental Monk

•Script of Orientalism: Framing of the Oriental through discursive logic informed not simply by empirical reality but by desires, repressions, investments and projections.

•Oriental Monk: a icon of pop culture in a narrative of a society which faces fear, loss and spiritual turmoil

•Spiritual search is critical here

Oriental Monk

•Modernized cultural Patriarchy: Griffith’s “Broken Blossoms”: representative standard for the moral behavior of Asians/different minorities

•The image of the monk from one of threat to one of desire and hope-The noble Buddhist will care for the children of the West

Oriental Monk

•Image in popular consciousness transmutes through time, but the narrative remains the same

•Media reinforce certain kinds of associations which then become a schemata for us to learn about others and their lifeworlds...

•but only based on what ails us.

Religion and Pop Culture

•Is this religion? Or is it just a transient consumer product?

•What are the implications of popular culture appropriating the language of religion in its own artifacts?

•Where can we draw the boundaries between material culture and religion?

•Should we draw the line? Isn’t religion also a material experience?