12-7-2010

The offense in this game is easy to recognize, but the reasons for it may be harder to articulate. Most obvious is the notion of agency, which here is not reflected in playing as Jesus, but rather in playing against Jesus. Another reason is Christ Killa’s iconoclastic violence, intended to disrupt the reception of the image of Christ on the cross by presenting it within the game’s rhetoric as cause for violence. The player has the ability (and within the game’s backstory, the moral obligation) to kill the cloned Jesus figures. So within the fiction of the game, Jesus is the “bad guy” and the player is the “good guy”—one might even argue the messiah. The player’s ability to immerse himself in the imagined avatar behind the gun invites a procedural violence against Jesus, justified by the assumption that he is “just” a clone. By so disrupting the biblical narrative and blending this disruption with agency as Jesus’ enemy, the game invites a blasphemous procedural rhetoric.

Rachel Wagner: The Play is the Thing: From Bible Fights to Passions of the Christ

In her analysis of why, exactly, Christians are hesitant to make a fully interactive and "free range" depiction of Christ, Rachel Wagner discusses examples of when this does happen, and why Christians do not like them. One example she supplies us with is Christ Killa, in which the player is immersed in a story about killing raving clones of Christ. As Wagner points out, this is a form of iconoclasm on two levels: not only is one destroying an image of Christ, but one is destroying how one views Christ. Essentially, the Covenant we form with that image is shattered, but worst of all, it is shattered by the player. This clearly deviates from the linear-pattern devised by most Christians.

12-6-2010

Aside from simply depicting a contrast with the ordinary, however, the liminal phase of ritual can also depict the ideal of the unstructured community, what Turner calls “communitas.” In communitas, in distinction from the hierarchically structured society, all are equal and there is no ranking to give one power over another (except perhaps the authority of the ritual elders). 20 This form of utopia cannot really exist, as no society can exist without structure— but this utopian ideal of communitas is just as critical to the functioning of society as the realism that requires structure, for it reminds a people of their essential unity and

Lyden: Movies as Religion.

In this passage, Lyden refers to the anthropologist Turner, who noted that societies form "communitas," which are momentary breakdowns of authority which make pleasantly allow all to be equal. His example is that of an Indian ceremony, where cast is reversed, the subordinate becoming insubordinate. Thus, for a brief period, a break-down in society is allowed to occur within the confines of a ritual, much like Gerard would argue violence can be carried out ritually to be cathartic.

12-2-2010

"Vengeance, moreover, cannot be claimed until the verdict of one's private oracle has been confirmed by the secret poison oracle of the local prince, for Zande society is an aristocracy in which the ruling class makes all final decisions. If the logic of these oracles, deaths, and acts of vengeance were analyzed publicly, Evans-Pritchard notes, it would reduce itself to an absurdity, because every new death would have to be attributed to yet another act of witchcraft in an endless circle.

Pals, Daniel. "Eight Theories of Religion." New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

In this passage, Pals discusses how Evans-Pritchard's study of the Zande led him to discover their ritual for handling accusations of death and witchcraft, which goes through a series of 1) Personal oracles, and then 2) aristocratic oracles, which have the final say. Evans-Pritchard argues that this is done to prevent logical absurdities from occurring. However, one must wonder if, perhaps, there is a touch of Marx's theories underlying this: that religion can become another facet of power and social structures.

11-30-2010

"ritualization is a matter of various culturally specific strategies for setting some activities off from others, for creating and privileging a qualitative distinction between the 'sacred' and the 'profane,' and for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to transcend the powers of human actors."

Nye, Malory. Religion: The Basics. New York: Routledge. 2008.

Nye quotes Catherine bell, who argues that the main function of ritual is to set apart the mundane profane from the exceptional sacred, which truly recalls the Eliadic notions of sacred and profane, but also Durkheims methods of creating ritual. She definitely echoes Eliade's belief that the "sacred" cannot be the day-to-day, and thus a sacred ritual would also transcend this.

11-28-2010

This violent translation of world religious traditions within the Matrix franchise has serious implications for our own violent culture with which it resonates. Already there have been a troubling number of copy-cat murderers who, legitimately or not, have cited the films as inspiration for their crimes. Studio executives strenuously deny any link between the films and real acts of violence.⁶ However, they appear to have recognized some of the public criticism that might stem from the release of the Animatrix “Kid's Story,” which ends with a positive portrayal of teenager's suicide in the matrix, since plans to make the segment available on the Warner Brothers' website were abandoned. The direct association of violence with religion in the films can result in some troubling simplifications by those interpreting the films. In an article detailing some of the most prominent Hindu elements in the first two films, Julien Fielding argues that “even if the movie audience feels uncomfortable at how quickly and without remorse Trinity and Neo blow away the policemen,” this choice must be understood as a product of Hindu ideas about dharma, and should not concern us further.

Flannery-Dailey, Frances and Rachel Wagner. "Stopping Bullets: Constructions of Bliss and Problems of Violence" Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation. 2004.

In this passage, Wagner and Flanner-Dailey discuss how copy-cat muderers have been executed in a style startlingly similar to that of the Matrix's. Although Warner Bros. seeks to deny it, the authors hint that they too acknowledge the disturbing violence of their work by refusing to put clips of it online. However, the authors go on to cite that was is truly disturbing about the portrayal of violence is not the violence itself, but its gross over simplification. Just as Morgan argued a religion must use simple, plain symbols to convey an idea to its viewers, so too must movies rely on simple violence with a simple solution to make it seem acceptable.

11-19-2010

But I have also argued from the beginning of this book that one cannot legitimately critique or dismiss films (or religions) without first seeking to understand what they are saying, and violent films are no exception to this rule.

Film as Religion; Lyden, John C.

Before launching into his analysis of violent movies portraying religious-esque sacrifice, Lyden first argues that we are not looking at movies from a point of moral judgement, but understanding; and this, he argues, can only be done when we put aside objectivity for subjective understanding. Essentially, we are to use Geertz's thick description, and think from the bottom-up.

"The ritual of Corpus Christi was celebrated to replace the Inca celebration of the solar deity...at the summer solstice. Incan nobility participated in the procession of the new Christian rite wearing traditional costume that included a solar disk....Yet in creating this substitution via subordination, the Christian rite of Corpus Christi preserved the pre-Christian meaning."

Morgan, David. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkley: University of California Press, 2005.

In this passage, Morgan discusses how during iconoclasm, religious icons are not necessarily destroyed, but often repurposed. However, in spite of the attempts to remove their original meaning, their underlying connatations remain; thus, the Sun Disk continues, to the Incans, to have its meaning while appearing Christian, which gives some credence to Chidester's theory of plasticity.