NEWS STORY: Religious scholars probe recent films on apocalypse

c. 1999 Religion News Service BOSTON Bruce Willis, Robin Williams and Darth Vader may have something in common. They may all be agents of the apocalypse. That, at least, is the impression of a group of scholars who presented papers on”Film and the Apocalypse”at the American Academy of Religion’s (AAR) annual meeting. Drawing from a […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

BOSTON Bruce Willis, Robin Williams and Darth Vader may have something in common. They may all be agents of the apocalypse.

That, at least, is the impression of a group of scholars who presented papers on”Film and the Apocalypse”at the American Academy of Religion’s (AAR) annual meeting.


Drawing from a spate of recent movies with apocalyptic themes, five scholars analyzed the ways in which films reflect society’s expectation for the upcoming millennium and any apocalyptic events that may accompany it.

The Star Wars trilogy plus last year’s”The Phantom Menace,”the Robin Williams film”What Dreams May Come,”the twin-plotted”Armageddon”and”Deep Impact,”and the Bruce Willis vehicle”Twelve Monkeys”were among the films the scholars contended took up apocalyptic religious themes and depicted them Hollywood style.

More than one scholar pointed out that a common thread in cinematic depictions of apocalyptic events is what one presenter referred to as the”desacralization”of the apocalypse, draining the religious meaning from the event in favor of a more human-centered interpretation.”The divine is nowhere in view,”said Frances Flannery-Dailey, a professor at the University of Iowa, in her lecture on”Bruce Willis as the Messiah.” Instead of the traditional idea of divine intervention bringing about or stopping an apocalypse, Flannery-Daily argues that Bruce Willis films such as “Armageddon”and”Twelve Monkeys,”in both of which Willis’ character sacrifices his own life in order to save the world, present human effort as the only way to do so.”The eschaton itself, as well as any hope of salvation, depends entirely on human effort,”she said.

Other presenters agreed human agency is usually put above religious or divine intervention, but pointed to moments when films cannot escape the religious overtone of apocalyptic events.”The popular eschatological imagination is a secular one, yet one that cannot let go of traditional apocalyptic imagery,”said Conrad E. Ostwalt, who is a professor at Appalachian State University.

Ostwalt used”Armageddon”as an example, saying although the human being _ Willis _ saves the world from destruction by a meteor, the film shows victory celebrations taking place at churches and mosques around the world rather than more secular locations.

Some films are able to integrate mystery or divinity and human agency, such as the Star Wars series and the more recent”The Matrix.” The Star Wars series, according to John Lyden of Dana College, whose talk was entitled”The Apocalyptic Cosmology of the `Star Wars’ Films,”is particularly effective in including both transcendence and human effort.

Although this invokes the ire of some religious critics who feel the films are trying to set out their own religious views, Lyden asserts the values of faith, loyalty, and family are actually directly in line with many religious teachings.”The continual whining about how `Star Wars’ is trying to replace `real’ religion might subside a bit if we realized that the values it portrays are not entirely negative,”he said.”The Matrix,”last summer’s Keanu Reeves blockbuster, drew admiration from the scholars, who felt the main character in this film was more disciplined than other human messiah figures.”Keanu Reeves becomes one in a line of macho messiahs,”including Willis, Kevin Costner, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, said Ostwalt.”But unlike these other messiahs, he must use mind control.” The workings of the mind, or the imagination, was the subject of the Robin Williams film,”What Dreams May Come,”which Susan L. Schwartz of Muhlenberg College referred to as”decidedly unWestern.” In her talk,”I Dream, Therefore I Am: `What Dreams May Come,'”Schwartz said the film, which is about a man who is killed in a car accident and wanders through a visually stunning afterlife trying to reunite with his wife, is based in South Asian religious ideas of imagination, the afterlife, and reincarnation.”The Western deity is no more evident in this film’s post-mortem reality than it is in the post-modern reality,”she said, referring to a general trend of the disappearance of God from modern popular culture.


Another popular cultural trend that was taken up was the role of women in this group of apocalyptic films. Scholar Joel W. Martin, from Franklin and Marshall College, argued that the”anti-feminism fuels these apocalyptic films.” Martin analyzed several films to support his argument. In”Deep Impact,”for example, he points out that the main character, a journalist, gives up her place in the underground city in which a remnant of the human race will survive, yielding it to a woman with a child.

The message, Martin argued, is that”women who are fertile and heterosexually bonded survive. One wonders whether the film is about a comet at all.”The film”Independence Day”has a similar treatment of women, Martin said in his analysis of a scene in which the first lady is killed by an alien attack on the earth.”The film implies that she would have survived if only she’d been at home with her husband,”said Martin.

Thousands of scholars attended the AAR and Society of Biblical Literature’s four-day meeting, which ended Monday (Nov. 22). Sessions on the millennium and biblical apocalypse were held, as well as sessions on religious violence, health care policy, school vouchers, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

DEA END LEBOWITZ

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