Horror and Religion

Horror and Religion
Author: Eleanor Beal
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1786834413

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Horror and Religion is an edited collection of essays offering structured discussions of spiritual and theological conflicts in Horror fiction from the late-sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Contributors explore the various ways that horror and religion have interacted over themes of race and sexuality; the texts under discussion chart the way in which the religious imagination has been deployed over the course of Horror fiction’s development, from a Gothic mode based in theological polemics to a more distinct genre in the twenty-first century that explores the afterlife of religion. Horror and Religion focuses on the Horror genre and its characteristics of the body, sexuality, trauma and race, and the essays explore how Horror fiction has shifted emphasis from anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism to incorporate less understood historical and theological issues, such as the ‘Death of God’ and the spiritual destabilisation of the secular. By confronting spiritual conflicts in Horror fiction, this volume offers new perspectives on what we traditionally perceive as horrifying.

Sacred Terror

Sacred Terror
Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-04
Genre: Horror films
ISBN: 9781481304900

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Sacred Terror examines the religious elements lurking in horror films. It answers a simple but profound question: When there are so many other scary things around, why is religion so often used to tell a scary story? In this lucid, provocative book, Douglas Cowan argues that horror films are opportune vehicles for externalizing the fears that lie inside our religious selves: of evil; of the flesh; of sacred places; of a change in the sacred order; of the supernatural gone out of control; of death, dying badly, or not remaining dead; of fanaticism; and of the power--and the powerlessness--of religion.

Religion of Fear

Religion of Fear
Author: Jason C Bivins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2008-08-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199887691

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Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics, disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes of communication. Within this world is a "Religion of Fear," a critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast "orthodox" behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind novels, church-sponsored Halloween "Hell Houses," sensational comic books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity. As the "Religion of Fear" has developed since the 1960s, Bivins sees its message moving from a place of relative marginality to one of prominence. What does it say about American public life that such ideas of fearful religion and violent politics have become normalized? Addressing this question, Bivins establishes links and resonances between the cultural politics of evangelical pop, the activism of the New Christian Right, and the political exhaustion facing American democracy. Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.

Holy Horror

Holy Horror
Author: Steve A. Wiggins
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476633711

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What, exactly, makes us afraid? Is it monsters, gore, the unknown? Perhaps it's a biblical sense of malice, lurking unnoticed in the corners of horror films. Holy Writ attempts to ward off aliens, ghosts, witches, psychopaths and demons, yet it often becomes a source of evil itself. Looking first at Psycho (1960) and continuing through 2017, this book analyzes the starring and supporting roles of the Good Book in horror films, monster movies and thrillers to discover why it incites such fear. In a culture with high biblical awareness and low biblical literacy, horrific portrayals can greatly influence an audience's canonical beliefs.

Theology and Horror

Theology and Horror
Author: Brandon R. Grafius
Publisher: Fortress Academic
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-03-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781978708006

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Scholars of religion have begun to explore horror and the monstrous, not only within the confines of the biblical text or the traditions of religion, but also as they proliferate into popular culture. This exploration emerges from what has long been present in horror: an engagement with the same questions that animate religious thought - questions about the nature of the divine, humanity's place in the universe, the distribution of justice, and what it means to live a good life, among many others. Such exploration often involves a theological conversation. Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination pursues questions regarding non-physical realities, spaces where both divinity and horror dwell. Through an exploration of theology and horror, the contributors explore how questions of spirituality, divinity, and religious structures are raised, complicated, and even sometimes answered (at least partially) by works of horror.

Terence Fisher

Terence Fisher
Author: Paul Leggett
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010-06-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780786481118

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Some critics in England and France have long maintained that British director Terence Fisher, whose films dominated world markets in the 1950s and 60s, was one of the greatest directors of fantasy films in history. Since his death in 1980, Fisher's reputation has grown from relative obscurity and his influence on the development of the modern horror film has been widely recognized. However, Fisher's importance should not be limited to the context of the fantasy and horror film genres. His films should also be recognized as expressions of his generalizations about human spirituality. This critical study of Fisher's films begins with an introduction that provides biographical information on his film career, summaries of all of the films he directed and examples of his impact on contemporary cinema. All of Fisher's films are analyzed in terms of their Christian and religious themes as well as their mythical sources. Chapters are devoted to Fisher's work on the subjects of Frankenstein, Dracula, curses (The Devil Rides Out), the ancient goddess (The Gorgon), the divided self (The Man Who Could Cheat Death) and the redeemer hero (The Stranglers of Bombay). The concluding chapter analyzes the role and influence of Biblical narratives in Fisher's films. Also included is a filmography; the work is fully indexed.

Reading the Bible with Horror

Reading the Bible with Horror
Author: Brandon R. Grafius
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978701691

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In Reading the Bible with Horror, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, he stops to place the monstrous Leviathan in conversation with contemporary monster theory, uses Derrida to help explore the ghosts that haunt the biblical landscape, and reads the House of David as a haunted house. Conversations arise between unexpected sources, such as the Pentateuch legal texts dealing with female sexuality and Carrie. Throughout the book, Grafius asks how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and he explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.

Religion and Its Monsters

Religion and Its Monsters
Author: Timothy Beal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1135283486

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Religion's great and powerful mystery fascinates us, but it also terrifies. So too the monsters that haunt the stories of the Judeo-Christian mythos and earlier traditions: Leviathan, Behemoth, dragons, and other beasts. In this unusual and provocative book, Timothy K. Beal writes about the monsters that lurk in our religious texts, and about how monsters and religion are deeply entwined. Horror and faith are inextricable. Ans as monsters are part of religious texts and traditions, so religion lurks in the modern horror genre, from its birth in Dante's Inferno to the contemporary spookiness of H.P. Lovecraft and the Hellraiser films. Religion and Its Monsters is essential reading for students of religion and popular culture, as well as any readers with an interest in horror.

Film as Religion

Film as Religion
Author: John Lyden
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2003-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814751806

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Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2003 Film as Religion argues that popular films perform a religious function in our culture. Like more formal religious institutions, films can provide us with ways to view the world and values to confront it. Lyden contends that approaches which interpret films only ideologically or theologically miss the mark in understanding their appeal to viewers. He develops an alternative method which shows how films can be understood as representing a “religious” worldview in their own right. Lyden surveys the state of the study of religion and film, offering an overview of previous methods before presenting his own. Rather than seeking to uncover hidden meanings in film detectable only to scholars, Lyden emphasizes how film functions for its audiences?the beliefs and values it conveys, and its ritual power to provide emotional catharsis. He includes a number of brief cases studies in which he applies this method to the study of film genres—including westerns and action movies, children's films, and romantic comedies—and individual films from The Godfather to E.T., showing how films can function religiously.

Christian Horror

Christian Horror
Author: Mike Duran
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9780990907732

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