Publication: Ideological blindspot in the academic study of religion and film
Issued Date
2019-01-01
Resource Type
ISSN
15700682
09433058
09433058
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2-s2.0-85074669229
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Mahidol University
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SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Vol.31, No.4-5 (2019), 416-445
Suggested Citation
Tenzan Eaghll Ideological blindspot in the academic study of religion and film. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Vol.31, No.4-5 (2019), 416-445. doi:10.1163/15700682-12341465 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/49957
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Title
Ideological blindspot in the academic study of religion and film
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Abstract
© 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. This essay offers a critique of how "religion" is defined and studied in the academic field of religion and film, and calls for a more nuanced application of ideological analysis to the subject. Surveying the dominant scholarship in the field, it exposes a tendency to provide either theological or mythological definitions of religion and to privilege the category as something sui generis-a unique, special, or "spiritual" domain of things in the world. Moreover, it shows how this scholarship disparages ideological analysis as reductive, abstract, and elite, and fails to consider how religion itself functions ideologically in film and film criticism. Drawing upon the work of critical scholars of religion to support this latter claim, as well as contemporary film studies theory, the article closes with a call for a more nuanced understanding of how ideology is constructed at both an individual and cinematic level.