The Religious Film
Christianity and the Hagiopic
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION 1
The Religious Film
and the Hagiopic
Lush, vaguely liturgical music floods the
theater. A sonorous off-screen male
voice slowly articulates the words, "And
it was written ..." or, "In the year ..."
On the screen, clouds mysteriously
separate, and a semi-transparent figure
appears in the sky. Later in the film, a
blood-soaked man, stumbling under the
weight of a heavy cross, is savagely
whipped as fainting women are escorted
away. Or, instead, a young girl is dragged
from a dungeon and tied to a stake,
where she is set on fire.
Conventional films about religious
heroes are instantly recognizable. Average film-goers can easily identify
the most common sounds and images, and, more importantly, they can
name the particular values that the most traditional films of this kind
uphold: blind faith, chastity, extreme forms of virtuous suffering, and
the superiority of one religion over all others. What viewers-and film
scholars-cannot name is the genre itself.
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