Is the apocalypse still God's fault?

As modern day filmmakers and storytellers attempt to retell apocalyptic stories, I wonder: do modern-day adaptations of apocalypse stories remove the element of the super-natural or divine? 

            According to Pagels, “The Book of Revelation reads as if John had wrapped up all our worst fears—fears of violence, plague, wild animals, unimaginable horrors from the abyss below the earth, lightning, hail, earthquakes and the atrocities or torture and war—into one gigantic nightmare.” It can be interpreted that Pagels is claiming that the apocalypse is a reflection of society’s greatest fear at the time.  An example of this is the Cold War; people weren’t worried about locusts as much as they were worried about nuclear bombs being dropped on their cities.  Hollywood movie makers took advantage of this and produced movies like Dr. Strangelove and Red Dawn that spoke to people’s paranoia.  As of more recently, people have begun to worry about viral infections and this has also been reflected through modern day film; movies such as World War Z and Contagion show apocalyptic epidemics that come as a result of viral infections.

            By creating these movies that reflect society’s greatest fear, filmmakers have effectively removed a sense of the divine from the apocalypse.  Technically, in order to consider something an apocalypse, there has to be an element of the supernatural, but now people are much more concerned about nuclear bombs and viral infections as opposed to locusts.  A reason for this may be because it makes people feel they can control their own fate, such as coming to a peace resolution or developing a vaccine that can save civilization; as opposed to the alternative of God’s wrath raining down and effectively ending the world.          

There's No Place Like Home

        Why must our conception of apocalypse be rooted in the familiar? In today’s media and film industry, most apocalyptic movies are set in major cities. Tokyo’s fought off Godzilla, New York’s fended off just about everything from aliens (The Avengers, 2012) to contagion (I Am Legend, 2007), and countless unnamed metropolises have struggled to survive the end of days. What’s the draw of attacking these massive, familiar cities? Why do we need to make the apocalypse personal? It's only when our own fortress has been breached that we truly categorize something as utter devastation. Much like many other aspects of life, we need some element of relatability in order to empathize. Perhaps it is an unfortunate testament to the condition of human nature that we can often only conceptualize chaos if it directly relates to us. Although, that’s a relatively unfair statement. I’m not trying to argue that the majority of the country is incapable of empathizing with the apocalyptic like atrocities happening all over the world. But rather that the fear of these situations is most potent when its placed in the context of our lives. Our fear is most palpable when it’s our home and our city up on the screen and under attack.

        Furthermore, it’s critical to note that these movie settings are usually urban. There are apocalyptic movies set in the suburbs or rural areas. However, the overwhelming majority is in the city. We’re all familiar with the image of collapsed buildings, chaos in the streets, and the monster ravaging a city on fire. What is it about cities that make them the perfect setting for the apocalypse? In comparison to rural areas, cities are a prime example of human innovation. Cities are something that man created – they’re a place that took years and years of work to build. Have we thus come to understand the apocalypse as a destruction of the world we have created? Why does the destruction of nature bother us less than the devastation of our own realm? Perhaps, it’s an unconscious recognition of a direct attack on mankind and all that we have worked to create. 

Religion in film: Why?

Throughout our discussions and readings this week, we continually returned to the subtle religious symbolism that films often allude to, and so I ask; How are films and religion interconnected and what motivation do movies have to include religious symbolism? 

Movies are known to incorporate religion within their storyline.  For example, according to Professor Plate, The Matrix has many similarities to Buddhism, and Star Wars shares similarities with several different religions.  Movies can also include actual symbolism as well such as Charlotte’s Web, where the lights in the barn formed a cross. 

The reason I believe that films look to connect with religion is because it makes viewers more attached to the plotlines because they feel more personally connected with the stories being told.  Religion can be very personal for people, so seeing films mirror religious storyline can cause people to associate movie characters with religious figures.   Also, its very convenient for filmmakers to lean on religion to develop stories, as Professor Plate said in his writings, “thousands of years and thousands of cultural locations have provided contemporary filmmakers with a storehouse of grand stories that are endlessly adaptable into the audio-visual medium of film. Because myths are inevitably mashups, directors and screenwriters can cull from stories told through the ages, and often told again in ever new forms.”  Due to many religious stories being so well known and developed, it’s easy for filmmakers to draw upon these stories to redevelop as movies.

So to answer my purposed question, I feel that filmmakers interweave religious symbolism both in the plot line and in the set design and they do so both out of convenience and to allow audience members to feel more personally connected with the story they’re watching. 

 

Film and its religious-like following

As was discussed in this week's readings, audio-visual forms of media constantly tell and retell myths, much like religion. Some myths are overtly religious such as the 2014 film, Noah, and others are religiously suggestive, but not as blatant, such as Charlotte’s Web. There have been a wide ranger of biblical retellings in film, take Noah and Evan Almighty. The stories in films draw on characteristics of stories from religion. The dichotomy between good and evil, right and wrong, is a religious characteristic that films often include.

Films themselves can take on a religious quality in the way people so faithfully watch and anticipate them. For instance, viewers of Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and many more classic film series faithfully watch these movies. Much like characters in religious myths, people adore on-screen characters as well. Activities surrounding films such as these mimic activities around religion. When a new movie in a series opens, fans flock to theaters much like a Christian goes to church on Easter, or a Jew to synagogue on the High Holidays. Additionally, consider tattoos. Perhaps some of the most commonly seen tattoos are religious symbols such as crosses. People also get tattoos related to their favorite characters or moments from films. In most cases, when someone gets a tattoo, there is a deeply rooted significance as to why that person wanted that on their body. The fact that cinematic elements make the cut for many people demonstrates the religious-like following they often have.

Once Upon a Dream

Once upon a dream, Aurora sings in the woodland that she will find her prince in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. And out of this romantic, idealized fantasy, a gorgeous prince appears and begins singing back to her: hooray, true love! As the story goes, Aurora was cursed by the evil Maleficent, and on her sixteenth birthday, Aurora pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and falls into a death-like, enchanted sleep. Yet the prince defeats the evil witch-gone-dragon and with true love’s kiss, the spell is broken. “True,” heterosexual love is what saves Aurora; her father’s or fairies’ love doesn’t quite cut it. Like so many of these 1950s Disney stories, the male protagonist saves the day. Second only to Dumbo, Aurora has the second-to-least amount of speaking lines for a Disney character.¹ So she’s sweet, beautiful, and needs saving. These “family values” don’t look great in today’s society, but back in the 1950s, they reinforced the political and social structure of the day.

Today, Disney is going through what some may say as a slight identity crisis. How do you uphold Disney’s traditional values while still remaining current? This is an issue myths undergo (think of Adam and Eve modern adaptations) and film, like any myth, needs to be retold, reshaped. So Disney released Maleficent this year. Here Disney features strong female characters, including Maleficent. She is multi-faceted: neither purely good or evil. She was terribly wronged by romantic, “true love” and seeks revenge on her perpetrator. So Aurora’s father also has a character make-over, and becomes more evil as the movie goes on. Like the original, Aurora is cursed and lives in a wooden cottage, but she’s visited in dream-like adventures by Maleficent, who has watched her cursed victim grow up with somewhat loving eyes. In the end, is it the boy prince, who Aurora barely knows, who saves the day? The strong Maleficent shows a maternal, unwavering, and true love who’s power can break any curse.

As the family structure in America changes, Disney needs to spin new adaptations of family movies to remain relevant. Maleficent shows that Disney is trying to reclaim its somewhat sexist past and create more female-centered stories.      

             

       1.  http://news.moviefone.com/2014/01/27/sleeping-beauty-facts/