Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy
Modern God
Seiten
2022
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-6669-0421-5 (ISBN)
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-6669-0421-5 (ISBN)
This book analyzes how films depict God when black characters experience suffering and tragedy to elucidate how cinema often portrays a God that is considered supportive, yet who does little to mitigate suffering. This sparks theodical contemplation on the role of divinity in protecting people from the consequences of human depravity.
This book explicates how many films intersect black suffering and God-talk in ways that instantiate secular limitations to divine efficacy. The book’s concept of a modern God introduces a new method of analysis that reimagines theodical discourses as mechanisms of modern identities and filmmakers as skillful exegetes who recalibrate divine attributes to the sensemaking cadences of their contemporaries. Shayne Lee demonstrates how cinematic theodicy navigates a happy medium between affirming divine benevolence and sidelining supernatural activity and that filmic characters, like their real-world counterparts, are quite clever at triangulating rationality, faith, and tragedy. In addition to positing synergistic links between theodicy and secularity, Lee offers critical insights into cinema’s relevance to the sociology of evil by specifying how films code and narrate malevolent actions and outcomes, demarcate clear lines of distinction between victims and perpetrators, clarify societal dynamics driving inequality and oppression, and transform individual episodes of suffering into collective and memorialized identities of trauma. This book illuminates how filmic treatments of theodicy construct evil and suffering in calculated ways that connect specific acts, effects, and institutions to greater structures of meaning.
This book explicates how many films intersect black suffering and God-talk in ways that instantiate secular limitations to divine efficacy. The book’s concept of a modern God introduces a new method of analysis that reimagines theodical discourses as mechanisms of modern identities and filmmakers as skillful exegetes who recalibrate divine attributes to the sensemaking cadences of their contemporaries. Shayne Lee demonstrates how cinematic theodicy navigates a happy medium between affirming divine benevolence and sidelining supernatural activity and that filmic characters, like their real-world counterparts, are quite clever at triangulating rationality, faith, and tragedy. In addition to positing synergistic links between theodicy and secularity, Lee offers critical insights into cinema’s relevance to the sociology of evil by specifying how films code and narrate malevolent actions and outcomes, demarcate clear lines of distinction between victims and perpetrators, clarify societal dynamics driving inequality and oppression, and transform individual episodes of suffering into collective and memorialized identities of trauma. This book illuminates how filmic treatments of theodicy construct evil and suffering in calculated ways that connect specific acts, effects, and institutions to greater structures of meaning.
Shayne Lee is associate professor of sociology at the University of Houston.
Introduction
Chapter 1. Theodical Secularity
Chapter 2. Tactical Deists: Black Liberation Theology and Cinema
Chapter 3. Cinema and American Slavery
Chapter 4. Ousmane Sembène: Toward a New and Modern Africa
Chapter 5. Contemporary African-American Films
Epilogue. Africa: The New Cinematic Holocaust
Filmography
References
About the Author
| Erscheinungsdatum | 07.10.2021 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 161 x 228 mm |
| Gewicht | 526 g |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-6669-0421-X / 166690421X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-6669-0421-5 / 9781666904215 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
Mehr entdecken
aus dem Bereich
aus dem Bereich
wie KI und virtuelle Welten von uns Besitz ergreifen – und die …
Buch | Hardcover (2023)
Heyne (Verlag)
CHF 29,90
Eine Einführung
Buch | Softcover (2022)
Springer VS (Verlag)
CHF 46,15
