ReligionDispatches.org

For those still undecided about the relations between sports and religion, here are a few brief recaps from Superbowl XLIV. In no significant order:

More

My competent colleagues have collectively conspired to bring us the latest news from Caprica on an ongoing basis. So I'll leave the Capricologizing to them. But I wanted to note a couple things surrounding the show that I think fills out some of the interest in its relation to religion: its advertising and the reception of the show as a potentially religious event in itself.

The SyFy channel obviously paid a hefty sum to the New York Times and other outlets for advertising Caprica. But, er, it worked. At least for me. I'm no longer a regular, prime-time telly watcher, having become one of the millions who are perpetually two seasons behind, but thanks to little red envelopes in my mailbox I'm not totally lost. (Speaking of, I'm in the midst of season 3 of Lost, season 3 of The Wire, and season 2 of 30 Rock.)

More

One part Matrix, one part Alien, one part thinly-veiled critique of colonization, a fair share of myth and ritual, and a whole lot of CGI, James Cameron’s Avatar is quite a ride, a marvelous 3-D perceptual entanglement with another world. I have elsewhere argued that films, like religions, function to create alternative worlds for those who interact with them. There is the screen/altar which offers a version of a world, and then there are the viewers/practitioners who engage the screen and altar. These new worlds take shape somewhere in the connection between the two; not in the mind-body of the audience members, nor merely “on screen,” but in a negotiable space between.

Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo offers a delightful representation of this negotiable space when the actor named Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) steps down off the screen and enters the “real world” to hook up with Cecilia (Mia Farrow), one of the movie-goers. Cecilia has gone to the theater to seek relief from her own world, to share in another, perhaps more glamorous and trouble-free world. In Allen’s film, two worlds cross and both characters are altered because of their shared desires that transcend the boundaries of the screen. “Nonetheless,” as I state in my book:

More

Nancy Gibbs ends her August 3, Time magazine "Briefing" with a note on the impending 2011 releases of the final Harry Potter films based on The Deathly Hallows. After then, no more Harry Potter films. Oh, dear. She finishes her piece with the lingering thought: "After that, it will be up to fans to find their own excuses for making a summer night feel magical."

While "briefings" must be just that, the further implications of this comment are curious, especially as Adam Gerik's accompanying picture in Time's print version shows smiling teenagers in a theatre lobby, all dolled up Hogwarts style, for a midnight screening of The Half-Blood Prince. In other words, the implication is that summer nights "feel magical" because you can dress up in beyond-the-ordinary clothes, be with friends, and experience an audio-visual creation. For those with some sensitivity to the workings of lived religion, the term ritual must come screaming forth.

More

Charles Siebert's cover story from the July 12, 2009, New York Times Magazine, "Watching Whales Watching Us," became one of the more popular articles for the week or so following its publication. Therein, Siebert tells of his journey to Baja California to learn of new studies being conducted with the eastern Pacific gray whale. Alongside continuing human-made threats to the extinction of many whale species (whaling, navy training, etc.), this gray whale has fared better than its beleagured cousins and offers scientists many points of research.

More