Lyden, John C. New York: New York University Press,
2003. 287 + x pp. $19.00 (US). ISBN 0-814-75181-4.
[1] John C. Lyden makes a valuable
attempt to take the study of religion and film in a new direction.
Rather than uncovering religious themes, figures, or symbols
in various movies, he analyzes the "religious" way
that audiences apprehend films, based on their adherence to
or subversion of specific genre conventions. Following Clifford
Geertz, the book argues for a broad definition of religion
that avoids reducing it either to functionality and ideology
or to a set of doctrines about the transcendent (42). This
enables Lyden to analyze the content, symbolism, mood, realism,
and audience reception of film in terms of the descriptive
and normative world-picture that film creates. Much in the
same way that myth and ritual interpenetrate to produce a
narrated, believed, and practiced apprehension of reality
(as well as a narrated, believed, and practiced vision of
an ideal), filmed narratives offer audiences powerful explanations
of the way things are and the way things should be. Audience
responses measured by box office (and, to a lesser extent,
the evaluations of critics) reveal which filmic myths and
rituals resonate most strongly with Americans. Lyden can then
produce a picture of the cinematic "religion" of
the audience by describing the worldview that the films inculcate.
[2] Part I, which comprises the first
third of the book, is an extended argument for this method
of viewing film. Lyden describes and critiques the current
approaches to the study of religion and film with a literature
review of key texts in the field. He correctly points out
the limitations of religious approaches to film that merely
identify and circumscribe overt or hidden Christian narratives
and sacrificial protagonists. Similarly, theological critique
of anti-religious messages in the movies tends to become simplistic
and reactionary. What these approaches miss, according to
Lyden, is the fact that audiences are receiving all
the messages of film "religiously," not just the
ones that have something to do with what we all recognize
as religion. In this section Lyden also takes to task the
discipline of film studies for relying too heavily on ideological
criticism - tending to view all movies in terms of Marxist
dogma, for example, or reducing all heterosexual relationships
in the movies to the exploitation of women.
[3] Part II enters into "interreligious
dialogue" with seven genres of film: westerns and action
movies, gangster films, "women's films," romantic
comedies, children's films and fantasy, science fiction, and
thrillers and horror movies. In each case, Lyden narrates
a brief history of the genre along with some speculation about
the reasons for its waxing or waning popularity. Then he takes
a representative (and usually recent) sample film (or films),
describes the plot in depth, and concurrently offers analysis
of the attractiveness of its "religious" message
to audiences. Hits like Die Hard (1988), Titanic
(1997), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) make up
the bulk of the examples.
[4] Lyden's achievement is his recognition
that he must develop a specific and defensible rationale for
choosing what films to analyze. The universe of film is too
large to approach without an explicit methodology for the
selection of data points. Lyden argues that "audience
response" reveals what "filmed religions" are
significant and worthy of study - presumably because the mass
audience is receiving the message of the film and responding
in a naØve, natural fashion. In order to understand the religious
import of the film, we must see it through their eyes, not
"as scholars are wont to do" (137). In the absence
of broad anthropological or sociological data on audience
response, Lyden must rely on popularity as a measure of religious
importance, leading to repeated and largely unsupported claims
that the particular movie he is analyzing is "immensely
popular" (216), "the most successful"(194),
"a tremendous hit" (176), "extremely popular"
(183), and "among the most popular and the critically
acclaimed films of all time" (156).
[5] The flaw in this methodology is
evident. While it is defensible to claim that, in a mass medium,
impact and therefore import is based on the number of consumers,
it is dangerous to allow popularity to dictate what artistic
works we should take most seriously. Lyden is acquainted with
the discipline of film studies, as evidenced by his accurate
summary of the formalism/realism debates among twentieth-century
critics. Yet he is spooked by its claim to see what is not
immediately evident to the untrained eye. In fact, the idea
of making aesthetic judgments or analyses is entirely absent
from his book, leading to a reduction of the medium of film
to the stories it tells. The question always in the background
for the reader is: why film? If the religious nature of the
medium is entirely reducible to its narrative content, why
is Lyden not discussing popular fiction, television, or any
other set of widely distributed stories?
[6] Although Lyden's book is scholarly
in tone and organization, his methods reveal a deep distrust
of film scholarship. Religious studies is valuable, he asserts,
because it reveals the inadequacy of commonsense views of
what religion is, means, and does; but film studies is destructive
because it teaches deeper modes of apprehension, searches
for subtexts, and undercuts commonsense view of what film
means, is, and does. Despite the positive steps Lyden takes
away from easy "theological readings" of film texts,
the field of religion and film is still waiting for a book
as conversant with and appreciative of film theory and criticism
as it is of religious studies.
Donna Bowman
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, USA
donnab@mail.uca.edu
