From Publishers Weekly
The lights dim, the voices hush and the devotees prepare for a sacred, transformative experience. This scenario does not describe a ritual in a cathedral or temple, but one occurring in another religiously charged space: the cinema. Lyden, a professor of religion in Nebraska, argues that if we define "religion" by its function-what the activity does for the people who participate in it-then movie-going is the religion of our time. Movies provide the collective myths to help us deal with our cultural anxieties and hopes, and catharsis in the form of rewarded heroes and punished villains. The book can be fascinating, if a tad theoretical and academic. Its most laity-friendly sections occur in the second half, when Lyden analyzes seven film genres (westerns/action flicks, gangster movies, melodramas, romantic comedies, children's films, sci-fi and horror). He also includes detailed discussions of several films, including the Star Wars movies, When Harry Met Sally, Titanic and the Hitchcock corpus. Throughout, Lyden does not try to dissect religious themes from various films, but attempts to understand how audiences respond to them in a religious way.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“A very important book. Lyden urges respect for how films actually function for people who watch them. He lays out an insightful and compelling case for considering film-watching a religious activity. In so doing, he offers a major challenge to all those who discuss culture, religion and theology today.”
-Clive Marsh,co-editor of Explorations in Theology and Film
“John Lyden has entered into the arena of Religion and Film books with an extremely adept contender. His review of the literature on existing approaches to religion and film should be required reading by film enthusiasts and theologians alike. What his conclusions offer in terms of a new approach are solid, convincing and most promising for the future of the field.”
-Tony S. L. Michael,co-chair, Religion, Film and Visual Culture, AAR
“Lyden’s book is well-written, insightful, and especially engaging for anyone who loves movies."”
-Religious Studies Review
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“. . . offers several new perspectives on this increasingly popular and gradually more critical area. It also is wellsuited for the religious studies classroom. Lyden’s writing is clear, and he nicely describes some of the more difficult theories of religion in ways that are accessible to undergraduates. In fact, the next time I teach my course "Myth and Ritual on Film" I will assign Film as Religion because of its analogizing methods of showing how film does indeed function as religion in contemporary U.S. culture.”
-Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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“Lyden offers perceptive criticisms of some of the most influential ways of talking about myth.”
-Crisis Magazine
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