Abrams discusses three types of transgressive sexuality, adultery, cross-dressing, and homosexuality. Of course, it’s easy to see how the inclusion of the former with the latter two will be troublesome to some readers. However, Abrams is simply considering these three modes of behavior as ways in which stars and crew defied widely-accepted sexual and gender norms throughout the studio era. Abrams writes, “[…The] bohemians embodied the pleasures of the forbidden and the taboo” (4). At the same time, Abrams focuses his attention on the venues in which this transgressive behavior was often acted out: nightclubs, public Hollywood parties, private Hollywood parties, the Hollywood star’s home, and behind the scenes of Hollywood productions. Abrams contrasts coverage of these Hollywood places and events with similar accounts from locations across the country. Though these modes of transgressive behavior took place in all locations and at a variety of times, Abrams narrows his discussion of one particular mode in each location. Abrams’ book is an important contribution to the study of film history as it reveals Hollywood’s self-awareness and an eagerness on the part of many viewers and fans to participate in transgressive behavior by consuming the stories and images that Hollywood released. Abrams consults a variety of sources for his analysis of these bohemians and their behavior. He considers trade press (Photoplay, Moving Picture World), traditional print journalism, and, interestingly enough, Hollywood novels and films…that is, fictional narratives about the industry that draw from real-world parallels. One of my few concerns with Abrams’ book is his hesitation to “name names,” and by that I mean not the bohemian stars themselves but the names of the historians to which he so frequently refers, who make bold claims about the stars’ identity and sexual behavior. Far too often, I had to look back to the footnotes to see what author he was referring to. However, Abrams’ study is also important because it reveals the origins of so much of our media obsession with stars today and the value we place on sexuality. In many ways, it makes a good companion piece to Pete Wards’ Gods Behaving Badly. Read on for a further summary of the book.

Abrams’ discussion of Hollywood nightlife in the first chapter focuses on the popularity of gender-bending cross dressers, female impersonators and women in men’s clothing. Female impersonation shows were extremely popular and highly publicized until the 1940s or so. Stars from Broadway and Vaudeville made their way to Hollywood and its nightclubs. Abrams writes, “[…Female] impersonators became one of the first groups of proven performers from another entertainment field to receive contracts and star in motion pictures” (18). Stars included Karyl Norman and Julian Eltinge. The coverage of these stars and their performances, Abrams adds, “associated Hollywood nightlife with the fantasy of seeing people who defied the typical clothing style for women” (29). What is an important reminder here is just how shocking it was for women to don pants and suits. Stars like Tallulah Bankhead and Greta Garbo quite literally paved the way for more contemporary fashions. Abrams also argues that it was an influential part of lesbian subculture as well before it became mainstream (37). Abrams’ discussion of fan reaction to female impersonators also applies to women who dressed like men: “If one of their [the fans'] favorite stars was friendly with female impersonators, the reader would continue to identify with the star, thus assuming the star’s position of friend of the female impersonator” (40). One wonders how closely the decline in the popularity of female impersonation shows was linked to the arrival of World War II and the demands of “manliness” and patriotism.

In the second chapter, Abrams discusses ways in which reporters covered stars’ behavior at public Hollywood parties and movie premiers. What were they wearing? Who did they show up with? Who did the leave with? What did they say? How did they behave? Much of their behavior (that of the bohemians) was coded and the press and the studios were more than happy to revel in that coded behavior/language. Stars that form the center of this chapter include Ramon Navarro (accusations of homosexuality) and Clark Gable and Carole Lombard (two of the most notorious adulterers in Hollywood history). Surprisingly, at this time, such behavior did not rob stars of very good salaries or big-budget movies (74).

Abrams’ third chapter analyzes private Hollywood parties and the (often) illicit sexual behavior that took place there. Here, he draws heavily on novels and films about Hollywood. Abrams writes, “This perception of the Hollywood private party as a highly sexual place was widely held. […] The images [of private parties] also provided audiences the excitement of vicariously witnessing other people experience wish fulfillment” (78, 79). Chief among the scandalous parties was the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle incident in which the actor was eventually acquitted of raping and murdering Virginia Rappe. Unlike Arbuckle, who never made it back, Abrams writes, “The sexual outlaws in Hollywood private parties did not start sparks that led to significant threats to either the movie industry or to the conception of Hollywood. Instead, the images promoted the Hollywood private party as an exciting place where audience members might catch glimpses of movie stars making love in their real lives” (85). Abrams continues, “[…If] he were so inclined, a man attending a Hollywood party could leave with another man’s date. He could even leave with another woman’s date” (85). Central to his discussion in this chapter are the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young, and Rudolph Valentino and Natacha Rambova.

In Chapter 4, Abrams analyzes portrayals of and features on stars’ homes, both their features and decorations and the ways in which the stars conducted themselves while at home. The stars entertained guests and lovers of the same and opposite sexes. Here, Abrams is concerned with “chic bachelorhood,” be it of the male or female variety, and “odd bedfellow digs.” The former deals with stars who live the single life, especially those who had little concern for living with the opposite sex, or anyone of any gender for that matter. The latter concerned wealthy same-sex stars who lived together because they either loved one another’s company or were physically attracted to each other. Abrams begins the chapter with an interesting discussion of the home in American popular culture and its ability to convey gender and social norms. Hollywood homes also conveyed the bohemians’ sexuality and relationship status (121). Abrams’ discussion of Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Mercedes De Acosta, and Cary Grant and Randolph Scott‘s homes is especially telling. What is most interesting here, as in the subsequent chapter, are the ways in which female stars and behind-the-scenes crew (writers, directors, artists, etc.) earned and flaunted their wealth and fame in a male-dominated culture, even as they had to negotiate questions about their lifestyles that came from a distinctly male point-of-view.

In the fifth chapter, Abrams discusses life behind the scenes on Hollywood productions and the ways in which the bohemians (stars and crew alike) conducted themselves at the workplace. Much like nightclubs or Hollywood parties, the press and the studios would tout illicit behavior during production in the promotion of these films. Like homes, dressing rooms became places of refuge or location for “covert affairs.” Like other illicit relationships, a bohemian star often became “close” to their designers, stylists, set designers, and makeup artists. These latter technicians were often just as bohemian in their tastes and sexuality as their on-screen counterparts. Abrams adds, “Hollywood publicity materials depicted three main characteristics behind the scenes. It appeared as a place where stars lived luxuriously, where workers formed a family environment, and where a man and woman could find romance [not necessarily with each other, of course]” (165). Abrams discusses artists and crew like Orry Kelly and Dorothy Arzner at length.

Abrams concludes that these bohemians toyed with “crossing the boundaries of culturally acceptable gender and sexual interests and activities […and] associated the taboo and pleasure of experiencing the forbidden with specific places in Hollywood” (193). He also, like me, questions, the inclusion of adulterers in addition to homosexuals and cross-dressers in Hollywood’s promotion of bohemian behavior (193). Nevertheless, Abrams argues that these bohemians not only transgressed past sexual mores but have shaped current norms and practices today. He also briefly traces how portrayals of bohemians that once “praised” or “uplifted” their behavior dramatically shifted to show them as pitiful or deranged characters (196). More so than ever before, our current media provides “audiences with ever-increasing information about the romantic and sexual interests of celebrities and public figures” (197). Abrams does a most insightful job of showing us where it all began.

It doesn’t get more bohemian than this:

Lindvall and Quicke pick up where Lindvall left off in Sanctuary Cinema. Though there was something of a despairing “end” to religious (read denominational) uses of motion pictures at the close of the 1920s, Lindvall and Quicke reveal that, beginning in the 1930s, a vibrant Christian film industry slowly emerged that paralleled, in some ways, the secular Hollywood industry. However, it would always be more of an underground movement that only occasionally inserted itself into the mainstream. Lindvall and Quicke present their work with sharp insight and humor. In the process, they reveal that the American Christian relationship with pop culture at large, and film in particular, has been more complex, even within conservative denominations than might initially appear. The authors, to their credit, are also unfailingly fair to even the most conservative productions that most film and religion scholars might dismiss out of hand. This continued research is important because few, if any, scholars have, as Lindvall and Quicke write, “specifically identified the role that Protestant films have played in constructing culture” (xii).

There are several avenues through which to undertake a discussion of American Protestantism after reading Lindvall and Quicke’s book. I’d like to echo a couple of interesting points that they raise before giving a broad overview of their work. Religious filmmakers and religious audiences’ reaction to their films were influenced by political and cultural influences. Lindvall and Quicke write about the reaction to one of Rev. James K. Friedrich’s films on the good Samaritan, “As war clouds loomed, however, a screening scheduled for the White House was canceled, and finally the project was put on the shelf. The theme was out of step with the times. Who would be taught to love your enemy when he may soon have to learn to kill him” (29). Unfortunately, as it is today, such prophetic (and scandalous) Christian theology is often a victim of the surrounding culture more than it is a transformer of it.

Despite their claims to the contrary, even the most conservative denominations were (and are) influenced by the emergence and rise of cultural power of motion pictures. Moderate to liberal denominations who embraced both film-viewing and filmmaking in their worshiping lives experienced varying degrees of success. On the other hand, denominations like the Southern Baptists, who tentatively embraced motion pictures, could never be as effective at changing the surrounding culture as they hoped to be with such schizophrenic approaches to an important cultural medium. Along with a lack of financial commitment to the emerging artform, few denominations had a clear enough vision for what motion pictures could or should be to allow them to enjoy sustained filmmaking ministries. Read on for an overview of Lindvall and Quicke’s excellent book.

In Chapter One, Lindvall and Quicke set the stage for the emergence of a Christian film industry, briefly highlighting the preceding Protestant and Christian reactions to the cinema at its development that paved the way for their current focus. What is chiefly characteristic of the setting is the religious cultural divide with, simply put, some Christians in favor of the films and others opposed to them(2). Attitudes began to shift enough, however, so that a sizeable Protestant population saw value in using films in the life and work of the church. Five genres of film emerged from the heightened Christian commitment to filmmaking: biblical films, missionary films, historical & biographical films, and even dramatci films. To varying degrees, creators of each genre sought to evangelize, uplift, and even entertain their audiences. Along with impacting a host of Christian audiences, some of these films even began to influence both Hollywood productions and foreign audiences. Lindvall and Quicke write, “Research findings on motion pictures in the 1930s demonstrated that Hollywood movies–in contrast to church-made films–handicapped missionary work, especially in the Orient, where viewers could no distinguish between true and false portrayals of American life” (19).

In Chapter Two, Lindvall and Quicke highlight the work of three important Christian filmmakers whose styles and filmmaking philosophies find parallels among Christian filmmakers today. Rev. James Friedrich, Carlos Baptista, and Dr. Irwin Moon made successful, even award-winning Christian films. Friedrich’s main drive was how to “‘make the Holy Scriptures a living experience for others,’” and to that end, he spent “an inheritance of $100,000 by investing it in a nonprofit motion picture company through which he might unify Christendom by means of the visual medium” (26, 28). For his work, Friedrich is perhaps most famous for starting Cathedral Films, which ran from 1948-1964. Somewhat prophetically, Friedrich shifted box office focus from theaters to churches “‘with a ready-made audience of sixty million,” anticipating the distribution and exhibition strategies of 21st century church-based film production companies like Sherwood Pictures and Graceworks Pictures (31). Unlike the Kendricks, however, Friedrich “made it a point to use ‘secular’ talent and crews. He believed that if you wanted a good film, then you would have to use good actors regardless of religious affiliation. He defended this practice to those who argued for using only Christian crews by comparing it to the making of a new church sanctuary [...]” (32). Friedrich finds contemporary parallels among those Christians who are working within the Hollywood system trying to make aesthetically accomplished films.

Unlike Friedrich, Carlos Baptista cared less about aesthetics, privileging the message over the medium, and, in this fashion, he was much like the Kendricks, who are something of his filmmaking progeny. Lindvall and Quicke add, “Baptista strongly believed that everyone who worked on any aspect of his films must be ‘born-again’” (44). However, Baptista’s passion for motion picture evangelism is impressive, and he, unlike many of his contemporaries, anticipated the future existence of home video collections (45). Dr. Irwin Moon stands apart from Friedrich and Baptista in a number of ways. Rather than illustrating Scripture, Lindvall and Quicke write, “[...] Moon dreamed of communicating the creative truths of God by illustrating them through science and nature” (46-47). It’s almost impossible to think of a contemporary example of Dr. Moon, whose “Sermons from Science,” seem so far removed from anything that current Christian filmmakers are producing. Unlike many Christian productions today, Lindvall and Quicke note that, by 1986, “a total of thirty-nine [of his] educational films had won twenty-seven national and international awards, plus the Eastman Kodak Gold Medal Award was presented to Irwin Moon for ‘the advancement of the educational process through the many unique uses of the art of the motion picture’” (54). Dr. Moon also adapted his science films for both congregation and classroom use, exhibiting a kind of intellectual ecumenism that is often lacking today (53).

In Chapters Three and Four, Lindvall and Quicke outline denominational efforts at film production, distribution and exhibition from the ’30s to ’80s. Chapter 3 covers Methodist and Ecumenical films while Chapter 4 focuses on “dissenting” images from Lutherans to Baptists to Episcopalians. Again, the ways in which these denominations did or did not cooperate with secular producers says much about their approach to the surrounding culture. Methodists (65) and Lutherans (96) did, whereas Baptists didn’t. Methodists were wary of evangelical films (64), whereas this proved to be the bulk of Baptist output. One of the most notable ecumenical efforts was the Protestant Film Commission, which “coordinated the labors of nineteen religious denominations and thirteen leading interdenominational agencies. Its twofold purpose was to try to produce some high-quality dramatic and documentary Christian 16mm films for distribution to various churches, schools, and community groups, and to stimulate and encourage the production of films with positive religious themes from the Hollywood film industry” (81).

In Chapters Five and Six, Lindvall and Quicke turn their attention to, to put it one way, more industrial efforts at Christian filmmaking. Here, Christians cooperated with one another to create production studios and distribution networks that more closely paralleled their secular counterparts. These companies and their output are with us yet and perhaps even a few of them are more familiar to a larger portion of Lindvall and Quicke’s potential readers. Companies include Family Films, World Vision, Gospel Films, Focus on the Family, World Wide Pictures, and Gateway Films. The latter two are perhaps the most popular, the former being Billy Graham’s filmmaking ministry and the latter for its production of The Cross and the Switchblade.

Thankfully Lindvall and Quicke devote an entire chapter to Mark IV Pictures and their apocalypse-themed films that have inspired a host of sacred and secular releases. Lindvall and Quicke tread more lightly through these films than some of their peers, most notably Heather Hendershot. While Hendershot is more critical of their theology, Lindvall and Quick prove more behind-the-scenes information on how these films came to be. In the next chapter, Lindvall and Quicke discuss less fearful cinematic evangelism efforts with the likes of Ken Anderson and Ray Carlson attempting to create gospel films in global contexts. Of course, nothing compares to The Jesus Film (featured image above), which has an estimated viewership of over 6 billion and boasts over 225 million conversions to Christ. At the conclusion of this chapter, Lindvall and Quicke also discuss a little-known film, Karunamayudu/Man of Mercy, a Jesus film in an Indian context (you can see a YouTube version of the film below).

In their conclusion, Lindvall and Quicke highlight a brief renaissance in Christian film production with so many young, talented, and promising Christian filmmakers attending traditional film schools like those at NYU, USC, or UCLA, and attempting to create less explicitly religious (though by no means less theological) productions that break the mold of their more didactic predecessors. Unfortunately, many Christian viewers are hesitant to embrace these films, which, perhaps explains the reason why so many talented Christian filmmakers have moved into secular Hollywood to work with more accomplished colleagues. Lindvall and Quicke point to this reality as a source of future research. Here’s hoping they get to work on that book sooner than later.

Check out a couple of videos below. The first is a YouTube version of Karunamayudu and the second is a sample of one of Dr. Moon’s science films.

The strength of Ward’s book, in my opinion, is that he takes seriously an often reviled aspect of pop culture, celebrity. In what seems like a vacuous world, Ward uncovers several important elements that shed light on changes in and expressions of religion in the twenty-first century. Ward doesn’t look at celebrity culture (stars, fans, adoration, etc.) as religion explicitly but rather refers to it as a para-religion (more on this below). I think Ward makes great points about the differences between celebrity culture and religion which shed light on both. However, I almost feel as if he protests too much. Celebrity culture, while never fulfilling every requirement of one specific definition of religion, does parallel with so many aspects of various definitions of religion that it in many ways it seems appropriate to call it a new religion of its own and dismiss with the “para-” or “kind of like” modifiers.

What is sorely lacking from Ward’s work is any sort of research or look into celebrities’ fan bases…where and how they interact (Facebook, message boards, conventions, etc.)…and how this might lend some formality or organizational structure to a culture that, he argues, lacks it. He also fails to consider the ways in which religion frequently fails to live up to its higher standards and becomes just as corrupt, shallow, and money- and image-obsessed as celebrity culture. While he is convinced that meaning-making takes place vis-a-vis celebrity culture, he argues that it is nowhere near as serious as traditional religious meaning making or the work of religious studies scholars. I would argue that this is what is so attractive to so many fans of celebrity culture…it’s ability to be simultaneously serious and silly. Nevertheless, Ward’s observations of the role of celebrities in pop culture and fans’ adoration of them speaks volumes about what it means to be human and, moreover, spiritual and religious in today’s world. Read on for an overview of his book and arguments.

Ward’s discussion of what celebrities do is as compelling as his debate of whether or not celebrity culture is a religion or not. Celebrities do not exist in a vacuum…they are made by both the media and the public. Celebrities stoke a conversation that spreads beyond the latest fashion, who they’re sleeping with, or what box office bomb they starred in. Ward writes, “[...At] root we are being drawn into a conversation about what we do and do not value” (2). He continues, “Celebrities matter not because of who they are but because of what they represent. [...] In fact, they mediate a range of possible ways of being human” (3).

The first and most obvious way in which celebrity functions as religion is through the worship of celebrities. Lest we think this is not the worship of some “immortal deity,” consider the continued pilgrimages to Graceland, the endless tributes to Michael Jackson (for gods’ sake one of them is called “The Immortal World Tour”), or the memorial to Princess Diana. In life, as in death, celebrities serve a divine function as Ward writes, “So celebrities are ‘deities’ only to the extent that they are carrying the projected identifications of fans” (14). While Ward claims that this identification lacks formal (read congregational) structure, he fails to examine ways in which groups congregate and participate in shared meaning-making in a digitally-mediated world. Some of this seems to flow from his limiting understanding of social relationships. Ward seems to me like he would be in the “Facebook connections aren’t real connections” camp. He argues that fans’ identifications and relationships with celebrities aren’t really real because the fan and the star have never met. Of course, we have to ask if an evangelical Christian’s “personal relationship with Jesus” is any more real. What social media and changing forms of communication are forcing us to do is to re-define what constitutes real relationship and is already changing the relationships between fans and celebrities.

This cover of Hello! magazine perfectly embodies Ward's understanding of how fans' make meaning with celebrities.

In the second chapter, Ward talks about the processes by which celebrities are represented to their fans and the world. We know celebrities because of constant media exposure, but we also know that we know celebrities and that they are in fact fabricated. But we still attach meaning to them in the process by the ways in which we view and “interact” with them. Like theological and religious beliefs, these meanings change across times and locations. All of these, while initiated by the media eventually spin out of the media’s control and morph into what fans need or want. As a result, we could see celebrity meaning-making as far more akin to religious meaning making that it might initially appear.

The third section is the crux of Ward’s book in which he stakes his claim that celebrity culture is not religion but a para-religion. In this chapter, he highlights traditional definitions of religion from essentialist, functionalist or phenomenological perspectives from the likes of Durkheim, Geertz, and Eliade (for example) and describes how celebrity culture both parallels and diverges from them. Of the entire book, this is the chapter that would be great reading for introduction to religion courses in both the classroom and the congregation. One of the more interesting scholarly engagements Ward undertakes is with John Caputo who is “examining the possibility of ‘theology’ that is carried in popular culture in a way that is somehow disconnected from formal religious tradition” (77). Here, I hear echoes of Peter Rollins’ latest book, Insurrection.

My frustrations with Ward’s unwillingness to take that small final step and just call celebrity culture a religion aside, there are elements of his para-religion definition that I find interesting and helpful. He writes, “In fact, the treatment of celebrity culture as a religious tradition, or indeed as a replacement for religious tradition, does not simply do a disservice to religion–it may well also run the risk not only of misrepresenting the lived experience of celebrity worship but of failing to see the religious significance of celebrity” (80). Here, he does leave space for fans to speak for themselves and to deny the religious nature of their celebrity worship…although I would imagine many of them would be of the “spiritual but not religious” set. Later, Ward quotes Marcel Cobussen who argues that “para” is a “dangerous prefix,” which defies “rules of identity, stability, and centricity” (80). One wonders if we are not engaged always in “para-theology” in our struggles to talk about the Divine.

The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain ensures a type of immortality for one of the most famous celebrities of all time.

If celebrities are in a sense demigods, Ward takes chapter four to explain what kind of gods they are…which again is far more reflective of us than they are of divinity. Celebrities embody what Ward sees as a transition from the traditional transcendental other focus of religion to the contemporary tendency to locate the divine in the sacred self (be that individual or collective). Of course, divine celebrities are graven images, self-centered, fallible, ordinary, diverse (polytheistic), sexy, saints, imperfect, powerless, and the like. Ultimately, Ward writes, “The theological in celebrity culture represents our conflicted and complex self clothed in the metaphors of the divine and reflected back to us. [...] Celebrity worship combines the sacred and the profane” (107). While most of these are negative connotations, they do (or should) force us to re-consider the ways we traditionally talk about God or the Divine.

Finally, Ward devotes chapter five to recurring theological themes that surface in celebrity culture. These are familiar: judgement, sin, fall, redemption, heaven, fidelity, apotheosis, incarnation, etc. The most interesting feature, however, might be the act of judging which, implicitly, reveals what we expect from our celebrities (and ourselves) and what we value in contemporary society. Believe it or not, fans’ obsession with celebrities most often, Ward argues, signifies a desire for family and stability. Ward concludes that celebrity culture and religious studies stand apart from studies of film and religion or popular music and religion because it is trashier and therefore generates moral judgement, which is itself a religious or theological act.

Mad Men: Dream Come True TV is really a mixed bag of essays. I found some to be a bit convoluted and direction-less while others were most informative. The last two sections of the book, which cover race, gender, and politics, will be of interest, I would imagine, to most visitors to this site. Fans of the series will no doubt flock to the first two essays that offer the most behind-the-scenes perspectives on the show. If anything, the essays collected here remind us why good television matters and why we should care about and watch it so closely. Whether at an ad agency in 1960s New York or on an intergalactic battleship, the drama of good television is, more often than not, more about us than it is the objects on the screen. As Edgerton points out in his introduction to the book, “[The characters in Mad Men] are merely an earlier, confused and conflicted version of us, trying to make the best of a future that is unfolding before them at breakneck speed” (xxvii). The brilliance of Mad Men, according to many of these contributors, is that it simultaneously portrays and critiques a seemingly distant time while showing us that we have much farther to go to get to where we already think we are. A brief summary of the book follows.

In a Foreword, Introduction, and fifteen essays, the contributors to this collection cover the series from a wide array of perspectives, all bunched into five larger themes. In the first, “Industry and Authorship,” Edgerton discusses the production history of Mad Men…how the series came to be. Brian Rose interviews executive producer Scott Hornbacher on both the birth of the series and the day-to-day, or episode-to-episode, work on it. Finally, Ron Simon puts, or reflects on, Don Draper in conversation with Bob Dylan and George Lois.

The second section addresses visual and aural style and their influences on the series. Jeremy G. Butler discusses the series’ style and the ways in which it compares to other popular ’60s fare like The Apartment or Ben-Hur. Tim Anderson analyzes the ways in which music and sound critique the idealism of the series and the time in which it is set. Finally, Maurice Yacowar, in brilliant fashion, extends this study to consider how moments of silence in particular episodes continues this critique. Yacowar observes, “If our awareness makes us feel superior to the characters we fall into Weiner’s trap. For it is his advertising men’s sense of superiority [...] that renders them hollow. These suggestive silences draw on our privileged knowledge and pull us into Weiner’s satire” (86).

The third section, “Narrative Dynamics and Genealogy,” places the series in historical context in relation to its structure and development. Horace Newcomb considers the role that television plays within the series and, by extension, in our own lives. Sean O’Sullivan points to the serial nature of the series and its relation to other serialized narratives and even The Odyssey. O’Sullivan realizes that, much like Yacowar’s discussion of silence, the moments of nothingness in between each season and the time that elapses in the narrative have implications for how we view the events that take place in each episode.  David Lavery discusses the poetic nature of the series and Frank O’Hara‘s influence on the ’60s, the series, and series creator Matthew Weiner.

In the fourth section, contributors mine the rich sexual politics and gender themes in Mad Men. In this section, contributors offer insightful essays that shed light on the brilliance of the series but that also reveal conflicting interpretations of the series. Mimi White analyzes the series’ “Mad Women” and argues that they are so for completely different, and sometimes self-imposed, reasons. Mary Beth Haralovich discusses the ways in which Mad Men‘s women characters open up conversations about feminism and how they can bridge the three different waves of it. Finally, Kim Akass and Janet McCabe point to the opportunities for and limitations on “the working girl” in Mad Men, the ’60s, and our world today.

Finally, three contributors focus on “Cultural Memory and the American Dream.” William Siska shows how the “boyish” nature of the men in Mad Men is a critique of American capitalism and consumerism as well as an embodiment of the tension between “gemeinschaft” and “gesellschaft.” Allison Perlman extends her analysis beyond the series, placing it in conversation with “paratexts” like DVD featurettes and accompanying documentaries about race and gender in American history to look at the ways in which the series offers a revisionist history of racism in America while simultaneously undermining that history. David Marc considers the series to be a “Roots Tale of the Information Age” and analyzes it in the context of broadcast advertising, the birth of the radio, and McLuhan‘s observations on advertising.

In Insurrection, Rollins undertakes what he calls “pyro-theology” in an effort to burn away theological chaff and religion itself. He is introducing us to and calling us toward a post-religious Christian experience. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Rollins is not concerned with getting back to the “glory days” of the Christian faith (if indeed there ever were any). Rollins argues that the church should ever be in flux, responding in love to the time and place in which it finds itself. Attempts to re-enact the “early church,” for example, are flawed because that model was appropriate for that time and place. What Rollins desperately wants his audience to return to and ground their experiences of Christianity in are the two central elements of the Christian story, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

Rollins bemoans the fact that the contemporary church, as most people know it, has de-scandalized the Crucifixion of Jesus and robbed it of one of its key messages. In the Crucifixion, Rollins argues, we have both the death of religion and the absence of God. These are earth-shattering and doubt inducing experiences that most Christians gloss over or rush past to bask in the (re)assurance of Jesus’ Resurrection. Rollins’ assumption of religion, which could certainly be up for debate, is that religion, by nature, cannot co-exist with doubt. As a result, most of our religious communities, in their lived expressions of faith (liturgy, rituals, etc.) do not make space for expressions of doubt, confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, and the like. Rollins boldly claims that the intellectual certainty that some expressions of religion require is antithetical to the message of the Crucifixion, which is itself a moment of doubt and fear. Rollins writes, “It is only when we see the Crucifixion as the moment where God loses everything that we begin to glimpse the true theological significance of the event. What we witness here is a form of atheism: not intellectual [...] but a felt loss of God” (21). He continues, “[...A] properly Christological reflection should lead us to see the felt experience of God’s absence as the fundamental way of entering into the presence of God” (24).

Rollins claims that we cannot rightly understand the Crucifixion without the Resurrection, but at the same time, we cannot understand the latter without the former. As such, the Resurrection is not a white-washing of the Crucifixion or a means by which we simply overcome the fears and pains of life, but a means of living with them. The Resurrection is life- and world-affirming, an invitation to turn towards the world in love, not despite its blemishes but because of them. For it is in the act of loving, Rollins argues, that we experience God, who is not an object to be pursued and obtained but the very act of loving itself. The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus are events that took place over 2,000 years ago, however, they are also events that are present here and now. Rollins asserts that these are ways of being that we are to enact here and now if we are to experience the Kingdom of God and eternal life. Rollins writes, “[...The] New Testament writers are clear that they are not speaking of the prolonging of our present life but rather about our entry into an utterly new mode of life, one that starts right here, right now. Eternal life is thus fundamentally a transformation in the very way that we exist in the present” (111). Part of the beauty and hope of this message is that we are called and allowed to take responsibility for our own actions and for shaping our own destinies and the future of our world.

The parables that Rollins includes at the beginning of each chapter make his book accessible; however, his discussion and arguments require some deeper engagement on the part of the reader. Few books have had me leaning forward in anticipation of where the author was going quite like this one. Rollins moves back and forth between Scripture, Bonhoeffer, and Batman with graceful ease. Insurrection is something that every person of faith (or none at all) should read and re-read. I imagine that Rollins will have his “enemies,” like all prophets do. However, they will most likely come from the ranks of the religious professionals, those fundamentalists, be they liberal or conservative, who benefit from having a firm grasp on truth. Rollins seems to be calling out the liberal theological establishment when he writes about “a new kind of fundamentalism, one that is rarely noticed or talked about [...], a fundamentalism that continues to operate in the very place where it is directly ridiculed and rejected” (51).

The implications for enacting Insurrection in our communities of faith are nearly endless because Rollins is not giving us a twelve-step checklist, but is rather calling us to use our imaginations…to think creatively and liberatingly about how we move through our world. He does claim that pastors should endeavor to express doubts, fears, and uncertainties from the pulpit and that churches should employ elements in music and liturgy that allow for expressions of those feelings. What Rollins understands about pop culture that so many churches and ministers fail to grasp is that it is so appealing to so many people because through film,s, television, music, etc., they see their own experiences played out before them. Lady Gaga, for example, is so threatening to the church because these are the spaces that she inhabits with her music.

There are countless questions that remain after reading Insurrection…as there should be. Chief among them would be where we go from here. Other questions center on Christian identity and the necessity of it. One thing is certain, enacting Insurrection is not easy and it will be painful. But for a fearful and broken world, it seems to be one of the most hopeful and healing ways forward.

Here’s a video of Rob Bell talking with Rollins about pyro-theology:

It was a bit of kismet that Ryan handed me John S. McClure’s Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention to be reviewed just before I headed off to the Academy of Homiletics meeting in Austin, Texas last weekend. McClure is a professor of homiletics at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a deft theorist on the intersection of popular culture, theology, and preaching. Between bouts of reading the book while seated among the eclectic citizens of Austin on the city’s public transportation system, I was able to talk with John during breaks in the conference. On the closing Saturday, we even had a moment to sit down for a brief one-on-one to get the inside scoop on this fascinating new technique for doing theology.

As a musician and recording studio owner in Nashville (in addition to his “day gig” as a professor) McClure is attuned to the way revolutionary changes in technology have changed the production of music. With computer-based audio editing software, the digital availability of vast libraries of songs, loops, and samples, and the rising popularity of practices like musical mashups (combining songs from different genres using a common beat) songwriting has become a collaborative process of mixture and collage.

In our conversation, McClure contrasts this radical shift in the manipulation of sound-based media to his early days working in music studios: “We were cutting tape with razor blades. Using samples, stretching a sound, or adding beats per minute would have taken days of work. What the average musician has on their home computer is hundreds of times more powerful than the tools a professional producer would have had in the 1960’s.”

In our conversation, McClure pointed out that music recording and theological education have much in common these days, as both are experiencing a “radical decentering of the industry.” Doing music no longer requires the cultural gatekeepers of recording studios and record labels, just as doing theology no longer requires the gatekeepers of seminaries and churches. With this in mind, “There has to be quantum cultural shift that accompanies these changes”— changes in technology and availability of information.

In Mashup Religion, McClure begins with the still-necessary, but familiar to our readers, defense of using popular culture as a text for theological reflection: “For many people in developed nations, the religious life takes place at the intersection between religious traditions, religious or quasi-religious ideologies, and popular culture.” Using Tillich’s language of religion as “ultimate concern,” McClure suggests that music, as an aural and kinesthetic medium, often reaches listeners at a deeper level of ultimate concern than speech. Songwriters in particular have become adept at crystallizing the essential elements of human living— states of love, loneliness, loss, joy, anger, and cycles of death and rebirth. As McClure writes, “For many, the song-maker is a kind of mediator or priest who uses new technologies of recording and mass media to produce meanings, worldviews, and moral soundscapes for our lives.”

McClure’s thesis is that like songwriters, theologians must take cues from changes in technology and learn to “mashup” their writing, teaching, and preaching. McClure spells out a methodology of “tracking” theological writing or preaching along the lines of a four-track recording, including the “tracks” of theology, scripture, culture, and message (which has to do with the arrangement or structure of the theology being presented). Furthermore, he suggests “sampling” or “looping”—a kind of theological bricolage that takes ideas from multiple theological sources and brings them into the mix. Finally, in “mashing up” a theological argument, one may begin to combine contrasting styles of theology—a fundamentalist piece with a liberationist piece, or a neo-orthodox piece with a classic liberal Christian argument. This would also allow for collaboration—more than one contributor working on a single theological piece of writing or teaching. McClure offers case studies of how this process might work in the composition of a sermon, as well as helpful charts and organizational ideas for those of us who have trouble keeping our tracks synced and our loops in line.

Most interesting from our Pop Theology standpoint are some of the ways McClure experiments with this style of doing theology in relation to popular music. He explores the contrasting (progressive/conservative) patriotic theologies of John Mellencamp and Toby Keith. He writes about Johnny Cash’s role as prophetic truth-teller about human troubles of poverty, addiction and crime. He explains Madonna and Sinead O’Connor’s roles as practitioners of an erotic theology of love. He reaches similar conclusions to my review of Eminem about the rapper’s simultaneous talent for capturing a generation’s theology of negation and aggravating tendency to add to that social nihilism through his own homophobic and misogynistic lyrics. In exploring these artists, McClure draws on theologians as wide-ranging as Barth, Tillich, Calvin, Julian of Norwich, Marjorie Suchocki, Tom Beaudoin, and Kelton Cobb.

McClure describes this system of bricolage and appropriation as “post-semiotic,” by which I think he means outside the usual sequential and linguistic structures of theology. I wonder, though, if he has not explored the full implications of what he is proposing in terms of mixture of different forms of media. There is still an assumption in Mashup Religion that theologians will continue with word-based structures of meaning, whether through writing or speaking. This revolution of media and mashup, however, has not just happened in music production. The media are pushing us to compose hybrid constructions of words, sounds, and images. The average YouTube video is more semiotically complex (and more relevant to culture) than most sermons—combining verbal, musical, and visual/filmmaking language into seamless multimedia messages. In this sense, McClure’s book may be a good first step in providing theory behind postmodern development of theological communication. But if the “medium is the message,” the message of theology is going to have to use the media more creatively if it is going to speak to contemporary culture.

Nevertheless, McClure’s book is an exciting and challenging read. I sense in the book and in my conversations with him a mind that is continually exploring the contours of culture, looking to make theology more real and more relevant. McClure is someone who lives and breathes his faith, and is interested in finding theological explanations not just for Jesus Christ, but for Jay-Z and J-Lo. In this regard, those of us who look for spiritual meaning not just in the elevated culture of the church, but in the culture of everyday life, have found a fellow traveler.

For more on Mashup Religion, see John McClure’s Web site: http://mashupreligion.blogspot.com/

Of course, many zombie lovers might roll their eyes as academics “ruin” the objects of their affection. It’s evident, however, that the contributors here are zombie fans too. They’re damn smart too. The collected essays do not read as disjointed reflection on a common theme, like so many academic pop culture texts do, but actually shed light on, support, or disagree with each other. In a very real way, the book reads like a panel discussion on zombies. The contributors reveal the multiple identities of and roles that zombies play throughout history and in contemporary popular culture. The zombies we know today, or many of them, would be unrecognizable to audiences that witnessed their origins in Haitian voodoo tales and practices. Despite their differences, many contemporary zombies still serve similar socio-political, economic roles that critique power(lessness), capitalism, racism and a host of other phenomena. The contributors here sharpen their focus to heighten the reality that, as W. Scott Poole reveals in Monsters in America, the victim and the violator run to zombies, ironically, to make sense of unsettling experiences. I couldn’t recommend Better Off Dead more strongly as a cornerstone text that will, hopefully, support a more extensive area of research, zombie studies. Read on for further coverage of the book’s highlights.

Christie and Lauro order their essays into three parts built around the “three most recognizable stages of twentieth- and twenty-first-century zombie configurations: the classic mindless corpse [from Haitian folklore to the United States], the relentless instinct-driven newly dead [the classical horror zombie from the 1950s to late 1970s], and the millenial voracious and fast-moving predator” (2). Each section features an introduction that outlines the contributors’ essays and how they both fit together and contribute to the broader theme of the book. In her essay, “They are not men…they are dead bodies!”: From Cannibal to Zombie and Back Again,” Chera Kee traces the origins of zombies to Haitian voodoo and briefly follows its (d)evolution in American history. This essay most closely parallels Poole’s discussion of the use of monsters to conceptualize “the Other.” As we will see later, because of the zombie’s (un)familiarity (it is both us and not us), this process is porous to be sure. In his essay, “We are the mirror of your fears”: Haitian Identity and Zombification,” Franck Degoul keeps his focus on the Haitian context of origin but also reveals how contemporary zombifications harken back to those very origins. Richard Hand examines an often-ignored aspect of pop culture, radio dramas, and uncovers some fascinating zombie narratives there that contain a wide array of the living dead. Finally, in his essay, “The Zombie as Other: Mortality and the Monstrous in the Post-Nuclear Age,” Kevin Boon attempts to categorize zombies and finds nine classifications: zombie drone, zombie ghoul, tech zombie, bio zombie, zombie channel, psychological zombie, cultural zombie, zombie ghost, and zombie ruse” (57-60). He also notes the shift from faith in God to faith in science that impacts the portrayal of zombies and, most often, the source of the zombie apocalypse (from Divine punishment to biological hazard).

"On the Beach" introduces what Nick Muntean calls "trauma zombies."

The second section covers the ways in which zombies took on a more autonomous nature, no longer serving the will of a controlling force or enslaver. While most observers and scholars turn to George Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead as the historical zombie hinge, Christie actually considers Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend to be a foundational zombie text, even though he employs vampires. Here, she posits the idea that humanity might be the “villainous” roadblock in evolution, delaying the liberating (?) zombie apocalypse. She writes, “Robert Neville [one of the last survivors] is legend because he is the single largest threat to a new society, one that has superseded humanity.” Christie argues that many readers (viewers) will miss this part because they “focus solely on the restoration of the human status quo rather than considering the potential for advancement in both mind and body that are often the focus of post-humanist considerations” (68). Also humans and zombies become harder to define. In his essay, “Nuclear Death and Radical Hope in Dawn of the Dead and On the Beach,” Nick Muntean provides an insightful viewing and comparison of these two films, arguing boldly that On the Beach (1959) is, in fact, a zombie film as its living dead nuclear survivors shuffle around waiting for their actual deaths. The film introduces what Muntean calls “trauma zombies,” whose “psychic annihilation precedes their physical destruction [...].” As a result, Muntean adds, “death becomes a state that we inhabit within our own earthly vessels, something we become, rather than somewhere we go” (82, 83). Muntean also considers the real world zombies, Musselmanner and hibakusha that we have seen. Steven Zani and Kevin Meaux discuss the, perhaps, less familiar filmmaker Lucio Fulci and the ways in which his zombie films re-define or complicate zombie identity by refusing to explain the origin of the zombie plague or by giving contradictory explanations for it. Unlike so many other zombie filmmakers, Fulci allows an essentially unbelievable and inexplicable event remain undefinable. In her essay, “Imitations of Life: Zombies and the Suburban Gothic,” Bernice Murphy discusses the migration of zombies to the suburbs in films like Fido and The Stepford Wives. In “All Dark Inside: Dehumanization and Zombification in Postmodern Cinema,” Sorcha Ni Fhlainn examines war films like Full Metal Jacket (1987), Universal Soldier (1992), Platoon(1986) and others to reveal the ways in which militaries necessitate zombification. Fhlainn’s chapter is a “study of personalized horrors, dehumanization, and violence that targets others and the self, which psychologically alters, damages, and annihilates the soldier, and depicts them, subtly or overtly, as zombified bodies” (140).

Zombie walks embody (r)evolutionary potential.

In the final section, the contributors consider the myriad ways in which the zombie genre is perfectly suited for “future” questions. Questions of identity, art, life, slacker culture arise in contemporary zombie films. Lynn Pifer studies the ways in which the plot of Shaun of the Dead (2004) affirm intentional slacker culture and critiques capitalism and work for work’s sake. In its uniquely humorous way, Pifer writes, “[...] Shaun of the Dead‘s zombies reveal and warn against the deadening effects of modern life” (165). Peter Dendle considers the ways in which the zombie genre expresses fears of and escapism for the millenial generation. It’s an interesting relationship, Dendle writes, “between history’s least energetic monster and history’s most energetic generation” (181). Margo Collins and Elson Bond offer an in-depth reading of Max Brooks’ World War Z and “funny” zombies like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for their hopefulness in horrific situations. Finally, Sarah Juliet Lauro, in her concluding chapter, “Playing Dead: Zombies Invade Performance Art…and Your Neighborhood,” and Afterword reflects on the role of zombies in performance art and the spreading phenomenon of zombie walks and the ways in which zombie narratives have infiltrated the broader culture and speculates on an ecological zombie future for the genre. She also recognizes that though devoid of power or effectiveness, zombie walks represent the potential for (r)evolution in our networked culture.

Be an intellectual old school zombie and do as I command: read this book!

The contributors to Triumph of the Walking Dead cover the series from about every conceivable angle. In a way, the collection reminds me of those critical reactions to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ like Mel Gibson’s Bible, Re-Viewing The Passion, or After The Passion is Gone, although with less thematic structure. The most entertaining essays come from fans of the series who are creators of zombie content in their own way. Scott Kenemore‘s “A Zombie Among Men” considers the superiority of zombies over humans and how Rick Grimes survives (so well) because he embraces the way of the zombie. Kenemore writes, “For humans to survive in the apocalyptic wasteland, they must become killers–at least of zombies and probably also of other humans. That is, there are no longer any innocents. Nobody who has made it this far has done so without blood on his or her hands” (193). Rick recognizes this more clearly (and quickly) than anyone else.

From a pop theology perspective, the most interesting essays cover morality, meaning(lessness), personhood, race and gender, and redemption. In his essay, “Take Me to Your Leader,” Jonathan Maberry examines post-zombie morality through Rick’s position of leadership among the survivors. The most fitting conclusion, it seems, is to abandon all concerns of (im)morality because existence in this world requires amorality. Craig Fischer‘s “Meaninglessness: Cause and Desire in The Birds, Shaun of the Dead, and The Walking Dead,” offers a brief but fairly brilliant comparison of the three. Examining the “cause ” of the apocalyptic events of each film and the comic book series sheds informative light on the others. While they may all be related, in varying ways, to sexual desire, they could just as easily all be meaningless. Fischer makes a great case for Hitchcock’s The Birds as a “proto-zombie film” (69).

Brendan Riley, in “Zombie People: The Complicated Nature of Personhood in The Walking Dead,” argues that the book and television series are so popular (and, by extension, the entire zombie genre) because they provide a perfect avenue through which to discuss personhood, identity, and humanness. Riley draws attention to the “situated nature of our identities” and how they change as we are faced with changing realities (83). In the series, the survivors and zombies represent different states or stages of personhood. In her essay, “No Clean Slate,” Kay Steiger addresses the critiques of The Walking Dead from race and gender perspectives and, while affirming some of them, argues (though perhaps not strongly enough) that Kirkman might be up to something different by employing racist and sexist characters in his zombie narrative. Rather than “affirming” racist or sexist positions, by including them in this post-apocalyptic setting, Kirkman shows how deeply entrenched they are in the human experience. The apocalypse doesn’t, unfortunately, re-set humanity as racism and sexism survive even as the limited number of survivors dwindles on a daily basis. This is yet another explanation for zombie superiority.

Finally, Kim Paffenroth (a co-editor of an upcoming collection of essays on theology and the undead) considers the (potentially) redemptive acts of the survivors in Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse. He argues that Kirkman’s narrative is more optimistic than Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) because, for one reason, family (both nuclear and extended) plays a more morally valuable role in the former. Love, against all odds and often fleeting but never futile, serves powerful, salvific roles in Kirkman’s series.

Triumph of the Walking Dead includes a handful of other essays that cover the series from perspectives on comic book history, violence, novel writing, science, mythology, and objectivism. This is no meaty text, but there is enough meat here to whet a zombie lover’s appetite and to spark conversations about these important themes. The contributors do prove that zombie narratives, and especially The Walking Dead, deserve our critical attention and have much to contribute to our parallel “real world” discussions of life-giving…and life-draining…issues.

One of my concerns here is that the book will be read and presented as a historical reflection on religion and pop culture, when it is really about deep metaphysical issues and religious questions as these are addressed through pop culture. [...My] authors and artists (and I through them) make [strong claims] about the nature of consciousness, the imagination, the paranormal, the nature of time, etc. What I am really going after here is “materialism” and “scientism.”

Readers can definitely think of Mutants and Mystics as a history of religion and popular culture, but to simply stop there would be doing the book and the reader a great disservice. In his book, Kripal shows how religious, paranormal, and mystical experiences that span centuries influence the creators of some of the most celebrated sci-fi and superhero comic series in history. At the same time, however, he demands that the reader take these events seriously (no easy task) in order to ask tough questions about reality and the (im)possible. What Kripal uncovers, broadly speaking, is a Super-Story composed of seven mythemes that organize these writers’ and artists’ experiences, the sci-fi and comic series they create, and, to an extent, our own experiences.

Kripal’s seven mythemes (which find parallels in other myth studies) include Divinization/Demonization, Orientation, Alienation, Radiation, Mutation, Realization, and Authorization. I’ll try to sum these up as quickly as possible. Divinization/Demonization is the process by which mythology and religion order society through belief systems, narratives, morals, etc. Orientation is the process by which humans make sense of that relationship, most often through the creation of “somewhere else,” i.e. heaven, hell, parallel universes, or a galaxy far, far away. Alienation, as a result of modern science, has given the “lie” to many of those stories. Radiation is the recognition of the “cosmic potential of matter itself,” which can either liberate or destroy us. Mutation is the awareness of the evolutionary nature of all of life and that humanity itself is “a transitional or temporary form.” Realization is the act of recognizing that this process of evolution is being authored by external forces (culture, family, faith, etc.). For Kripal this might also involve the awareness of paranormal influences as well. Finally, Authorization is the process by which we take control of our story and begin writing it ourselves. These aren’t necessarily a progressive series of events but weave in and around and through each other. At least I think this is what Kripal has set out for us…I’m still trying to work it all out.

Few images reveal the influence of mysticism on contemporary popular culture as this image of a meditating Magneto from The Uncanny X-Men.

For the purpose of this response, I am particularly interested in three elements of Kirpal’s work, Realization, Authorization, and his willingness to take seriously events that so many people often dismiss as crazy, all of which have implications for communities of faith and individual believers. Many of us have experienced moments of Realization or Authorization in our own lives, albeit in less paranormal fashion than many of Kripal’s subjects. We know those moments of finding out what we have been told all our lives is simply not true. We know what it is like to be controlled by family, friends, religion, advertising, or the government. The question that Kripal implicitly asks us to consider is what to do when we experience those moments. How do we break free from those controlling forces? How do we, with integrity, live and write our own stories? In other words, how do we practice Kripal’s act of Authorization?

Kripal’s Super-Story got me to thinking about Christianity and how it can provide an alternate story to free us from the stories that imprison us here and now. At its best, Christianity has frequently done this. At its worst, however, it has proven to be the very force that imprisons people. Kripal writes, “[...You] can’t think yourself out of the story you are caught in with the rules and elements of the very story in which you are caught. You can’t free yourself with the tools that the master provides you. You need a new story and new cognitive tools” (263). What are the tools that Christianity provides us to free ourselves from controlling narratives? What are the tools that Christianity provides others to craft dominating narratives?

In Mutants & Mystics, Kripal takes seriously often derided media and the experiences that have inspired them. Writers and artists like Ray Palmer, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Philip K. Dick have had unfathomable, inimitable influences on our popular culture. They’ve each had some pretty incredible experiences from remote viewing to alien abduction to visions of the future. For these artists, science fiction and comic books have been the most effective means of sharing these experiences. That they have such devoted followers reveals both their success in conveying those experiences and the effectiveness of the media in transmitting them. Kripal argues:

But just because something is encountered through the imagery of bad movies or sappy religious art does not mean that what is being encountered is a bad movie or a pious painting; it might simply mean that all religious experience is culturally conditioned, and that the human imagination often draws on the most immediate, not to mention the most colorful, to paint and frame an encounter with the sacred. (81)

At the same time, Kripal’s study calls into question his writers and artists’ experiences of psychedelic drug use, alien abduction, remote viewing and other mystical experiences. Kripal maintains that traumatic experiences, alien abduction, or psychedelic drugs use, for example, are not the experiences on which we should focus. Rather, we should consider the possibility that they create the conditions through which the victim or user becomes more open to a deeper reality behind everyday “normal” experiences.  In the end, Kripal sympathizes with his subjects: “It seems important to point out that any scientific explanation of something like remote viewing must, in principle, remain an abstract, third-order account of what are, in the end, deeply personal, often fantastically meaningful states of consciousness.” (199)

Mutants & Mystics demands a particularly open-minded audience, much like the paranormal probably does. Readers who have a fixed worldview or a dogmatic hold on the way things work need not apply. Other readers who are quick to denounce people who confess to paranormal or mystical experiences as crazy should stay away too. Kripal’s best audience is one that suspects that there is more to our experience than what we see, feel, or do every day…that suspects that the truth is out there and that it is bigger, and crazier, than we can imagine. Ironically, it seems as if a Christian, or religious, audience would be the most appropriate, although I imagine that many religious readers will denounce or roll their eyes at Kripal, much like they have done with the writers and artists about which he writes.

One of Kripal’s most interesting points in Mutants & Mystics is showing how both religious and non-religious critics reject the paranormal claims of the writers and artists that he discusses. An open engagement with them is, Kripal argues, “completely impossible within our present mirrored cultures of religious fundamentalism and scientific materialism, which appear oddly united in their ferocious “damning” of the paranormal” (330). Another strength of Kripal’s book is that he takes his subject(s) seriously, but not too seriously. He is humorous but not disrespectful, sometimes skeptical but never dismissive. Fans of comics and sci-fi will no doubt be thrilled and intrigued by Kripal’s findings. Readers only slightly interested in the subject matter, be they religious or not, will certainly have their minds expanded or, if they’re lucky, completely blown away.

Mutants & Mystics (376 pages, University of Chicago Press) releases on Tuesday, November 15, in a stunning hardback version complete with full-color illustrations.

For more from Jeffrey J. Kripal and other discussions on Mutants & Mystics, visit the Patheos book club.

Marzi’s life is full of youthful wonder. That she grows up in communist Poland only adds to it. She attempts to make sense of ration cards, long lines, limited goods (even toilet paper), and her own parents’ financial troubles. Though times are hard for Marzi and her family, they always seem to have just enough to get by. They also benefit from an extended family network, the members of which take good care of each other. Like other children her age, Marzi attends school and must navigate both educational and friendship highs and lows. During her school breaks, Marzi and her parents take frequent “vacations” to family members’ farms where they help work in the fields. Along with trying to make sense of the adult world of her parents (as all children attempt to do), Marzi is faced with a nearly incomprehensible political system that plagues her life…somewhat inadvertently. She knows her parents suffer but not why. Even though she doesn’t fully understand political events that happen around her, her description of them and changing socio-political times are quite simply beautiful. It is a testament to Sowa that she doesn’t let her contemporary reflections on and understandings of these events “pollute” her childhood recollections.

Marzena Sowa

Of course, the first thing that you note when reading a graphic novel is its visual style. Here, Sowa’s partner Sylvain Savoia has employed a childlike style that is not too cartoonish. It perfectly captures Marzi’s sometimes fantastical view of the world around her. Savoia employs muted, drab colors no doubt in an effort to convey the mood of the time in which Marzi grew up. Second, readers will most likely be struck by the poetic nature of Sowa’s writing. That she tells her memoirs in a series of vignettes only lends her reflections on these events to a poetic approach. Robbed of their accompanying images and laid out in verse form, we would still be left with a strikingly beautiful account of her life.

Numerous themes are at play throughout Marzi that lend themselves to theological discussion. Marzi’s religious upbringing is obviously chief among them. We see priests standing beside the workers who strike for their rights. We see rural Polish devotees who claim to see the image of the Virgin Mary in a school window. More interesting than these, however, are Marzi’s own theological questions and speculations. What does God look like? How does God relate to the world? How does God forgive or punish sin? Marzi shows readers the ways in which faith, like communist rule, can oppress but also provide liberation, meaning and hope for its adherents.

Of course, the themes of freedom, oppression, and economic opportunity and (in)equality also demand theological reflection. There is clear economic inequality in Marzi’s experiences, which is all the more ironic against the background of a system that purports to be founded on ideas of equality. The contrasts between the rural and urban settings in Marzi are fascinating as well. Given my own ignorance of that time and place, it seems as if they comprise two completely different worlds, which is not to ignore the harsh experiences that rural dwellers no doubt endured.

Sowa’s reflections on the fall of communism…particularly the ways in which it falls in Poland…are especially beautiful, and not at all like what we perhaps associate with political revolution. It is difficult to read Marzi’s questions at this time and not hear similar questions being posed by so many of our own neighbors today. In what ways will we respond to government failures? What will it eventually take for us to say enough is enough? How and where will protestors occupy to make their voices heard more effectively? For those interested in or participating in the Occupy Movement spreading across the United States, Marzi will no doubt prove to be an insightful, surprisingly fun, and inspirational read.

Marzi (248 pgs., paperback) went on sale in comic book stores yesterday, October 19, and will be in bookstores on October 25. Below is a sample of the novel.

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