Religious Imaging in Millennialist America: Dark Gnosis

ISBN-13: 9783319991719 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 316 str.

Ashley Crawford

Opis

Ashley Crawford investigates how such figures as Ben Marcus, Matthew Barney, and David Lynch-among other artists, novelists, and film directors-utilize religious themes and images via Christianity, Judaism, and Mormonism to form essentially mutated variations of mainstream belief systems.

Spis treści

 

Chapter 1. Introduction: American Gnosis

Chapter 2. Delirium                                                                                        

A brief history of America’s religious founding(s).

Chapter 3: Dualism                                                                                         

An exploration of good and evil via David Lynch’s films.

Chapter 4 Delusion                                                                                         

On Mormon and Masonic symbolism in Matthew Barney’s CREMASTER films

Chapter 5: Deconstruction                                                                                          

On Judaic law and the apocalypse of language in Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet.

Chapter 6: Dereliction and Defecation                                                                   

On the religious underpinnings in Matthew Barney’s Subliming Vessel and Ben Marcus’ Leaving the Sea and the apocalyptic imaging of Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament.

Chapter 7. Dark Gnosis

O autorze

Ashley Crawford is a freelance cultural critic based in Melbourne, Australia, and is the author of a number of books on Australian culture.

Blurb

Ashley Crawford investigates how such figures as Ben Marcus, Matthew Barney, and David Lynch—among other artists, novelists, and film directors—utilize religious themes and images via Christianity, Judaism, and Mormonism to form essentially mutated variations of mainstream belief systems. He seeks to determine what drives contemporary artists to deliver implicitly religious imagery within a ‘secular’ context. Particularly, how religious heritage and language, and the mutations within those, have impacted American culture to partake in an aesthetic of apocalyptism that underwrites it.