Religion in [American] Culture Project:
This project is a consideration of ways in which popular consciousness, reflected in creative productions, engages, or expresses issues of religious importance. Such engagement may take form of affirming religious importance. Such engagement may take form of affirming
religious convictions/values, criticizing how certain religious notions/assumptions function in popular culture, or engaging in the artists’s
own profound inner struggles and questionsings.
Please select a creation that is more or less current in the contemporary popular cultural scene in North America (or your home culture
elsewhere, if you wish). This may be a literary production (a book, a major poetic composition, a comic), a dramatic stage production,
a cinematic production (including documentary), a musical production (program/show, music video, rap, etc), a television program (a
single episode or an overview of a series) an on-line game, or other material. While the formal distinction between “religious” and
“secular” expressions is increasingly blurring today, you are encouraged to identify a work of art that nominally belongs to the secular
world rather than, say, a televangelist TV program, a selection of praise music on a religious radio station or transcript of a sermon.
Please work up an analysis:
To whom (what age group, social stratum, ethnic or sub-cultural group) is this work addressed? What issue(s) is the artist addressing?
What is (s)he saying about them? How well does (s)he succeed? Are there discernible levels of meaning/message? (Perhaps one
message at an overt level; another at a deeper, or covert/coded message?) What signs can you identify concerning whether or not the
message is finding currency (whether of acceptance or resistance) among it’s target audience? – in the larger population? How well does
the relationship between the medium and the message work? (Is it appropriately chosen? Might another medium have worked out better
in capturing the attention of it’s intended audience?) You yourself may agree or disagree with what the artist is saying- but you are
invited to express your reactions to what you are dealing with: did it “grab” you effectively? (even if you don’t agree with it?)
What cultural barriers might this production have to overcome? (e.g., how might various age groups or ethnic groups within your own
church congregation respond to it?) Might it appeal more to one of the four “personality types” we’ve studied in this class, than to others? What spritual pathway might be represented in the underlying values of this production?
Summation:
Please step back, and relate to the larger cultural scene: What larger trends in society does this production participate in? (Does it, for
example in the current wave of fascination with vampires. Does it ride the current trends in graphic novels? Etc.) Conclude with your
own concerns/appreciations; personal response to the message(s).
Please briefly present in class on your agreed date and submit the 7 page double-spaced paper on blackboard on or before June 5th.
(I like this done asap)