Week 2 theoretical- Religious Sensations in Mainstream Media, Theoretical-Week 2

Religious Sensations in Mainstream Media, Theoretical-Week 2

After reading this weeks theoretical article, a few things resonated with me. Meyer talks about sacred images or representations such as the Christian cross, Hindu deities or sacred drums. Although these images may at first seem a mere tool in the larger scheme of the religious show that is put on, they are sensational forms (Meyer 2012). These aesthetic sensational forms not only exemplify the large void between humans and the Divine, but 'bridge that distance and make it possible to experience...the transcendental' (Meyer 2012, p.162). The deity, sacred drum or cross is no longer profane but sacralised by the ritual or context in which it appears. Eliade posit this beautifully when he said, 'The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adorned as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ganz andere' (Eliade 1957, p.12).

Whether it be a beautifully ornate statue, a televised sermon or singing bowl chanting, 'the phenomenological reality of religious experience...[is]... grounded in bodily sensations' (Meyer 2012, p.164). What Meyer is trying to emphasize here is that the ecstatic experience is not attributed to one single factor, it is the sum of all sensations, the beautiful music playing as one enters the holy place, the holy imagery that its decorated with and also the participation in song or chanting that grabs the spectator and turns him or her into a participator. Meyer discusses how media in the current age now plays a role in inducing sensational transcendence (Meyer, 2012).

Today's media has shaken hands in renewed friendship with religion. With new technologies, has come new ways of promoting and reaching out through religion. Meyer claims that with these new technologies the relationship between media and religion has opened up in new ways, such as audiovisual religiosity used as empirical evidence for faith based truths (Meyer 2012).  As humans rely on what is visible to prove authenticity, some people's 'belief becomes thus vested in the image, it becomes hard to distinguish between belief and make-believe, miracles and special effects, or truth and illusion' (Meyer 2012, p.164). In addition paradoxes arrive with religion and modern media's new friendship, paradoxes of ethics. Partridge discussed the release of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and how although there was extreme violence in the film, there were Christian letters written to the board of movie rating classification arguing the age should be lowered from 18 to 15 because of the 'importance of the film's religious content' (Partridge 2001, p.496). For a faith that renounces violence, the paradox of enforcing a religious yet violent film is evident.


Multimedia
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=1359386

References
Eliade, M 1957, The Sacred and the Profane: The nature of Religion, Harcourt Inc, Orlando.

Meyer, B 2012, 'Religious Sensations: Media, aesthetics, and the study of contemporary religion', in Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader, Routledge, London and New York, pp.159-169.

Partridge, C 2001, 'Religion and Popular Culture', in Religions in the Modern World; Traditions and Transformations, Routledge, London and New York, pp.489-521.

Week 1 reflection- Jennifer Aniston and Hollywood versus Shamans and Ayahuasca

I was recently reading a news article on Jennifer Aniston's new movie 'Wanderlust', in which she drinks the South American holy plant brew of ayahuasca. The article describes how Jennifer through her movie character portrays the taking of the sacred brew in a stereotypical and reductionist light. For instance, the ayahuasca ceremony is filled with stereotypical hippies representing the 1960s LSD era.

The negative portrayal of ayahuasca ceremonies in the movie has caused outrage, as the spread of ayahuasca has reached as far as anthropologist and psychiatrist academics as well as lay people. Ayahuasca in its purest form is used in traditional healing ceremonies and for these to be portrayed as drug fueled hippie encampments angers ayahuasca drinkers and ceremonial attendees alike.

Ayahuasca in itself is the drinking of a tea brewed by several plants, one which contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT). I have learned from my own research that DMT occurs in the human brain but lies dormant until we die or almost die, then it is secreted into our brains. So by drinking DMT, it releases the DMT in our brains which one could argue creates a near death experience (NDE).

Far from hippie encampments with mindless drug taking, ayahuasca ceremonies combine nature spirituality with story telling, healing and guidance. The shaman of such ceremonies is someone 'capable of restoring order and harmony in the group. Someone who, when there is a dysfunction in a group-a tribe- he or she is capable of resynchronizing the elements of the group with nature and cosmos' (Narby, Kounen & Ravalee 2010, p. 9).

In Aniston's movie, 'Wanderlust' once she takes the ayahuasca as emotionlessly as a street drug, she suddenly appears perched on a tree singing a top forty song (Phillips 2012). This experience seems to emulate a street drug or acid trip, not a ceremonial medicinal plant. Ayahuasca drinkers who take the plant in shamanic ceremonies say that by all of us, even Western people taking ayahuasca it forces 'us to suddenly perceive the conditioning of the ideas we think are ours but in fact are artifacts implanted by culture, from childhood with your parents, in the end, all these things' (Narby, Kounen & Ravalee 2010, p31).

Far from being a drug addict, the shaman believes 'the vast majority of illnesses have a spiritual cause' and so when the shaman takes part in an ayahuasca ceremony, the 'trance forms part of the cure...by his ecstasy he finds the exact cause of the illness and learns the best treatment' (Eliade 1964, pp. 327-328).

The question to be posed is how damaging is such portrayals of traditional nature healing? Not only is the shamans nature spirituality threatened by such cavalier representations, his home is by the encroaching bulldozers in the Amazon. How can we preserve and or represent this nature spirituality without ethnocentrism or reductionist bias?



References
Eliade, M 1964, SHamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

Narby, J, Kounen, J & Ravalee, V 2010, The Psychotropic Mind: The World according to Ayahuasca, Iboga, and Shamanism, Park Street Press, Vermont.

Phillips, JT, 2012, Ayahuasca, What Jennifer Aniston May Not Know About the 'Spirit Vine', Huffington Post, 2/3/2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-talat-phillips/jennifer-aniston-and-ayahuasca-explained_b_1303999.html


Photo
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/904610

Week 1- Twilight and the Culture Industry

After reading the Culture Industry Reconsidered (Adorno et al, 2008) from this weeks reading list, some things really resonated with me. In the article, the recycling of ideas for mass production is discussed. I thought this point was particularly relevant to the current (and in my opinion baneful) Twilight craze. Twilight is all about vampires and werewolves, which feature as frequent mythical characters throughout human history. These mythological beings have existed for thousands of years through folklore and it is an example of how 'the culture industry fuses the old and familiar into a new quality' (Adorno et al, 2008:12).

The article also discusses how high and low art are forced together after years of separation (Adorno et al, 2008). High art could be classified as ancient or classical mythologies and highly respected texts and the low art could be described as how these stories have been adapted for todays culture, like in the Twilight books and movies. Adorno and Rabinbach imply, and I am inclined to agree with them, that this low art like the Twilight novels and movies, are a nocuous expression of art derived from worthy classical works or folklore, that only serve to represent and exploit the 'ego-weakness...[of]...powerless members of contemporary society (Adorno et al, 2008:18).

Although I dislike Twilight, I do not entirely condemn all mass produced entertainment, as we all fall vicim to its wares in some shape or form, the extent of which is determined by thy own true self. What does disconcert me however is the demand for media and entertainment that serves as an escape or as 'a sanctuary from immediacy and life' (Adorno et al, 2008:14). I don't agree this is a good occurrence partly due to my own principles of leading an honest life, by being aware and socially conscious without blinders, but also partly due to the fact that media like Twilight and others propagates characters, sweethearts and 'supposedly great personalities' that can create illusory ideals in the minds that view them (Adorno et al, 2008:14). For instance unrealistic romantic aspirations, idyllic lifestyles and not to mention questions of beauty and self-esteem.

It would also be wise to note that what is on demand in the entertainment industry is supplied as the 'world wants to be deceived' (Adorno et al, 2008:14). The biggest issue with this for me is that high popularization of mainstream characters, lifestyles and tastes screams conformity. Conformity in its extremes allows no room for individuality, it gives no encouragement for cognitive consciousness and can recreate and render our world vapid and mundane by the incessant cries of escapism.


Below is a link to another interesting example of how mass media has thwarted an ancient religious practice.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/jonathan-talat-phillips/jennifer-aniston-and-ayahuasca-explained_b_1303999.html

References
Adorno, TW., Rabinbach, AG. 2008. Culture Industry Reconsidered. New German Critique 6. New German Critique.

Photo
The image used is from my own personal collection and need not adhere to any copyright laws.