Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material, and the Cinematic Sublime
Author: Sobchack, Vivian
Source: Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, Volume 4, Number 2, July 2008 , pp. 194-203(10)
Publisher: Berg Publishers
Abstract:
This essay looks at the phenomenological relation between immanence and transcendence, the material and the immaterial, in films focused on "spiritual" or "religious" subject matter and themes. These films employ a variety of cinematic strategies meant not only to represent but also to present and solicit transcendent or "spiritual" states of being from the viewer. Each of these strategies is also an act of belief about the relationship between immanence and transcendence and about the relationship between the viewer's lived and sensual body and the visions and sounds expressed on the screen. Thus, certain strategies sublimate the experience of ek-stasis in literal dramatizations that emphasize the transcendent as "other" than material immanence, others emphasize the transcendent as located in immanence and thus sublimate the experience of ek-stasis in the materiality of existence—and still others emphasize the transcendent as immaterial and ungraspable except as an apprehended gap and/or opening in immanence. Considering such films as The Diary of a Country Priest, Thérèse, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Passion of the Christ, and Bee Season, the essay describes how certain ek-static moments are presented not only to but also on the viewer's lived-body, where both immanence and transcendence emerge and phenomenologically constitute both the sense and meaning of religious or spiritual experience.Keywords: EMBODIMENT; FIGURATION; IMMANENCE; LITERALISM; MATERIALITY; SYNAESTHESIA; TRANSCENDENCE
Document Type: Research article
DOI: 10.2752/175183408X328307
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