The secular, pluralist culture of the West encourages a subjective approach to spiritual truth where stimulating emotional experiences, such as those provided by film, can contribute to personal conceptions of the sacred. Examining Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as the principal case-study and Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (2009) and Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) as comparative examples, Sarah Balstrup argues that these directors harness the affective properties of film to generate altered states of perception in a manner analogous to religious practice.
Powerful feelings of dissociation and indescribable significance typical of mystical testimony appear in viewer responses to these films, demonstrating the continued sacralisation of such states of mind. In their own way, each film confronts the viewer with an apocalyptic revelation of the impersonal forces of the universe, moving away from personhood and the human narrative, into pure sensation. They present a non-deterministic spiritual truth that can be intuited but not explained, mirroring developments in the religious sphere.
Investigating the relationship between cinematic technique and religious experience, Spiritual Sensations offers an alternative approach to the study of religion and film that has been principally focused on narrative symbolism and the dramatisation of values. Spiritual Sensations makes a further contribution to the field by analysing films contextually, considering viewers' subjective responses in light of religious and cultural change.
Author(s): Sarah K. Balstrup
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 224
City: London
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Introduction: Religious Experience in the Cinema
Religion, Film, and Cultural Change
Chapter Outline
Chapter 1: Religion and Film
The Transcendental Style in Film
Religious Experience and the Ritual Function of Film
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Religious Experience
Alternative Spirituality
Religious Experience and Spiritual Authority
The Easternization of the West
Conclusion
Chapter 3: 2001: A Space Odyssey: Cosmos and Ethos
Re-Imagining the Universe
Mystery and Potentiality
Conclusion
Chapter 4: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Meditative Perception
Meditative Qualities of Sound, Composition, and Pace
Transcendental Style: Structure and Stasis
Meditative Practice and Focused Awareness
Conclusion
Chapter 5: 2001: A Space Odyssey: Crossing the Perceptual Threshol
Ineffability
Noetic Quality
Transiency
Passivity
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Enter the Void: The Initiatory Moment
The New Extremism in a Media-saturated Age
Agency, Authority, and Epistemology
The Initiation of a Director
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Enter the Void: Trauma, Psychedelics, and the Lightning-Bolt Path
Sex, Stasis, and the Spiritual
Sensory Possession
Profane Paths to the Sacred: Cinematic Journeys of Realization
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Melancholia: In Dreadful Beauty and Trembling
Frontality, Vibrations, and Inversions
Mystical Experience
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Melancholia: Presence in Absence/The Long Withdrawing Roar
Longing for Reality
Searching the Darkness
Conclusion
Conclusion: Spiritual Sensations
Religion, Film, and the Transcendental Style
The Many Paths
Sacred Sensations and the Beholding of Truth
References
Index
