The Right’s Satanic-Grammy-Panic Isn’t About the Devil or Pfizer or Even Scantily-Clad Women — It’s All About the Transphobia
When I need to know what’s wrong with the world and who to be outraged…
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Pop Star Ke$ha Punks Westboro Baptist Church
God smacks this world.
Read MoreMichelle Shocked Show Shut Down After Anti-Gay Rant
RD readers would not have been surprised.
Read MoreNicki Minaj Called ‘Possessed’ After Grammy Performance
Shockingly, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is angry about the Minaj’s Grammy performance; but why did she go with the “Roman Zolanski” bit?
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Goodbye to Amy Winehouse, Living Celebrity Dead
The street bordering Winehouse’s apartment has become a shrine that includes vodka and beer. While it may sound unseemly, some see it as a natural expression of our imagined relationship with the supernatural.
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The Varieties of Religious Experience in Indie Rock
Alternative rock, with its default anti-establishment stance (whether feigned or forthright) has not been the typical go-to place for sincere religious music. That may be changing. Though stylistically diverse, several recent releases show a unique motif: treating religious histories and sacred texts as fonts of wisdom, experience, and poetry.
Read MoreA Sacred Encounter with Erykah Badu’s Controversial Nude Video
A new video by Erykah Badu, for which she has been cited for disorderly conduct, shows the singer stripping nude in the Dallas area in which JFK was killed.
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Body Language: Michael Jackson and the Illogic of White Superiority
The King of Pop’s failing body revealed the vulnerabilities of whiteness as the norm, forcing us to rethink assumptions about what can be called ‘flesh tone.’
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Praying Upon a Star: Michael Jackson Spectacle Highlights Online Rituals
These days, rituals of mourning, praise, and eulogies for celebrities are often enacted in and through the media sphere.
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Michael Jackson, Perfect “God” for the Media Age
Was Michael Jackson a supernatural magician or an icon of self-immolation? Both? The physical body is gone, the musical productivity has ceased, the capacity to speak for himself is no more, so now MJ is a wonderfully ambiguous figment of our imagination. Three religion scholars discuss the life, legend, meaning, and myth of one of the world’s most talented, successful, and perhaps tortured performers.
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