Religion Dispatches
In the ever more dystopian world of Syfy Channel’s Caprica, teenage girls inhabit robot bodies, or live eternally without bodies at all, human bodies are marked by memories, and all the while there is blood flowing in the virtual streets.
Read More
Tamara, the girl who is dead but doesn’t know it, who exists only within the “magic circle” of a virtual game, takes center stage in this week’s episode, and in our commentary.
Read More
Among other clues to this sci-fi opera, our Caprica watchers took particular note of a bobbleheaded bull on the dashboard of a Tauron killer. What can we learn from the possibility that Capricans can be as kitsch-obsessed, cigarette-addicted, and as reckless with civil liberties as earthlings can be?
Read More
More on the sci-fi TV show that imagines monotheists rebelling against a polytheist society, speculates about the nature of the human soul, and asks, “Can you be free if you’re not real?”
Read More
The Tebow family are in the missionary business, and the ad they produced for Focus on the Family used their son’s football stardom to good effect. But what were they really selling?
Read More
Avatar is now officially the top-grossing movie of all time, but that’s not because it shows us something entirely original (in 3D no less). Like all good myths, it is a mashup: a mix of well-tested stories, presented in an unfamiliar way.
Read MoreOral Roberts had a passion for the dramatic, but what looked extemporaneous was well-rehearsed. His religious showmanship? Impeccable.
Read More
Does God really care who wins Big Brother?
Read More
An interview with the director of Afghan Star, a documentary that follows a tense but cathartic talent competition.
Read More
For viewers whose search for meaning is not confined to institutional religion, the television landscape abounds with religious and moral themes. And whether it’s euthanasia, polygamy, angels, demons, or clerics doing cameos, treatment of religion on the small screen is often surprisingly sophisticated.
Read More