Leaving Neverland was released almost ten years after the demise of celebrity pop singer Michael Jackson (1958-2009). In its four-hour course, Wade Robson (1982) and James Safechuck (1978) speak extensively about their childhood years, in which they claim to have been sexually abused by Jackson. Directed and produced by the British filmmaker Dan Reed (Children of the Tsunami, 3 Days of Terror: The Charlie Hebdo Attacks), and co-produced by Channel 4 (UK) and HBO (USA), the documentary film gained tremendous attention from media and audiences worldwide, especially after tailor-made versions were broadcast on television in several countries.
The third season of Netflix hit series Darkwill be dropped online coming Saturday, June 27th. Those who watched the first two seasons know that this is an important date within the realm of the series’ narrative – and those who watched these seasons might also be interested in the following.
Ik had dit eigenlijk al eerder willen doen, maar het was er nog niet van gekomen: ik heb het grootste deel van mijn academische schrijfwerk van de laatste jaren geüpload op Academia.edu. Klik hier om mijn profiel te bekijken. Bijna alle stukken die nu te downloaden zijn op Academia, kun je ook terugvinden in het archief van deze site.
In de herfst van 2019 bezocht ik, net als in 2018 (‘Interpreting Rituals’), de NGG conferentie in Groningen, waar Charles Hirschkind te gast was om onder andere met PhD en RMA-studenten over embodiment, semiotiek en materiële benaderingen van religie te spreken. In mijn (waarschijnlijk niet al te toegankelijke, excuus) reflectie-paper kijk ik terug op enkele discussies en teksten rond deze thema’s, en koppel ik ze aan mijn huidige thesis-voorstel m.b.t. een documentaire over the Satanic Temple (Hail Satan?, 2019).
Senna is a 2010 documentary film, directed by Asif Kapadia, that portrays the public and personal life and the tragic death of Formula 1-racer Ayrton Senna (1960-1994). Despite receiving general critical acclaim of journalists worldwide[1], Formula 1-racer Alain Prost (1955), former team member and eventual life-long rival of Senna, explicitly renounced the way in which he was represented in the film. This paper discusses Prost’s major arguments for this renunciation in the light of the two existing versions of the film and their differences in terms of content and montage. I argue that the award-winning[2] montage of the regular, theatrical cut establishes a paradoxical relation between the film’s purportedly independent quality as an artwork and the external objections of its accuser: while the film’s critical acclaim is partly the result of the refined montage, the montage is also precisely what has made the film controversial.
I wrote an extensive paper on pop star Billie Eilish and her song all the good girls go to hell. If you are interested, you can read it right here. I wrote it in the context of my research master in Religious Studies at Utrecht University and my interest in music, popular culture & the transformations of western culture, identity politics, symbolism and transgression.
This is a paper from a few months ago. Writing on the (academic) study of ”Gnosticism” was challenging, especially because I barely knew anything about the field when I started my research. The final effort still contains some flaws that I’m well aware of – specialists will certainly be able to spot them, which is also one of the reasons I ultimately didn’t succeed in publishing the paper. It’s interesting to reread and to see how quickly views can change and evolve – my thought experiments on the subject matter were different from how they are now. Still wanted to publish it though, it might be an interesting trip for those of you who are interested.
The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973, released on DVD by Studiocanal)
In the course of March and April 2019, I wrote seven essays on topics ranging from a supposedly blasphemous song to the relationship between subjectivity and anthropological fieldwork. Today I publish the first essay, on Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man.
In the first semester of 2018/19 I wrote an extensive paper on the academic study of religion and film. A condensed outline of my argument was presented at a student conference of the UvA and the UU in January 2019. I publish the full paper right here.
What happens when you’re suddenly asked to write an exegesis on a particular set of biblical verses? I did so for a RMA course on Religious Texts and Interpretative Practices, and you’ll be able to find the result in this post.
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