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.
Lees verder Interdisciplinary Glances: the study of religion and film [Paper]
The following essay was written for the course Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion. Utrecht University & UvA, autumn & winter 2018/2019.
Lees verder Religion or ”Religion”: Universality and Particularity in Religious Studies
I recently wrote an academic book review for one of my research master courses. I took a publication of the Canadian Religious Studies scholar Douglas E. Cowan, entitled America’s Dark Theologian: the Religious Imagination of Stephen King.
Lees verder Academic Book Review: Stephen King, America’s Dark Theologian [Douglas E. Cowan]
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.
Lees verder Lost in Translation: 1 Timothy 2:9-14 [Paper/Exegesis]
In the autumn of 2018, I attented the yearly conference of the NGG (Nederlands Genootschap voor Godsdienstwetenschap). The overarching theme was ‘Interpreting Rituals’. Keynote lectures and paper sessions shed a light on a broad variety of topics, challenging me and the other research master students on the spot to search for challenging perspectives. The paper that I am sharing serves as a reflection on the conference and one of its pivotal themes. I wrote it in the aftermath of the event, but the case study that I used will be the starting point for another paper on David Bowie and performativity, which I will hopefully produce this spring.
Lees verder Essay: Performing Death (NGG Conference Religious Studies, 2018)
In the early 1970s, the ‘angry young man’ manifested itself as a central character in Indian films. Mostly played by star persona Amitabh Bachchan (1942-), the angry young man expressed themes of anti-establishment and socio-political disturbance.[1] In his characteristic role as a criminal anti-hero (Deewaar, 1975, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, 1978), Bachchan often became the victim of either his own passionate love for a woman or the socio-financial hardships of family life in Bombay.
Lees verder (It Happened On) A wednesday: The angry young man and the common stupid man in (New) indian Cinema [Essay]A World of Immersion
The blind perspective in Salvo
An essay on film style, fear, immersion and identification in the Italian film Salvo (2013).
A new chapter on Italian neorealism is written in the cinematic underworlds of Napels and Sicily, where formalistic filmmakers find their entrances to the harsh realities of daily mafiosi life. This bold hypothesis may sound completely arbitrary, but it actually connects to compelling insights in recent scholarship. A significant deal of literature has been written about the films of, among others, Roman filmmaker Matteo Garrone (1968-), whose oeuvre is regularly connected to ‘a new trend in Italian cinema’.[1] Antonio Rossini and Carmela Bernadetta Scala state that ‘’ …the old school of neorealism blends perfectly with the new trends in Italian cinema which we have called ‘’new neorealism’’’’.[2] For Roberta di Carmine, the films of Garrone ‘’ signal Italian cinema’s recovery from a state of ‘creative stagnation’’’.[3]
Lees verder A World of Immersion: The blind perspective in Salvo
The [English] paper that I submitted below is the result of my efforts for a master course on conversion. My intention has been to combine theoretical reflections on conversion [‘can you also convert to secularity?’] with a textual & formal analysis of a specific film (Kreuzweg, or Stations of the Cross, Dietrich Brüggemann, 2014). I argue that this film perpetuates a rigid binary between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ and I question the ideological implications underneath.
Lees verder Paper: Religious Sacrifice and the rejection of secular conversion in Kreuzweg
We use storytelling to escape from our most bitter and indigestible truths. One of the constants in all the stories we tell, across all cultures, is this Star Wars morality: a division of the world into good and evil. Good guys and bad guys only exist in stories. Every act of evil throughout history has been committed by human-beings like us, and every time we divide the world into good guys and bad guys, we actively deceive ourselves. And it’s a dangerous lie, because it helps us run away from the unpleasant reality that evil is something human. (…)There are no evil people, there are only people who commit evil. Whenever we take that leap, from people who do evil to evil people, then we’re just using stories to escape from the things in ourselves that we cannot face up to.
-Joshua Oppenheimer-[1]
In 1965 and 1966, followers of Muhammad Suharto’s anti-communistic regime tortured and murdered at least half a million people.[2] The perpetrators were never officially punished for their crimes. History is always written by the victors, and in their grand narrative, justice has been done. This explains the surrealistic opening of Joshua Oppenheimers The Act of Killing (2012): Anwar Congo’s re-enacted execution on the rooftop (illustr. 1) is a horrifying showcase of a self-proclaimed war hero. What we may expect is regret, what we actually see is pride.[3]
Lees verder Emotional truth over politics? The voice of the director in The Act of Killing
Het afgelopen studiejaar ging veel tijd op aan het schrijven van mijn masterscriptie. Nu mijn diploma binnen is en ik alweer bijna aan een nieuwe studie begin, wordt het hoog tijd voor het online plaatsen van het eindresultaat. Film als filosofie: de werking van subject en geheugen in Christopher Nolans Memento telt ongeveer 40 blz. tekst en heeft me zo vaak (al dan niet integraal) naar Memento doen kijken dat ik voorlopig liever The Prestige of The Dark Knight aanzet. Geïnteresseerd in de volledige scriptie? Bericht me voor de pdf/het word-bestand of lees alles hieronder terug. Eerst even de kat uit de boom kijken? De uitgebreide inleiding geeft als het goed is een gedegen beeld van mijn aanpak en de onderwerpen die aan bod zullen komen. De Engelse abstract van de scriptie heb ik helemaal onderaan de scriptie geplaatst. Lees verder Masterscriptie: Film als filosofie: de werking van subject en geheugen in Christopher Nolans Memento