Shifting Realities? Changing Concepts of Religion and the Body in Popular Culture and Neopaganism

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of the way in which ideas about religion and the body—in its relationship with technological innovation—are portrayed in some significant science-fiction books and films since the 1980s and on similar ideas in Neopaganism. I aim to show that, while in some cases we can trace a direct influence of popular culture on Neopaganism, it is possible to observe a relation between changes in science-fiction works and changes in Neopaganism: both reflect and express changes in society at large. By examining ideas of the body, technology and religion in Gibson's Neuromancer, David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, the article shows how new ideas can be used in a counter-cultural way or to strengthen existing power structures. The second part of the article considers whether there is a direct relationship between changes in popular culture and changes in Neopaganism or whether we can talk of a convergence of themes; it does this by examining how Neopagans have used and re-shaped ideas found in science fiction and fantasy. Finally, three key changes in Neopaganism are highlighted, changes that correspond to those found in significant popular culture works.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Andrew Hass, who read an earlier, shorter draft of this article and suggested that it be turned into a paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for the helpful suggestions they made and Dr Elisabeth Arweck, editor of JCR, for her encouragement and for several useful clarifications in the course of the revision process.

Notes

NOTES

1.  According to Chesher, “Science fiction is often a critical and oppositional fictional form, however. The ostensibly alien setting licences writers to discuss contemporary social issues without referring directly to what they criticize. Sci fi often presents dystopic visions of alienation and struggle against impossible problems. Extending the consequences of social trends can be more incisive than overt criticism. Sci fi in its critical mode can show that things perceived as natural and normal are in fact cultural constructs.”

2.  Gibson (qtd. in Chesher) writes, “What's most important to me is that it's about the present. It's not really about an imagined future. It's a way of trying to come to terms with the awe and terror inspired in me by the world in which we live.”

3.  In the novel, other planes of reality can be accessed: the plane of dreams, of drugs, of the simstim and, of course, of memory.

4.  Videodrome (1983), a film whose connections with Gibson's Neuromancer have been noted by several commentators (e.g. Grace), also stages virtual reality games. However, its focus is on the deceptive (even ‘diabolic’) power of (TV) images and their ambiguous relationship with the flesh rather than on total bodily immersion in a virtual world and on the interpenetration and fluidity of reality (realities) as in eXistenZ. Further, one of the central themes of the film (pornography) has somewhat reduced the film's potential influence on mainstream popular culture; ‘the flesh’ is ‘played out’ more subtly and in a less disturbing way in eXistenZ than in Videodrome. Also, even if one of the characters (‘Barry Convex’) is a ‘devil’ figure and Faustian allusions pervade the film, religious allusions and themes are not as artfully presented in Videodrome as in eXistenZ.

5.  Voiceover comment to eXistenZ, DVD version.

6.  This is one of the favourite themes in Phillip Dick's work. Cronenberg, in his voice-over comment to the film, declares that eXistenZ is a homage to Dick, one of his favourite writers (eXistenZ DVD, director's comment).

7.  Dick's visionary novels and short stories have inspired a surprisingly high number of Hollywood blockbusters. For instance, Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott was based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”; Screamers (1995) on “Second Variety”; Total Recall (1990) on “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”; Paycheck (2003) on “Paycheck”. A complete list can be found at http://www.philipkdick.com/films_intro.html

8.  See for instance the short story that inspired Blade Runner (“Do Electric Sheep Dream Electric Dreams?”).

9.  For example, the athletic and ‘super-hacker’ heroine Trinity in The Matrix. In this film, women are portrayed in a way which shows them as the materialisations of misogynist male fantasies. Gillis convincingly argues that they embody stereotypes, such as the ‘femme fatale’ (“Cybernoir”), which represent male views of female power (and agency) as dangerous (to males) and as challenging male certainties. Thus, in Gillis's view, “the films largely rely upon representing women through explicitly drawing upon a noir aesthetic which has traditionally contained the transgressive potential of women”, so that “Woman remains an inscrutable enigma, who must be reduced to a function to be controlled” (ibid 83).

10.  This kind of representation is obviously critical of the way cinema represents ‘non-whites’; nonetheless eXistenZ remains a ‘white universe’. The Matrix, however, includes a number of ‘black’ characters; however, as scholars have shown, the way they are represented is not unproblematic. According to Claudia Springer, apparently “positive representations” end up being “derogatory depictions”, drawing upon stereotypes (98), such as the ‘Hollywood mammy’ (the Oracle) (96). In The Matrix Trilogy, race representation is thus not neutral and appears to be tailored to precise (economic and cultural) interests and to the definition, by means of contrast, of ‘whiteness’ (Nakamura).

11.  Other researchers have pointed to the relevance of scholarly works, for example by Margaret Murray, various exponents of the Cambridge School, and some fictional works, such as Charles Leland's Aradia, which the author presented as a non-fictional work (Jencson 3–4).

12.  For instance, Gore Vidal's Julian, a novel about the Pagan Emperor Julian (Adler 263–4), influenced Don Harrison, the co-founder of the Church of the Eternal Source.

13.  See http://www.caw.org/. Some articles now mention the ‘Gaia Conspiracy’.

14.  Ecofeminists, for instance, appropriated the Gaia hypothesis early (see Orenstein 14). Recently, Pagan elaborations on Gaia, the Gaia theory, and the environment have become frequent. For example, the connection which Lucie Bell, a biochemist who studied with Lovelock, makes in a paper published in a well-known Pagan journal between Pagan spirituality and the Gaia theory or Glenys Livingstone's recent elaboration of ‘PaGaian’ Thealogy.

15.  See http://isxios.home.mindspring.com/gaea.html, access date: 8 February 2006. As the author is a Reconstructionist—he belongs to a tradition which is often polemical towards Wiccan eclecticism—his considerations are particularly interesting.

16.  See, for instance, Elaine Graham (72), who points out that some scholars conceive of cyberspace as a new kind of sacred space (Davis), “a place of salvation and transcendence” (Robins), a “heavenly city of Revelation” (Benedikt), and define it as “a charmed site” (Kroker and Weinstein), “a portal to another world” (Lieb).

17.  Recent studies show an attempt to integrate online and offline life (Dawson 32–3).

18.  Neopaganism cannot be compared to the Church of Scientology, which has directly originated from Ron L. Hubbard's science-fiction works and has made such texts its ‘sacred’ and normative texts, because Scientology's clergy strictly control the interpretation of these texts.